Part 24: White Protest Voices - “Fratelli Tutti”, by Pope Francis. “Without Borders”. I Read All 287 paragraphs. My Summary with quotes is here. Farther below are commentaries from priests of his church and select others.
Roman Bishop Francis published his encyclical October of this year here vatican.va
There is a clear statement of pastoral guidance and it is in plain language.
While the letter is intended to be a Universal peace bridge of principles and actions, what it actually declares and accomplishes is something entirely different. This essay is a summary of each of eight chapters. Interpretations and remarks may follow in a separate essay depending on....
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To begin...
Some one characterized F Tutti as a “collection” but I would use a different term: scrapbook. It is a scrapbook of thoughts organized into chapters and arranged to form a running theme based on the Good Samaritan story. There are introductory thoughts, restatement of the Good Samaritan story, and commentary following and expanding upon the Bishop’s guiding thoughts of the many meaning of the Samaritan lesson.
These are declared by Rome to be only an encyclical and therefore not Church doctrine, but nonetheless a papal order to followers of his Franciscan Order. It will call for extended meditation for some, but for those not bound to vows to his Order there are obvious lessons and teachings Fr. Francis did not intend.
Chapter One
Roman Bishop Francis begins his treatise “Without Borders” and a comment from his name-saint: “love that transcends the barriers of geography and distance” and “no bounds and transcended differences of origin, nationality, colour or religion.”
It is laudable that he discriminates between sacred and secular and insists he will not interfere in Politics. He then declares the political necessities of his gospel in serving his flock. He also admonishes others to avoid arguments and it is clear these first 8 paragraphs are written for the Sacred leadership and lay-leaders.
The next 6 pps begins with a harsh political remark hinging on the word “nationalism” and contrasted with the word “endure” and thus establishing the contrasting realities of his office versus laity geo-political realities. He continues with “exploited” in calling market access a source of division and “identity” becoming “fragile”. This is a result of a reversal of respect for “history”, “elders” and “tradition” under the onslaught of a new “cultural colonization”.
At the 15th he launches the assault against secular politics lack of virtue and contrasts with his Sacred virtue using “domination“, “control”, “despair” and “conflict” in contrast to “family” and “care”. This continues with long pps about a “careless” world sprinkled with “race” and “rights”. This establishes his office of caring versus a careless world and his role as ‘Papa’. All of the evils are a result of ancient traditional identities and their borders that cause division. Then he weirdly adds a remark about “mafias” exploiting the divisions, though he stops short of stating it is a criminal exploit, which has been used to Rome’s benefit over the centuries. He concludes the critique on divisions by turning to the natural world and “seeds of common life that need to be sought out and cultivated”. By the 36th he constructs a scaffolding contrasting separation against “solidarity”.
At the 37th he launches the assault against borders with justifications for ignoring them. A long section criticizing the borders includes characterizations of invaders in various derogatory terms and closes by asking how can “fraternity” form in such a conflict? He thus places the virtue of fraternity above all else like the reasons for borders, laws and security. At the 47th he finally launches a long section on negotiating. “Wisdom” suddenly is used against “reality” as though fiction is political. He concludes by again arguing that fiction is a product of barriers which are political and the solution is “Hope” or rather “paths of hope”.
At the 56th The story of the God Samaritan becomes revealed as the basis for the entirety of his thesis on fraternity. A very long commentary on the many virtues demonstrated by the Samaritan is closed with a political condemnation: “These are symptoms of an unhealthy society. A society that seeks prosperity but turns its back on suffering.” This critique on the political tribal divisions is suddenly conflated to be an example of the virtues of a borderless world and takes to the 86th pp.
“No man is an island” is then raised to contrast with long, long sweeping expressions of the benefits of relationships and “universal love”
“100. I am certainly not proposing an authoritarian and abstract universalism, devised or planned by a small group and presented as an ideal for the sake of levelling, dominating and plundering.” “Liberty, equality and fraternity” are raised as an ideal It takes another 14 pps and hundreds of words to express.
But it then comes to the key expression for which the entire document is written to justify:
“118. The world exists for everyone, because all of us were born with the same dignity.” and “if one person lacks what is necessary to live with dignity, it is because another person is detaining it. Saint John Chrysostom summarizes it in this way: “Not to share our wealth with the poor is to rob them and take away their livelihood. The riches we possess are not our own, but theirs as well” and “the Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property”
“121. No one, then, can remain excluded because of his or her place of birth, much less because of privileges enjoyed by others who were born in lands of greater opportunity.”
A very long series of pps describes very many ways that a world view of ‘differences are bad’ and ‘contrasts are complimentary’. He closes a long chapter on fraternity with pastoral guidance on the way to promote openness and relationship.
What follows is a long commentary with his own observations of the failures of Politics and parties, its styles and methods. He experiments with a call for “moral energy” in politics and is most certain with calling for ‘charity’ as the Samaritan story teaches us. What follows is an entire chapter of attempts to describe politics based on charity.
As he ends politics and begins chapter six and pp 198 he elevates dialog as his tool of art, and an expose’ on Truth and Lying follows. He again calls for an embrace of contrasts and rises to stating “peace is not achieved by recourse only to those who are pure and untainted”, since “even people who can be considered questionable on account of their errors have something to offer which must not be overlooked” and “people’s right to be themselves and to be different.” It concludes with a call for kindness as a virtue.
Chapter 7 finally raises the highest objective of politics: Peace. Long pps of admonitions on war, forgiveness, death as punishment follow.
After long pps of observations on our shortcomings and failures to create the world he desires, he concludes with a final short chapter 8 on the role of the Church and finally finds words: “If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to make full use of the means at his disposal in order to impose his own interests or his own opinion, with no regard for the rights of others.” And “276. For these reasons, the Church, while respecting the autonomy of political life, does not restrict her mission to the private sphere.”
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Last, here are a selection of commentaries I found when looking using Bing and Google search engines
thejesuitpost.org
An Overview of Fratelli Tutti
Brendan Gottschall, SJ is a scholastic of the East Coast province of the Society of Jesus
A commentary by the Good Samaritan Society
firstthings.com
Fratelli Tutti and the Good Samaritan Society
Articles by Fr. Raymond J. de Souza
“The Holy Father employs formulations that will require study in order to be harmonized with previous teaching.”
tfp.org
Fratelli Tutti: A Socialist-Utopian, Ecumenical-Interreligious Encyclical
October 29, 2020 “The new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (hereafter FT), is an atypical papal document... The document is Pope Francis’s sociological commentary on the modern world and is informed by his ecologist, anti-capitalist, and pro-socialist prejudices...
A World Without Borders or Private Property
While FT claims to be a social encyclical like others published by preceding popes, it has a politico-ideological bias. It curtails the legitimacy and exercise of private property as much as possible and makes an across-the-board attack on the free market economy...”
en.m.wikipedia.org
churchmilitant.com
Italy’s Freemasons Celebrate ‘Fratelli Tutti’
Grand Master: Pope Francis' encyclical reflects Masonic values
nationalreview.com
What Pope Francis Gets Right... “Without the ascendency of authority, tradition, home, hearth, and altar in civil society, this great economic run the human race is on simply cannot last. Francis deserves credit for pointing this out, hapless though he may be when it comes to the finer points of economic theory.” |
