Solution to poverty is poverty

I have yet to study Pope Benedict XVI's Message for the World Day of Peace, 1st January 2009. It's theme is "Fighting Poverty to build Peace", and the same theme was the subject of the Pope's homily at Mass in St Peter's Basilica yesterday.

In his homily, Pope Benedict compared the chosen poverty of Christ as he become man to the un-chosen poverty that is sinful. According to ZENIT's report:

Nevertheless, he continued, there is "a poverty, an indigence, that God does not want and that must be fought." This, the Bishop of Rome said, is "a poverty that impedes people and families from living according to their dignity, a poverty that offends justice and equality, and as such, threatens peaceful coexistence."

He affirmed that such poverty is not just material, but also includes the forms of poverty found in rich and developed nations: phenomena such as marginalization and relational, moral and spiritual misery....

He thus made a call for a "virtuous circle" between the poverty "to be chosen" and the poverty "to be fought," such that "to combat iniquitous poverty, which oppresses so many man and women and threatens everyone's peace, it is necessary to rediscover sobriety and solidarity, as evangelical values that are at the same time universal."

The Pope's homily is interesting in a number of ways. The first is the way in which it carefully describes the difference between chosen and un-chosen poverty, and then relates them to each other - chosen poverty (on the part of those who are rich) as an act of solidarity with those who are poor without choice. A second way is its inclusion of forms of poverty other than material poverty, thereby asking that the spiritual poverty of materially well developed societies be included in the consideration of poverty by the Church. These two are not un-related to each other, a recovery from the spiritual poverty of developed nations being a condition for the recovery from material poverty of under-developed nations.

Thirdly - and I think the Pope's words can be rightly seen in this way - we can read the Pope's words as a kind of manifesto for the livesimply project. The Pope has provided an explicitly Christological orientation that can be taken up by livesimply and would enrich its campaign of solidarity for the poor. I have posted previously on the possibility for livesimply to become the modern branding of the evangelical counsel of poverty.

There is another potentially interesting possibility in Pope Benedict's words. In the life of the Church there are such people as consecrated virgins, single lay people who have formally vowed themselves to virginity but are not members of a religious institute. Canons 1191-1198 of the Code of Canon Law cover the question of vows in this sort of situation, without limiting in any way the vows that can be made, whether privately or publicly. Perhaps thought could be given to encouraging the vow of poverty being made in this way.

Thinking faith on livesimply

Thinking Faith, the Jesuit on-line journal, has an interesting article entitled The Challenge to Live Simply. This is a very well articulated account of the livesimply project, and I think anyone who wishes to comment on that project should read this article. It is very easy to get drawn into commenting on livesimply without understanding its real basis - commenting on the comments, rather than on the original! If you read this article, I think that you will see that some genuinely Catholic insights are involved in the project; indeed, I would suggest that one can see in it elements of a genuine charism in the Church.

You need to read the Thinking Faith article to make sense of the following observations:

livesimply tends to express its approach to relationships in the order of relationships with other people followed by relationship with God (eg in the third paragraph) - Deus Caritas Est presents these two the other way round, the relationship with God being treated before that with other people. According to Cardinal Cordes, the drafting of Deus Caritas Est by the Pontifical Council Cor Unum put them the same way round as the livesimply project, and Pope Benedict deliberately changed the order round when he wrote the encyclical. This isn't to say that livesimply has got it wrong, since the essential point is that the two go together. But it may indicate a certain development in doctrine.

livesimply might be criticised for lacking a Christological reference in much of its work. The Thinking Faith article contains the following paragraph:

We have an incarnational faith. We believe that God became human in Jesus and therefore God became poor, powerless and vulnerable. The gospels tell the story of the life, mission and death of Jesus and this sets an example of how we should act towards others. Jesus stood out against the social and cultural expectations of his times in the way he interacted with the Pharisees, in the way his disciples understood him, and most of all on the cross. So it is with us; in a world of greed, selfishness and consumerism we are called to be good news for the poor.

I think this paragraph does give a ground for suggesting that the practise of the livesimply project should articulate a more explicit Christological reference. I think that reference can be developed more fully than this paragraph's presentation of Jesus as the example we follow, perhaps along the lines of Jesus as a redeemer of poverty through his assuming of poverty.

I think the paragraph headed "Living sustainably" recognises that the environmentalist aspect of livesimply does not really have its origins in Populorum Progressio, the encyclical that is the inspiration of the project as a whole. It is a "later insertion", though that does not necessarily make it erroneous. I think we should be cautious about accepting "kinship" with creation as a replacement for "subjugation". Whilst the latter word might not communicate successfully to contemporary sensitivities, the idea that the material created world is for the service of humankind and for him to use towards his own good (cf Genesis) is not necessarily adequately communicated by the word "kinship" either. Pope Benedict, when he is "talking green", presents creation as something to be valued and protected because of its being a manifestation of its Creator. His environmentalism has a Trinitarian and Christological reference, which could perhaps be drawn into the livesimply project as part of a development of its Christological reference.

The paragraph headed "Living simply" contains a one sentence reference to the evangelical counsel of poverty as lived out in consecrated life in the Church. Again, I think this allows us to see in livesimply a modern presentation of the evangelical counsel of poverty, without that being against the inspiration of the project. This would go hand in hand with a development of the Christological reference of livesimply. Towards the end of the article, a suggestion is made that livesimply could give rise to "basic Christian communities". This choice of terminology has a certain historical, ecclesial and political context. But the idea of people living life together under a chosen condition of poverty seems to me a profoundly Christian idea. Leaving aside a vocabulary with a particular political or social overtone, this could be seen, as are the new movements in the Church, as a contemporary way of living what would previously have been called religious life.

This paragraph, in the section headed "Living in solidarity", is perhaps unfortunate in opposing the religious practise of going to Mass to charitable mission. Completely resolvable, though, if the Christological reference implicit in livesimply is fully developed:

The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 reminds us that the final judgement will not be concerned with the things that usually enter our heads when we think of our religion – for example, how many times we attended Mass – but rather with how we behaved to Jesus when we encountered him in our brothers and sisters in need. Our prayer life and religious devotions are things that have to help and sustain us in our desire for the common good.

I think it is possible to see in livesimply elements of a genuine charism in the Church, to see things that could lead to genuine renewal in the living of the evangelical counsel of poverty in the Church. Its call to turn away from materialism, from the desire for more and more things, and towards a more spiritual life is something that I think Pope Benedict would support wholeheartedly.