I was not a big fan of Cardinal Ratzinger when he was elected to the papacy; I found him brilliant, but divisive - ultimately harmful to the church (I am not a Roman Catholic, so my interest is that of an outsider). Therefore I was surprised - no. delighted would be a better word - with Pope Benedict XVI's First Encyclical Letter (deutsche Version). I had expected a long condemnation of post-modern relativism, but Benedict has given us a brilliant treatise on the essence of Christianity: love. The encyclical should be required reading for all Christians, but even non-Christians will enjoy his elegant style along with the rich allusions to Greek thought, Nietzsche, Marxism and the history of the church. There are benefits to having a classically-trained German theologian as pope.
I have read the 80-page encyclical once; I need to read it several times to come up with a complete analysis, but I wanted to put down some initial thoughts:
First, Benedict deals head-on with human sexual love - defined as eros - and its problematic history in the church. He acknowledges its central meaning in human experience:
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had poisoned eros, which for its part, while not completely succumbing, gradually degenerated into vice.[1] Here the German philosopher was expressing a widely-held perception: doesn't the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life? Doesn't she blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator's gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine?
Benedict finds eros in the Old Testament and provides an exegesis of the Song of Songs. But whereas eros is self-directed, agape finds its true expression in the other. True Christianity, according to Benedict, recognizes the fundamental unity of eros and agape, which he defines as ascending and descending love. Eros alone runs the risk of degrading sexuality to a commodity, while agape by itself becomes divorced from human experience (a good argument, by the way, against a celibate priesthood).
The meditation on individual love leads to the second part of the encyclical: The Practice of Love by the Church as a "Community of Love". Here Benedict outlines the centrality of charitable work in the church, and he traces its historical development.
a) The Church's deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.[17]
It is at this point where Benedict touches on the subject of social justice and provides a critique of Marxism, even while acknowledging the correctness of Marx's dialectical analysis of capital, and the concentration of capital in the hands of a few. But he steps back from any endorsement of a liberation theology - which he has long opposed - relegating the establishment of a more just social order to the realm of politics - separate from the church.
Fundamental to Christianity is the distinction between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God (cf. Mt 22:21), in other words, the distinction between Church and State, or, as the Second Vatican Council puts it, the autonomy of the temporal sphere.[19] The State may not impose religion, yet it must guarantee religious freedom and harmony between the followers of different religions. For her part, the Church, as the social expression of Christian faith, has a proper independence and is structured on the basis of her faith as a community which the State must recognize. The two spheres are distinct, yet always interrelated.
So the church's role is limited to administering to the suffering of people in the here and now, not working to create a better future where charity may no longer be required. It is a pity that Benedict doesn't recognize expression of human love as realized in the Christian-inspired nonviolent social movements such as the civil rights movement in the United States or Desmond Tutu's struggle against Apartheid.
But the encyclical is a tour de force that has been welcomed - with some reservations - even by some of the church's detractors, such as the theologian Hans Küng:
Der Schweizer Theologe Hans Küng hat die erste Enzyklika von Papst Benedikt XVI. als «respektables, solide und differenziert gearbeitetes Dokument» begrüsst. Allerdings habe die Enzyklika auch Grenzen, heisst es in einer Reaktion aus Tübingen. Viele Katholiken seien «bestimmt froh», dass diese erste Enzyklika des neuen Papstes «kein Manifest des Kulturpessimismus oder leibfeindlicher kirchlicher Sexualmoral» sei, sondern sich «einem zentralen theologischen und anthropologischen Thema» widme, schreibt der katholische Kirchenrebell in einer Mitteilung.
Perhaps in his next encyclical Benedict will write about the ecumenical implications of his meditation on eros and agape. For these are universal human aspects that are at the core of all religions. By following through on that he could achieve true greatness.
Comments