Berkley Center

In this opinion piece for the Washington Post, Berkley Center Director Thomas Banchoff explores the Catholic teaching on mercy as it relates to our broken political culture. Decades ago, Pope John Paul II made a plea for mercy in his 1980 encyclical Dives in Misericordia (“Rich in Mercy”). Banchoff contends that mercy is painfully scarce in our politics today. 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. Nonetheless, Catholic social teaching insists on mercy as a political and personal imperative. Humanity’s great ethical and spiritual traditions also converge around love and mercy as core values, but as the world’s largest religious institution and a force in U.S. politics, the Catholic Church remains a critical voice calling out cruelty and indifference.