Reading Francis

I am headed on retreat and off the grid for a couple of weeks starting tomorrow, but I couldn’t let a pope release a social encyclical without at least a quick skim before I left, and Pope Leo released Magnifica Humanitas this morning. So here I am.

I haven’t read any of the commentary already out there, and I’m sure there are already some excellent insights that I’m missing and other thoughts that others have already covered. But since I write mostly for those who are not really that into all this stuff, hopefully you’ll forgive me. So far I have only:

• Listened to Colleen Dulle’s 5-minute overview on the Inside the Vatican podcast, because I couldn’t resist.
• Listened to the remarks Pope Leo gave at the introductory press briefing, which I recommend (and are in English). They are not just a summation of the document but a really good 10-minute complement.
• Read the encyclical online. Had I had time, I would have made our printer churn out the 26 or so pages so I could mark it up and do a better job of analysis, but that can wait for another time.

I should also say since I mentioned in my earlier post that I was curious what the footnotes would look like, I read through those before I actually read a word of the document itself. Would not recommend to others, though it helped me.

Quick takeaways:

1. I wrote my masters thesis in the mid-1990s on a principle of Catholic social teaching, and Magnifica Humanitas fits in very well within the tradition of “anniversary encyclicals” that commemorate an anniversary of the first major social encyclical, Rerum Novarum. (I wrote more about this tradition in the earlier post.) As is true of others, it outlines the history and development of Catholic social teaching since 1891 (this is the 135th anniversary), then moves the ball forward a little. The footnotes draw almost exclusively on the sorts of sources that those traditional ones did – previous major Church documents and a few Church Fathers. (Surprisingly, there aren’t even that many Augustine callouts.) The way popes generally introduce change is by walking through the works of their predecessors to show how what they’re about to say is not really change at all, but an evolution of tradition. That’s the case here.
2. As such, this is a great place for those who are “Catholic curious” (or otherwise intrigued by what Popes Leo and Francis have had to say) to catch up on Catholic social teaching. Leo does a quick historical recap of each pope’s development of the body of social doctrine (paragraphs 28-45), and then an overview of the core principles of Catholic social teaching (46-85). 
3. Pope Leo establishes clearly that his predecessor Francis is part of Catholic tradition rather than a break from it. There are a bunch of references to all of Leo’s modern predecessors, but especially Pope Francis. A lot of the coverage of Leo’s first year wondered to what degree the more staid Leo might walk back some of Francis’ more controversial (to traditionalists) stances; if it wasn’t already clear by now, Pope Leo is following Pope Francis in his own way. One of the new things I saw in the footnotes, as a small example, was that the final document of the global synod on synodality, a process that some believe will be Francis’ biggest legacy, was referenced in ways not that different from more traditional Church sources.
4. Other new things: While I would resist the temptation to read this in the “Pope Leo vs. President Trump” frame, the recent tensions between the White House and the Vatican might be behind Leo’s section that defines “the lane” for the Church to weigh in on social, political and economic issues (17-27). It’s possible that predecessors have done this too, but I don’t remember this articulation, charting a course between “stick to religion” and “Catholic triumphalism”.
5. Earlier in the encyclical, Leo discusses the importance of admitting faults and seeking forgiveness, but it was striking to see, in a discussion on the element of human trafficking and degradation behind many of the “AI jobs” in underdeveloped countries (176-179) that the Church was wrong to be so slow to denounce all forms of human slavery (which Leo XIII, the Rerum Novarum guy, finally did toward the end of the 19th century). When the Church admits wrong and asks forgiveness, it might be a new day!
6. There will be some stories about a statement in paragraph 192 in which Leo seems to indicate that there are no longer any justifiable wars. It’s not a big part of the document, and it echoes things by predecessors, but it’s the sort of thing you saw popes say about the death penalty before Francis changed official teaching.
7. I’m limiting myself for now to two quotes (one from the beginning and one from near the end); hopefully later this summer we can do a reading group to dig out the many jewels in the document. But for those of you more likely to skim, for your consideration, from the AI section:
   1. #118-130 is the soul of the encyclical as I read it, an argument against posthumanism on what it means to be human that I find hopeful and much-needed. My favorite part on this first read.
   2. #132-138 is for the politicos, journalists and the communicators
   3. #139-147 is for families and educators
   4. #148-169 is for labor and economic policymakers
   5. #182-211 is the part on war and power vs. the civilization of love that will get most of the attention
   6. #212-228 is the part for all of us on the roles we can play in making peace
   7. The close (#229-245) is strong and worthwhile, too.
8. OK back to my footnote fetish. Unlike Pope Francis, there are very few references that are outside of the mainstream Church documents. Besides the synod final document I mentioned and some statements by the International Theological Commission (which I don’t remember from the past but could be de rigeur), there were two theologians referenced (one Italian, one French), only one bishops’ conference (the USCCB!), the UN (in a section on multilateralism) and:
   1. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
   2. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
   3. Plato, Letters
   4. JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings; The Return of the King

There’s no reason to believe that this last one was a shoutout to uber-Tolkien nerd Stephen Colbert, but I hope that, wherever he is, he is smiling nonetheless.

Two paragraphs I liked: 

This one, from the open, summarizes the narrative frame Leo uses throughout the document of Babel vs. Nehemiah:

#10: “We must, then, avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. The risk of dehumanization — of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means — is an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise. Instead, let us choose the “way of Nehemiah,” which highlights the importance of working together to make the City of God a safe place for returning exiles. Rebuilding today means recognizing that, precisely from the plurality of voices and visions which, even though they sometimes remind us of the confusion caused by the diversity of spoken languages, a bright possibility emerges. Indeed, this is the possibility of building together, of transforming diversity into a resource and of making listening and dialogue the common ground upon which to cultivate justice and fraternity. Within this shared task, Christians discover their unique role of guiding actions toward God so that, in his light, pluralism does not dissipate into disorder, but instead, through the practice of synodality, it becomes the space in which humanity rediscovers its solid foundations and its final end. In the Book of Revelation, John sees the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:2) as a gift for all humanity. And this vision of grace is an invitation for us Christians to work together in order to foster a peaceful, just and dignified life in community within today’s ‘cities.’”

This one, from the section on what our role is in peacemaking, was particularly powerful:

#216: “There are times when, in order to remain human, we must set aside our reservations and take a stand. In some conflicts, it is unjust to remain neutral, nor is it enough merely to claim that we are not complicit. [192] When we witness the bombing of civilians, attacks on hospitals, schools or vital infrastructure, and violence that affects children, we are confronted with scandals that wound humanity itself. For this reason, we cannot limit ourselves to the level of abstract analysis. Pope Francis encouraged us to “touch the wounded flesh” [193] of those who suffer, look at their faces, listen to their stories and acknowledge their wounds. Painful events require both history and memory, the former to recount the facts, the latter to bear witness to lived experiences.”

See you in a few weeks!