DALL’ENCICLICA “LAUDATO SI” ALL’ENCICLICA “FRATELLI TUTTI”. UNA PROSPETTIVA SULLA SPIRITUALITÀ E L’ETICA SOCIALE
FROM THE ENCYCLICAL „LAUDATO SI” TO THE ENCYCLICAL „FRATELLI TUTTI”. A PERSPECTIVE ON SPIRITUALITY AND SOCIAL ETHICS

Summary/Abstract: From the Encyclical „Laudato si” to the Encyclical „Fratelli tutti”. A Perspective on Spirituality and Social Ethics. The essay begins by showing that it is essential for all Christian thinking - and thus also for a Christian social ethics - to refer to a deeper meaning passively received from God. Starting from this Logos, Christian social ethical thinking tries to convey how to build a civilisation or a society of integral and humane capitalism whose inner building principle is love. This reception of meaning and love in order to be enabled to love takes place practically in liturgical worship as the author argues with Romano Guardini; here the absolute love of God is first received and vouchsafed as an unclaimable and yet profoundly vital gift. Liturgy focuses, like a burning glass, the experience of a greater freedom of the human being to do good in the face of a greater love, in the face of absolute love, in the face of God. In this view, liturgy is liberated freedom for the good and for the better, for the beautiful. From there, all human activity not only has a technical-instrumental and efficiency-oriented side, but is deeply ordered towards the realisation of higher values, so that the author can say: Culture grows out of cult. From here, he shows how a culture of law and ethics unfolds from the mere nature of man to faith in a personal God. In this perspective, law and morality are formulations of the primordial sense placed by God in human natural reason - the logos - and serve to shape a world conducive to life and worthy of human beings. This highlights in particular the space of political action, which plays a prominent role especially in Pope Francis’ encyclicals „Laudato si” and „Fratelli tutti”. In these encyclicals, the author primarily criticises a „technocratic paradigm”, in which human action is only reduced to questions of technical possibilities and efficiency, but in which the deeper meaning of human action is obscured. Starting from the parable of the prodigal son and the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is particularly prominent in „Fratelli tutti”, the author then develops the extent to which one must first convert to the incarnate Logos Christ in order to be able to realise the Logos instilled in man and the world, also in political thought and action. This is where the author sees the proprium of Christian social ethics as ethics of institutions and as inclusive capitalism, as also developed in the encyclicals of Pope Francis: The orientation of state, society and economy towards the realisation of higher values, of the Logos placed in the world by God.

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