Washington Post op-ed: Liberals and Conservatives Shy Away From This Core Catholic Teaching, by Thomas Banchoff (Georgetown):

Cruelty is ravaging politics. What happened to mercy?

Decades ago, Pope John Paul II made a plea for mercy. His 1980 encyclical “Dives in Misericordia” (“Rich in Mercy”) emphasized God’s forgiving love toward humanity and decried a widespread tendency to “remove from the human heart the very idea of mercy.” Instead of mercy, John Paul saw a rise in “spite, hatred and even cruelty.”

Mercy is painfully scarce in our politics today. … Liberals and conservatives shy away from mercy in politics. Conservatives see mercy as a moral virtue to be practiced in family and community settings that has little place in political life, where the clash of interests and the rule of law should prevail. Liberals tend to see mercy as a poor substitute for justice. While it evokes the reality of suffering and the moral obligation of the powerful to address it, mercy downplays the agency of the downtrodden and their demands for systemic change. While not opposed to personal and community engagement on behalf of the poor and marginalized, liberals place greater emphasis on social justice through state action. …

Catholic social teaching insists on mercy as a political and personal imperative. Ever since Pope Leo XIII addressed the social upheaval of the industrial revolution in his 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” the Roman Catholic Church has insisted that the modern state protect the dignity of the human person, with a focus on the poor and the powerless. Jesus’ injunction in the Gospel of Matthew to feed and clothe the poor, heal the sick, visit the prisoner and welcome the stranger — to embrace what Catholics came to call “corporal works of mercy” — is binding on believers at a personal level. But it also animates the Catholic vision of a just society and a well-ordered state. As the church echoes conservative support for limited government and the rule of law, it also insists on a fair distribution of wealth and on what John Paul called “measures inspired by solidarity and love of preference for the poor.” While the church insists, with liberals, on social justice as a goal of public policy, it also emphasizes the centrality of mercy at a personal level — support for those in pain and need. …

With social media and the artificial intelligence revolution further deepening our mutual isolation, we must be intentional about seeking out vulnerable neighbors and practicing the countercultural virtue of mercy — giving more than is required of our time and resources to those in need. “We are called to promote a culture of mercy based on the rediscovery of encounter with others,” Pope Francis wrote in 2016, “a culture in which no one looks at another with indifference or turns away from the suffering of our brothers and sisters.” Such a culture shift will take time. But only citizens who practice mercy themselves are likely to demand it from their politicians.

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