| Politics

Giving and receiving as the way to build a truly just economic order.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) – I finished my first reading of ‘Caritas in Veritate’ on Friday, July 9, 2009. It was a brilliantly sunny day. I was enjoying the fresh air outside of Finaghty’s Irish Pub and Restaurant in Snowqualmie Ridge, Washington where I was surrounded by a breathtaking, panoramic view of the mountains. All I could think of was the gratuitous goodness of God. I was finishing a week away with my best friend, my wife of 33 years. We had traveled across the country to meet our 6th grandchild, little Sofia Elizabeth. I sat there realizing that everything in life is a pure gift!

After having read this letter again, along with comments on it both good and bad, I believe that this scholarly yet pastoral and prophetic encyclical letter can be summarized in one word, Gift! It proposes a way out of the current economic crisis by truly considering its source. That way calls us to rediscover that any fruitful reflection on the economic order must not begin with commodities but with human persons in relationship. The Professor occupying the Chair of Peter has offered to the world a framework for the building of an economy of gift and communion. If the ideas, insights and principles contained within this letter are seriously considered and used they could lead to tremendous advances in building a more just and hopeful economic order.

In the Pope’s words: “Charity in truth places man before the astonishing experience of gift. Gratuitousness is present in our lives in many different forms, which often go unrecognized because of a purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life. The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself, and it is a consequence — to express it in faith terms — of original sin.’” (#34)

That understanding of the root of the problem is a critical polestar for navigating through this letter and deriving its insights as an aid in the task of building a better way. He continues “…In the list of areas where the pernicious effects of sin are evident, the economy has been included for some time now. We have a clear proof of this at the present time. The conviction that man is self-sufficient and can successfully eliminate the evil present in history by his own action alone has led him to confuse happiness and salvation with immanent forms of material prosperity and social action. Then, the conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from “influences” of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way.”

This encyclical letter reminds the reader that the market does not exist in “the pure state. It is shaped by the cultural configurations which define it and give it direction. Economy and finance, as instruments, can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man's darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.
The Church's social doctrine holds that authentically human social relationships of friendship, solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or “after” it. The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner.”

Contrary to what some have written, this encyclical letter neither endorses nor rejects “capitalism.” As the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church consistently has done in the past it simply does not use the term, preferring the term “market economy.” That is because the market is made for man and not man for the market. Freedom is a good of the person and a free market must be one which is moral. Catholic Social thought needs to be rescued from those who seek to use it as a kind of "proof text" to legitimize any political theory or economic system that fails to spring from its’ fundamental view of the dignity of the human person, solidarity, authentic human freedom, economic and social justice as well as matters of war and peace.

Our task as Catholic citizens is not to put literal or figurative proof texts from Catholic Social Teaching around political, social or economic theories that are rooted in a flawed or limited notion of the person, the primacy of the family, solidarity, and a proper application of the principle of subsidiarity. This has gone on for too ...