Globalization makes us neighbors, but ‘love in truth’ makes us brothers and sisters

Posted: 08.14.09

Pope Benedict XVI has written his third encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (Charity in Truth). The long-awaited encyclical (it underwent revisions in the light of the present economic crisis) commemorates the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s “Populorum Progressio” (On the Progress of Peoples); but, it stands in continuity with the social teachings developed by popes since Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” in 1891.

As the world continues to confront the most serious economic recession in 80 years, the Holy Father calls for reform in economic and social systems, noting that the present crisis was brought about not by the failure of the market, but the failure of ethics in the business and financial communities. “Truth matters,” the Holy Father is telling us – even in economics. Without truth, charity becomes mere sentimentality; without truth, the truth about man and his relationship to his Creator, “man neither knows the way to go, nor even understands who he is.”

Undergirding Benedict’s encyclical is a Christian vision of the human person, made in the image and likeness of God, destined for communion with God. As the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council reiterated, man is the only creature God made for himself. This vocation to transcendence, the pope argues, must be acknowledged if development is to proceed along paths that will truly promote human flourishing on this earth. Otherwise, seeming “advancements” in science, technology and other spheres of human endeavor will end up “dehumanizing” rather than humanizing us. If we view ourselves as no more than a chance development in a mindless universe, then why would we or anyone else have any significance? In such a world closed to transcendence, anyone can justify using other human beings for their own ends and purposes.

“The solutions to the current problems of humanity,” the pope writes, “cannot be merely technical, but must take account of all the needs of the person, who is endowed with body and soul, and must take the Creator, God, into consideration.” That three-quarters of the world’s population lives in poverty or that millions still die of starvation is not because there are not enough riches or food to go around, nor is it because there are too many people. Population is not the source of poverty but rather the inequitable distribution of the world’s resources. A Haitian proverb says “Bondye konn bay; men, lezom pa konn separe” (“God knows how to give; but men do not know how to share”). It is our not knowing how to share, “this lack of brotherhood among peoples and individuals” that accounts for poverty and underdevelopment in our world. Globalization, Benedict observes, has made us all neighbors but it hasn’t made us brothers and sisters.

“Love in truth” does reveal to us that, in fact, we are brothers and sisters; “Love in truth” does bind us to one another as “our brother’s keeper.” God’s love for all his creatures must be mirrored in the way we care for one another – through acts of love and solidarity that are grounded in the truth that every human life is sacred and that all humanity forms one family.

This 30,000-word encyclical is not an easy read, but its message is a profound restatement of the challenge of living the Gospel in the 21st century. It is a clarion call to fidelity: fidelity to man that requires fidelity to truth, which alone can guarantee human freedom and the possibility of integral human development.

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