Forgotten Treasures
Common Objections Leveled Against Encyclicals

by Peter A. Kwasniewski

In the past six issues of Lay Witness I have been celebrating and commending some of the most excellent, though too often forgotten or ignored, papal documents of the past century. In these ever-timely gifts from the throne of the Sovereign Pontiff, we find rare nourishment for intellect and heart that few other resources can match (as Benedict XVI’s Spe Salvi has once again demonstrated—what an encyclical!).

In the year of grace 2008 we will continue to explore these forgotten treasures, this time setting our sights on Bl. Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Benedict XV.

As a sort of breather midway, however, I wish to address typical objections that liberal Catholics of today bring against studying and taking seriously papal encyclicals from the past—or even from the present. While doubtless more objections could be fabricated, these are among the most common. (Please bear in mind that the following objections present not my view, but that of an imaginary objector.)

Objection 1: The encyclicals constitute unprecedented interventions of the papal magisterium in disputes that arise in the daily life of local churches. From this vantage they count as interferences in the more natural process of the gradual working-out of difficulties that could be expected with patient dialogue. Such a genre of documents could have resulted only from Roman centralization and power concentration, as the ruthlessly silenced liberation theologian Leonardo Boff maintains.

Objection 2: Building on the last, it would seem that the “top-down” approach exemplified in encyclicals violates the principle of subsidiarity within the Church, according to which it is the People of God at all levels—especially the laity who are competent to deal with secular realities—who should be the testers and judges of what accords with the gospel and what does not. They are, after all, baptized into the prophetic office of Christ, and the sensus fidelium cannot be mistaken.

Objection 3: Popes are neither competent nor commissioned to address the many contingent and complex affairs that they do address. This is particularly true when it comes to “Catholic social teaching.” The pope is not an economist or a statesman, so he should not try to pontificate about economics or politics.

Objection 4: Popes are not the authors of encyclicals anyway; we’re getting the doctrine of this or that Jesuit—for example, of Gustav Gundlach, S.J., one of the authors of Quadragesimo Anno, or Sebastian Tromp, S.J., principal author of Mystici Corporis Christi; or of Martin Rhonheimer, purportedly the author of Veritatis Splendor. Why should such a document, coming as it does from a ghost writer behind the papal throne, deserve to exercise more authority over the minds of the faithful, or more influence in theology, than the writings of any professor of Catholic theology may exercise on their own merits?

Objection 5: The content and style of older encyclicals is dated, and has surely been superseded—the world changes so fast. It makes no more sense to study old encyclicals than to read old newspapers if one wants what is relevant here and now.

Reply to the first: The unprecedented frequency, gravity, and clarity of papal encyclicals since the time of Leo XIII is a providential development in and for the post-Enlightenment period in which we are living. Modern intellectual errors and ethical experimentation are growing worse and worse; a timely, decisive, universal response is more than ever necessary. A large army without a general to issue wise instructions is worse than a mob; it is an armed and dangerous mob ready to shoot anywhere at anything, or, in our day and age, perhaps it is ready to embrace a cowardly pacifism that wages war against nothing. Christ strengthened Peter to be the bulwark of the faith; the successors of Peter are always given the zeal to meet the needs of their times.

Reply to the second: Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, spoke frequently about the process of politicization suffered by the concept “People of God,” removing it far from its biblical origins and allowing it to become an instrument of a democratic agenda peculiar to modernity. In truth, the People of God, or New Israel, is hierarchically structured, and it is to the bishops, as successors to the Apostles, that the responsibility and grace of measuring earthly realities by the gospel has been entrusted. The prophetic office of Christ has passed principally to the magisterium.

When we speak of the sensus fidelium or capacity of the faithful to discern what is true in faith and morals, the “faithful” here necessarily include the rulers of the Church as well as the laity—indeed, were it to be defined over against those rulers, it would no longer be an expression of the faith of the whole Church, but only that of a faction or party within it. One could go further: If there were only a single orthodox Catholic left in a world filled with dissenters, his would be the accurate expression of the sensus fidelium, not the consensus of their errors.

Moreover, as John Paul II had to teach more than once, the principle of subsidiarity does not apply within the divinely-instituted structure of the Church, which is a monarchy pure and simple, patterned after the monarchy of God the Creator and the all-powerful Kingship of Christ, where legislative, executive, and judicial powers are united in a single ruler who exercises perfect providence for His subjects.

Reply to the third: “Morals” is one of the two areas over which the pope is expressly appointed by God as a teacher and ruler of the faithful, and social ethics manifestly falls into this category, as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church explains in summary form. Objections from either the so-called “right” or the so-called “left” stem from the same root: a passion for private judgment, an arbitrary limitation of Catholic teaching to a narrow range of dogma. As we know, a single bolt removed from a bridge weakens the entire structure: The Old Catholics, who started off denying only papal infallibility as defined by Vatican I, now permit every sort of doctrinal aberration, including women “priests” and contraception. It is the Vicar of Christ who rightfully determines the subjects (or aspects of subjects) to which his magisterium legitimately extends, as well as the truth to be taught in their regard.

Reply to the fourth: There are three points to consider in replying to this objection. First, rarely is it just one person who writes the draft of an encyclical. Often there are several who collaborate or write different parts or separate versions of the same part, and it is up to the pope not only to review and select from their work but to add, rewrite, reorganize, and, in a word, do as he pleases with the draft texts prepared for him, thus making them his own even from a writer’s perspective.

Second, as St. Thomas never tires of pointing out, God uses a wide variety of secondary causes to accomplish His aims. He can as easily ensure that truth is communicated through a hundred collaborating minds as through a solitary seer.

Third and crucial is the fact that an encyclical is signed and promulgated by the pope and none other. Once he does this, he has taken possession of it and responsibility for it, he has issued it in his own name and in virtue of his own apostolic authority. Hence, theologically speaking, he makes the content his—even more his, formally speaking, than it would have been his materially had he penned every word. In other words, the step from the unauthoritative word of the draft to the promulgated word of the encyclical is even greater than the step from another author to himself. A text completely written by another would be more the pope’s (as pope) after it has been promulgated than a text completely written by himself but never promulgated. This is a paradoxical but true conclusion that follows from the essence of hierarchical authority.

Anyone who would prize a papal writing only if it expresses “original thought” has fundamentally misunderstood the nature both of originality and of tradition. Apart from creative writing, originality is a vice; no one is the origin of divine truth save God alone, and the magisterium’s sole purpose is to preserve and transmit without error the deposit of that truth in the Catholic Church. The pope is guided by the Holy Spirit to develop various insights and applications that unfold over time, in an organic way, the full meaning of the Church’s teaching. Hence, the pope’s very choice of contributors for a proposed encyclical, as well as what he actually does with the resulting materials, are no less guided by the Spirit of truth.

Reply to the fifth: While the precipitating circumstances behind some encyclicals are dated—for instance, the Russian Bolshevik Communists, the Italian Fascists, and the German National Socialists are no longer the regnant forces of Europe—nevertheless the issues and topics tackled in papal encyclicals are always with us, and the papal response is nearly always astonishingly pertinent. These encyclicals are confronting timeless issues by means of timeless principles, and so we stand to learn as much or more from older documents as from newer ones. The best example I can cite is the long line of commemorative encyclicals on Rerum Novarum. The later ones (e.g., Quadragesimo Anno; Mater et Magistra; Centesimus Annus) do not render the earlier superfluous, but presuppose them, build on them, and develop them, presupposing the fundamental truth of the whole tradition. Moreover, even in the encyclicals that at first glance seem far removed from our situation, points of profound relevance are often found. A good example would be Leo XIII’s numerous epistles to the Italian episcopacy warning against the inroads of Freemasonry.

One amazing thing to see (though it should hardly be surprising given what we know about the office of the pope) is just how powerfully unified, and yet not redundant, is the teaching of successive popes on a host of fundamental questions. Ignorance of the earlier documents often leads people into thinking that something later is a novelty when it is, in fact, clearly present in an earlier pope’s writings. There are no novelties awaiting us, only solid truth such as will nourish us throughout life. Let us then continue in the path we have begun, full of confidence in the treasures of the Church and full of gratitude to Our Lord for lavishing them on His people.

Peter Kwasniewski is an associate professor of theology at Wyoming Catholic College and a visiting professor at the International Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Gaming, Austria. He received his BA in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College in California and his MA and Ph.D. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America.

Kwasniewski has published extensively in scholarly and popular journals and directs Gregorian chant and other sacred music. He and his wife, Clarissa, have two children and are lay members of the Order of Preachers.

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