reflection, norms of judgment and directives for action’^64 that could be
drawn from the social teaching of the church. These terms are not
synonymous but are located on different semantic levels: principles
stem from the wisdom of faith; norms originate in philosophy, science,
and in human reason; directives for action correspond to the technical
skills and the art required to apply the principles and the norms to
reality. For charity, the gospel’s core, to become operative, it needs
politics, economics, and the other social sciences, as well as the skills
and techniques of management, good government, etc. Religious enthu-
siasm alone, without knowledge and competence, can be extremely
dangerous.
In the face of these difficulties the challenge is precisely how to carry love
into society as one of its shaping principles. Charity as a social principle is the
most important contribution of Christian humanism to society. John Bequette
is correct in writing that‘[a]t the heart of the Christian humanist endeavor is
the theological virtue of charity’. The disinterested practice of Christian
charity will‘achieve that integral restoration of the human person which is
the aim of Christian humanism’.^65 However, how do we get charity into the
institutions? I think by means of the principles of Catholic social teaching:
human dignity, solidarity, and subsidiarity, powered from within by the‘wild
force’^66 of charity. In this sense, Christian humanism, by bringing into society
the living presence of Christ, is a‘disturbing element’. De Lubac put it
beautifully:‘Christ is,first and foremost, the great disturber.’He awakes us
from our sleep. Faith continually disturbs us and upsets‘the too beautiful
balance of our mental conceptions and social structures’.^67 According to a
Christian view of the world‘holiness comes before peace’,^68 and the‘prophetic
minorities’of Maritain are really‘shock minorities’.^69 To stay alive, free, and
democratic, our liberal democracies need this influence of charity to shed light
on those who suffer in the dark, give voice to those who are inarticulate in their
screams of pain, and bestow legal force to their claims. Beauty has to do with
love, and it is the beauty of love that will save the world. Beauty is the tune to
which Christian humanism sings.
(^64) Paul VI, Apostolic LetterOctogesima adveniens§4, cf. http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-
vi/en/apost_letters/documents/hf_p-vi_apl_19710514_octogesima-adveniens.html.
(^65) John P. Bequette,Christian Humanism: Creation, Redemption, and Reintegration, rev. edn
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), 168 and 171.
(^66) Jacques Maritain,Christlicher Humanismus: Politische und geistige Fragen einer neuen
Christenheit(Heidelberg: Carl Pfeffer Verlag, 1950), 69.
(^67) de Lubac,Drama, 14.
(^68) John Henry Newman refers to this phrase of a pastor as one of those that shaped his youth.
It is also a characteristic of Christian humanism. Cf. John Henry Newman,Apologia pro vita sua
(London: Routledge, no year), 6.
(^69) Maritain,Man and the State, 126–33.
220 Martin Schlag