Exploring
the Encyclical Letter
Fratelli Tutti

by BJ Brown

One way to approach a papal letter like Fratelli Tutti is as a treasure-hunter, or a miner digging for gold or precious gems. We might read with a sharp eye and highlighter in hand, looking for the most quotable passages.

There’s nothing at all wrong with this approach, especially considering that Fratelli Tutti itself is a 287-paragraph document with 288 footnotes where it quotes other documents. (The numbers in parentheses in this essay refer to Fratelli Tutti’s paragraph numbers). But also, such quotable gems can capture the essence of a longer text. Such is the way that the first two sentences of the very last document of Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, have come to encapsulate thousands of pages of the Council’s teaching:

            The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of [people] of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts.

These two remarkable sentences have shaped decades of church life, down to Fratelli Tutti itself.

So, for a first read through of Pope Francis’s letter, let’s consider some of the passages that sparkle and shine and draw attention to themselves. But before we dig in, there are two preliminary tasks to attend to:

First, consider how you are equipped for this exploration. What tools and perspectives do you bring and how these might focus what you pay attention to? For example, it’s interesting how very different groups of people have thought Fratelli Tutti was addressed directly to them! They were picking and choosing what related to their background and interests. Our economic status, gender and racial identities, our family history, all of these attune us to notice particular words, expressions, and ideas and to understand them in particular ways. All of us do this, bringing particular perspectives to our reading, habits of seeing that are shaped by our lives’ experiences. Some of us also bring specialized tools, such as our knowledge of history or economics or politics or theology. Some of us are equipped with critical skills for analyzing written texts. Such tools can help us see and share what others might miss. So, first of all, what what you bring to the text.

The second preliminary task is to recognize something that might present an obstacle to further progress, that is, the encyclical’s title.

Church documents are customarily named according to their first words. These words can become a shorthand that captures the letter’s spirit, as happened with Gaudium et Spes (“Joy and Hope”) and Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”). But how should we understand the first words of this encyclical, Fratelli Tutti?

For some, the words that translate to “brothers all” evoke a love that transcends all barriers, something that Francis will call “social friendship” later in the letter. For other readers, the first words of this document discourage them from reading any further. The letter itself seems to acknowledge this dilemma, stating that women “possess the same dignity and identical rights as men” before noting how often “we say one thing with our words, but our decisions and reality tell another story” (23).

Let us acknowledge and then set aside this obstacle for the time being, perhaps with a sigh of resignation that we still must deal with the issue of the power of inclusive language. Let’s consider the rest of Pope Francis’s letter, if only to be able to decide whether what its words say are worth more than the reality of its title.

The heart of Fratelli Tutti is its second chapter, Pope Francis’s meditation on the parable of the Good Samaritan. The familiar parable is, as we recall, Jesus’ answer to the question, ‘who is my neighbor?’ Pope Francis asks us to consider which character in the story we most identify with, but he is crystal-clear about which one we must choose to become: “In order to rebuild our wounded world. . .our only course is to imitate the Good Samaritan” (67). This, Pope Francis goes on to explain, is not just a matter of responding to particular people in need, for “the decision to include or exclude those lying wounded along the roadside can serve as a criterion for judging every economic, political, social and religious project” (68). A few paragraphs later, Pope Francis adds an underline and exclamation point: “belief in God and worship of God are not enough to ensure that we are actually living in a way pleasing to God” (74).

In other words, we are called to what theologians call orthopraxis—living with the loving service that God created us —much as we are called to orthodoxy, that is, believing rightly. This is exactly what Jesus told his questioner in the first place: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. . .do this and you shall live” (Luke 10:27-28). All of the rest of Fratelli Tutti could be read as an explanation of how to do this in our world today, using Pope Francis’s idea of “social friendship” as an active link between human dignity and the common good.

Pope Francis takes a no-limits approach to human dignity, to the “worth of every human person, always and everywhere” (106), “based not on circumstances but on the intrinsic worth of their being” (107). He has an equally firm belief in the common good, and the common destination of the earth’s goods. It matters not, he says, “whether my neighbor was born in my country or elsewhere” (125). Each nation shares responsibility for the development of all. “We need to develop the awareness,” says Pope Francis, “that nowadays we are either all saved together or no one is saved” (137).

But we will not be all saved together if we confine ourselves to acting individually, or even with a merciful response to the strangers we find lying in the road before us. Pope Francis says that “it is an equally indispensable act of love to strive to organize and structure society so that one’s neighbor will not find himself in poverty. It is an act of charity to assist someone suffering, but it is also an act of charity, even if we do not know that person, to work to change the social conditions that caused his or her suffering” (186).

Pope Francis believes that politics is the force that can shape social conditions in this constructive way, politics understood as “a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good” (180). In the fifth chapter of Fratelli Tutti, “A Better Kind of Politics”, the Pope reflects at length on politics. He rejects what is limiting and self-serving in populism and liberalism. He argues that politics should control economics and the marketplace, not the other way around. He seeks a ‘good politics’ committed to “building communities at every level of social life. . .profoundly renewing structures, social organizations and legal systems from within” (182, 183).

These are challenges to American ears, and to a culture that sometimes values the rights and dignity of individuals to the peril of the common good.

The church, too, has political responsibilities, Francis asserts. The church “cannot remain on the sidelines” but must give constant attention to the political dimension of life (276). Francis is not adding anything new to Catholic social teaching. As an often-quoted passage from the 1971 document Justice in the World puts it, “action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the social order fully appear to us as constitutive dimension of preaching the gospel.” In this encyclical, Pope Francis simply echoes what is deeply engrained in Catholic social thought.

Looking for quotable gems is one way to read a papal letter. But Fratelli Tutti is a long and dense document. A best-quotes approach only takes us so far in understanding what it says and what it may require of us. Another approach is to consider its structure and purpose. Pope Francis did not write a series of tweets, he chose a particular form—a papal encyclical—in order to serve a particular function. It is also worth exploring the messages that may be within this medium of communication. And it’s also worth considering how well Pope Francis accomplishes the task he set for himself.

We can continue our explorations of Fratelli Tutti at Old St. Joseph’s November 17 Zoom meeting, Fratelli Tutti 101. All are welcome. Reading the letter in advance may be helpful but is not required. Our conversation that evening can also serve as an orientation to your own reading. Sign up here to receive a Zoom link at noon on November 17.