A Response to George Weigel's Criticisms of Caritas in Veritate

The Catholic Church has always been involved in temporal affairs and, for most of its history, was the earthly institution with the most political, economic, and social power in Europe (Hamilton 1). During that period of great temporal power, the Church was directly involved in shaping the culture of Europe through evangelization and the teaching of the Faith through schools and universities, but also by living out the Gospel through the founding, managing, and operation of hospitals and charitable institutions (Hamilton 1). However, once the Reformation took place, the Church’s temporal authority began to be threatened because Her spiritual authority was under attack (Snell 1). Thus, following the Reformation were a series of events, such as the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, which further diminished the Church’s ability to directly intervene in political, economic, and social events (Snell 1). This ultimately resulted in the fall of the Papal States (Snell 1).

Following this event, the Church needed to dedicate more attention to its social teaching as an intellectual body of thought which resulted in the publication of Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, giving birth to the modern notion of Catholic Social Teaching (Leo XIII 1). Every pope since Leo XIII has issued at least one social encyclical, as Weigel points out, and this has resulted in each pope adding their own unique insights to the Church’s social teaching. In particular, Pope Benedict XVI’s social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, presents a brilliant approach to social issues where he notes “that all social issues, including political and economic questions, are ultimately questions of the nature of the human person” (Weigel 1). However, Wiegel maintains that some of the encyclical does not have the clarity and rigor of Ratzinger’s own hand, such as the statement “necessary openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion” which, whatever its true meaning may be, Weigel contends, “on its face, it is virtually impossible to know what it means” (Weigel 1).

It is worth exploring Weigel’s critique by first expressing it in his own words and then examining the text of Caritas in Veritate to see if his critique holds water. In my assessment, there is some merit to Weigel’s criticism of the encyclical, but I do not think that it renders the encyclical useless or not insightful. I think that, despite the merits of Weigel’s critique, Pope Benedict XVI’s wisdom shines through and provides cogent and powerful tools for how we, as Catholics and seekers of the Truth, should approach social issues.

Firstly, we shall look at Weigel’s assessment of the encyclical in his own words. His central criticism is that:

Indeed, those with advanced degrees in Vaticanology could easily go through the text of Caritas in Veritate, highlighting those passages that are obviously Benedictine with a gold marker and those that reflect current Justice and Peace default positions with a red marker. The net result is, with respect, an encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus. (Weigel 1)

He seems to view the encyclical as disjointed because of the diverging influences of Benedict XVI and the “Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace” (Weigel 1). He affirms that the parts of the encyclical which are Benedictine in nature are good, as implied by those passages being highlighted in gold, whereas the ones from the Pontifical Council are not. Moreover, Weigel contends that Justice and Peace “imagines itself the curial keeper of the flame of authentic Catholic social teaching” despite the fact that many of their proposed documents have been rejected by the pope (Weigel 1). He hypothesizes that Benedict, essentially, made concessions to the council, perhaps as a way to appease them, although this seems somewhat speculative. Weigel views the Benedictine passages as clear and in line with the social teaching of John Paul II, but the passages which come from Justice and Peace are unclear or even unrelated to other parts of the text. The fundamental point is that that Caritas in Veritate is not the unified document it could have been as a result of the fact that Justice and Peace was able to influence the final text of the encyclical. 

With that in place, let us now look at the words of Caritas in Veritate to see whether or not Weigel is correct in his assessment. As mentioned earlier, there are some lines which Weigel himself uses to illustrate his point, but there are others which can be examined to show that there is some merit to his argument. Firstly, there are two features of the Benedictine passages which make them recognizably Benedictine. One, they express some truth about the importance of God in social issues and, two, they link social issues to questions about the nature of man. Here is a passage to illustrate the first feature:

Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. (Benedict XVI 1)

These are the first three sentences of the encyclical and display the first category of statements which are Benedictine. There is a recognition of God in this statement, but also connection between Jesus Christ and proper human development, all of which is very in line with the thought of Pope Benedict. An example of the second kind of Benedictine passage can be found here:

Gratuitousness is present in our lives in many different forms, which often go unrecognized because of a purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life. The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself, and it is a consequence — to express it in faith terms — of original sin. (Benedict XVI 34)

Once more, the theological notion of original sin is explicitly employed, thus acknowledging God through a theological understanding of modern society. However, there is also an analysis of human nature provided when he says that man is made for gift, thus connecting social issues to the nature of man.

Contrarily, the passages which come from Justice and Peace are often less clear in what they mean, but less directly related to repositioning social questions as anthropological ones or God, for that matter. Here is an example of such a passage:

Today the picture of development has many overlapping layers. The actors and the causes in both underdevelopment and development are manifold, the faults and the merits are differentiated. This fact should prompt us to liberate ourselves from ideologies, which often oversimplify reality in artificial ways, and it should lead us to examine objectively the full human dimension of the problems. (Benedict XVI 22)

The language here is, overall, much vaguer and while there is a mention of the “human dimension of the problems,” the anthropology expressed is unclear here, whereas in the passages above there is a clear definition of at least some aspect of man’s nature (Benedict XVI 22). Thus, there does seem to be some merit to Weigel’s complaint.

However, despite the veracity of Weigel’s critique in certain places, overall Pope Benedict XVI’s understanding of social issues as derivative of questions about human nature is clear and offers a good framework to assess these issues which modern paradigms lack. In my estimation, Weigel’s criticism only applies to specific sentences in the encyclical that are dispersed throughout the encyclical, rather than comprising a substantial portion of the essay. For example, the passage I cited as an example of what Weigel criticizes about Caritas in Veritate is more ambiguous in its meaning than the ones which are clearly Benedictine and also not as directly connected to God and human nature as those passages. However, the degree to which the passage above is different from the Benedictine passages seems to be overstates by Weigel as the passage I cited does connect social issues to questions about human nature: “it should lead us to examine objectively the full human dimension of the problems” (Benedict XVI 22). Most of the encyclical is very cogent, directly connected to God, and ties contemporary social issues and questions about philosophical anthropology together, thus showing Pope Benedict's clear command and control over it. Moreover, given that the non-Benedictine parts of the encyclical are sprinkled throughout the parts that are certainly Benedictine, there may be point where Caritas in Veritate feels disjointed, but does not remove the power and cogency of Pope Benedict’s central insight in the encyclical. Thus, I think that Weigel’s statement is overstated.

In conclusion, the history of Catholic Social Teaching is relatively recent in the 2,000 year history of the Church. Nevertheless, the central ideas of it have roots in the Church’s long history of social involvement and also in the Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium of the Church, especially the Papal Magisterium. Pope Benedict’s magisterial contributions to this body of thought came in his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. The central point of his encyclical is that social issues, such as the ones surrounding abortion and climate change, should be seen as questions about the nature of man and, thus, be engaged with at that fundamental level of understanding. George Weigel in reviewing Benedict XVI’s encyclical notes this wonderful element of it, but also feels that the presence of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in the encyclical, which, he thinks, diminishes the quality of the text. I think that Weigel is right in pointing out this fact about the encyclical, but I also maintain that the power of Benedict XVI’s insights are still very much felt and are not overshadowed by the influence of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. His central insight that social questions are derivative of metaphysical questions about the nature of man should force us to rethink questions surrounding contemporary social issues like same-sex marriage and climate change. What his insights entails that issues like these, which can so often seem to be unrelated in contemporary discourse, are in fact linked because they derive from the same fundamental question: what is man? Indeed, in the words of Weigel, Pope Benedict suggests “that people who don’t care much about unborn children are unlikely to make serious contributions to a human ecology that takes care of the natural world” (Weigel 1). Thus, Benedict XVI reminds us that we must have a comprehensive vision of the human person in order to properly understand and resolve the social issues of our day. In taking a comprehensive vision of man, shaped by God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, and applying it to contemporary social issues, we can participate in the restoration of creation and the bringing of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Works Cited

Benedict XVI, Pope. “Caritas in Veritate.” Caritas in Veritate (June 29, 2009) | BENEDICT XVI, 29 June 2009, www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html.

CAPP-USA. “The Origin of Catholic Social Teaching: The Church’s Best Kept Secret.” CAPP, 24 Oct. 2023, capp-usa.org/2021/03/catholic-social-teaching-origin/.

Hamilton, Bernard. “Spreading the Gospel in the Middle Ages.” History Today, vol. 53, no. 1, 1 Jan. 2023, https://doi.org/https://www.historytoday.com/archive/spreading-gospel-middle-ages.

Leo XIII, Pope. “Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891): Leo XIII.” Rerum Novarum , 15 May 1891, www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html.

Snell, Melissa. “The Origin and Decline of the Papal States: Territory of the Papacy through the Middle Ages.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 11 Feb. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/the-papal-states-1789449.

Weigel, George. “Caritas in Veritate in Gold and Red.” National Review, National Review, 29 July 2020, www.nationalreview.com/2009/07/caritas-veritate-gold-and-red-george-weigel/.