Today we start the series of reflections on Pope Francis Encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” from our perspective, from our Vincentian point of view. Fr. Aarón Gutierez CM, Assistant General, will be our guide in this tour of the Fratelli Tutti. Enjoy reading.
If I wanted to find a reason to read and profit from “Fratelli Tutti,” the new encyclical of Pope Francis, I would look at his approach to “Fraternal Charity,” which, according to Vincent de Paul himself, is “a sign of predestination, since it is through it that the true disciple of Jesus Christ is recognized.” Whoever thinks of fraternal love thinks of the command of Jesus Christ: “Just as I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” Loving in this way is the most concrete human way of expressing an intense love for God, who in the words of Jesus Christ said: “Truly I tell you that when they did it with one of these least of my brothers, they did it to me.” Since these truths are part of the Vincentian spirit, it may seem to us that there is nothing new for us here. And it is possible that many of his assertions are already found in the social doctrine of the Church or in the writings of previous pontiffs. We just have to be clear that the pope is not trying to be novel. He does not even try, the pontiff writes, to “summarize the doctrine on fraternal love, but rather to dwell on its universal dimension, on its openness to all.” The pope’s desire is to move all of humanity to reflect and dialogue “in the face of the various and current ways of eliminating or ignoring others, (so that) we can to react with a new dream of fraternity and social friendship that does not stop at words. Although I wrote it out of my Christian convictions, which encourage and nurture me, I have tried to do it in such a way that reflection opens up to dialogue with all people of good will.” (FT 6).
Ultimately, this encyclical tries to unite various dreams that, from the reality of today’s world, are the demands of the most basic humanity: the inclusion of all human beings in different senses; the dream that we are all brethren without obscuring the differences, but without highlighting them to the degree that is being done today; the chimera of a “social friendship” that is nourished by justice, solidarity, equity, and others; the fantasy that we all consider the world as a “common home” and we prepare to take care of it, because it is also the stage where God performs his marvels. The mirage is that everyone contributes to harmony and peace in the world. From this profusion of dreams, the pope has chosen to challenge the world from the figure of the Good Samaritan. This figure by itself expands the dimensions of affective love and the consequences of effective love, themes so dear to the followers of the Vincentian mysticism of Charity.
As in his other encyclicals, the pope seems to have used the see, judge, and act method. His discourse begins by briefly analyzing some problems that afflict humanity at the present time and deny both the love of God and the love of neighbor. He continues to allow himself to be questioned and enlightened by the Gospel, and finally, he proposes a series of reflections in order to think, and to create an “open world” to humanity, through a fraternal charity that goes beyond belonging to a religion, race, corporate or geographic entity.
a. The open fraternity … on the way toward a “new Humanity.”
“Open fraternity,” understood as the ability to “recognize, value and love each person beyond physical proximity, beyond the place in the universe where they were born or where they live… (FT 1) “… beyond their colors, flavors, cultures, which imply the recognition of their dignity and their cultures, flavors and smells, their life, their dynamics, their greatness,” … is the possibility of “finding new paths for humanity today.” Obviously, the pontiff’s proposal is rooted in the Christian experience of the love of God, from which there emerges the value of fraternal love that, by itself, opens people to communication and dialogue. Despite the fact that this seems very clear in the encyclical, the use of the concept of “fraternity” has not been liked and there are those who see it as close to Freemasonry. But the concept of fraternity itself has multiple synonyms, including brotherhood, harmony, companionship, etc. Seen without prejudice, and in good Spanish, it is easy to understand that it refers to people who adhere to each other, based on love or friendship.
a.1 The protagonists in an open fraternity
Aware that individualism and corporatism are the main keys of the modern world, His Holiness communicates his dreams of inclusion and unity of all, men and women, religions, societies and others, in the task of creating an open fraternity. It is the responsibility of all human beings to make this dream their own: “I hope that in this age in which we live, recognizing the dignity of each human person, we can together bring about a worldwide desire for fraternity. Among all: Here is a beautiful secret to dream and make our life a beautiful adventure. No one can fight life in isolation. … We need a community to support us, to help us and in which we help each other to look forward. How important it is to dream together! … Alone you run the risk of having mirages in which you see what is not there; dreams are built together. Let us dream as a single humanity, as walkers of the same human flesh, as children of this same earth that shelters us all, each one with the richness of his faith or his convictions, each one with his own voice, all brothers.” ( FT 8). “Dreaming” recalls a slogan that is very popular and carried within the Vincentian Family, which has promoted beautiful experiences of union and communion in recent decades. A dream capable of discovering new possibilities to expand our dreams, and “opening up” to a more extensive collaboration with new ways of making charity effective. It is important to recognize that humanity is going through a critical moment of great ideas, a world whose main axis is the existence of closed and exclusive fraternities which try to enforce the decisions of a few over the majority of humanity. The Church itself is not exempt from temptations and it falls into positions of this type. To try to “open” the personalities turned in on themselves, and at the same time, to welcome all people of good will, calling them not to be overcome by difficulties and pointing to horizons of hope, is a beautiful gesture of trust in humanity.
The hope of realizing this dream rests in the very structure of humanity, where there already exists a certain openness to infinite love that takes human beings beyond their own limitations. In seeking to fulfill the dream of “an open fraternity,” hope becomes an urgent challenge. A challenge that will become a reality if “all of us” become involved in this path of overcoming the barriers of confinement and exclusion, and to create the possibilities of living that new humanity traversed by fraternal love, dreamed of by God himself for his children.
1. Points that, in today’s world, deserve attention and care.
The development of universal fraternity has been slowed down by the shadows of a closed and exclusive world: “ambition, the individualistic conception of life, satisfaction and considering as truth what is my interest and the abandonment of a historical consciousness that recognizes the value of humanity beyond this enormous communication that exists.” It is not that dreams of peace, justice, unity, integration, and development have been lacking, only that they have not been carried out. They have been broken by prioritizing a life system based on haste, profit, and finances. The presence of new forms of “colonization,” among them “cultural colony,” are spreading as an “effective way of smoothing out historical consciousness, critical thinking, the struggle for justice and the paths of integration, is to empty out meaning or to manipulate the main words. What do some expressions like democracy, freedom, justice, and unity mean today? They have been tampered with and disfigured so to be used as an instrument of domination, as meaningless titles that can serve to justify any action.” The new colonialisms create meaningless voids that not only distort the words, but also touch the essence of the resulting values. It is the gradual rarefication of historical consciousness because of “a kind of deconstructionism,” where human freedom tries to build everything from scratch. It leaves standing only the need to consume without limits and to accentuate many forms of meaningless individualism” (FT 11) which allow us to suppose that history, instead of moving ahead, is going in reverse.
The lack of a functional project for everyone is increasingly evident. The growth of throw-away humanity is obvious. It favors the interests of “a small number of people with the right to live without limits” and in constant waste. Likewise, human rights are not the same for everyone. Injustices tolerated and even caused by the organisms that govern the world are proliferating (FT 22-24). Continuous situations of conflict, fear, loneliness, and social insecurity are being created: “Wars, attacks, persecutions for racial or religious reasons, and so many insults against human dignity are judged in various ways according to whether or not they suit certain interests, mainly economic. What is true when it suits a powerful person ceases to be so when it no longer benefits him. These situations of violence are ‘multiplying painfully in many regions of the world, until they assume the forms of what I could call a ‘third world war in stages’.” (FT 25)
The lack of effective ways to control globalization and progress greatly hamper the responsibility of seeking the common good. The laws of the market and technology create a world that runs aimlessly. The disasters caused by the pandemic without a clear explanation (FT 29-36), the “borders” that mutilate the human dignity of migrants, frequently lacerated by unscrupulous traffickers: drugs, people, organs, and the rest (FT 37-41).
While, on the one hand the world of communication offers great possibilities, on the other hand it generates massification (promoting uniformity) and inconsistency with their frivolous networks and creators of false expectations, “digital relationships, which exempt from the laborious cultivation of friendship, of stable reciprocity, and even of a consensus that matures over time, they have the appearance of sociability. They do not truly build an ‘us’ but tend to conceal and amplify the same individualism that is expressed in xenophobia and in the contempt of the weak. Digital connection is not enough to build bridges, nor enough to unite humanity.” It seems clear that the mass media, at the service of the spectacular and sold to the interests of the market, are also dishonest and manipulative: they spread truths piecemeal, contribute to “information without wisdom,” without the ability to recognize and respect the value of the person, the basic unit for the construction of the humanity that we need.
The submission of poor countries to the standards created by rich countries has serious psychic consequences. For example, self-deprecation, very well taken advantage of by the globalizing process in its tendency to “homogenize the world, interests of power emerge that benefit from the low self-esteem, while, by means of the media and networks, an attempt is made to create a new culture at the service of the most powerful. This is taken advantage of by the advantage of financial speculation and plunder, where the poor are always the ones who lose. On the other hand, ignoring the culture of a people makes many political leaders fail to implement an efficient project that can be freely assumed and sustained over time.”
At first glance, the encyclical paints a grim picture. However, Pope Francis does not hesitate to motivate the world with the testimonies of dedication and generosity that have been given in the midst of the pandemic. If, on the one hand, its exposition of world reality reflects a lack of meaning in the face of the challenges it presents, on the other hand it opens up a series of possibilities to awaken hope and continue the task of building an open fraternity.
