True charity, caritas, is love. If we want to act with true charity, love would serve the foundation for our actions. This is why, if and when we have some reason other than love for why we give to those in need, our actions are but a simulacra of true charity. And so, if we act without such love, Paul says we gain nothing for what we do: “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3 RSV). We must not confuse charity, caritas, merely with giving away money or other goods to those who are in need, because we can do so for reasons other than love, such as giving away money for the sake of tax benefits or to pretend that we are better people than we really are because we seek some sort of temporal benefit out of such fame.
Charity should never be used as an excuse to ignore the dictates of justice. This is because if we love someone, we would rather they never suffer, for them to never be in need, than for us to have the opportunity to do something to help them deal with their needs. Those who try to pit charity against justice say justice prevents them from doing acts of charity, but all they show is what they want to do is put on a show, not that they care for the people involved. For, just as we would rather someone we loved never get sick than to be in need of and receive medical care, we should desire someone we loved to never be in need thanks to injustices such as racism, sexism, poverty, hunger, homelessness, or any other injustice society has a duty to prevent.
Even if justice prevailed in society, we would still be able to love someone, meaning, there would still be room for true charity, which is why using charity as an excuse to ignore injustice shows how truly uncharitable we really are. Thus, Pope Benedict XVI said, “Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love.” [1] Just as grace perfects nature, so love, true caritas, true charity, takes the good found in justice and uses it as a foundation to lift someone up and make them even better. The common good promoted by a justice should be seen as a starting point, and not the ending point, of our love. This is why, if we see someone we love suffering as a result of injustice, we will do what we can to make sure they receive the justice they do not yet possess. Moreover, if we truly are charitable in our heart, we will work with and through society to eliminate the structures of sin which create such injustice, replacing them with structures of justice. Of course, as it is not easy to do this, we will also do what we can to take care of the immediate needs of those who suffer from the hands of injustice. We will feed the hungry. We will comfort the abused. We will lift up the downtrodden. But we will realize, all of that is but a band-aid; unless society is transformed, such injustices will continue. This is why we will work with society and use whatever structures we can establish in it to heal the harm done by injustice, seeing that as a part of our charitable endeavors:
Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity, and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI’s words, “the minimum measure” of it, an integral part of the love “in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving. The earthly city is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion. Charity always manifests God’s love in human relationships as well, it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world.[2]
Thus, it is beneficial to repeat: working for justice, working for a just society, far from being an impediment for charity, really is a part of what one who is truly charitable will do. While charity is not threatened by justice, it certainly can be and often is threatened and undermined by its lack. If we truly are charitable, therefore, we would be working for the establishment of justice in society, promoting those structures which will defend society from evil. It is something which we are to engage as a society. We should not pit the church, with the way it is to engage charity, against secular society and the role society has in establishing justice in the world. “We have seen that the formation of just structures is not directly the duty of the Church, but belongs to the world of politics, the sphere of the autonomous use of reason.” [3] The church is to work with and through all secular structures which have been created to establish justice in the world. She does this by showing them what she has in our conscience, that is offering to them the wisdom which can had from her understanding of the common good. One of the important ways she can do this is make sure that justice is not engaged without love, without charity, that is, without mercy; this is to make sure justice does not become the means of establishing a dead legalism which, under the name of justice, begins to subvert the very justice intended. And so, the church, in allowing society its role, will find its role will remain, even as it will always be meant to bring God’s grace, God’s love, into the world, and in doing so, to bring love to everyone, a love which will always be needed. “The Church can never be exempted from practising charity as an organized activity of believers, and on the other hand, there will never be a situation where the charity of each individual Christian is unnecessary, because in addition to justice man needs, and will always need, love.” [4] Charity is able to do this better when just structures are put in place, for then it will have the tools charity needs to be as effective as possible, which is why Pope Francis, in an examination of the parable of the Good Samaritan, pointed out how the Samaritan relied upon them to render his aid:
True charity is capable of incorporating all these elements in its concern for others. In the case of personal encounters, including those involving a distant or forgotten brother or sister, it can do so by employing all the resources that the institutions of an organized, free and creative society are capable of generating. Even the Good Samaritan, for example, needed to have a nearby inn that could provide the help that he was personally unable to offer. Love of neighbour is concrete and squanders none of the resources needed to bring about historical change that can benefit the poor and disadvantaged.[5]
It should not be surprising that once we pit charity against justice, we begin to ignore the dictates of justice, and in the end, instead of love, hatred is manifested by what we do. Soon, we find ourselves fighting against justice, and the more we do so, the more we will seek excuses to justify injustices, and in doing so, finding ourselves losing more and more of the love we should have as we find ourselves accepting the needlessly suffering of others, or worse, becoming the cause of such suffering. Sadly, as St. Sophronios wisely understood, this is what has happened to so many of us in our lives; we have not allowed the dictates of love, the dictates taught by Christ, the apostles, and the saints, to direct our thoughts and actions; instead we constantly find excuses to dismiss such charity from our hearts so we can justify insane cruelty and hatred of others:
But we pursue the opposite of what these men teach. Not only are we unwilling to love one another, but we want to hate our neighbors as enemies, not realizing, it seems, that enmity and hatred are offspring of the evil spirit. Hence, we treat them with injustice and oppress them and subject them to countless slanderous attacks, and totally bereft of love we inflict every kind of harm on them. [6]
Any attempt to present charity and pit it against justice does not flow from charity. Those who love others will want justice in the world. They will want the common good to be experienced by all. Those who would reject the role of government and its work for the common good, saying it deprives people the chance to engage charity, show they want charity to be some sort of performance art, ignoring the love which should be had in all acts of charity. Such a simulacra of charity is a Satanic deception which must be denied. Charity without justice is not charity, and those who deny justice, therefore, deny charity itself. This, after all, is manifest in God and God’s love for us: “Who can appraise that love of God for us, unless it is that His justice is so great that in Him there is nothing unjust?”[7] Love will never be satisfied with injustice, and so if we are satisfied with it, we do not have love; and we have been warned that without such love, we end up gaining nothing from whatever act of charity we think do.
[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est. Vatican translation. ¶28.
[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Cartitas in veritate. Vatican translation. ¶6.
[3] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, ¶29.
[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, ¶29.
[5] Pope Francis, Fratelli tutti. Vatican translation. ¶165.
[6] St Sophronios of Jerusalem, “Homily 7: Homily on the Blessed Apostles Saints Peter and Paul (On the Fourth Day of the Nativity)” in Homilies. Trans. John M. Duffy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020), 319-21.
[7] Salvian the Presbyter, “The Governance of God” in The Writings of Salvian the Presbyter. Trans. Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1962), 107.
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