the world.
Now, how a city state a few miles
Caritas in Veritate: The
Truth about Humanity
by Jennifer Roback Morse
Many commentators read Pope Benedict XVI’s
Caritas in Veritate as if it were a think tank
white paper, and ask whether he endorses their
particular policy preferences. It is a mistake to
read the encyclical in this way. A close look at
the document’s introduction makes plain that
Benedict is not a man of the Left or of the Right:
He is a non-ideological man of God.
The opening sentence soars above any political
platform: “Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ
bore witness by his earthly life and especially by
his death and resurrection, is the principal force
behind authentic development of every person
and of all humanity.” This is our first clue that
we are not dealing with a technocrat or
ideologue. “Authentic development” points
away from the deliberations of politicians and
policy wonks. Benedict does not define his
objectives in material terms, such as maximizing
GDP. Neither does he conduct focus groups or
consult experts to figure out what people want.
Rather in this encyclical, Benedict reflects on
what it means to be authentically human and
what the human good actually entails. That is to
say, he seeks the truth about man in society.
Some readers will no doubt assume that it is
hubris to believe that one can know Truth with a
capital “T.” Others may fear that Benedict will
somehow impose his “ideology” on the rest of
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
across, defended by a handful of guys with
medieval weapons is going to impose its will on
anyone is beyond my imagining, but put that to
one side. Truth has taken such a beating in our
time that our contemporaries routinely flinch at
its mere mention.
But Benedict is not now, nor has he ever been,
afraid of the concept of truth. He is not
intimidated by postmodern doubts. He knows
where the truth is to be found. The Truth is a
person: Jesus Christ.
Truth and Freedom
His theory about Truth is not his own, but the
traditional teaching of the Church, as it comes to
us from the Apostles and as it has been
safeguarded and interpreted over the centuries.
His theory is quite simply that every person
longs for both truth and love. This longing can
never be suppressed, in spite of modern
pretensions to being ever-so-above-it-all. “All
people feel the interior impulse to love
authentically: love and truth never abandon them
completely because these are the vocation
planted by God in the heart and mind of every
human person” (no. 1). Therefore, we will never
be able to completely suppress the human desire
to know the truth and to live in accordance with
it.
Benedict’s perspective on Truth has its own
view of human freedom as well as of the human
good. “Each person find his good by adherence
to God's plan for him,… in this plan, he finds his
truth, and through adherence to this truth he
becomes free.” Two possible objections come to
mind, from opposite intellectual poles. From the
relativist side, we can practically hear the
sophisticated eye-rolling over the idea that
freedom means anything other than “doing as I
please.” But consider these reasons why it is
reasonable to follow God’s plan for our lives:
(1) God knows more than we do; (2) He has the
good of more people in mind, whereas honestly,
most of us are mostly thinking of ourselves most
of the time; and (3) He has a longer time
horizon.
From the objective side, people may fear that
Benedict is descending into postmodern
relativism when he refers to an individual truth
for each person. Benedict’s recognition of this
unique path for each person takes nothing away
from his affirmation of the existence of eternal
and universal truths. Compared with the
dehumanization of modern culture, Benedict’s
vision of each person living in accordance with
God’s distinctive plan for them is positively
refreshing. Our emphasis on Equality smashes
individuality. The combination of mass media
and consumer culture, while it indulges choice
in trivial matters, nonetheless creates a tendency
to conformity in the most significant aspects of
life.
Benedict’s Realism
“The search for love and truth is purified and
liberated by Jesus Christ from the
impoverishment our humanity brings to it.”
Pause for a moment on this phrase, “the
impoverishment our humanity brings.” Some of
our contemporaries may interpret it as evidence
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
of hostility toward humanity. But I believe it is
evidence of a realism that is far superior to the
modern alternatives.
We are not gods, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-
loving. Instead, we are limited human creatures.
We easily confuse temporary goods with
permanent goods, partial goods with complete
goods and particular localized goods with
universal general goods. Benedict knows well
that we have a tendency to take one really good
and important idea, make an idol out of it, and in
so doing, “impoverish” it.
The modern ideologies fit this pattern. Consider
Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality. The varieties
of liberalism, including some free market
versions, treat Liberty uncoupled from truth as
the ultimate good. The fascists took the very
natural desires for belonging and identity,
Fraternity, and created a political system that
worshiped the State and the Volk. And the
various communist and socialist ideologies take
the one noble idea of Equality and apply it
where it is truly inapplicable.
These modern ideas were supposed to take the
place of religious superstition, but instead, have
unleashed rivers of blood on humanity. And for
all the power they usurped, these ideologies still
do not have the capacity to satisfy the deepest
longings of the human heart. Only a relationship
with Jesus Christ can do this. This was one of
the key points of Benedict’s earlier encyclical
Spe Salvi, which translates In Hope we were
Saved. Placing our hope in political platforms or
leaders is certain to disappoint us. Only God
Himself is worthy of this kind of ultimate hope.
Genuine Collaboration
With this prologue in place, we can turn to the
core ideas of the encyclical: that charity and
truth are not in tension with each other, but in
fact complement one another. “Charity is at the
heart of the Church's social doctrine...
Everything has its origin in God's love,
everything is shaped by it, everything is directed
toward it” (no. 2). God’s love is the great source
of all legitimate and reasonable optimism. And
this is necessarily grounded in the truth.
“Without truth, charity degenerates into
sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to
be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without
truth, this is the fatal risk facing love” (no. 3).
This close intertwining of charity and truth
allows Benedict to avoid the problem of
subjectivism that has plagued so much of
modern political philosophy. We tie ourselves in
knots trying to create a political system that is
procedurally neutral toward all points of view.
We try to hold the self-contradictory position
that we must never say that some views are
superior to others, while still maintaining that
moral autonomy is itself a value that trumps all
the others.
Benedict need not become embroiled in these
debates over how to manage competing visions
of the good life. He is proposing a “thick”
conception of the good for the human person:
“In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of
his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers
and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he
himself is the Truth.” Though our modern
colleagues may be surprised to learn this,
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
Benedict’s vision of Truth does not degenerate
into warfare and hostility. Instead, the common
commitment to the Truth allows genuine
collaboration. “Truth, by enabling men and
women to let go of their subjective opinions and
impressions, allows them to move beyond
cultural and historical limitations and to come
together in the assessment of the value and
substance of things” (no. 4). The commitment to
truth provides us with a standard of goodness
that exists outside our subjective desires. Thus,
truth liberates us from the power struggles that
inevitably accompany competing preferences.
“Without truth, without trust and love for what is
true, there is no social conscience and
responsibility, and social action ends up serving
private interests and the logic of power” (no. 5).
True Common Good
Benedict is also freed from one of the vexing
conundrums of modern political philosophy,
namely, what is the goal of the polis? Some
political philosophers emphasize things like
“social justice,” which has come to mean little
more than the redistribution of income. An even
more revolting concept is Rousseau’s “general
will,” which has come to mean that the people in
power get to do whatever they want and claim it
represents the will of the people. Both these
terms smuggle in a thick conception of the good,
even while being unwilling to defend the
existence of “goodness” as such. Benedict, by
contrast, is quite willing to defend a robust view
of human nature, and the human good. This
allows him to use the older, medieval term,
“common good,” without irony. The “common
good” denotes something more than an
aggregation of individual preferences, or the
management of competing preferences.
“The common good is the good of "all of us,"
made up of individuals, families and
intermediate groups who together constitute
society. It is a good that is sought not for its own
sake, but for the people who belong to the social
community and who can only really and
effectively pursue their good within it” (no. 7).
In this way of looking at things, the role of the
state or polis is not to give everyone every good
thing. The role of the polis is to create a set of
institutional arrangements that allow people to
pursue their own good. But unlike modern
subjectivism and relativism, we do not shrink
from asking the really important question of
what is actually good for us.
Of course, this requires us to have a reasonable
understanding of how a social order actually
works. Benedict offers the same disclaimer as
his predecessor when he says, “the Church does
not have technical solutions to offer” (no. 9).
This leaves wide latitude for the laity in each
country to figure out how to implement the
general principles of Catholic social teaching to
their own situation. This should put to rest the
fears that the Church has some “agenda” to
impose on the world.
Reality, Not Fantasy
So don’t read Caritas in Veritate with a checklist
of policy prescriptions. I can almost promise you
that the Pope will not conform to your whole list
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
of policy preferences. If you read it this way,
you will miss the larger point.
Benedict takes us to a world that once was, and
could yet be: a world with noble aspirations for
love and truth. It is a realistic world, not a
utopian fantasy. This is the world we abandoned,
these are the possibilities we forsook, when we
exchanged truth for consensus and charity for
self-interest. “Fidelity to man requires fidelity to
the truth, which alone is the guarantee of
freedom and of the possibility of integral human
development. For this reason the Church
searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and
recognizes it wherever it is manifested” (no. 9).
In an age when many have lost even the idea of
truth, not to mention the will to search for it, the
Church is poised to illuminate corners of our
experience that few others will even notice. And
in an age of indescribable loneliness, the idea of
a social order built on love is surely more
appealing than any list of policy proposals.
This article originally appeared at Acton.org.
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is an
economist and the Founder and President of
the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit educational
organization devoted to bringing hope and
encouragement for lifelong married love.
She is also the author of Love and
Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a
Village and Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long
Love in a Hook-Up World.