Louisiana Anthology

Bruce R. Magee.
“And Charity toward None.”

Martha Boone’s story about a nun who worked at Charity Hospital.

1735.  A sailor named Jean Louis dies, leaving his estate to fund a charity hospital that would be free to all. I don’t know the exact date, which is fitting. “Nothing being more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than its hour…I bequeath…a hospital for the sick of the City of New Orleans, without anyone being able to change my purpose, and to secure the things necessary to succor the sick.”  January 21, 1736. The reading of the will, which led to the founding of L’Hôpital des Pauvres de la Charité (the Charity Hospital for the Poor). The Sisters of Charity took over the administration of the hospital in 1834.

August — September 2005.  The lower floors of Charity Hospital in New Orleans were flooded in Hurricane Katrina, and the rest of the hospital was depleted of supplies. When U.S. Army Lieutenant General Russel L. Honoré led the Joint Task Force Katrina into the city on August 31, 2005, he immediately ordered the restoration of Charity. Soon he reported that the lights were on; the air conditioning was working; there were fresh beds with fresh sheets; and supply closets were re-stocked. The order came back to shut it all down. The politicians had decided to close it permanently. The lied that it was too damaged to fix. It's apparently not too damaged to turn into luxury apartments.

March 23, 2020. Coronavirus was sweeping the world, hitting New York and New Orleans especially hard. New Orleans was hard hit because of Mardi Gras and possibly because of the lack of medical care after the close of Charity Hospital.

Covid was also spreading through Italy, and had overwhelmed the country’s ability to treat everybody who was sick. When 72-year-old Italian priest Don Giuseppe Berardelli got seriously ill with coronavirus, he gave up the ventilator his parishioners had provided for him so that a younger person could live. After he died on March 23,  James Martin, an American priest and editor-at-large for America Magazine, the Jesuit Review of Faith and Culture, called Berardelli a “Martyr of Charity.” And he cited a Bible verse, John 15:13, which says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends” (CBS News).

Martyrs of Charity

A decision of the magnitude of closing Charity Hospital during the chaotic period after Katrina is inevitably overdetermined. The year 2005 was the high watermark of neoliberalism. The Katrina response was one of the topics covered by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Another term used for the approach is vulture capitalism. The vulture capitalists see a vulnerable victim like Charity Hospital or the Orleans Parish public school system, and they swoop in to profit off of the misery of others.

Another element possibly contributing to the closure of Charity Hospital was racism on the national and state levels. White socialism is a government program that benefits only or primarily white citizens, like the original Social Security program, the G.I. Bill housing benefits for white veterans, segregated schools, with inferior schools for black pupils, and Charity Hospital, with a separate and unequal entrance for black patients.  The instant a government program starts treating both races alike, white support for the program plummets. The fate of Charity Hospital may have been sealed the day the “Whites Only” sign was removed from the entrance.

Today I want to investigate a third possible contributor to the scuttling of Charity Hospital, and that’s the name ‘Charity’ itself. I believe that one part of understanding the closing of Charity is the debasement of the concept of charity itself. My search involves at least 3 languages, so it is a history of an idea as much as a history of a word. Decades of undermining the concept of charity laid the groundwork for a successful attack on an institution bearing its name. Both those offering charity and those receiving it have come under criticism. But what is charity that makes the attacks necessary to start with?

Faith, Hope, and Charity

55 a.d.  The Apostle Paul is in Ephesus working to establish a church there, when he receives information about the situation in a church he had founded earlier in Corinth in 51-52 a.d. Much of the letter addresses problematic behavior among the new Christians — taking each other to court, eating food that had been part of pagan rituals, in the shift from one man even dating his father’s wife (Please let her be his step mother!).

Paul and the Corinthians were struggling with a shift in their understanding of the nature of morality in the move from Judaism to Christianity and from Palestine to the rest of the Roman world. Nietzsche believed that pagan morality emerged from the aristocracy. Aristocrats saw themselves as good and the slave class as bad, meaning low-class, crude, boorish. The slaves, on the other hand, saw themselves as good and the aristocrats as evil parasites who lived by preying on their underlings. The slave mentality was reflected in Judaism and Christianity, both of which evolved from lower classes.

Nietzsche’s thesis is powerful and has many people who follow it or at least take it as a starting point for their own theories.  I always had reservations about Nietzsche, but until recently, I never had an alternative. Until now.

I now believe that the understanding of morality changed as the relationship between the individual and the state changed. When people are governed by monarchs, they are subjects, and their primary obligations to the monarch are obedience and loyalty. A religion modeled on that relationship follows the divine command theory of morality — an action is good or bad based on whether it’s in obedience to God’s commands, and the Torah was the collection of those commands in Judaism.

The emergence of democracy in Athens and other Greek cities changed the relationship between the people and the state. The individual was not longer a subject but a citizen. Citizens governed themselves in a corporate sense, but that would be impossible if the citizens were unable to govern themselves individually. And to govern themselves individually, they needed ethics. People without ethics can’t be good citizens, whether they are leading or following, as it apparent from the example of Donald Trump.  

Aristotle created the theory and practice of civic virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle took the word ethos (habit, custom) and applied it to habits of character. One develops Aristotlean virtues by practice and training.

Nicomachean Ethics
ἦθος, ἔθος teloj 'amartia	ethos, custom, habit goal, end. Teleological "The ends justify the means." Missing the mark. Also translated as "sin" in the Greek New Testament.
The Taxonomy of Knowledge Ethics Metaphysics Politics Poetics Rhetoric Physics
Summum Bonum (Greatest Good) —Politics!! |                  |                      |                     | Ethics — Strategy — Economics — Rhetoric
Summum Bonum What is the greatest human art?
Life without polis, without politics, falls back to the, oikoj, with its feuds & unending chaos	polij policy, police, politics, political trials order civilization Establishment the Man
Good soldier needs courage Too little — Just right — Too much Coward — Courage — Foolish, Rash, Headstrong Golden mean Goldilocks principle

Metavirtue

A metavirtue is the virtue that makes the other virtues work. In Aristotle, because the virtues are the proper mean between two extremes, a person needs the   sofrosunh sophrosune to determine the proper course of action. "Sophrosune is an ancient Greek concept of an ideal of excellence of character and soundness of mind, which when combined in one well-balanced individual leads to other qualities, such as temperance, moderation, prudence, purity, decorum, and self-control" (Wikipedia). It does NOT apply to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity; moderation of those virtues would be a sin.

According to Acts, Paul was a citizen of Rome (Acts 16:37-38, Acts 22:25-28). If this account is accurate, Paul was aware of his status as a citizen (πολίτης, politēs, civis in Latin), which still carried weight even in Imperial Rome. In his letter to the Ephesians, he tells the church members there,

ἄρα οὖν οὐκέτι ἐστὲ ξένοι καὶ πάροικοι ἀλλὰ ἐστὲ συμπολῖται τῶν ἁγίων καὶ οἰκεῖοι τοῦ θεοῦ. (Ephesians 2:19, Greek New Testament)

“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”  (Ephesians 2:19, KJV).

There is a parallelism here: the Ephesians have changed from strangers (ξένοι) to fellow citizens (συμπολῖται), and from people living byeside the house (πάροικοι) to part of the household (οἰκεῖοι). As fellow citizens, Christians have a fundamental equality and an implicit right and obligation to participate in governing. For instance, Paul tells the Corinthians they someday will judge the angels, (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). In the household, however the father is very much in charge.

If the metaphors are mixed, so is the resulting morality. No question that God is still in charge and that his divine commands must be obeyed. Yet the Torah is no longer operative, creating a lot of confusion. Why can’t I date my stepmother? There’s no law against it. Why not eat food used in pagan ceremonies? There's no law against it. This is where ethos comes in. In a monarchy, the king expects obedience and loyalty, so life is a series of orders and laws to be obeyed, but to make a democracy work, the subjects have to become citizens. In order to govern the city, they must first govern themselves. So unacceptable behaviors are still unacceptable, but based on different motives. 

 55 a.d. Paul is famous for his lists of virtues. Rather than work through them all, I’d like to focus on Paul’s metavirtue — ἀγάπη, caritas, charity. And now we come back to Paul writing to Corinth in 55 a.d. In the midst of trying to address the problems of the Corinthian church, Paul places his great hymn to love:

ἐὰν ταῖς γλώσσαις τῶν ἀνθρώπων λαλῶ καὶ τῶν ἀγγέλων ἀγάπην δὲ μὴ ἔχω γέγονα χαλκὸς ἠχῶν ἢ κύμβαλον ἀλαλάζον. (1 Corinthians 13:1, Greek New Testament)

Si linguis hominum loquar, et angelorum, caritatem autem non habeam, factus sum velut æs sonans, aut cymbalum tinniens. (1 Corinthians 13:1, Vulgate)

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13:1, KJV)

Paul argues that without ἀγάπη, no other gift or virtue amounts to anything, and that when the gifts of prophecy, tongues, and knowledge become obsolete, the gift (χάρισμα, charisma) of ἀγάπη will endure, along with faith (πίστις, pistis, fides) and hope (ἐλπίς, elpis, spes). 

νυνὶ δὲ μένει πίστις ἐλπίς ἀγάπη τὰ τρία ταῦτα μείζων δὲ τούτων ἡ ἀγάπη. (1 Corinthians 13:13, Greek New Testament)

Nunc autem manent fides, spes, caritas, tria haec: major autem horum est caritas. (1 Corinthians 13:13, Vulgate)

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (1 Corinthians 13:13, KVJ)

As beautiful as Paul’s soaring rhetoric is, it’s somewhat lacking in specifics. Since we’re considering charity in the Roman Catholic context, I’m going to use the definition of ἀγάπη, caritas, charity, love in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

As a virtue, charity is that habit or power which disposes us to love God above all creatures for Himself, and to love ourselves and our neighbours for the sake of God. (“Charity and Charities”)

The third and greatest of the Divine virtues enumerated by St. Paul (1 Corinthians 13:13), usually called charity, defined: a divinely infused habit, inclining the human will to cherish God for his own sake above all things, and man for the sake of God. (“Love: Theological Virtue”)

So we love God for His sake, and we love others for God’s sake as well. But what does that love look like? Catholics looked to Matthew 25 for a practical program to make up for the vagueness of 1 Corinthians 13 (“Charity and Charities”).

This parable is the climax of the fifth and final sermon in Matthew. It’s Jesus’ valedictory speech, marking it as especially important. On top of that, Jesus repeats the list of good deeds four times, again marking it as important. And the Roman Catholic church picked up on this emphasis, making these charities the embodiment of charity. And it worked, possibly in spite of the church’s strange theology, their symbolic cannibalism, and an unfortunate tendency to engage in murder and holy war. The church ministered to the immigrant, the sick, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, and the prisoner, both within and outside the church.

362 a.d. Julian the Apostate was Emperor 361-363 a.d. Raised as a Christian, he rejected Christianity and tried to restore the Greek religion. In 362 a.d., he sent a letter to Arsacius, the High-priest of Galatia. This letter shows the attractiveness of the Christians’ lifestyle by his attempt to co-opt it for polytheism.

The Hellenic religion does not yet prosper as I desire, and it is the fault of those who profess it; for the worship of the gods is on a splendid and magnificent scale, surpassing every prayer and every hope. (Wikisource)

Julian has taken care of the funding for the temples, and their worship is being carried out on a grand scale.

Why, then, do we think that this is enough, why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism? I believe that we ought really and truly to practise every one of these virtues. And it is not enough for you alone to practise them, but so must all the priests in Galatia, without exception. Either shame or persuade them into righteousness or else remove them from their priestly office, if they do not, together with their wives, children and servants, attend the worship of the gods but allow their servants or sons or wives to show impiety towards the gods and honour atheism more than piety. In the second place, admonish them that no priest may enter a theatre or drink in a tavern or control any craft or trade that is base and not respectable.

Because Jewish and Christian monotheists rejected the Greek pantheon, they were considered to be atheists. Julian recognizes that ceremonies alone were insufficient to pull the population back to polytheism from Christianity. He believes that the behavior of the priests is important, and he calls on Arsacius to encourage the priests to adopt the virtues of the Christian priests. He starts with personal piety of the priests and their relatives respecting the gods and staying out of theaters and temples, but he moves on to the virtues familiar from the parable.

In every city establish frequent hostels [ξενοδοχεῖον, xenodocheion, receiving strangers] in order that strangers may profit by our benevolence; I do not mean for our own people only, but for others also who are in need of money. I have but now made a plan by which you may be well provided for this; for I have given directions that 30,000 modii of corn shall be assigned every year for the whole of Galatia, and 60,000 pints of wine. I order that one-fifth of this be used for the poor who serve the priests, and the remainder be distributed by us to strangers and beggars. For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. Teach those of the Hellenic faith to contribute to public service of this sort, and the Hellenic villages to offer their first fruits to the gods; and accustom those who love the Hellenic religion to these good works by teaching them that this was our practice of old.

 So it’s the ethos, stupid. The Christians’ lifestyle was what attracted new converts. Julian’s instructions would cover the homeless, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, and immigrants. He didn’t get to prisoners or the sick, but he implicitly or explicitly covers the rest of Jesus’ list. 

 383-404 a.d. St. Jerome translated the Bible into the Latin version known as the Vulgate. The Vulgate ensured that the church would continue to read and write Latin at least until 1963, and to some extent until today. To the extent that the classic civilization was preserved, it was due in part to the Vulgate.

 1270-1272 a.d. Thomas Aquinas, the great synthesizer of Christian theology and Aristotlean theology, brought together Paul’s virtues and Aristotle’s in a series of essays.

In what appears to be an attempt to counteract the growing fear of Aristotelian thought, Thomas conducted a series of disputations between 1270 and 1272: De virtutibus in communi (On Virtues in General), De virtutibus cardinalibus (On Cardinal Virtues), and De spe (On Hope). (Wiki)

Cardinal (Pagan philosophical) Virtues
Prudence	Prudentia	φρόνησις	Phronēsis
Justice	Justitia	δικαιοσύνη	Dikaiosunē
Courage	Fortitudo	ἀνδρεία (manliness)	Andreia
Temperance	Temperantia	σωφροσύνη	Sōphrosunē
Theological Virtues
Faith	Fides	πίστις	Pistis
Hope	Spes	ἐλπίς	Elpis
Charity	Caritas	ἀγάπη	Agapē

 As we saw before, each set of virtues has its own metavirtue to make the others operative. Prudence is the art of finding the golden mean between two extremes. Courage is the mean between rashness and cowardice, for example. ἀγάπη / caritas / charity, as Paul stated, makes the other Christian virtues operative. Perhaps it, too, exerts a moderating influence on the harshness of the other virtues without it. Burning somebody at the stake may be an auto-de-fé (act of faith), but never an auto-de-amor (act of love). This idea of Charity as a metavirtue entered mainstream thought, as this citation from the OED demonstrates:

1846 Keble in Plain Serm. VIII. ccxli. Charity —the true love of God in Christ…ensures the practice of all other virtues. (“Charity”)

Wherever the Roman Catholic church the Vulgate went, they carried caritas together with actus caritatis, acts of charity. Acts of charity were so well known that anybody wanting to compete with the church had to do so on those grounds. Julian had lost before he began, because why would people go for brand X when they could have the Christians who invented charity?

Love and Charity Split

A linguistic shift took place in English that divorced charity from charitable deeds. Charity came to mean the acts of charity, while the gift of charity got transformed into the gift of love. According to the OED, this was starting to happen around 1600. As Protestant England moved further from the memory of the Vulgate’s caritas, the word ‘love’ replaced the word ‘charity’ in translations and in ordinary discourse. I checked 31 English translations starting with the Wycliffe (Catholic) Translation of 1395. The Wycliffe Translation, Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible, the King James Version, and 2 more translations that stick closely to the KJV all use charity, under the influence of caritas in the Vulgate. The most recent translations that use charity are:

1. The Third Millennium Bible of 1998, a slight updating of the KJV.
2. The Jubilee Bible of 2000, an idiosyncratic translation modeled on a Spanish translation.
   

On the other hand, 25 translation starting with the Tyndale (Protestant) translation of 1522-1535, use the word ‘love’ instead. As the use of the KJV has declined, so has the awareness of charity as the greatest gift. The KJV is still the most used translation at 34%, but that means that 66% of American Christians use other translation that generally favor ‘love’ over ‘charity’.

As ‘love’ and ‘charity’ diverged, ideas about charity were debased and about love were cheapened. There were references to the coldness of charity, as deeds of charity lost the motive of charity (Paul refers to this possibility in 1 Corinthians 13:3).  The saying “Charity begins at home” began circulating about this time as well. The warrant for this was 1 Timothy 5:8 — “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” While these statements have a surface similarity, their significance is different. Paul’s (or Deutero-Paul’s) point is that Christians should provide for their families. “Charity begins at home” generally implies that one only needs to take care of one’s own family.

As we move to the present, both the Roman Catholic Church as an organization and its individual members continue to pursue the ministry Jesus commanded in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.

The [Catholic] Church operates more than 140,000 schools, 10,000 orphanages, 5,000 hospitals and some 16,000 other health clinics. Caritas, the umbrella organisation for Catholic aid agencies, estimates that spending by its affiliates totals between £2 billion and £4 billion, making it one of the biggest aid agencies in the world.

Even these numbers only tell half the tale. Caritas does not include development spending by a host of religious orders and other Catholic charities, while most of the 200,000 Catholic parishes around the world operate their own small-scale charitable projects which are never picked up in official figures. Establishing like-for-like comparisons is hard, but there can be little doubt that in pretty much every field of social action, from education to health to social care, the Church is the largest and most significant non-state organisation in the world. (Struke)

During the Great Depression, at the moment that the United States government began moving toward the preaching of the church regarding the treatment of people in need, reactionary capitalists began a long campaign to reverse the trend. Masses of Americans had stopped listening to the media they controlled, so they began to working to get minsters and priests to preach their message of capitalism as freedom under God, and the need to liberate the nation from the slavery of the New Deal (Kruse). They successfully convinced millions of Americans that the United States was a Christian country in conflict with godless Communism.

The attack on charity (in the generally understood sense) really began to gain traction as the nation’s social programs began to include minorities, starting with Brown v the Topeka Board of Education decision in 1954. The United States government was intended to be by, for, and of white people. As I said earlier, for the government to begin to include other races in that social sphere meant a loss of privilege for those white people, who saw charity for all as a betrayal of the social compact as they understood it, and as corruption. Our money should be spent on our people. I call this White Socialism. Once those signs for  “White Patients Only” came down, the way was paved for the closing of Charity Hospital, waiting only for the people who needed it to be out of town because of the devastation of Katrina.

Text prepared by:

• Bruce R. Magee

Source

Magee, Bruce R. “And Charity toward None.” March 2025.

L’Anthologie  Louisianaise