Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te: On love for the poor. (III)

In the last two posts, I’ve looked at two themes in Leo XIV’s new document Dilexi Te:

1. What should I believe about the poor?
2. What should I, as an individual, do for people who are experiencing poverty?

In this post, I pull out excerpts which address a third theme that runs through the exhortation: What should groups, institutions, the Church, and governments do with their collective power and resources to address the needs of the poor?

Like theme 2, much of this direction rests on ideas found in the first theme, ideas about who “deserves” help, what is meant by “the poor,” and what is the purpose of having possessions that are “ours” in the first place.

Let us see what Pope Leo teaches us we ought to do collectively. I’m going to wind up repeating some of the excerpts I posted in the two previous posts, but looking at them from the collective angle.

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Again, the preferential option for the poor, and how it calls the whole Church to choose in favor of “the weakest”:

This “preference” never indicates exclusivity or discrimination towards other groups, which would be impossible for God. It is meant to emphasize God’s actions, which are moved by compassion toward the poverty and weakness of all humanity. Wanting to inaugurate a kingdom of justice, fraternity and solidarity, God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest.

What might that mean? Off the top of my head: Some of your parish funds might need to go to improving functional accessibility for disabled people, or multilanguage materials in the foyer, or whomever among you needs something. “The weakest” is not always the same individuals. The preferential option for the poor is a guide for making decisions about priorities.

Here’s the bit about who deserves help:

[Some Scriptural t]exts call for respect — if not also love — even for one’s enemy: ‘When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free’ (Ex 23:4-5). Here the intrinsic value of respect for others is expressly stated: anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance.

Boy, I’ll tell you what this made me think of immediately: Vice President J. D. Vance recently insinuating that only some people in need deserve to receive emergency medical care. He said, “If you’re an American citizen and you’ve been to the hospital in the last few years, you’ve probably noticed that wait times are especially large and very often somebody who’s there in the ER is an illegal alien. Why do those people get health care benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens?”

I, personally, do not think that undocumented immigrants count as “enemies.” But surely, if, as Pope Leo says, anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance, then that should answer this question posed by the Vice President, or indeed by any Catholic.

Governments, indeed, are supposed to defend the weak against the strong and care for those in need. It’s not something that ought to be left to the private sphere, at least when government has been given competent powers. Almsgiving—specifically religiously-motivated, self-giving help—is not the only action to be taken on part of the poor. We must also demand that “competent authorities,” including government, use its powers to care for the poor and secure justice, as is its responsibility:

Those inspired by true charity know full well that almsgiving does not absolve the competent authorities of their responsibilities, eliminate the duty of government institutions to care for the poor, or detract from rightful efforts to ensure justice.

The following message, articulated by Pope Francis, is about the mission of the Church, but we would do well to consider whether as Church we are speaking this truth to the worldly power and demanding that they treat our migrant brothers and sisters as people and not as a problem:

Pope Francis has recalled that the Church’s mission to migrants and refugees is even broader, insisting that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote and integrate. Yet these verbs do not apply only to migrants and refugees. They describe the Church’s mission to all those living in the existential peripheries, who need to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated.” He also said: “Every human being is a child of God! He or she bears the image of Christ! We ourselves need to see, and then to enable others to see, that migrants and refugees do not only represent a problem to be solved, but are brothers and sisters to be welcomed, respected and loved.

Benedict XVI also called for collective action “capable of guaranteeing” support that would free people from hunger:

Amid the multiple crises that marked the beginning of the third millennium, the teaching of Benedict XVI took a more distinctly political turn. Hence, in the Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, he affirms that ‘the more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbors, the more effectively we love them.’ [88] He observed, moreover, that ‘hunger is not so much dependent on lack of material things as on shortage of social resources, the most important of which are institutional. What is missing, in other words, is a network of economic institutions capable of guaranteeing regular access to sufficient food and water for nutritional needs, and also capable of addressing the primary needs and necessities ensuing from genuine food crises, whether due to natural causes or political irresponsibility, nationally and internationally.’

Although it can make moral demands on worldly powers, the Church is not supposed to be like the kingdoms of this world (which is one of the things that enables it to make those demands, I think!) and should resemble Jesus more than it resembles the world’s power structures:

“[In the early days of the Second Vatican Council] [t]here was a growing sense of the need for a new image of Church, one simpler and more sober, embracing the entire people of God and its presence in history. A Church more closely resembling her Lord than worldly powers and working to foster a concrete commitment on the part of all humanity to solving the immense problem of poverty in the world.”

Doctrinal rigor, promoted without mercy, is empty. It’s a mistake to be concerned only (or even, maybe, primarily) with that rigor, and not concerned with how the poor (of every type) receive it. There is a grave mistake in assuming that if the Gospel is not received well, the fault lies entirely on the hearer.

Many other Fathers of the Church, both Eastern and Western, have spoken about the primacy of attention to the poor in the life and mission of every Christian. From this perspective, in summary, it can be said that patristic theology was practical, aiming at a Church that was poor and for the poor, recalling that the Gospel is proclaimed correctly only when it impels us to touch the flesh of the least among us, and warning that doctrinal rigor without mercy is empty talk.

The Church should see all people as worthy of love:

Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies. It spans chasms that are humanly impossible to bridge, and it penetrates to the most hidden crevices of society. By its very nature, Christian love is prophetic: it works miracles and knows no limits. It makes what was apparently impossible happen. Love is above all a way of looking at life and a way of living it. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today,

And as autonomous individuals whose cultural expression has value to the wider world—in a bit of a rebuke to Catholics in mainstreamed or wealthy cultures who profess shock when they see faith practices take unfamiliar forms among marginalized communities:

“[C]onsider marginalized communities as subjects capable of creating their own culture, rather than as objects of charity on the part of others. This means that such communities have the right to embrace the Gospel and to celebrate and communicate their faith in accord with the values present within their own cultures. Their experience of poverty gives them the ability to recognize aspects of reality that others cannot see; for this reason, society needs to listen to them.”

There’s a lot to chew on in this document. An entire theme that I haven’t touched is a sort of history of how the saints, and religious communities, have modeled service to the poor, to prisoners, etc. I recommend reading the whole document. It isn’t difficult, and it ought to bear fruit in our discussions of public policy, pastoral mission, and private charity.