All Leo, all Francis – what to make of Dilexi te
Speculation about how much Leo revised Francis’ draft assumes he bulked out the patristics, putting a theological gloss on the social priorities. But the Church Fathers were pretty bolshy.
“I am happy to make this document my own,” writes Pope Leo in the introduction to Dilexi te. His first apostolic exhortation is also Francis’ last; as Leo explains, his predecessor was preparing the text under that title in the months before he died. It was to be the sequel to Dilexit nos, his rather unexpected and entirely characteristic encyclical on the Sacred Heart.
From a potted salvation history, running through the Old Testament and the New, the Church Fathers, the monastic, mendicant and every other type of order, up to Mother Theresa and Irmã Dulce and the work of Caritas Internationalis today, Dilexi te asserts that “caring for the poor is part of the Church’s great Tradition”.
That tradition takes in the social doctrine developed over the twentieth century and the resolutions of the Latin American bishops at Medellín, Puebla, Santo Domingo and Aparecida. It demands that we confront “structures of sin” but never forget the importance of almsgiving. The Church serves the poor not as its dependents but as the protagonists in its own story.
“I am convinced that the preferential choice for the poor is a source of extraordinary renewal both for the Church and for society, if we can only set ourselves free of our self-centeredness and open our ears to their cry.”
That’s quite the collage. Presenting the document on Thursday, Cardinal Michael Czerny was a little frustrated by the inevitable questions about who did which bits. “It’s 100 per cent Francis and 100 per cent Leo,” he said, the principle of the Lennon-McCartney songbook.
Speculation about how much Leo revised the original largely assumes that he bulked out the patristics in the third chapter – including Augustine of course – and put a theological gloss on Francis’ blunt social priorities. But the Church Fathers were pretty bolshy: Justin defended the place of a collection for the poor during the liturgy, John Chrysostom insisted social justice was integral to the Eucharist, Ambrose said that what you give to the poor “is not your property, but theirs”.
“For the Bishop of Milan, almsgiving is justice restored, not a gesture of paternalism,” says Dilexi te, in terms worthy of Aparecida, and offers a similar reading of Ambrose’s pupil: “Today, fidelity to Augustine’s teachings requires not only the study of his works, but also a readiness to live radically his call to conversion, which necessarily includes the service of charity.”
Francis or Leo? You start to see Czerny’s point. The document includes the gamey phrases we instinctively hear in Francis’ voice – like the warning that without regaining moral dignity “we fall into a cesspool” – but they matter only insofar as Leo was willing to put his signature to them. (Who knows how much more colourful stuff he had to strike out?)
More significant is how Leo’s own voice is informed by his predecessor. “I often wonder, even though the teaching of Sacred Scripture is so clear about the poor, why so many people continue to think they can safely disregard the poor,” he asks, picking up a thread of chastisement running through the text. He condemns the use of economic data to claim things aren’t so bad and the acceptance of grotesque inequality while we wait for “invisible hands” and “trickledown prosperity” to do their trick. The criticism of “Christian movements … which show little or no interest in the common good of society” recalls the rebuke to climate sceptics within the Church in Laudate Deum.
Poignantly, Francis is present not just as a contributor, and in the dozens of references to his teaching, but as a figure in Church history. The story of how he chose his papal name after his election, when a fellow cardinal embraced him and told him “Don’t forget the poor!”, appears in the first chapter.
Sitting beside Czerny at the launch, the papal almoner Cardinal Konrad Krajewski regaled the room with stories of the irascible old boss who told him to get out of the Vatican and find the poor. Once he reported that he was under strain organising supplies for the homeless around St Peter’s Square. “You’re complaining?” asked the Pope. He firmly reminded Krajewski that he was dealing with Christ in the colonnade. “It was like a cold shower.” When the almoner’s office saw an increase in funds from a boom in sales of blessing parchments, Francis spoke to him again: “If that money doesn’t go to the poor, then you’re going to hell.”
Dilexi te is not a relic of that extraordinary pontificate, already fading into sepia-tinted legend, but the next instalment of a Magisterium profoundly shaped by it. That Leo has chosen to open his account with a document planned by his predecessor shows that he acknowledges the debt, even that he embraces the continuity. But as memories fade and the legend blossoms, the next round of questions begins – continuity with what exactly?
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