Fratelli Tutti: The Pope of Universal Brotherhood
It may be a bad omen to begin an article with a disclaimer, but before writing about Fratelli Tutti one seems to be necessary. The following piece does not pretend to be an exhaustive exposé of what is commonly considered a very difficult and obscure text. The Vatican itself implicitly admitted this obscurity when, on its release, they published no less than eight different schematic tables to explain it!1
What follows merely develops a thesis in regard to the 287-paragraph, 43,000-word third Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis I. That thesis is that, following Abu Dhabi, Fratelli Tutti presents a universal human brotherhood built on a mistake that misrepresents St. Francis.
Following Abu Dhabi
The Abu Dhabi Declaration was co-signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar University in Cairo at Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, on February 4th, 2019. It was meant to unite Catholics and Muslims in an ecumenical initiative, to build human fraternity.
The Society of St. Pius X’s Superior General, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, published a statement soon after2 pointing out that the Abu Dhabi Declaration stated that the pluralism and diversity of religions is willed by God in His wisdom. As Father rightly argues, that statement is opposed to the dogma that the Catholic religion is the one true religion. It falsely indicates that there can be peace outside of Christ.
The Declaration’s ideology hearkens back to a French secular movement of Catholic activists, Le Sillon, founded by Marc Sangnier in 1894. Pope St. Pius X condemned that movement in the 1910 letter Notre Charge Apostolique, addressed to the French Bishops. There he writes:
By separating fraternity from Christian charity thus understood, Democracy, far from being a progress, would mean a disastrous step backwards for civilization. If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of wellbeing for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity, and that is why Catholic charity alone can lead the people in the march of progress towards the ideal civilization.3
The Abu Dhabi Declaration comes back to the same idea as the Sillonists, talking about a universal human brotherhood which has its basis in something besides Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church He founded. Fratelli Tutti expands and develops the same ideology.
Fratelli Tutti Presents a Universal Human Brotherhood
Pope Francis’s Fratelli Tutti came out the year following the Abu Dhabi Declaration, on the feast of Saint Francis, October 3rd, 2020.
I have felt particularly encouraged by the Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, with whom I met in Abu Dhabi, where we declared that ‘God has created all human beings equal in rights, duties, and dignity, and has called them to live together as brothers and sisters.’ This was no mere diplomatic gesture, but a reflection born of dialogue and common commitment. The present encyclical takes up and develops some of the great themes raised in the document that we both signed.4
Brotherhood implies familial life, which in turn implies a common origin. People who are “family” share the same parents. The common origin on which Pope Francis bases the life all are called to live together as brothers and sister is human dignity: “It is my desire that, in this our time, by acknowledging the dignity of each human person, we can contribute to the rebirth of a universal aspiration to fraternity. Brotherhood between all men and women.”5
Because Pope Francis bases societal familial life on human dignity, he invokes St. Francis as the inspiration of Fratelli Tutti. St. Francis spread the love of God and inspires a fraternal society because he helped people to become themselves, rather than imposing doctrines through verbal warfare.6 The Pope gives as an example of this St. Francis’s visit to Sultan Malik-el-Kamil in Egypt when he both kept his identity and subjected himself to another human for God’s sake.7
St. Francis’s attitude implies not just personal initiative, but also that global measures should be put in place. A globalist structure will enable fraternity to develop through the cultivation of true liberty by ensuring equality among people.8 Ensuring a fraternal structure where people are free and equal means that the moral good, which is truly necessary for the integral development of the human person, can be pursued.9
The expression of Pope Francis’s ideal is captured in a term he borrows from Pius XI, “political charity.”10 Political charity is found in dialogue based on human dignity.11 That basis implies roots in ethical principles taken from human nature. Those principles are fully expressed in the Gospel for believers but are embodied in the same practical rules as those that express the ethical principles from human nature. They can be acceptable to even agnostics, which gives perpetual room for dialogue.12
What assistance can religions give to this universal human brotherhood? Well, all religions respect people as God’s children.13 That recognition comes from the established transcendent dignity coming from a common Father.14 In turn, respect for the transcendent dignity of a common Father leads people to a universal love for all regardless of religion.15 The great desire of the Pope for a globalist family would be helped by fostering respect for all people as God’s children, resulting in peace, not fundamentalist violence.16
Built on a Mistake
Pope Francis’s enterprise for universal brotherhood is built on a fundamental mistake. Though it may sound like a hard thing to say, not all men have the same dignity. And since they are not equal in this respect, the global order of Fratelli Tutti can’t be found in universal fraternity based on a shared dignity among all people.
Why don’t men have the same dignity and why is it impossible to build universal brotherhood on that dignity? Well, St. Thomas explains that human dignity is found in both what persons are and in what they do.17 The dignity in what they are is in their spiritual soul and their capacity by grace to attain Heaven. Their dignity in what they do is in their following God’s law, again by the grace of God.
Since people follow God’s law to different degrees in their individual actions; their dignity flowing from their actions is not the same. Fratelli Tutti, meanwhile, sees dignity as only consisting in what people are, not in what they do. However, the dignity in what people are is only a capacity to be what they should be!
Taking an example from family life might make this distinction clearer. A father’s role in his family demands respect. The love that he gives his family by caring for his wife and children demands that respect for his actions. However, if he only tells his family that he loves them but does not take care of them, he has a radical demand for respect by what he is, but his lack of fulfillment of his role in his actions as a father makes him unequal in dignity to a father who does fulfill his role through his actions.
True human dignity can only be found in what people do, in how they live, because that alone leads to their supernatural end. That dignity consists in keeping the Commandments by the Faith that the Catholic Church provides. To base any kind of human unity on anything else will always be inadequate. Archbishop Lefebvre points this out succinctly: “To the extent that a man adheres to error or attaches himself to evil, he loses his final dignity or does not attain it; and nothing more can be founded on it!”18
The false democracy that is based on a false concept of dignity has severe social implications. It can root people in a prideful independence, where they think that they do not need Our Lord or His Church.19 As Pope St. Pius X stated against Le Sillon, social life not based upon the one true religion has been historically proven to be impossible. Practical choices cannot ignore beliefs, because practical choices reflect beliefs.20
We turn to Archbishop Lefebvre again and are reminded that true fraternal charity for people demands their conversion: “Let us look at our neighbor with God’s eyes, happy if we see him in God, wishing to see him there if he is not, convinced that he can get there as long as he has not died.”21
Pope St. Pius X warned about taking non-Catholic solutions. If we open up the cross-pollination of religions to each other based on a false concept of human dignity while sharing the same practical rules, there will be consequences. Free expression of error can lead to a severe loss of Faith in that environment, especially for young people.22
That Misrepresents St. Francis!
Pope Francis invokes St. Francis as the inspiration for Fratelli Tutti because he helped people become themselves, going to the Sultan to subject himself to another human being, not to impose his beliefs on him. The name of the Encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, is an echo of St. Francis’s opening words of his sermons, to “all brothers.”
Previous popes painted a different picture of that saint. Pope Leo XIII in September of 1882 published the Encyclical Letter Auspicato Concessum on the seventh centenary of St. Francis’s birth. Leo XIII indicates that the express divinely ordained purpose of St. Francis was to bring people to the imitation of Our Lord Jesus Christ and incite virtue specifically Christian.23
The charity that he showed towards other people, especially the marginalized, was directed to the unification of all in the Catholic Church established by Christ. “Therefore, he has deserved well of that brotherhood established and perfected by Jesus Christ, which has made of all mankind one single family, under the authority of God, the common Father of all.”24
Leo XIII goes further and indicates that true social welfare had been made to advance by the Franciscan Third Order. Male and female members from all walks of life labor in the world for the same apostolic aims that St. Francis did, the growth of the Catholic Church in society.25 The true Catholic spirit St. Francis and his followers spread in society was opposed by both the materialism that Pope Francis decries ubiquitously in Fratelli Tutti but also by the more “socialist” optics he seems to favor.26
Thirty-nine years later in 1921 Pope Benedict XV wrote the Encyclical Sacra Propediem to those same tertiaries to emphasize the proper characteristics of their specifically “Franciscan” service. He contrasts that with: “The St. Francis of Assisi whom certain moderns present to us, and who springs from the imagination of the Modernists, this man, cautious in his obedience to the Apostolic See, a specimen of a vague and vain religiosity, is assuredly neither Francis of Assisi nor a saint.”27
Benedict XV goes on to say that problems among different countries and material injustice in the world comes from “disdain of Christian principles.”28 He encourages people to imbue society with the Franciscan spirit in society by working for the glory of Our Lord and the triumph of the Catholic Church.29 Indeed, for Benedict XV, the true social imitation of St. Francis can only be in leading souls to Christ: “
In truth what must really be done is, by imitation of Francis of Assisi, to open to the greatest possible number of souls the way which will lead them back to Christ; it is in this return that resides the firmest hope of salvation for society.”30
Should the point not be driven home enough by Leo XIII and Benedict XV, Pius XI adds his voice to theirs in his Encyclical Rite Expiatis in April 1926. He invokes St. Francis as a patron of social involvement which is uniquely Catholic.31
Pius XI refers to Leo XIII’s work and specifically states that society can’t expect peace if it does not return to the Catholic Church as the one source of salvation.32 For Pius XI, a truly Franciscan spirit can result in a greater social order and protection of the unprotected, but that first requires a fraternity mutually seeking after a perfection that is purely Christian.33
Finally, it’s worth noting that Pius XI refers to the same meeting between St. Francis and Sultan Malik-el-Kamil. Pius XI ascribes different motives to St. Francis than Pope Francis does, namely the desire to spread the Gospel and suffer martyrdom, a sacrificial death as a witness to his faith. Moved by an ardent desire to spread the Gospel and even to undergo martyrdom, he did not hesitate to go to Egypt and there bravely to appear in the very presence of the Sultan. 34
Conclusion
We cannot deny the truth of the problems in the world that the Pope presents in Fratelli Tutti. Crime and abuse are more and more present in a godless world. However, they will not end by the establishment of a universal human brotherhood founded on a mistaken notion of human dignity. They will end by the conversion of both individuals and societies to the one “God-full” religion, the Catholic Church. This is St. Francis’s solution, and ours can be no other.
Endnotes
1 https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/%E2%80%9Cfratelli-tutti%E2%80%9D-dummies-61427.
2 https://sspx.ca/en/news-events/news/communiqu%C3%A9-superior-general-society-saint-pius-x-true-fraternity-45364.
3 Notre Charge Apostolique, para. 30.
4 Fratelli Tutti, para. 5.
5 Ibid., para. 8.
6 Ibid., para. 4.
7 Ibid., para. 3.
8 Ibid., para. 103.
9 Ibid., para. 112.
10 Ibid., para. 180.
11 Ibid., para. 198.
12 Ibid., para. 214.
13 Ibid., para. 271.
14 Ibid., para. 273.
15 Ibid., para. 281.
16 Ibid., para. 284.
17 IIa-IIae. q. 64, a. 2, ad 3
18 Msgr. Lefebvre, They Have Uncrowned Him, pg. 192
19 Notre Charge Apostolique, para. 31
20 Notre Charge Apostolique, para. 41
21 The Spiritual Life, pg. 239
22 Notre Charge Apostolique, para. 43
23 Auspicato Concessum, para. 10
24 Ibid., para. 13
25 Ibid., para. 21
26 Ibid., para. 22
27 Sacra Propediem, para. 15
28 Ibid., para. 13
29 Ibid., para. 14
30 Ibid., para. 25
31 Rite Expiatis, para. 1
32 Ibid., para. 5
33 Ibid., para. 35
34 Ibid., para. 37
Picture sources
TITLE IMAGE: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pope_Francis_among_the_people_at_St._Peter%27s_Square_-_12_May_2013.jpg (Edgar Jiménez)
ABU DHABI: laportelatine.org/formation/apologetique/les-droits-de-lhomme-et-lislam
Current Issue
