 |
| Pope Francis on Trump: "Wait and see" |
Everyone knows we are divided, and no one thinks
that’s good. But we seem at a loss for a solution. Can the Catholic Vision help?
How?
Sometimes teachers learn more than they teach!
Recently I conducted a session for adults preparing to
join the Roman Catholic Church. An
important question surfaced: are Catholic Social Teachings just general
principles without much practical direction, or do they include specific
actions to implement those principles--or are they someplace in between?
The question would be important anytime, since the
answer determines how relevant Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is to our daily experience of the
society and the culture we inhabit. But
the question is especially urgent now, when Americans are divided into two
equally unhappy camps.
One camp is convinced that America is in grave danger from
terrorists, illegal immigrants, refugees, rampant crime, lost jobs, unfair
trade deals, the media, and the power of establishment elites. The other camp is equally convinced that
America is endangered by a dishonest, incompetent, paranoid administration that
is bent on conning the public and curtailing our rights and protections to
achieve its mission of self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment.
Observing these two unhappy camps locked in a power
struggle, I recall a key theme from Vatican II (1962-1965): that the Catholic Church
must position itself as a public source of wisdom, to help steer power away
from evil and toward good.
This begs the question: can Catholic Social Teaching do
that job? Can it provide the wisdom we need to steer this current power
struggle in the US toward good results?
Pope Francis has been speaking to this question quite
a lot recently. His comments focus on two notions of great practical value for
people of faith.
Notion #1: “Wait and See.” One thing both unhappy camps share is inflated
rhetoric. One side invents its own
facts: immigrants are pouring in, refugees import terror, crime is soaring,
joblessness stems from free trade and regulation. The other side spins hypothetical horror
scenes of mass deportations, treasonous collusion, police state tactics. Such rhetoric fuels the conflict but provides
little basis for resolving it.
Francis prefers to wait for concrete facts. In his January 22 interview with the Spanish
newspaper El Pais, when asked about of his own opinion of the new American
president, Pope Francis avoided both alarmism and cheerleading. He suggested, rightly I think, the prudence of
basing any response on actual events rather than invented fears or anticipated
outrages:
I think that we must wait and see. I
don't like to get ahead of myself nor judge people prematurely. We will see how
he acts, what he does, and then I will have an opinion. But being afraid or
rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view,
quite unwise. It would be like prophets predicting calamities or windfalls that
will not be either. We will see. We will see what he does and will judge. Christianity
always rests on the specific, either a position is specific or it is not
Christianity.
…We need specifics. And from the
specific we can draw consequences. We lose sense of the concrete. The other
day, a thinker was telling me that this world is so upside down that it needs a
fixed point. And those fixed points stem from the concrete. What did you do,
what did you decide, how do you move. That is what I prefer to wait and see.
The public response to Trump’s travel ban is a perfect
illustration of “specific” action. The very
day the government began detaining immigrants, green card holders, even those
with visas, protesters thronged airports, vast crowds filled city squares, and
the courts acted swiftly to halt the ban. This fits rather neatly with Francis’
advice. Rather than jump to conclusions,
we should respond to results.
But this leaves open the question: on what basis do we
judge the results?
Notion #2: The Relevance of Catholic
Social Teaching. Of course, specific responses presume
preparation. They require the ability to
mobilize people who are ready to act and who know when the time for action has
arrived. Pope Benedict XVI famously said
that the Church cannot stand on the sidelines in the fight for justice--but to
arbitrate any contest, one must master the rules. So in many recent statements,
Pope Francis has been demonstrating how Catholic Social Teaching (CST) can
provide practical rules for the conflicts we face.
Such practical teaching must avoid two extremes. If CST offers only general principles,
arguing about how they apply might lead to endless debate that frustrates rather
than promotes action. But if CST attempts
to dictate specific policies or actions, people may argue that the Church is
stepping beyond its expertise into technical areas where its competence is
suspect. In short, if the Church wants
CST to provide practical wisdom, then it must go beyond theoretical platitudes
but avoid technical solutions.
And here Francis guides us, for in comment after comment
he makes it clear that CST offers something different. CST offers neither mere principles nor
specific solutions; instead, it offers concrete
criteria for judging actions that we or others take to solve problems.
This makes CST highly pragmatic. Instead of obsessing over hypotheticals, it
focuses on actual results. Instead of
claiming to provide concrete solutions, CST provides clear criteria for
evaluating concrete solutions. It’s not
enough to take actions that achieve results; those results must fit CST criteria
or be rejected. In this sense, the gospel message is radically pragmatic: we
need not argue about rhetoric or theories, but ask rather which theories are
working or not working. Thus CST cannot dictate solutions, but it can judge
them.
And this helps us to prepare to act, because we can
formulate the criteria in advance of any particular action. Francis has demonstrated this over and
over. Examples abound:
Asked by El Pais
about populism that carries a message of “xenophobia and hatred toward the
foreigner,” the pope replied:
Crises provoke fear, alarm. In my
opinion, the most obvious example of European populism is Germany in 1933.
After (Paul von) Hindenburg, after the crisis of 1930, Germany is broken, it needs
to get up, to find its identity, a leader, someone capable of restoring its
character…“Let’s look for a savior who gives us back our identity and let’s
defend ourselves with walls, barbed-wire, whatever, from other peoples who may
rob us of our identity.” And that is a very serious thing…No country has the
right to deprive its citizens of the possibility of talking with their
neighbors.
The use of “savior” here is key, since it implies that
for Christians such a politics is idolatry—as clear a criterion as any in our
faith!
Asked about the treatment of refugees and other
religion, the pope was equally concrete:
You cannot be a Christian without living
like a Christian. You cannot be a Christian without practicing the Beatitudes.
You cannot be a Christian without doing what Jesus teaches us in Matthew 25.
Matthew chapter 25 is Jesus’ injunction to help the needy
by such works of mercy as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and welcoming
the stranger. The pope went on:
It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a
Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help, someone who is
hungry or thirsty, toss out someone who is in need of my help…If I say I am
Christian, but do these things, I’m a hypocrite.
So if criterion #1 is idolatry, #2 is hypocrisy.
In mid-February Francis sent a letter to a meeting of popular
movements in California to express his view of popular resistance movements:
These are signs of the times that we need to
recognise in order to act.…The grave danger is to disown our neighbours. When
we do so, we deny their humanity and our own humanity without realising it; we
deny ourselves, and we deny the most important Commandments of Jesus. Herein
lies the danger, dehumanisation.
Criterion # 3: Disowning the neighbor
leads to dehumanization.
Within the last two weeks some journals headlined
the pope's opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline being constructed through
US tribal lands. Actually, the pope never mentioned the pipeline. But he
offered a clear criterion for addressing that case, when he told representatives
of indigenous peoples at a U.N. agricultural meeting that the key issue facing
them is how to reconcile the right to economic development with protecting
their cultures and territories.
 |
| Francis at the Conference on indigenous peoples in Rome |
Indigenous people, he said, have a right to
their ancestral lands. And this provides a clear rule for action:
In this regard, the right to prior and informed consent
should always prevail…Only then is it possible to guarantee peaceful
cooperation between governing authorities and indigenous peoples, overcoming
confrontation and conflict.
Finally, when Francis takes on the “Trickle Down Theory”
for reducing economic inequality (see CrossCurrents #461), he does not talk
about equality of OPPORTUNITY--he talks about the actual results of economic
structures that, whatever the theory on paper, in practice LEAVE millions excluded
from prosperity. We may argue about why this happens, and who is responsible,
and how to solve the problem--but we may NOT deny that it is a problem that
plagues most third-world countries as well as our own.
The preferential option for the poor is a matter of
principle for Catholic Social Teaching, and no system that results in massive
inequality can be justified by any theory. The pope believes the current model
has had ample opportunity to prove itself, and has failed. So it is folly to
expect suddenly better results if we cling to what Francis calls "the
sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system." He believes it is
time to give “equal opportunity” to another model.
Thus, on issue after issue, this pope advises that we “wait
and see” but also prepare ourselves with clear standards for judging what actually
happens. And for THAT job, Catholic Social Teaching provides a valuable legacy.
"By their fruits you will know
them...."—and By His Fruits You
Will know Him.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2017
