A Brief Review of Two Papal Encylicals

An amazing result of the vast technological achievements of man is that men are generally much more ignorant than they ought to be. People, including me, come out of school inexcusably poorly read in the classics of literature, history, ethics, civics, philosophy, & religion. I spend a great deal of my time attempting to make up for lost ground on these accounts.

Since I travel a lot, I've found that I can take a massive amount of great reading material with me in a very small package by taking a CD of the contents of the New Advent website. I think it costs about $20, but if one were to collect the actual books of all the material on it, I'm sure it would cost thousands & take up rooms.

Below are just a handful of thoughts on 2 very different papal encyclicals I read recently in the New Advent library archives, but both with connections to my philosophy studies (I also read Leo XIII's encyclical against duelling, Pastoralis Officii, but it was only loosely connected)...

Sublimus Dei - On slavery in the New World, Pope Paul III, 1537

Theology & philosophy from ancient times throughout the Middle Ages largely strove to understand the nature of person in the context of the Divine Persons of the Trinity, & perhaps secondarily to man, but only then with a view toward man as a species, often called the "cosmological" view. The full working-out of the nature of man as a person - including his interior life, the "personalist" view - is a rather recent happening.

So, what happens when fifteenth & sixteenth century Europeans come into contact new races of humans, whose appearance & culture are markedly different from their own? Well, the sub-title given to the papal encyclical gives a clue.

In 4 short paragraphs, the Holy Father notes that God has established that "all are capable of receiving the doctrines of the faith," and that those who hold that the "people of whom We have recent knowledge" are mere "dumb brutes" are in league with that ancient enemy of man. Of course, if these newly discovered peoples are not really human persons, but just man-like animals, then there can't be much wrong with owning or using them, right?

He declares flatly that, "the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it." He goes on to say that they shall not have their property taken nor be reduced to slavery, but "should be converted to the faith of Jesus Christ by preaching the word of God and by the example of good and holy living." An absolutely priceless phrase that applies today as much as it did 500 years ago.

Now, I have been on record as stating that the Vatican did not officially denounce the evil of slavery until Pope Leo XIII's In Plurimis of 1888 (curiously directed toward the bishops of Brazil). Some may wonder why the 1573 decree does not decry all slavery or indentured servitude, but only as pertains to the newly-discovered peoples of the Americas. My understanding for this is that the Church does not see slavery as a direct impediment to salvation, as did not St. Paul (1 Cor 7:20-24, et al.) (though another of Leo XIII's encyclicals on slavery, Catholicae Ecclesiae, opens with numerous citations to show that the Church has always opposed slavery as evil. There is also Gregory XVI's In Supremo Apostolatus from 1839). Yet, as the Church emerged from a limited way of thinking about human persons inherited from antiquity & the Middle Ages, it has increasingly come to see not just in terms of pure salvation/damnation, but also in terms of justice due human person. Slavery itself may not be a hindrance to salvation, but it is unworthy of persons to either try to own another or to be owned by another. This fullness of understanding of the inherent value of human life continues to be worked out, as we wrestle with issues ranging from abortion to human cloning to euthanasia.


Mit Brennender Sorge - "With Burning Sorrow," On the Church & the German Reich, Pope Pius XI, 1939

Given the recent upheaval surrounding the cause for canonization of Pope Pius XII (who is thought to have heavily contributed this encyclical while Papal Nuncio to Germany) & my own interests in this issue, I read this encyclical with wonder. I honestly can't imagine what it must have been like to live through this time in Germany.

The background of the letter is that the Holy See & the Reich had entered into a concordat in 1933 which guaranteed that the Church would be able to continue to operate freely in Germany, including the running of schools & seminaries (though I haven't read the concordat itself yet). It is clear from the language here that the government has now undertaken a campaign to actively disregard the provisions of the prior agreement & to undermine the Church's moral & spiritual authority.

While this is a long & penetrating document covering the salvation of man through Jesus Christ alone, the role of the Church in bringing Christ to the world, the Natural Law, the rights of parents to rear & educate their children as they see fit, & the condemnation of racial crimes - including a note that Jesus himself was a Jew - the thing I find intriguing & which I comment upon here is a reference to a kind of German religion set up by the Reich - a paganistic & pantheistic alternative religion which deifies the well-ordered universe as reflected in the well-ordered State & whose sacraments are scientific progress & societal purification.

The Holy Father notes quite sharply, "Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God... Neither is he a believer in God. [7]"

While circumstances have certainly changed, there are still any number of people today who hold that the earth, the universe, the collectivity of all life, or whatever is the real divine being, & that we are the ones who sin against her when we damage her with oil spills, pollution, etc. Since we are the problem, we must be contained, esp. through population control. The thing is, it all seems so reasonable at the time.

The philosophical error here, as I see it, is what Dietrich von Hildebrand calls "value judgment." It is simply the recognition & justice due a given person, thing, or circumstance. Ice cream is nice on a hot summer day, but it hardly calls for for the adoration due God. If one of your scoops falls on the ground, you may be disappointed, but it hardly calls for the same outrage as against Hitler or the same tears as over millions exterminated.

We often live for this merely "subjectively satisfying," while rarely giving due consideration to those things of real value. Many thinkers, even St. Thomas himself, seems to have failed to make this distinction among the various goods. Even the entire universe, as inconceivably vast & wonderful as it is, is still just a thing without a soul, & so does not dwell on the same plane of value merited by a single human being, of whom John Henry Cardinal Newman called, "an infinite abyss of existence." This is why we respect the dignity of all human beings: they merit it simply by being human beings. This is why we adore God - because God is inherently adoration-worthy due to his perfections. How we respond to a value placed before us has implications for our own selves. If we respect or revere a thing according to what it due it, we make something greater of ourselves. But if we either ignore or rebel against this call for a value response, or if we give a thing more honor than it deserves, then we degrade ourselves as person.

This reasoning also has something to do with why Catholics cannot participate in Masonic organizations (see papal encyclicals Humanum Genus & here & here, & the CDF's pronouncement against Masons here). Despite their various benevolent works, they are basically a rival religion, who pay homage to an unspecific, generic maker & orderer of the universe. While this sounds harmless enough, the problem is that God is not a nameless, generic deity, but a very specific Being whom we know (though we don't know everything), because he has revealed himself to us.

The Holy Father says, "Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side. [9]"

To continue to address a mysterious & nameless deity while standing in the light of full revelation is simply untenable. This is also the concern with any ecumenical movement or program that disregards or eliminates revealed truths of the Faith for the sake of an easy, though false, unity.

In a different vein, there is a little phrase that begins the last cited paragraph to which we should be attentive: "Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label..." I was really taken back to find that "My God!" is a phrase used frequently by Chinese English-speakers to denote surprise or exasperation. I'm sure they are just parroting what they have heard elsewhere - probably Western films - & know not what they do. Less forgivable is how common we've allowed the flippant use of "OMG!" to become in our own culture.

Similarly, the Holy Father notes that Christian religious language has been appropriated & given new meanings by the Reich, blurring the distinction between the Church & the new State Religion. Using the example of the term "immortality," the pope declares that, "Whoever only means by the term, the collective survival here on earth of his people for an indefinite length of time, distorts one of the fundamental notions of the Christian Faith and tampers with the very foundations of the religious concept of the universe, which requires a moral order. [24] " Immortality in the Third Reich refers not the individual, but the indefinite survival of the Reich itself.

But instead of wasting your time reading what I think these mean, go read them yourselves. There is a vast wealth of wisdom & insight to be found in all of these papal writings (including the truly brilliant ones by our most recent popes), no matter the time or circumstances in which they were written. Here we find the very best of the men who were personally called by Christ to feed his sheep & confirm the brethren.