The Rule of Benedict: Love and Truth

When Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed from this life on December 31 of last year, he left behind a body of brilliant theological reflection dating from his tenure as a university professor in his native Germany through his retirement years following his shocking resignation from the papacy in 2013.

And following in the tradition of popes dating back more than a century, he continued to develop Catholic social teaching, particularly regarding the role of all persons and human institutions — including businesses and financial markets — in fostering justice and human flourishing.

The Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century advanced the free-market economy but coincided with the rise of socialist thought. These colliding interests led Pope Leo XIII to write his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which insisted that an economy must be based in justice, essentially calling business and government leaders to the practice of the natural virtues.

Later popes would mark significant anniversaries of Rerum Novarum by applying its principles to the modern world. In the latter 20th century, Pope John XXIII commemorated its 70th anniversary with Mater et Magistra (1961); for its centenary, Pope John Paul II wrote Centesimus Annus (1991). Between these, Pope Paul VI penned two social encyclicals, including 1967’s Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples), which signaled another significant development in Catholic thought on global economic issues.

Love at the Heart

Like previous social encyclicals, Pope Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth), issued in 2009, called for the practice of justice in economic and social issues. But it went further to assert that the exercise of this natural virtue of justice — like the commandments themselves — must be rooted in the supernatural virtue of love.

“Charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine,” Benedict said at the top of his encyclical. Charity — or love — “gives real substance to the personal relationship with God and with neighbor; it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones).”

Charity and truth are inseparable, and as the guiding principles of social doctrine they “[take on] practical form in the criteria that govern moral action,” the Pope said, adding he would focus on two criteria critical to development in a globalized society: justice and the common good.
 
Justice “is inseparable from charity,” he wrote. “Only in charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value.”

Charity demands justice but also transcends it. “The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion,” Benedict wrote. “Charity always manifests God’s love in human relationships as well, it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world.”

Human Development

To serve the common good includes working toward “integral human development,” wrote Pope Benedict, a concept proposed by Pope Paul VI in Populorum Progressio.

The Church does not propose technical solutions for how this development is to happen, but notes that everyone is called by God to work for human development, he said, “The truth of development consists in its completeness: If it does not involve the whole man and every man, it is not true development.”

Benedict wrote Caritas in Veritate during the global economic crisis of 2007-2008, which undoubtedly factored into his reflections. He observed, in effect, that a technological society cannot be trusted to self-regulate or set realistic goals; instead, the world “needs to rediscover fundamental values on which to build a better future” — among these justice and love infused with truth.

“Today’s international economic scene, marked by grave deviations and failures, requires a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise,” he said.

An Ethics of Economics

When he turned to concerns involving free enterprise, he addressed one of its dangers when it loses sight of these fundamental values.

In economic matters, he said, “once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”
 
The common good, therefore, requires shielding persons from these excesses, Benedict said. The rights of workers need to be protected. Universal employment should become a priority. Ensuring food and other goods necessary for life are available to everyone is essential.
 
“The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics whatsoever but an ethics which is people-centered,” he stressed.

The vision is not merely to create ethical sectors, “but to ensure that the whole economy — the whole of finance — is ethical, not merely by virtue of an external label but by its respect for requirements intrinsic to its very nature,” the Pope said. “The Church’s social teaching is quite clear on the subject.”

Elaborating on this in a 2010 address, the Pope noted that some businesses had weathered the global crisis by adhering to “moral behaviors” and being aware of local needs. Enterprises, he said, can be “vital and produce ‘social wealth’ if the businessmen and managers are guided by a far-sighted view, that prefers investment in the long term to speculative profit and that promotes innovation instead of thinking of accumulating riches only for itself.”

Business leaders attentive to the common good “are always called to see their activity in the framework of a pluralistic whole,” the Pope said in the address. “Such an approach generates — through personal dedication and a fraternity expressed in concrete economic and financial decisions — a market that is more competitive and, at the same time, more civil, animated by a spirit of service.”

Expertly, Caritas in Veritate dovetailed social teaching with Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life), thereby linking respect for human life with integral human development.
 
“Openness to life is at the center of true development,” Benedict wrote.

Mixed Response

As might be expected, Caritas in Veritate received mixed reviews even among some orthodox Catholic observers. Among those who greeted it with a measure of skepticism was author and social analyst George Weigel, who in a National Review commentary characterized the encyclical as a “hybrid, blending the pope’s own insightful thinking on the social order with elements of a Justice and Peace approach” favored by more liberal influences within the Vatican. “The net result is, with respect, an encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus.”

While the “Benedictine sections” of the encyclical are compelling in linking charity with truth and makes many keen observations about the global economic situation, the parts that seem shaped by “Justice and Peace” thinking are “simply incomprehensible,” “clotted and muddled,” with more talk of “redistribution of wealth than about wealth creation,” Weigel added.

He advised readers to focus on the Benedictine parts of the encyclical, including “his extension of John Paul II’s signature theme — that all social issues, including political and economic questions, are ultimately questions of the nature of the human person.”

In support of Caritas in Veritate, Catholic historian and theologian Matthew Bunson called the encyclical an “elegant synthesis of Catholic social thought and Catholic moral teachings.”
 
Pope Benedict, he said, “has given the world a profound assessment of authentic human development. … This is a significant moment in Catholic social teaching, and the encyclical will be the source of fruitful reflection for many years to come.”

Despite the discomfort of some with parts of Caritas in Veritate, it could be said that the keywords of this encyclical’s title, love and truth, underlie all the late Pope’s theological thought, which was profoundly Christological and ultimately oriented toward our hope and desire for eternal life.

After the encyclical’s release, some saw Benedict as a “social democrat,” but  “such labels had no meaning for him,” journalist Glenn Argan wrote recently in National Catholic Register. 

“His thought and his life were rooted in a deep faith in Christ as our sole redeemer,” Argan said. “Our lives on this side of paradise will always be incomplete, and we can only find completeness through the ongoing exercise of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.”

Business executives’ dilemma: the need to please investors

Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for businesses is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limiting their social value….
 
Today’s international capital market offers great freedom of action. Yet there is also increasing awareness of the need for greater social responsibility on the part of business.
 
Even if the ethical considerations that currently inform debate on the social responsibility of the corporate world are not all acceptable from the perspective of the Church’s social doctrine, there is nevertheless a growing conviction that business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference.
 
— Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 40