idiot proof

WELL, DO YOU?

Pope Francis published his third encyclical, Dilexit Nos, in late 2024. He very much sees a continuous theological line through 2015's Laudato Si’ (wrote about that one a while ago), 2020's Fratelli Tutti (wrote about that one a while ago a few times), and this third letter:

“The present document [Dilexit Nos] can help us see that the teaching of the social Encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti is not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ. For it is by drinking of that same love that we become capable of forging bonds of fraternity, of recognizing the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home.”

What's interesting to me, though, is that the scope of each of the three letters, at least on a superficial level, narrows as you get closer to the present day. Laudato Si’ is about a lot of things; it will probably be remembered as “the encyclical about climate change” but covers a wide range of moral issues and emphasizes their breathing, heaving interconnectedness. Fratelli Tutti, which I find notable for its detailed and moving analysis of the parable of the Good Samaritan, is about how we should treat each other and our call to show mercy to all, even those we aren't close to; not-coincidentally, it landed less than one year into a multi-year pandemic that isolated all of us from each other. Dilexit Nos, especially in its first half, feels extremely focused on the interior life, on defining the “heart”, the indescribable consciousness that you have, that you need to understand that the fully human Jesus has too, the heart that He loves you with and calls you to love Him with, and to realize that the people around you have it too, and you are called to love and be loved by them too, in a deep and personal knows-you-by-name-all-the-way-down-to-this-ineffable-thing-deep-inside-you way.

Francis obviously wrote these letters because he wanted to get a message across; in contrast to most theology writers over two millennia of Catholicism, he writes with the very clear hope that his readers will allow these teachings to take root deep within them and change them, will not just scan for one or two takeaway sentences, will slowly grow and see the world and the people around them differently after their encounter with these texts. I find this a very impressive quality in Pope Francis the writer, but there is also a little bit of dark comedy here in our refusal to internalize any of these encyclicals, leading to Francis’ additional attempts to try and come up with some sort of easier essay, to dumb things down for us as much as he possibly could. He wrote Laudato Si’, this big, sweeping, complex, multi-issue encyclical, to show us “this is how the Catholic church needs to think about morality so it can help save the world in the anthropocene era”. And then we, you know, didn't do any of the things in that letter, so five years later in Fratelli Tutti, he tried again, “okay, something simpler this time, please just treat each other with kindness, let's just start there and then we can move to the world-saving stuff once you start treating each other better”; when that letter was originally published, I wrote that “Often throughout Fratelli, it feels like Francis is trying to repeat the lessons he tried to teach five years ago, talking more loudly and more slowly, because too many people — especially too many Catholics — weren’t getting it, and certainly weren’t acting on it.” And then we, you know, still didn't do any of the things in that letter, so he tried yet again in 2024 with Dilexit Nos, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and sighing and trying out “okay, so you understand how you're…a person, right? You have consciousness, understanding, an inner monologue, hopes, worries? Do you get that everyone around you has that too? Do you get that God can see that in you and then also in everyone who has ever existed? Can we at least start there? Now that you have this information, do you think that anything about the world, or even just anything about your life, should perhaps be different?”