11 May 2023
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter
In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles Peter admonishes those who make a distinction between Jew and Gentile. The modern church continues this defense of the commonality of the human community and it stands as bulwark against the fragmentation of humanity caused by racial theory, eugenics, and scientific racism, movements supported by many intellectuals in the last half of the 19th century. While many countries were marching with full thrust into national struggles forged by Darwinian socialism, the church viewed this route as the sure course for disaster for humanity. The record of the Church, particularly by the end of the 19th century is loud and clear. A few examples must suffice. Pope Leo XIII in the encyclical Rerum Novarum advocated the unity of humanity with his emphasis on dignity of the human person, the common good, and subsidiarity. Forty years later Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno Pope Pius XI reiterated the themes of Pope Leo XIII and cast a critical eye on the abuses caused by an unregulated capitalism and atheistic communism. This same Pope, an unrecognized hero of the day, provided the first instance a government official speaking against “the conspiracy of silence” and blasted Hitler’s government for its attacks against humanity in the encyclical Mitbrendender sorge. The Catholic church in Germany paid a high price for the Pope’s scathing criticism of Nazi Germany after the promulgation of this encyclical A quote from a papal address given by Pius XI on September 14th1938, the feast of the Holy Cross, deserves repetition:
“Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we [Christians] are all Semites”
In the first encyclical of his papacy, Pope Pius inaugurated what would be one of the hallmark themes of his papacy: The dignity of the individual and the social and governmental structures required to support this dignity. Summi Pontificatus states
….the first of these pernicious errors, widespread today, is the forgetfulness of that law of human solidarity and charity which is dictated and imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men, to whatever people they belong…..
Evidence for the Church’s stand on the dignity of each human person can be heaped into a very large pile. It is unfortunate that, in many cases, when Catholic schools look to understand the importance of the commonality of the human family and the obligations of this understanding. Unfortunately, there exists an ignorance of this Catholic tradition and its defense of the commonality of the human family, a defense that finds it has its roots deep in the experience and teachings of the early church, a tradition that bears fruit in the teachings and the practices of the church today.