Pope Francis, in the first major encyclical of his papacy, Evangelii Gaudium (assuming that Lumen Fidei was mostly the work of Pope Benedict XVI), begins with the language of the heart. “The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus” (no. 1). His diagnosis of the great danger in today’s world is “the desolation and anguish born of a complacent and covetous heart” (no. 2). The language of the heart, rather than the “salvation of souls” which had been a major chord in the Church’s discourse since the Council of Trent, was given renewed prominence by Pope Benedict XVI in the first of his social encyclicals, Deus Caritas Est (2005). Those who work on the front line of the Church’s mission to those who are vulnerable, he says, need a “formation of the heart: they need to be led to that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirits to others” (no. 31). Both popes are aware that without this formation of the heart, which the Catechism describes as “our hidden centre…the place of encounter…” (CCC no. 2563), the pastoral work of the Church could be driven merely by human will, which will sooner or later burn out.
This encounter with God in Christ, which is at the heart of Christian discipleship, is described in its various dimensions in the Catechism: “Christ Jesus…is present in many ways to his Church: in his word, in his Church’s prayer…in the poor, the sick and the imprisoned, in the sacraments of which he is the author” (CCC no. 1373). The encounter with Christ in these four ways – in scripture, prayer, the liturgy and in the poor – are the pillars of the formation of the disciple. In Fratelli Tutti, the third of a trilogy of reforming exhortations and encyclicals, Pope Francis focuses on the encounter with Christ in those who are vulnerable, on the edges of life, whose dignity is diminished by poverty and exclusion. The scriptural foundation for the encyclical is the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37). Jesus subverts the question, “Who is my neighbour?” – with its implicit in/out mind-set – and puts the onus firmly on us to be a neighbour to the wounded one, no matter what cultural or religious barriers have to be traversed, and to act accordingly: “Go and do likewise” (10.32).
At the beginning of Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis reflects on the distortions of the contemporary era. He highlights the “culture of walls” (no. 26), the self-diminishing policy of exclusion and self-preservation which ends up enslaving the ones who built the walls, since “they are left without horizons, for they lack interchange with others” (no. 37). He says that these walls are mirrored by “walls in the heart” (no. 27) which are the interior source of the physical walls around a nation’s borders and gated communities. The hard-hearted culture of individualism, consumerism and exclusivism, finds its root in the heart of the person. That is where we need to start if the aspiration to “a new humanity” (no. 127) of fraternity and social friendship is to become an enduring reality. It is the call to conversion, repentance as a change of mind and heart, with which Jesus inaugurates his public ministry in Mark’s gospel (1.15). Francis makes it central to his thinking on the prospects for change: “Everything, then, depends on our ability to see the need for a change of heart, attitudes and lifestyles” (no. 166).
The call to social friendship is a call to conversion, repentance as a change of mind and heart (image by Levent Simsek: Pexels)
There is only one source for this conversion of the heart and it is not from within us. Our reaching out to others in need, our ability to confront our own complicity in the culture of indifference, the energy to sustain a life of self-giving “is made possible by the charity that God infuses” (no. 91). A person’s life is measured by love, not in the imposition of our “ideologies” (no. 92) or a “violent defence of the truth” (no. 92). This seems to be aimed at those in the Church who are invested in ‘culture wars’ and see their mission as railing against liberal conspiracies, closing down dialogue with other religions, and supporting anybody in public life – anybody – whose policies converge with a single point of Church teaching. Love takes first place and love, which is “only possible by God’s grace” (no. 93), is the “movement outwards towards another” (no. 93). The Holy Father has insisted from the beginning that this movement out towards another is an encounter with the reality of the other, not a distant benevolence which assumes that we know what is best for those who are in need.
This is no less than our vocation and destiny as human beings. A life devoted to my needs and the needs of my group, a first world lifestyle which can only be sustained by the impoverishment of others, a life which dwells in “concupiscence” (no. 166), is destined finally to despair and futility, since no fulfilment can be found in the “empire of money” (no. 116), the empire of things. As Abraham Heschel so memorably said, “Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness”.[1] Our fulfilment is to partake in the agape of God, to give ourselves away in love. “We achieve fulfilment when we break down walls and our hearts are filled with faces and names” (no. 195). The reality of the other, the encounter with “the sacred mystery of the other” (no. 277), must form our heart. The dimensions of that love are spelled out in the encyclical. Love is not just working to relieve those who are hungry and poor, important as the corporal works of mercy are; love is called upon to change the conditions which makes poverty possible in the first place.
The Holy Father dwells at some length on solidarity, one of the man principles of Catholic Social Teaching. He confirms that solidarity finds concrete expression in service and in particular, “caring for vulnerability” (no. 115). But then, in one of the most challenging aspects of the encyclical, indeed of his entire pontificate, he calls us to go beyond simply “sporadic acts of generosity” (no. 116). He states that solidarity also means “combatting the structural causes of poverty, inequality, the lack of work, land and housing, the denial of social and labour rights” (no. 116). This is a call to prophetic witness which will set the Church against those with a vested interest in maintaining the current system of inequality. This prophetic stance requires an education in the See-Judge-Act methodology which Francis is formed in and which he has brought back to the centre of the Church’s thinking, as he explains compellingly in Let Us Dream, the book-length interview with Austen Ivereigh. We need to ‘see’ as in ‘see through’ all the mechanisms of distortion. We are called to “unmask the various ways that the truth is manipulated…” (no. 208). There is an urgency to this work. We can no longer indulge the “empty diplomacy, dissimulation, double-speak, hidden agendas and good manners that mask reality” (no. 226). We need to discern what is of God and what is not, and act to bring about a world which is more conformed to the Gospel.
This is a call for the Church to be a prophetic witness in the public square, advocating a more just and peaceful world, where those on the margins are the protagonists of change. In the past the Church was often seen in the company of those in power, giving comfort to the political status quo as a price worth paying for her material security. That can no longer be the case. Fratelli Tutti calls for the music of the Gospel to sound in “our public squares, our workplaces, our political and financial life” (no. 277), a music whose major chord is conversion to the love of God and love of neighbour. In a summons which has added power at a time when many churches are closed, or at much reduced capacity, the encyclical finishes with an echo of the call in Evangelii Gaudium for the Church to move beyond its own walls, to get out on to the streets, to encounter the reality of living at the sharp end of injustice: “We want to be a Church that serves, that leaves home and goes forth from its places of worship…in order to accompany life, to sustain hope, to be the sign of unity…to build bridges, to break down walls, to sow seeds of reconciliation” (no. 276).
Raymond Friel has spent the last 30 years in Catholic education, 14 of them as a headteacher. More recently he has been the CEO of multi academy trusts of Catholic schools in Plymouth and Westminster dioceses. He is the author of a number of books, including Gospel Values for Catholic Schools and The Revolution of Tenderness: Being a Catholic in Today’s Church. In April 2021, Raymond takes up his new role as CEO of Caritas Social Action Network. You can follow him on Twitter @friel_raymond.
Learn more about our Fratelli Tutti project
[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005) p. 6.