The logic of gifts

Way back in 1980, before I was even fully aware of my surroundings, Pope John Paul II published an encyclical titled Dives in misericordia, or Rich in Mercy. Some time in the mid- to late-nineties, I finally read it, and discovered something that confused me greatly: JP2 said that justice was incomplete, insufficient, and inhumane without mercy.

This was confusing to me because I thought, as many of my friends did, that mercy was something that overrode and (in a way) contradicted justice.

It's now many years later, and I've just finished reading Pope Benedict XVI's new encyclical, Caritas in veritate, or Love in Truth. Pope Benedict says something very similar, that justice and charity are intimately connected, and that justice is false without charitable love. In fact, he implies that charity is actually the foundation for justice.

He explains this by focusing on one central aspect of charity, of love: giving a gift. It seems that justice, which is a relationship in which someone owes something to someone else, is always a result of a gift, a free act which establishes or alters a relationship.

That's kind of abstract. Let me give a few examples.

Let's look at babys. It's hard to deny that parents owe their children the sustenance and support needed to grow to adulthood. Children have a right to such things as food, clothing, shelter, education, and so on. Parents who do not adequately provide such things for their children are called "child abusers" and are subject to legal coercion. And yet, what has the baby done to "deserve" these rights, to essentially put his/her parents in debt to him/her? Nothing -- except to receive the gift of life which those parents freely gave to him/her.

Okay, so some might object that parents are not perfectly free in bringing a child into the world, for a variety of reasons. I will not argue that point just now. But what about a couple who marry each other? Surely there is no constraint or obligation on either toward the other. No one can make me marry anyone in particular, nor force me to marry at all. However, once the spouses do marry, they discover that they are obliged to one another. Infidelity, to take the most obvious example, is (among other things) unjust to the spouse. It's a matter of justice: a wife has a right to demand faithfulness from her husband; and vice versa. Even though the law continues to distance itself from spousal obligations, we still recognize that an unfaithful husband does wrong to his wife.

Well, maybe some kinds of justice are based on a gift, but are all forms of justice? Well, let's take the example of a worker who is offered a job. Here is an exchange of gifts with different kinds of freedom on each side. Sure, the employer needs workers to do business, and the worker needs income to support him-/herself; but neither is under any constraint or obligation to arrange for this particular person to be given this particular job under these particular arrangements. There is a sense in which a worker's agreement to do the work and the employer's agreement to compensate the worker is an exchange of gifts, because each is free in offering something to the other. But based on this exchange of gifts, real issues of justice arise: a worker who does not fulfill his/her obligations, or an employer who does not properly compensate his/her workers, wrongs them.

What about criminal justice? Is there a gift involved at the foundation of rights to property or safety? Isn't the city, or the state, or the nation, obliged to provide protection for these things? This may be a bit more subtle, but here is where B16 provides an insightful perspective: gifts not only require the freedom of the giver, they also require, perhaps even more so, the incapacity of the receiver to make, or take, or require the gift. So, my capacity for health or safety or ownership of things is not something I can acquire for myself. It is not something I can earn or "deserve". I cannot give myself life; all I can do is take care of the life I have, and protect it. I cannot give myself intelligence or freedom or the other faculties needed to own property or interact socially; all I can do is use the abilities -- often explicitly called "gifts" -- I have to live in society. We do not make property or health or safety; we only use and take care of what we receive as given to us.

As St. Paul asks, "What do you have that you did not receive?" The answer, literally, is: nothing.

It is only after we have received what we have not made and have not earned that we can speak of justice, of what is due or owed, of rights and responsibilities. Of all the many profound insights of this encyclical, the logic of gifts is what has struck me most deeply.