RETHINKING OUR METHOD

“FRATELLI TUTTI” AND THE NEED TO RECONSIDER THE NATURE AND APPROACH OF
CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

Rodrigo Guerra López*

FORUM PLUS: EUROPEAN CATHOLIC FORUM FOR SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
MAY 12, 2022

INTRODUCTION

I am very happy to be able to share these brief moments with you. Nine years ago, I had
the opportunity to participate in a meeting organized by "Forum Plus" in Dubrovnik, of
which I have fond memories. Now, as time goes by, I meet again with friends who have
matured in the quest to create a relevant Christian presence in the face of contemporary
social challenges in Europe. A search that has been creative and that undoubtedly bears
fruit, as this Congress attests.

The subject that you have invited me to present, in a certain sense, intends to delve into
the experience that you have lived, and in which many groups and communities live, who
want to show that the Christian faith is not exhausted in a proposal of private life, but that
it has an important historical and cultural dimension.

The Christian faith, of course, is based on a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. This
encounter is lived as an experience in the inner world, in the secret universe that lives in
the heart of each person. However, from that intimate place, due to its own dynamism, it
tends to expand towards our elemental solidarities: our friends, our family, our
community and, eventually, the entire world.

The expansion of the experience of faith to a social horizon, even a global one, does not
spring from a strategic program of action or from the search for fame in the manner of a
“rock star”. On the contrary, the Christian faith, when assumed in its entirety, becomes
expansive mainly by the logic of the Incarnation, that is, by the formal affirmation that
the God in whom we believe has taken flesh, and has become one of us (cf. Jn 1, 14).
Thanks to the Incarnation, everything human is a way for the Church and everything
human is called to find its fullness in Christ1. In other words, the expression “everything
human” encompasses both private and public life, the interior experience of Jesus Christ
and the transformation of the world according to Him.

* Ph. D. in Philosophy by the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein;

Founder of the Center for Advanced Social Research (www.cisav.mx ); Ordinary member of the
Pontifical Academy for Life; Ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; Secretary of
the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. Web site: www.americalatina.va E-mail
r.guerra@americalatina.va
1 Cf. SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Redemptor hominis, n.n. 10, 13, 14.
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Thus, when Christianity affirms itself without its historical and cultural dimension, it not
only prevents seeing a certain social dimension of faith, but also affirms a heretical
Christology in which Jesus Christ is a God who only apparently becomes “incarnate”, but
who does not really receive all that is human within himself. This type of Christology has
a name: “docetism”. Docetism is a spiritualist deformation that by sustaining only the
divine dimension of Jesus Christ, leaves without embracing human life fully considered.
A “docetist” god may be interesting to an scholar, but he is existentially boring to a man
or woman who is serious about the challenge of his own life. Furthermore, a "docetist"
god is meaningless in the face of the social challenges of our time.

Quite the contrary, when we let Jesus Christ, true God and true man, break into our lives,
life changes because the certainty arises that we are not abandoned to our own strength
and that we are not thrown into a purely individual existence. On the contrary, the
experience of faith in an incarnate God occurs precisely not in spite of the fragile and
clumsy life of the neighbor, but through it. It is the concrete flesh of the other with whom
I am “Church” that puts me in contact with the living experience of faith and grace. The
"faith of the Church" is found by immersing in the experience of friendship and company
that Jesus Christ offers us and that mysteriously unites us all. Thus, our “being together”
becomes a (sacramental) sign that Christ remains in history.

In this way, the social dimension of Christianity is not an accidental or secondary element
with respect to faith, but rather it is a constitutive dimension of the good news of the
gospel. Understood in this way, the so-called “Catholic Social Doctrine” can be conceived
not only as a set of more or less interesting principles that must be applied, but also as the
reflexive and critical moment of a practical movement.

Indeed, Christianity is a movement before it is a concept, it is an experience before it is a

theory, it is astonishment before the humanity of the neighbor in whom the Incarnation
continues, more than a set of values. Saint John Paul II, in his programmatic Encyclical
"Redemptor hominis" tells us something particularly acute in this regard:

In reality, the name for that deep amazement at man's worth and dignity is the
Gospel, that is to say: the Good News. It is also called Christianity. This
amazement determines the Church's mission in the world and, perhaps even more
so, "in the modern world". This amazement, which is also a conviction and a
certitude – at its deepest root it is the certainty of faith, but in a hidden and
mysterious way it vivifies every aspect of authentic humanism – is closely
connected with Christ. It also fixes Christ's place – so to speak, his particular right
of citizenship – in the history of man and mankind.2

With these words we intend to say many things in a tight way. Among others, that faith
in Jesus Christ is not alien to the multiple paths that every human being travels, it is not
alien to integral humanism, it is not alien, even, to what happens here, in the European
Parliament.

Being a Christian means, among other things, constantly and radically living an elemental
sympathy for the whole of human reality. Yes, for all human reality.

2 SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Redemptor hominis, n. 10.

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Rodrigo Guerra López

This does not mean that our human condition is immaculate. Real human life is full of
wounds, limits and betrayals. Christians do not love evil. However, the call to freedom
offered by Christianity is universal. And that is why it does not matter so much that some
are closer and others are farther from the fullness in Christ. For all there is good news,
before censorship. For all there must be patience and companionship, rather than
rejection.

All the words said so far are not intended to go in the direction of a spiritual retreat or to
be a meditation to encourage our devotion. It is necessary to repeat these words, again
and again, because they constitute the heart of the new synthesis of "Catholic Social
Doctrine", as Pope Francis gives it to us today.

In fact, "Catholic Social Teaching" is not a lactose-free version of Christianity. It is

Christianity in its community horizon. For this reason, although it may be important to
study some “handbook”, or our beloved “Compendium”3, the most important thing is that
our religious experience fosters a renewed passion for each human person, that is, for
each unique, unrepeatable and irreplaceable history.

When in "Catholic Social Teaching" we speak of the primacy of the person, what we
mean is not that one concept is more important than others. The human person is not a
concept. In fact, the person is unconceptualizable. Saying “person” is not a universal and
abstract representation, but this word always refers to the concrete rational-relational
singular, that is, to you and me in a total way and in relation to others. This includes even
our most particular biographical data, that is, everything that makes us truly unique, and
therefore more valuable.4

For this reason, understanding that the “Catholic Social Doctrine” affirms the primacy of
the person, is always, more than a theoretical declaration, a call to live an experience of
radical responsibility for the other. We may suddenly think, hearing this, that we want to
immediately introduce a "second principle". The principle of “solidarity”. However, Pope
Francis tells us something that goes beyond the very horizon of solidarity. It is necessary
to be “brothers”:

Indeed, while solidarity is the principle of social planning that allows the unequal
to become equal; fraternity is what allows the equal to be different people.
Fraternity allows people who are equal in their essence, dignity, freedom, and their
fundamental rights to participate differently in the common good according to
their abilities, their life plan, their vocation, their work, or their charism of service.
From the beginning of my pontificate, I wanted to point out that “our brothers and
sisters are the prolongation of the Incarnation for each of us” (Apostolic
Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 179).5

3 PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,
Continuum, 2006.
4
Cf. R. GUERRA LÓPEZ, Afirmar a la persona por sí misma, CNDH, México 2003.
5 POPE FRANCIS, Message to Prof. Margaret Archer, President of the Pontifical Academy of Social
Sciences, 14 April 2017.
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Why is it so important to speak openly about fraternity in the current context and within
"Catholic Social Doctrine"? Antonio Spadaro SJ has expressed it succinctly and
particularly eloquently:

Fraternity […] subverts the logic of the apocalypse that prevails today, a logic that
fights against the world because it believes that the world is the opposite of God,
that is, an idol, and therefore must be destroyed as soon as possible to accelerate
The end of the ages. Before the abyss of the apocalypse there are no longer
brothers, but only apostates or "martyrs" in a race "against" time. But we are not
militants or apostates, but all brothers.

Fraternity does not burn time or blind eyes and souls. Instead, it occupies time, it
requires time. The one of the discussions and the one of the reconciliations.
Fraternity “loses” time. The apocalypse burns it. Fraternity demands the time of
boredom. Hate is pure emotion. Fraternity is what allows equals to be diverse
people. Hate eliminates what is different. The fraternity rescues the time of
politics, mediation, encounter, the construction of civil society and care.
Fundamentalism nullifies it like in a video game6.

In a context strongly marked by polarization, in which the "social center" is shrinking and
extremism - from one side or the other - devours communities, Pope Francis bets that we
Christians shall not allow ourselves to be absorbed by ideologies that seek to tear the
world apart, but that we may show our specifically Christian contribution. The fraternity
does not call for a crusade against "enemies", but instead, it seeks to create reconciliation
processes and inclusive solutions. Jorge Mario Bergoglio SJ, since he was Archbishop of
Buenos Aires, already saw this need:

We are divided because our adherence to men has been replaced by adherence to
systems and ideologies. We have lost the sense of man and of the concrete people
with all their historical experiences and their clearest aspirations. We must not
listen only to the call of the systematic coherences that seek to manipulate men
according to their interests. Man, who is the origin, subject and end of every
institution, has been absorbed and manipulated by them7.

Indeed, what we need to build is a post-ideological society marked not by a nihilistic

vacuum or by a more or less exalted irrationalism, but by a fraternity that becomes
political charity. In other words: we have to discover that the logic of cultural battles is
not enough to understand and face the challenges of our time, to understand this particular
cultural moment that we call "change of era". It is the logic of charity, in its most sublime
sense, that we must introduce in all our strategies to be relevant to the secret yearnings of
everyone's human heart.

Believing in dialogue, in reconciliation, in charity as a method of political action, is

usually considered naive, coward, or typical of the faint-hearted. For those who have been
conquered by ideology, it seems as if the brave, consistent and efficient position is that of

6 A. SPADARO SJ, “Fratelli tutti. Una guía para la lectura”, en R. LUCIANI – D. PORTILLO (COORDS.),
Fraternidad abierta 2.0, Khaf, Madrid 2021, p.p. 16-17.
7 J. M. BERGOGLIO-PAPA FRANCESCO, “Testimonanza di sangue” (CIAS, Bs. As. 1976), trad. it. en
Pastorale sociale, Jaca Book, Milano 2015, p. 243.
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Rodrigo Guerra López

the radicalized, the extremist, the one who does not build bridges but breaks down walls
and, eventually, the one who is willing to destroy people.

Jesus of Nazareth was undoubtedly a radical man. However, he was radical in patience,
in mercy, in tenderness. He radically affirmed the truth with charity. He knew well that
one does not build by destroying. Peace is not affirmed by attacking. The authentic
common good is only built when it is interpreted as the set of conditions that make it
possible for all of us to recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters and to be responsible
for one another. “Common good” primarily means sustaining fraternity, that is, promoting
recognition of the dignity of people, especially the poorest, the most marginalized, the
most vulnerable.

In fact, Pope Francis reminds us that:

Now there are only two kinds of people: those who care for someone who is
hurting and those who pass by; those who bend down to help and those who look
the other way and hurry off. Here, all our distinctions, labels and masks fall away:
it is the moment of truth. Will we bend down to touch and heal the wounds of
others? Will we bend down and help another to get up? This is today’s challenge,
and we should not be afraid to face it.8

And later he states:

The spiritual stature of a person’s life is measured by love, which in the end
remains “the criterion for the definitive decision about a human life’s worth or
lack thereof”. Yet some believers think that it consists in the imposition of their
own ideologies upon everyone else, or in a violent defense of the truth, or in
impressive demonstrations of strength. All of us, as believers, need to recognize
that love takes first place: love must never be put at risk, and the greatest danger
lies in failing to love (cf. 1 Cor 13:1-13).9

Pope Francis, through "Evangelii gaudium", "Laudato si'" and, especially, "Fratelli tutti",
invites us to take a new step in Christian social commitment, rethinking our fundamental
method of interpreting reality and committed action.

From a methodological point of view, the question can be summed up as follows: in

fidelity to the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption, Christians, as missionary
disciples, must risk advancing to the last frontier. The “last frontier” is more thematic and
existential than geographical. The “last frontier” are the peripheries inhabited by men and
women who may be far from God and the Church, but yearn for truth, goodness, beauty
and justice. A moralistic Christianity, focused on a defensive or merely combative
attitude, does not exhibit what is specific-Christian. It is the love of God lived radically
with the wounded brother, with the fallen brother, with the “adversary” brother, which
can generate a novelty greater than that offered by the logic of power or the logic of
ideology.

8 POPE FRANCIS, Fratelli tutti, n. 70.

9 Ibidem, n. 92.
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Rodrigo Guerra López

If you push me a little more, in order to be even more compact in my expression, from a
methodological point of view what we need is a more intelligent look, a more intelligent
perspective, a more intelligent understanding of reality. This is what "Catholic Social
Teaching" consists of. Faith expands the horizon of reason and allows us to look at reality
with more fullness of meaning, with more depth, with less anger and more hope. Only
then, it is possible to act in a different way. Only then it is possible to overcomes the
"mainstream" of those who let pure pragmatism and the search for power animate their
struggles.

The future of our society is at stake. Violence is at the door and easily erupts at the
slightest provocation. That is why we need a new generation of young people capable of
living in company, in communion, the experience of being Christians, protagonists of a
new creativity capable of affirming co-responsibility for the other and thus reducing the
risk of new wars.

It is not enough to give individual testimony. It is necessary to walk together

("synodality"), so that our unity may be an eloquent sign of our faith. It is not enough to
react to "enemies" or "adversaries", it is necessary to relearn that being Christian is not
the result of an ethical choice,10 a reactionary attitude, or a purely defensive gesture. The
beginning of Christian faith is an encounter, it is the "Kerygma", which if deepened in
life, generates an inexhaustible creativity capable of always finding ways of peace and
fraternal inclusion among people and among nations.

This is the beginning of a new kind of politics.11 This is the hopeful beginning of a new
society that we can be proud of, instead of ashamed.

Thank you very much!

10 BENEDICT XVI, Deus caritas est, n. 1.

11
Cf. POPE FRANCIS, Fratelli tutti, Ch.V; R. BUTTIGLIONE, Il problema politico dei cattolici, Piemme,
Casale Monferrato 1994; C. AGUIAR – R. GUERRA (COORDS.), Católicos y políticos, Prólogo de JORGE
MARIO BERGOGLIO SJ, Agape, Bs. As. 2006.