CHURCH IN FOCUS:
Caritas in Veritate -17
18 September 2011

In our Focus on the Church Programme we continue with the study of the Third Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, released on the 7th of July 2009. Addressed to the “bishops, priests and deacons, men and women religious, the lay faithful and all people of good will”, the encyclical begins with the affirmation that “Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness” is “the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity”.
The first words and early paragraphs introduce the name of the encyclical, Caritas in Veritate ‘Charity in Truth’, and the integrating relationship between the two components of the title. The introductory paragraphs describe love as an extraordinary force that has its origin in God and leads us to discover our own truth that reflects the face of Christ, who is Truth. Charity in truth leads to the authentic development of all persons. It is the principle behind social teaching and gives rise to criteria for social action such as, justice and the common good. Love in truth when it comes to social affairs is the great challenge for the Church in a world that is becoming globalised.
Pope Paul VI had already recognized and drawn attention to the global dimension of the social question. Following his lead, we need to affirm today that the social question has become a radically anthropological question, in the sense that it concerns not just how life is conceived but also how it is manipulated, as bio-technology places it increasingly under man's control. In vitro fertilization, embryo research, the possibility of manufacturing clones and human hybrids: all this is now emerging and being promoted in today's highly disillusioned culture, which believes it has mastered every mystery, because the origin of life is now within our grasp. Here we see the clearest expression of technology's supremacy. The vitro fertilisation is a process by which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the body: in vitro, meaning in glass or laboratory. Vitro fertilisation is a major treatment in infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed. The process involves hormonally controlling the ovulatory process, removing ova from the woman's ovaries and letting sperm fertilise them in a fluid medium. The fertilised egg or zygote is then transferred to the patient's uterus with the intent to establish a successful pregnancy. In this type of culture, the conscience is simply invited to take note of technological possibilities. Yet we must not underestimate the disturbing scenarios that threaten our future, or the powerful new instruments that the “culture of death” has at its disposal.
Pope Benedict XVI in the final chapter is entitled "The Development of Peoples and Technology", warns against the "Promethean presumption" of humanity thinking "it can re-create itself through the 'wonders' of technology". Technology, he says, cannot have "absolute freedom". "A particularly crucial battleground in today's cultural struggle between the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of bioethics", says the Pontiff and he adds: "Reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence". The social question has, he says, become an anthropological question. Research on embryos and cloning is "being promoted in today's highly disillusioned culture which believes it has mastered every mystery". The Pope likewise expresses his concern over a possible "systematic eugenic programming of births". Underpinning the entire Encyclical is the argument that without a belief in God, authentic development is impossible for "man is not a lost atom in a random universe: he is God's creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved."
He says that already Pope Paul VI had recognized and drawn attention to the global dimension of this social question. According to him that the social question has become a radically anthropological question that touches the human situation a great deal in the sense that it concerns not just how life is conceived but also how the laboratory manipulates a great deal as bio-technology places it increasingly under man's control. In vitro fertilization, embryo research, the possibility of manufacturing clones and human hybrids: all this is now emerging and being promoted in today's highly disillusioned culture, which believes it has mastered every mystery, because the origin of life is now within our grasp. To the tragic and widespread scourge of abortion we may well have to add in the future — indeed it is already surreptiously present — the systematic eugenic programming of births. At the other end of the spectrum, a pro-euthanasia mindset is making inroads as an equally damaging assertion of control over life that under certain circumstances is deemed no longer worth living.
Underlying these scenarios are cultural viewpoints that deny human dignity. These practices in turn foster a materialistic and mechanistic understanding of human life. Who could measure the negative effects of this kind of mentality for development? How can we be surprised by the indifference shown towards situations of human degradation, when such indifference extends even to our attitude towards what is and is not human? What is astonishing is the arbitrary and selective determination of what to put forward today as worthy of respect. Insignificant matters are considered shocking, yet unprecedented injustices seem to be widely tolerated. While the poor of the world continue knocking on the doors of the rich, the world of affluence runs the risk of no longer hearing those knocks, on account of a conscience that can no longer distinguish what is human. God reveals man to himself; reason and faith work hand in hand to demonstrate to us what is good, provided we want to see it; the natural law, in which creative Reason shines forth, reveals our greatness, but also our wretchedness insofar as we fail to recognize the call to moral truth.
One aspect of the contemporary technological mindset is the tendency to consider the problems and emotions of the interior life from a purely psychological point of view, even to the point of neurological reductionism. In this way man's interiority is emptied of its meaning and gradually our awareness of the human soul's ontological depths, as probed by the saints, is lost. The question of development is closely bound up with our understanding of the human soul, insofar as we often reduce the self to the psyche and confuse the soul's health with emotional well-being. These over-simplifications stem from a profound failure to understand the spiritual life, and they obscure the fact that the development of individuals and peoples depends partly on the resolution of problems of a spiritual nature. Development must include not just material growth but also spiritual growth, since the human person is a “unity of body and soul”, born of God's creative love and destined for eternal life.
The human being develops when he grows in the spirit, when his soul comes to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within, when he enters into dialogue with himself and his Creator. When he is far away from God, man is unsettled and ill at ease. Social and psychological alienation and the many neuroses that afflict affluent societies are attributable in part to spiritual factors. A prosperous society, highly developed in material terms but weighing heavily on the soul, is not of itself conducive to authentic development. The Pontiff here laments of the new forms of slavery to drugs and addiction that exists in the world today leading to the lack of hope into which so many people fall. This can be explained not only in sociological and psychological terms but also in essentially spiritual terms. Once involved in such a situation, people isolate themselves and the emptiness, in which the soul feels abandoned, despite the availability of countless therapies for body and psyche, leads to suffering. There cannot be holistic development and universal common good unless people's spiritual and moral welfare is taken into account, considered in their totality as body and soul.
The supremacy of technology tends to prevent people from recognizing anything that cannot be explained in terms of matter alone. Yet everyone experiences the many immaterial and spiritual dimensions of life. Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. A particularly crucial battleground in “today’s cultural struggle between the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of bioethics”. The Pope goes on to add: “Reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence”. The social question has become an “anthropological question”. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church’s social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations.
All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us. We should never cease to marvel at these things. In all knowledge and in every act of love the human soul experiences something “over and above”, which seems very much like a gift that we receive, or a height to which we are raised.
Fr Eugene Lobo S.J.