Love, Truth, Justice – Not Enough?: My Thoughts on Michael Novak’s Thoughts on Benedict’s CARITAS IN VERITATE
Posted on 13 July 2009
Recently, Benedict published his latest encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate”, which as someone has said is the first social encyclical of the 21st century. Last week, the Catholic neo-conversative Michael Novak offered a response at First Things. To put it bluntly, Novak’s position stunned me. You should read it in its entirety, but here are excerpts from the conclusion of his piece:
What Benedict XVI has not spelled out yet is another forgotten lesson from St. Augustine: the ever-
corrupting role of sin in the City of Man… The Father of Lies seems to own so much of the real world.
What are the most practical ways of defeating him? The Catholic tradition—even the wise Pope Benedict—still seems to put too much stress upon caritas, virtue, justice, and good intentions, and not nearly enough on methods for defeating human sin in all its devious and persistent forms.
Let me say up front that I don’t want to be unjust and uncharitable to Mr Novak in my defense of the Pope’s position on justice and love! That would only serve to make me look the fool. However, I’m convinced that Novak is as wrong as he can be - dead wrong, wrong in a way deadly to himself and to anyone who would take his ideas seriously.
Did he really say that the church puts too much stress upon caritas, virtue, justice, and good intentions’? Really? Did he really say that instead of living faithful and virtuous lives we should do something that actually works for ‘defeating human sin in all its devious and persistent forms’? Really? It seems the answer to every question is Yes, he really did.
Reading Novak’s remarks, I couldn’t help but think of Peter ushering Jesus aside to rebuke him: ‘Not so, Lord!’ (Mt 16). Novak, I believe, has done precisely that. I can’t help but wonder if Novak is not, like Peter, publically exposing himself as an enemy of Christ, a scandalon, a tool of Satan.
Novak does this in the name of _____? Not the Gospel, to be sure. Not the Catholic church – remember, Novak criticizes not only Benedict but the entire ‘Catholic tradition’. Quite explicitly, he is thinking of salvation in merely human terms – pragmatically and ‘realistically’ – and this is nothing other than demonic: ‘Get behind me, Satan, for you have in mind the things of men, and not the things of God’.
Now, I’m sure all that Novak was trying to say was that sin cannot be confronted by abstractions. Agreed. The problem is he thinks love, truth, and justice are abstractions. It seems clear to me that in this moment, at least, Novak is (unwittingly no doubt) under the sway of the ‘rulers of this age’ who find love, truth, and justice too weak to do the required work, that is, to maintain the (un)natural order of things. (Which, effectively, is nothing other than the effort to stave off the Eschaton as long as possible.) He believes – if he means what I take him to mean – that the way of love, truth, and justice - the way of the cross – is scandalously naive. We should be brandishing swords rather than bearing crosses.
But let’s not put all the blame at Novak’s feet. He is only one among of legion of us who simply don’t take Jesus and the way of the cross seriously. If his is a more public event, it is not any worse than those in which we choose to live by conventional wisdom – or political persuasion – rather than by the Gospel.
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