Philip Booth is Director of Catholic Mission and Professor of Finance, Public Policy and Ethics at St. Mary’s University, and Director of Policy and Research at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales
Fraternity was an important and sustained theme of Pope Francis’s teaching which led to his encyclical Fratelli tutti and unites his social teaching with his pastoral approach.
By developing this theme, Pope Francis prompts people of different political perspectives to think hard about their own policy positions. The stress on fraternity is a challenge to both bureaucratic and collectivist ways of thinking and also to radically individualistic ways of thinking.
In his letter following the synod on the family, Amoris Laetitia,Pope Francis wrote: “When a family is welcoming and reaches out to others, especially the poor and the neglected, it is a symbol, witness and participant in the Church’s motherhood.” (324) Our human nature requires that our acts of solidarity and fraternity start at the most basic level in society. However, the parable of the Good Samaritan shows how those acts should involve anybody with whom God’s providence leads us to have an encounter. Genuine solidarity and fraternity require a relationship and not just a cheque. These acts can, if engrained in culture, radiate outwards and can turn into a great social movement. But they can only take place if we have a political system which promotes the principle of subsidiarity and therefore allows the family to play its proper role: hence the concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity are complementary and not in tension.
There are three things that I especially like about this theme of fraternity. In Catholic social teaching, it provides clear point of unity for people with different political perspectives. For example, the critique of the welfare state and of regulatory bureaucracies by supporters of a free economy is largely a critique of how these institutions have become impersonal and undermine civil society institutions for the provision of welfare, lauded in Rerum novraum, which had fraternity at their heart. At the same time, those on the left throw the same accusation at corporate capitalism. Both sides should be able to see the merit in the argument of the other and, in a spirit of intellectual generosity, discuss how we might bring about a more fraternal society.
Secondly, as noted above, fraternity neatly unites the social and the pastoral. As Francis said, pastors should “smell the smell of the sheep”.
Also, Pope Francis’s teaching in this area prompts personal reflection and an examination of our consciences. It raises questions such as “do I give money to homeless charities but never stop to talk to a homeless person?”. “Do I campaign to change political structures but never assist people personally or through community groups?”.
In developing this theme, Pope Francis followed on from his predecessors, perhaps most notably Pope Benedict’s Deus caritas est and Caritas in veritate. Fraternity is, of course, fundamental to the Christian calling and the Church’s social teaching.
This reflection on fraternity summarises a longer article which can be found here.