USCCB Holds Social Ministry Gathering

The 2010 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering was held in Washington, DC from February 7th to 10th in the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill. The event brought together various people to discuss social issues and concerns. Namely, the CSMG placed an emphasis on discussing human life and dignity, as well as how to work for and achieve justice and peace in society.

The event opened with a Mass, at which Bishop William Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre and Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development served as the celebrant and homilist. Among the presenters scheduled for the event were Fr. Allan Figueroa Deck, SJ, Executive Director of the Secretariat for Cultural Diversity in the Church; Mr. John Carr, the USCCB’s Executive Director of Justice, Peace, and Human Development; Dr. Maryann Cusimano Love, Associate Professor of the Department of Politics at the Catholic University of America; Mr. Ray Boshara, Vice President and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation; and Mr. David Brooks and Mr. Mark Shields of the PBS NewsHour.

The theme for the 2010 Gathering was “Charity in Truth: Seeking the Common Good”, seeking to place an especial emphasis on Pope Benedict XVI’s most recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. In the encyclical, the Holy Father described the various problems facing underdeveloped countries in the world, and stressed the need for charity and truth in order to rectify their situations. Particularly, Benedict focuses on the problems attached to globalization, prolonged unemployment, food shortage, and environmental problems, as well as the potential solutions which could be brought about through recognition of the human race as a single family.

The relationship between charity and truth, as Pope Benedict points out so perfectly in the encyclical, is “at the heart of all Catholic social doctrine.” Charity, willing to do what is good, is obviously a fundamental principle, the basis of all social action. When divorced from truth, however, it quickly becomes an “empty shell”, and easily ceases to be a force for good, often becoming, in fact, the exact opposite.

In the Trinity, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Word; in similar fashion, for human beings, the will proceeds from and presupposes the intellect. Charity, the action proper to the will, cannot be said to truly exist unless one knows the good. Without such knowledge, there is no “charity” properly speaking, but merely sentimentality.

Ugo Spirito, the Italian fascist political philosopher of the twentieth century, insisted in his book Life as Love that a civilization dominated by the Logos was incompatible with true love, which could only be attained by eliminating the duality between good and evil, and all the value judgments which inevitably accompany it. This pre-eminence of “love” over law in Spirito and many modern philosophers has, unsurprisingly, led to a denial of the natural law, replacing it with various other tautological ethical constructs which have inevitably ended in the moral chaos visible throughout the world today, in both rich and wealthy countries.

The only real solution, as the title of Pope Benedict’s encyclical suggests, is love in truth and directed by truth. The Natural Law, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, “is a participation in the eternal law and an impression of the divine light in the rational creature, by which it is inclined to its due action and end,” (ST I,II,q.91,a.2). If one acknowledges the unchanging moral principles which govern the world, and bases social action around them, the laws of society will become a participation in the eternal order of nature, and man will be more easily guided to his last end, where alone true peace and justice are to be found.

This recent gathering to discuss social issues in the light of Caritas in Veritate is a promising sign that Catholics, lay and ordained, are coming to recognize and understand more fully the grandeur of the natural law, and its place in the life of the Church. All Catholics ought to be truly grateful for this fact, and for the efforts of the Holy Father to bring it about.

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