Are you a logophilic nerd? Are you inebriated by verbal nuance, troubled by the mutability in the meaning of words? If so, have no fear. You’re not alone and your condition may be instructive. For instance, it is illustrative to consider the different implications of the word ‘love’when used either as a noun or as a verb. This distinction bears on two areas of interest for our readers: Catholic Social Teaching and Catholic philanthropy.
As a noun ‘love’ is described conventionally as an intense feeling of affection, a deep but impersonal, inactive emotion. In this substantive form, to be efficacious ‘love’ must be activated by some personal agent. Someone has to offer it. As a verb, though, ‘to love’ is a personal, active force because it necessarily implies the role of persons, the ones giving and receiving the love.
Many of us tend to regard ‘love’ only as a temporal emotion, an emotion that only becomes personal when we share it with others. It is a feeling of affection we can create or discontinue at will. (We who think this way can also easily begin to regard morality as something which we create and share, and which we can modify at will). But, convention aside, our faith teaches us that love is more than an emotion. It is much more than a temporal noun. It is an eternal verb.
What bearing does this semantic distinction have on Catholic Social Teaching? Critics warn that CST is Marxism in disguise. However, CST is an antidote to Marxism as it recognizes and promotes the sovereign dignity of each individual (arising from the imago dei and the Incarnation). Marxism denies this individual sovereign dignity.
Perversely, Marxism may attempt to use CST as a means to subordinate individual liberty by insisting that for all to be free all must surrender personal liberty to some collectivized authority. For a Marxist the effective application of CST principles would be in service to the collectivized dignity of humanity (and therefore to this collectivized authority) and not in service to the sovereign dignity of the individual (and therefore to the eternal source of that dignity).
CST is a counter to Marxism for another reason. Those who practice the former construe the word ‘love’ as a verb and not an impermanent emotion. Importantly, they understand that the person doing the loving – through us – is the eternal God. His is the ‘collectivized authority’ Marxism could never accept.
The same logic pertains to philanthropy. There are many kind souls who exercise generous philanthropy in response to a moral imperative or ‘out of the goodness of their hearts’. This, of course, is admirable. For Catholic philanthropists, however (and others religiously affiliated), philanthropy – like the verb ‘love’ – is more than a moral act or an emotion. These philanthropists regard themselves as channels through which God, the essence and giver of love, actively directs this dignifying force.
The meaning of words can change. Can it be so with ‘love’ whose source is immutable?