Radical Pope,
Traditional Values
MONTREAL — In less than a year in
office, Pope Francis has certainly stirred things up. Eschewing the papal
palace to live in a simple apartment, and mingling with ordinary people in St.
Peter’s Square rather than staying cloistered with cardinals in the Curia, the
pope, recently named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, appears to offer a sharp
contrast to his recent predecessors.
Many of the pope’s
statements have been highly arresting: He has attacked the “idolatry of money”
and called unchecked capitalism “a new tyranny.” His trenchant critique of
trickle-down economics has earned the ire of conservative commentators like the
radio host Rush Limbaugh, who termed as “Marxist” the pope’s exhortation
“Evangelii Gaudium,” published in November. The pope’s response was swift and
unapologetic.
“Marxist ideology
is wrong,” he told the Italian newspaper La Stampa. “But I have met many
Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended. There is
nothing in the exhortation that cannot be found in the social doctrine of the
church.”
Francis looks like
a radical break with the past, but he is right: He represents an
essential continuity in the Roman Catholic Church’s mission.
In Victorian times, Pope Leo XIII (in
office, 1878-1903) was also denounced as a “socialist” when, in 1891, he issued
the Catholic Church’s first formal statement on economic and social issues. In
“Rerum Novarum,” he called for a living wage, opposed child labor and (a little
belatedly) supported the idea of trade unions. Leo’s strong defense of private
property in the same letter did not seem to win over critics.
Even Pius XII
(1939-58) — one of the least-loved popes, thanks to the Vatican’s ambiguous
wartime role — insisted that when fighting unjust social conditions, “Charity
is not enough, for in the first place there must be justice.” In the late
1940s, it was a future pope (John XXIII, 1958-63) who, as the Vatican’s
ambassador to France, helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of
the United Nations.
The statements of
Pope Francis have certainly been more spirited than we have heard for a while —
complete with exclamation marks, extremely rare in papal documents — and he has
found new images to drive his points home. Poor people, he said
recently, have been waiting a long time for the rich man’s glass to overflow.
Instead, all that seems to happen is that the glass keeps getting larger.
In many ways,
though, he has simply been putting a personal stamp on traditional Catholic
social teaching. “How can it be that it is not a news item when an
elderly homeless person dies of exposure,” he asked, “but it is news when the
stock market loses two points?”
Francis’ economic
opinions may appear naïve to those more worried about productivity trends and
price-earnings ratios than the 10,000 children who die every day from hunger.
But his passion and purpose are timely. Last year, the World Bank
reported that the number of extreme poor (those making less than $1.25 a day)
had dropped in every region of the world, including Africa, but that the number
of those living on less than $2 per day — 2.5 billion people, or 43 percent of
the population of the developing world — had hardly budged in 30 years. In
other words, improvements in public welfare have barely kept pace with
population growth, and there is still much to be done to bridge the gap between
the rich and the poor.
The educational
role of the church in the developing world has been powerful and often
controversial. “All we want is a labor force,” a colonial governor lamented to
missionaries in Madagascar a century ago, “and you’re turning them into human
beings.”
The most visible
arm of the church’s social mission is a network of humanitarian and development
agencies known as Caritas (Latin for “charity”), which is the largest private
organization of its kind after the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Its total budget, $3 billion, is barely as much as the World Bank lends to
large countries like Turkey or Brazil in a single year, but its reach and
impact are unmatched.
In some African
countries, as much as half of basic education and health services are provided
by the church. Catholic hospitals and clinics around the world distribute about
a third of all the antiretroviral drugs received by people living with H.I.V.
and AIDS, and in India, where Catholics are no more than 2 percent of the
population, the church is the second-largest care provider in this area after
the government.
As a result of its
work in basic health and education — and despite its obtuse views on birth
control — in the last 50 years the church has probably lifted more people out
of poverty than any other civic institution in history.
Until the election
of Pope Francis, that mission seemed under threat as priests, religious and lay
people raised in the reforming spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65)
were retiring or dying off. At the same time, many younger clergy members were
emphasizing evangelization and personal salvation,emphasizing the
church’s message rather than just its outreach. In the opening hours of his
papacy, Francis seemed to echo this complaint.
“We can build many
things, but if we do not witness to Jesus Christ then it doesn’t matter,” he
told the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel during his first Mass as pope. “We
might become a philanthropic NGO, but we wouldn’t be the church.”
Since then, Francis
has stressed that serving the poor and promoting social justice are central
to the church’s identity and mission.
As the first pope
from the developing world, Francis may help divert international concern about
poverty away from imaginary geographical groupings like “north” and “south.”
Being the leader of the largest and most influential faith community on
earth, he can help reinforce the idea that every country, region and
community is capable of taking steps to improve its citizens’ lives.
Pope Francis has
renewed the hope of Catholic activists that faith and charity can go hand in
hand.
Robert
Calderisi is a former director of the World Bank and the author of
“Earthly Mission: The Catholic Church and World Development.”
NY Times
