ENCYCLICAL LETTER
FRATELLI TUTTI
OF THE HOLY FATHER
FRANCIS
ON FRATERNITY
AND SOCIAL FRIENDSHIP
ENGLISH TEXT OF THE ENCYCLICAL
No I have not read the text, but will do someday because Francis almost always has some words that you know are really his, no speech writer would use them. I suspect readers of the original in Spanish have the advantage because Francis often uses very idiomatic phrases from Argentina.
However for our discussion, the Irish Bishops have quick power point like visuals that summarize the eight chapters (links below).
What does it propose? Its aim is to put forth a new vision of fraternity and social friendship.
1. Dark Clouds over a Closed World Globalized society makes us neighbors but not brothers and sisters.
2. A Stranger on the Road The Good Samaritan as model
3. Envisioning and Engendering and Open World "You are all brothers and sisters Matt 28, 8)
Promoting values that advance integral human development
4. A Heart Open to the Whole World What is gratuitousness?
Every health society is open and welcoming by its very nature
5. A Better Kind of Politics What is a better kind of politics? A political and social order whose soul is social charity
6. Dialogue and Friendship in Society What does it mean to dialogue? Each of us can learn from others, no one is useless or expendable.
7/ Paths of Renewed Encounter Jesus never promoted violence or intolerance
A prayer to the Creator
Lord, Father of our human family,
you created all human beings equal in dignity:
pour forth into our hearts a fraternal spirit
and inspire in us a dream of renewed encounter,
dialogue, justice and peace.
Move us to create healthier societies
and a more dignified world,
a world without hunger, poverty, violence and war.
May our hearts be open
to all the peoples and nations of the earth.
May we recognize the goodness and beauty
that you have sown in each of us,
and thus forge bonds of unity, common projects,
and shared dreams. Amen.
An Ecumenical Christian Prayer
O God, Trinity of love,
from the profound communion of your divine life,
pour out upon us a torrent of fraternal love.
Grant us the love reflected in the actions of Jesus,
in his family of Nazareth,
and in the early Christian community.
Grant that we Christians may live the Gospel,
discovering Christ in each human being,
recognizing him crucified
in the sufferings of the abandoned
and forgotten of our world,
and risen in each brother or sister
who makes a new start.
Come, Holy Spirit, show us your beauty,
reflected in all the peoples of the earth,
so that we may discover anew
that all are important and all are necessary,
different faces of the one humanity
that God so loves. Amen.
I ripped through it at the crack of dawn, dawdling over paragraphs 15, 35, 37 45, 74, 113, 118-121 and 168. But all the rest are good. It is full of the kind of lines which Dr. Sixto Garcia used to precede with "Boom" before he read them.
ReplyDeleteWithout disguising whom he is talking about, he field strips the Trump record on immigration (twice), the economy (at length), nationalism, populism and the death penalty. (I may have missed it but I don't think he mentioned abortion.)
And, he makes three mentions of his new bff, Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, which ought to disjoint a few American Catholic noses. Can't wait to see what the rad trads try to make of it.
The analysis of the Good Samaritan (chapter 2, I think) goes farther than I've ever seen anyone go with it before.
He is mainly promoting solidarity over divide-and-conquer. Bill Barr should be examining his conscience, and Mike Pompeo should consider it a relief that the pope did not receive him because otherwise he might be associated with solidarity over ---.
Ultimately, “persons are no longer seen as a paramount value to be cared for and respected, especially when they are poor and disabled, ‘not yet useful’ – like the unborn, or ‘no longer needed’ – like the elderly. We have grown indifferent to all kinds of wastefulness, starting with the waste of food, which is deplorable in the extreme”.
Delete19. A decline in the birthrate, which leads to the aging of the population, together with the relegation of the elderly to a sad and lonely existence, is a subtle way of stating that it is all about us, that our individual concerns are the only thing that matters. In this way, “what is thrown away are not only food and dispensable objects, but often human beings themselves”. We have seen what happened with the elderly in certain places in our world as a result of the coronavirus. They did not have to die that way. Yet something similar had long been occurring during heat waves and in other situations: older people found themselves cruelly abandoned.
Tom, abortion is there at least in these passages. Of course in a quick read it would be easy to miss it since the emphasis is upon the elderly in these passages.
Yep, they are there. Between the "not yet useful" and the "no longer needed." Compare the amount of attention given to the displaced and refugees, for example, in Chapter 4, "A heart open to the Whole Word, where paras 129-132 examine the "limits" of borders (a theme that runs through the encyclical) and the follow-up on the fruits of openness.
DeleteTom says "The analysis of the Good Samaritan (chapter 2, I think) goes farther than I've ever seen anyone go with it before."
Delete69. The decision to include or exclude those lying wounded along the roadside can serve as a criterion for judging every economic, political, social and religious project. Each day we have to decide whether to be Good Samaritans or indifferent bystanders.
It is hard to imagine going further than that.
"Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and counter-charges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation."
ReplyDeleteSounds like a description of the Tuesday night debate. Of course we know Francis does not watch TV and this was probably translated weeks ago.
Thanks Jack, for linking the Irish bishops' power point summary. I plan to read it in its entirety later. But it is nice to have a broad summary available.
ReplyDeleteMuch was made before it even came out about the supposed sexism of the title, using the Italian word for brothers, fratelli. It is apparent that "brothers and sisters" is used in the body of the encyclical. The title was a quote from a writing of St. Francis. I actually think it was fine, and could care less about the identity politics supposedly implied.
Sounds like the message is something we need to hear in this moment.
Thanks, Jack and Tom, for your posts and analyses.
ReplyDeleteLast Monday, Georgetown hosted an online discussion of this encyclical. They have posted the video online. It discusses the principal themes and implications of the letter.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPXb3HrhEqo