Reflections on Magnifica Humanitas, part 3

As I stated previously, Pope Leo XIV has released his first encyclical entitled Magnifica Humanitas. I opened with a reflection on the Introduction to this teaching document. The opening was concise but theologically solid, as it presented the core of Catholic Social Teaching from the 1890s onward. I am continued to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest this encyclical chapter by chapter in real time. I have not read the entire document yet, but rather reading it privately in sections and then commenting on it before reading more. I find it helpful to engage in pieces and not read the entire thing and then start my analysis, as that tends to lead to a more broad overview and not looking at each section in it's unique own right. 

Today, I read through Chapter 1 of the document. My initial reaction to the 1st chapter is not quite as positive as my enthusiasm for the opening introduction. It gets a little theological squishy in the early middle section (more on that in a moment), but ends with a pretty solid recap of the major encyclicals on Social Justice from the magnum opus Rerum Novarum onward to the last stuff written by the late Pope Francis.

 Chapter One is entitled, "A Dynamic Approach Faithful to the Gospel." It opens with a cursory paragraph issuing a call for expansion of doctrine, which in Catholic theology, is permissible. Unlike our Orthodox brethren, the Catholic Church teaches that doctrine can grow and adapt as humanity moved into new eras with new expansions of science and philosophical thought. Catholic doctrine is not supposed to change, and can grow and expand as new problems needing new solutions arise. St John Henry Newman's work On the Development of Christian Doctrine is a seminal treatise on this idea, if one so so inclined. 

Pope Leo's take on this is that basically Catholic Social Teaching does not evolve in a vacuum. Social Doctrine develops "from within, calling for...further development in fidelity to the Gospel." He does attempt to ground Catholic Social Teaching to Christ and the Good News. The Church's task in Social Teaching is not to randomly interfere into worldly matters or simply try to impose a one size fits all "external code of ethic...from above." 

 He does not come out and say that Catholic Social Teaching is primarily a matter of ethics (as opposed to morals), but he certainly implied that here. While I agree that the corpus of Catholic Social Teaching are not doctrines that we found formulated under a rock that was pointed out to us by an angel, I did start getting a bit twitchy in the next subsection of Chapter One when Pope Leo seems to embrace the idea that all Catholic Social Teaching is simply a matter of ethics and their applications and not grounded in external moral right and wrongs. 

This section, entitled "A Church journeying through human history" (paragraphs 19 through 22), goes into a rather odd analogies of the Church being "Mother Church" that works in the City of Man but is not of the City of Man, nor is the Church to be a substitute for, or a transplantation of, Civil government. The supposed a very clear distinction, grounded in his reading of the Vatican II documents, that there is a clear distinction between "the ecclesial community and the political community, emphasizing that each must operate with full autonomy." 

While I do not in principle necessarily disagree with that, there is a bit of a danger here because this is not what the Church has always taught nor is it what the Church has always practiced. The Pope for centuries was head of a vast earthly kingdom of which he was the absolute monarch. There were times when the Pope had his own armies and ordered rebels against his earthly kingship to be executed as traitors to the Papal crown. Again, while I think the Church made many mistakes by turning the Pope into a king with temporary political rule and power, to present this issue in a way that seems to lead to the conclusion that "this is what the Church has always taught" is historically not particularly accurate. Even Church canon law is designed so the Church can be a fully functional civil government in places where no functional civil government exists. 

Pope Leo seems to posit the idea-why not using the actual term itself-that the Church's role in the world seems to be as "Mother Church." I have no problem with that analogy, although I wish Pope Leo would have labeled that analogy more precisely in his verbiage. Our mothers are often wise, and we do well to listen to the wisdom of our mothers. Had I been writing this encyclical, I would have hit home with that idea much more clearly than the language of the "twofold acknowledgement-the autonomy of earthly realities and the distinction between ecclesiastical and political spheres of competence" (paragraph 22.) 

The encyclical then pivots to a short discussion of the nature of the Church and the secular Social Sciences. He says that the Church "is not afraid to encounter human knowledge" and that such secular schools of thought can be tools to help the Church better understand the world. I think here is where Pope Leo tries to define the parameters and purpose of Catholic Social Doctrine: "Herein lies the proper function of Social Doctrine, which does not claim to supplant the responsibilities of politics or institutions, but offers itself as a foundation for collective discernment, helping to recognize and promote whatever serves the dignity of persons, the vitality of communities and the common good." So, I would argue he means that Mother Church, like a good mother, gives us wisdom and things to think about without dictatorially tells us how to run our lives. 

While I think I can get on board, in principle, with that idea, this bleeds into the next paragraph (25) that says, "In this same vein, I too have reaffirmed that the Church “does not claim to possess a monopoly on truth,” [17] because truth is not a territory to be defended, but a good to be shared." That statement gave me pause because, if the operative analogy is Mother Church, that gets really squishy into what smacks of relativistic mummery really quickly. While we may not have all the Truth, the Church does have the Truth, and that is the Truth of the revelation of Jesus Christ. He then tries to save face by getting out of relativism by ending the paragraph with an analogy of "This concept can also be illustrated by the image of a multifaceted polyhedron, [19] in which the one truth of the Gospel is reflected from different angles." While I do not disagree with that analogy, a multifaceted polyhedron of infinite beauty is both a thing to be defended and also a clear undeniable and nonnegotiable Truth. That Truth either is a polyhedron or it is not. If someone, say a Communist Bolshevik, says that polyhedron is an opiate of the Masses and false, he has no Truth in him, and continuing to have dialogue with such a person under the guise that he has some truth worth considering is at best intellectually dangerous and at worst moral cowardice.  

He then goes on to give perhaps the most problematic statement of the document to this point: 

From this perspective, Saint Paul VI acknowledged that, given the great variety of historical situations, it is unrealistic to think that the Church’s Social Doctrine can propose a single response that is valid in all contexts. [21] For this reason, he invited each Christian community to interpret the reality in its own country with clarity and responsibility. The fruitful tension between the universality of the Church’s mission and her local roots is an intrinsic aspect of her life, for she encompasses the whole world, while addressing the specific issues of each context as the real setting in which the Gospel takes shape.

This ignores the question of what happens when local roots twist the Gospel and go off the theological reservation, as it were. We are already seeing this in the fallout from the Synod on Synodality nonsense. Just because it is local and the people want it does not make it right or good Church doctrine. The Magisterium defends the Faith against incursions. The Devil attacks at the roots not at the main trunk of the tree. I saw this in the Episcopal church. The roots start sucking up the poison, thinking it's water, and before long, the whole tree falls ill and dies. 

This is where I really disagreed. In Paragraph 27, the Pope says, the "Church’s Social Doctrine is not a handbook of principles and norms to be applied, but a process of shared discernment...the Church — together with other Christian denominations and believers of other religions — must make her voice heard, not in order to dominate, but to promote communion." This is precisely what Social Doctrine is *not.* It very much is base principles illuminated to us from the light of Jesus Christ to make the world a more just and peaceful place by application of these Christian principles. Social Justice is not a big hand holding ecumenical conference where we tacitly discuss ethics, all hold hands, and sing Kumbaya. Social Justice is boldly proclaiming the Good News of the Great King who died and rose again who giveth life and life more abundantly. I have to respectfully disagree on this section. 

The remaining part of Chapter 1 then gives a historical map of the history of the various Papal encyclicals from Rerum Novarum onwards. It is a pretty solid synopsis. Interesting, how he describes each encyclical is very much each encyclical's handbook of principles and norms to be applied to combat the social ills each Pope saw at the time. The irony that this contradicts what Pope Leo was defining as what Catholic Social Teaching was not supposed to be in the preceding subsection is precisely what he highlights as what is right about those documents. I don't think he quite thought through that irony.

So, where does that leave me in my analysis as I approach Chapter 2? I am sort of in a Supreme Court justice "concur in part and dissent in part" frame of mind. I really liked the Introduction and the History of the Catholic Social Teaching encyclicals that he included in Chapter 1. I got really twitchy in the "Social Doctrine as a shared discernment" section. So, we will see where he goes with this. He has not delved into AI yet, so I am guessing he will start doing that in the coming chapters. As he seems to so far define Catholic Social Teaching as ethical considerations and not praxis, I am curious to see how he frames AI. 

See you next time...