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“Evangelization, the Economy, and the Poor in Evangelii Gaudium”
Presentation to the 2014 Catholic Extension Mission Bishops’ Conference
This afternoon we are focusing together on the economy and the poor in the teaching of Evangelii Gaudium. The document is about evangelization, and the Holy Father sees the Church’s relation to the poor as integral to our mission. The poor teach us about God, even as we seek to announce Christ to them.
Pope Francis talks about the priority of time over space in EG 222. I would like to begin with his approach to the relation of space to time because in a certain way it can provide an organizing principle around which to describe the document's broader teaching on the Church’s mission and relation to the poor. The Holy Father notes:
One of the faults which we occasionally observe in sociopolitical activity is that spaces and power are preferred to time and processes. Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; […] Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need, then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in significant historical events.(1)
Space is a reality of the moment. It is not an idea. It is a now embodiment, and in the way Pope Francis describes it, it is particularly susceptible to possessiveness. Spaces are often dominated by a “this is my space” attitude. The reference reminds me of what Saint Thomas says about why material things cannot be the ultimate happiness of man: no one can be really happy though he possesses all he desires, simply because such things are passing, and one lives in fear of their loss at any moment.(2) Fear dominates an excessive preoccupation with spaces. Or, to put it more precisely, fear dominates preoccupation of spaces filled with things.
But, if we are to take in earnest what the Holy Father says elsewhere in the document, that to believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in everyone means realizing that he seeks to penetrate every human situation and all social bonds, then we must admit that the present space, marred by possessiveness and the conflict and fear it engenders, can be sanctified and rectified.(3) But this is possible only if the prerogatives of time are restored to a proper place. The now is not mine to fill and then hold on to, against all competitors, it is a moment that opens up to the encounter with others, with God, and with God in others. To give priority to time over space is to make space consciously hospitable and docile to the reality of human life as a mystery of interpersonal growth and development.
I. The space created by the Gospel
In economic terms, my diocese is one of the poorest in the United States. Over 1.4 million inhabitants in four fairly small (by Texas standards) counties. The third world and the first and second worlds are blocks from each other in my diocese. I can show you the colonias of dirt floor homes with unfinished roofs, housing extended families of 8 or more adults and children, all recent undocumented immigrants, on the outskirts of old towns, or in rural areas. I can also take you to old neighborhoods with houses dilapidating, but still serving the basic function of giving frame to a home-life. And I can take you to exquisite gated communities of old wealth and of new immigrant wealth. As I say, they are often just blocks from each other. The spaces speak about the perspectives of life and time animating the people dwelling in them.
The first kind of space I would like to talk about, the one that preoccupies me the most, is the space created by preaching the Gospel. Pope Francis insists that the whole Church is to be engaged in this announcement. To announce the Gospel in its integrity establishes a human space suffused with grace, that is to say, a space, as the Holy Father states it: which invites us to receive God’s love and to love him in return with the very love which is his gift, brings forth in our lives and actions a primary and fundamental response: to desire, seek and protect the good of others.(4)
In an important sense the urgency of proclaiming the gospel has to do with redeeming the human space. The possessive character of human space needs the Gospel to open up its closed horizons. A space hospitable to God becomes a space necessarily hospitable to all that is human. The Gospel is about the kingdom of God (cf. Lk 4:43); it is about loving God who reigns in our world. To the extent that he reigns within us, the life of society will be a setting for universal fraternity, justice, peace and dignity. Both Christian preaching and life, then, are meant to have an impact on society.(5)
The implication of what the pope says, and what the Tradition has always affirmed, is that the distortion and only partially coherent configurations of fraternity, justice, peace and dignity in the world is the given state of things apart from regeneration in the New Adam. The Gospel regenerates human relations because it offers us the grace of relational transformation according to the mind of God in Christ Jesus the Lord.
Pope Francis’ teaching on social cohesion and economic justice picks up an important theme in Pope Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate: the social teaching of the Church is elaborating more concisely the primacy of charity as the gift that makes justice possible in a broken world. It will become increasingly difficult to speak of social justice without speaking also of evangelical charity, precisely because what constitutes justice is in intellectual disarray. This is a fact, and says something about where the reduced horizon of reasonable discourse has ended up in a positivist, voluntarist post-modernity. What is emerging, however, is a sense that the Gospel newness contained in the word charity -- gift of self for the good of another-- rightly establishes the context by which the Church can then talk about justice. In other words, evangelization—changing hearts to be bearers of charity—is the engine that makes a persevering effort on behalf of justice possible, provides its essential content, and which offers hope that a reasonable dialogue about what constitutes justice can be fruitfully engaged in practical terms.
By the death of Christ in one place and at one moment, God has created a space for us. It is the space where death yields to life. To be grasped by Christ Crucified and Risen, to accept the Kerygma in faith, demands a response to the God who, by accepting the Cross has chosen to identify with each and every one. Whatsoever you do to the least of mine you do to me. This is the source of the Gospel imperative that makes a Christian, by definition, one who must desire, seek and protect the good of others.(6)
Let me put it this way: Because God in Christ Jesus has said to me “What happens to you matters to me,” and because he particularly made this announcement to those who dwelt in the margins of the human spaces he traveled, then I must live my life as one who says to every human being: “What happens to you matters to me” This “it matters to me” is the call to live with this preoccupation as a daily and practical concern. The kerygma has a clear social content: at the very heart of the Gospel is life in community and engagement with others. The content of the first proclamation has an immediate moral implication centred on charity.(7) The announcement of the Gospel, the formation in the Gospel, and the inculturation of the Gospel creates a new space in a world of possessive spaces. The Gospel frees hearts to serve with generous self-forgetfulness.
II. Mothers and Children
Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society. This demands that we be docile and attentive to the cry of the poor and to come to their aid.(8)
Yes, the Diocese of Brownsville might be one of the poorest regions of the United States in economic terms, but I can testify that the space the Gospel opens up in hearts and in communities is rich and vibrant. In June and July, when the steady stream of Central American children crossing the Rio Grande River into McAllen and Brownsville turned into a flood, the first people to notice were women and men from some of our nicer neighborhoods, who, passing by the McAllen bus station, noticed mothers with young children in obvious distress, waiting in large numbers for their buses. They stopped, asked if they needed anything, and quickly learned that these were mothers with children who were released by immigration officials to find their way to relatives elsewhere in the United States. I need not go into the detail here about how immigration officials decide such things, but the fact is that these mothers and children were dehydrated, had not had a change of clothes since they began the trek across Mexico three or four weeks prior, and had not had a decent meal since they had left Honduras or Guatemala. The parishioners began organizing to take food and water to the bus-station, until the bus station complained that they couldn’t permit this to go on. That is when the whole operation moved to a parish hall near the bus-station where the mothers and children could be received, welcomed, given a place to take a shower, get a medical check-up, and get fresh clothes for the journey to New York, or Chicago or Pittsburgh or California or wherever.
Since the operation became more organized with the help of our local Catholic Charities and literally hundreds of volunteers, I have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity. I have had little old ladies in Pueblo de las Palmas, a very poor colonia, thrust two dollars in my hand and say esto is para las mamas y los niños (this is for the mothers and the children). The Archbishop of Monterrey, Mexico, sent word to me that he wanted to take up a second collection in his Archdiocese for the women and children from Central America coming into Texas. Now, Monterrey has more poor people than Brownsville does, but I gratefully accepted the offer as a sign of the communion of the church, and our solidarity with the poor. They raised $53,000.00 dollars. That was more than several of my second collections last year. Baptist churches in Tennessee sent van-loads of volunteers to man the parish hall for weeks at a time. The cities of Brownsville, Pharr and McAllen cooperated superbly, offering supplies, food, even shower facilities. I could go on and on.
While in some places in the US, Central American mothers and children on busses were greeted with angry shouts and signs telling them that there was no place, no space for them here, this was not our experience. What does this mean? It means that when the Gospel opens a space in the human heart it’s dynamic knits together a human community that hears and sees the brother and sister in need, and then tremendous things can happen. We must hear the cry of the poor, the Holy Father says. And many people do. I wish I could say I had something to do with how it all developed in the Rio Grande Valley over the summer, that way I might have something to say for myself on judgment day, but the fact is that it was those ladies and men, moved by the Gospel, who saw what was happening in the bus station. It was the little old lady in Pueblo de Palmas with the two dollars, and the doctors who volunteer to this day to check the children and their mothers before they leave for elsewhere, and the people of Monterrey to want to help in some way. All of them in some way live out a commitment to the Gospel revolution that says we cannot be blind and deaf to the cry of a person in need, and that individuals and communities must respond in practical ways. If grace has no practical effect on how we hear and how we see the condition of our neighbor, what's the point?
III. Space and Time for Relationships to Bear Fruit
Since this Exhortation is addressed to members of the Catholic Church, I want to say, with regret, that the worst discrimination which the poor suffer is the lack of spiritual care. The great majority of the poor have a special openness to the faith; they need God and we must not fail to offer them his friendship, his blessing, his word, the celebration of the sacraments and a journey of growth and maturity in the faith. Our preferential option for the poor must mainly translate into a privileged and preferential religious care.(9)
I want to talk about the second space I feel obligated to attend to with great urgency. We all need to make decisions about where to put our priorities in pastoral planning. I will tell you where I see my greatest challenge, how to put sufficient personnel and facilities in the poorest areas of the diocese. We get a lot of help from Catholic Extension and others for places like Pueblo de Palmas, where the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary have been working for over ten years and where I recently established the Quasi-Parish of St Anne. I think that what the Gospel asks of me, and what Pope Francis is insistent upon, is that pastoral planning and resources not simply go to the places that can afford them. There are a couple of ways I am trying to address this. First, some of our poorest areas are also the areas with the most people. Parishes with mission chapels in these areas can barely afford to maintain one priest much less two. But if I only send parochial vicars to the parishes that can afford them, then I’m severely limited. What happens is that the newly ordained don’t get a good sense of the needs of the poor in the diocese, and the largest places do not benefit from the presence of a second priest, usually newly ordained and full of vim and vigor. Thus, increasingly, I use diocesan money to subsidize the salary and expenses of a second priest in the poorest areas of the diocese. To be a missionary diocese implies that diocesan resources, especially people resources need to go where most needed, not where best afforded.
Secondly, I have earmarked the Diocesan annual appeal this year for diocesan projects that display local initiative into underserved areas. This is an attempt to encourage parishes to look beyond who is sitting in the pews, and find out ways to reach people who for some reason or other are not in the pews. I think the thrust of much of what Pope Francis is saying is an encouragement to us bishops to give space for local initiatives to take root and flourish. I want to see if this encouragement to local initiative bears some fruit. People on the ground often can display great creativity.
All of this that I describe has to do with opening spaces where attitudes shaped by the priority of time over space predominate. These are occasions and places where people can encounter one another, and where relationships can develop. This is where the response to the women and children at the bus station came from.
This is also where a thing we call the Catholic Youth Renovation Project came from. Strong leadership at one of our economically strong parishes in Mission, Texas, led to an idea that teenagers from the parish and adults skilled in repairing and renovating homes could organize a week long excursion during the summer to the poorest regions of the diocese to help families in the colonias improve their houses. Over the last few years the initiative has grown. The kids put up walls, fix plumbing, add an extra room to little three room homes housing 6 to 10 people. And they have fun doing it, and take pride in their work. All this is possible because adults who know how to do these things have the patience to work with youth. Relationships develop between adults and kids from a middle-class parish. And these lead to relationships with the families whose houses they work on. The families offer them simple fare as they work. The teenagers get to know the small children being raised by grandmothers. There is time for Mass and prayer together, laughing, singing. Local businesses like chick-fil-a donate lunches. Now even the sheriff's department comes out to join in the work in the interest of building up good-will in the colonias. Again, I wish I could say the bishop makes this happen. I didn't, the Gospel operating in people's lives does. I go out to visit the sites, bless the renovated houses, and have lunch with the youth and adults. In other words I try to encourage the relationships that have made possible the gradual growth of this marvelous expression of solidarity.
The grace is in the relationships that grow out of the encounter. The Holy Father is not saying anything novel when he places priority on this in the work of the Church. He is pleading with us to make it palpably real.
Obviously I would like to see this kind of project spread to other areas of the diocese. For many reasons I would want this, but most importantly so that young people can experience the joy of encountering the poor, their neighbors really, of knowing their names, of playing games with their kids. I want our young people to experience a joy that comes from forgetting their own problems long enough to be of help to someone else. Gospel joy is synonymous with Cristian maturity, and it's surest sign is in a person who says to another that the burden you bear is more important to me than my own.
But to see something like this grow, is not as easy as reproducing a structure. A letter from the chancery is not enough. It has to start with opening a space where relationships can coalesce and mature: first, the relationships in parish communities between adults and teenagers, then relationships between them and the poor who live just a few miles down the road.
Sometimes we prove hard of heart and mind; we are forgetful, distracted and carried away by the limitless possibilities for consumption and distraction offered by contemporary society. This leads to a kind of alienation at every level, for “a society becomes alienated when its forms of social organization, production and consumption make it more difficult to offer the gift of self and to establish solidarity between people”.(10)
As the Holy Father says, at root the Church must be about preaching and teaching the gift of self in solidarity with others as the road to life. It is commonplace in some Church circles to complain about how the media culture leaves no room for the Church's message. True enough, I suppose, but hardly an excuse for throwing up our hands. Take the youth to do something together for the good of someone else. Pray with them while they do it. It does no good to talk about finding life by learning how to give it away unless we give people, young and old, a taste of the experience. Then our preaching will find an experiential context within which they can understand.
When the Holy Father says that the paradigm for the Church is the pilgrim and the immigrant, (and not, I add, the office building), he is saying that these forms of life are dependent on relationships first, and include necessarily an openness to what an encounter can bring. The immigrant in particular depends on the living God-- y la Virgen -- to protect them on the way, by his providence, and most especially by means of the encounters the Lord facilitates. Dios te puso en mi camino-- God put you in my path-- is a phrase my Grandmother used a lot, and it comes from a sense of faith that God helps us on the pilgrimage of life by putting people who are compassionate and helpful in our lives.
IV. Space to listen and to speak, space to understand and to act
It is in the context of relationship that I think we can best understand the Holy Father's remarks about reform of the global economy. He, and with him the Church, prefers realism to idealism. Changing things on a global level in a way that attends to the cry of the poor, is not a matter of proposing an economic schema that imposes from the top down a more equitable economic theory. It starts in some way with bringing to bear the kerygma of Christ for us thus we for all into the conversation about economic, and more broadly, social dysfunction. The dialogue engages by necessity many diverse participants.
Solidarity is a spontaneous reaction by those who recognize that the social function of property and the universal destination of goods are realities which come before private property. The private ownership of goods is justified by the need to protect and increase them, so that they can better serve the common good; for this reason, solidarity must be lived as the decision to restore to the poor what belongs to them. These convictions and habits of solidarity, when they are put into practice, open the way to other structural transformations and make them possible. Changing structures without generating new convictions and attitudes will only ensure that those same structures will become, sooner or later, corrupt, oppressive and ineffectual.(11)
He speaks of developing habits of solidarity. For someone like me, contributing to a conversation about global economics has something of a surreal ring to it. I mean, what do I know about global economic structures impacting employment opportunities for the dispossessed in West Africa? Or in Honduras? And to be honest, the specter of global economic structures conjures images of power and intrigue that can frighten us as much as the Aztecs were frightened by a hostile pantheon. Still, once we get over the initial mythic fears, we realize that something can be done. Spaces open to development are possible and even now opening up.
The US bishops have a treasure of opportunity in our own Catholic Relief Services. I happen to be on the board. Listening to Carolyn Woo and her excellent team, it is clear that there are many on the world economic stage who share our concern for the structural inequities that exploit the poor. They may not share our faith, but in some way the recognition that the private ownership of goods is justified by the need to protect and increase them, so that they can better serve the common good is shared by diverse actors on the global stage. This is where it is vital that CRS and the whole of the Church's presence in global development through Caritas International and similar structures keep pace with the dialogue.
In the global square of economic structure, the Church needs consistently to say, we can disagree about many things, but let us join our efforts on behalf of the poor and rejected in society. This resonates with many more power-brokers than we might first imagine. Perhaps this is due to the historical fact that the gospel touches perspectives even where faith is no longer so evident. We who have faith must engage this reality. CRS has done some very hard work protecting the integrity of its Catholic identity on the global stage. This is necessary when so many others working in the development arena, including governments and corporations and foundations, do not share our commitment to integral anthropology, particularly on the life issues. As a result of this hard work we are in a better position to know with whom we can work cooperatively, be it as full partners or as limited cooperators in particular areas.
New possibilities in Impact Investment are opening up as we speak, aimed at offering alternatives to an endemic structure of exploitation of labor and natural resources in the third world by purely self-interested parties in the first world. These alternatives offer hope that the poor can become active agents in the building of their own future. This is an example of what the Holy Father means when he says in paragraph 190 that we need to grow in a solidarity which “would allow all peoples to become the artisans of their destiny”,since “every person is called to self-fulfilment”. These things take time to develop. They will do so only if we help create space for processes to begin and to mature.
We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market. Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: it requires decisions, programmes, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality. I am far from proposing an irresponsible populism, but the economy can no longer turn to remedies that are a new poison, such as attempting to increase profits by reducing the work force and thereby adding to the ranks of the excluded.(12)
One of the reasons we cannot abide an economic program that relies ultimately on the theory of the "unseen hand", no matter how nuanced, is that at bottom it is as deterministic as it's polar opposite of Marxist theory ever was. We cannot let the notion that things will get better for the poor if we let market forces alone work their magic. Realistic Catholic anthropology recognizes that we are created to be free artisans of our own destiny. To be self moving agents as Saint Thomas says.(13) We are not cogs in a machine, governed by either inexorable dialectics or unseen hands. Self-interest is not a bad thing in itself so long as it is responsive to the primacy of relation over possession. The economy is for man, not man for the economy.
Sadly, even human rights can be used as a justification for an inordinate defense of individual rights or the rights of the richer peoples. With due respect for the autonomy and culture of every nation, we must never forget that the planet belongs to all mankind and is meant for all mankind; the mere fact that some people are born in places with fewer resources or less development does not justify the fact that they are living with less dignity. (14)
But coordinated thoughtfulness about how to open up opportunities for the poor to have control over their own destiny requires a renewal of the political order. Distrust and cynicism reigns currently in this space, not to mention preoccupation with preserving power balances. I think we need to get to know our local politicians, and their families, if we can, before we call to argue for a position or a vote. I have found the local political officials surprisingly open to this. The city of Brownsville recently passed a pay-day lending reform ordinance. Exploitation of the poor by brutal lending institutions charging families in financial crisis exorbitant interest is a real problem in Texas. I think the voice of the Church helped the political leadership garner the will needed to pass the reform ordinance locally.
V. Hospitality and the Poverty of isolation
I would like to say a little about the issue of physical spaces in the life of the Church. We need them, obviously. And Catholic Extension has helped us construct some vital structures. But in the context of time having priority over space, how we construct, and what we construct can be seen in a provocative light. I am more interested in hospitable parish spaces. The issue of hospitable spaces touches upon our response to what the Holy Father calls the poverty of isolation. It is particularly acute in our time, and it knows no demographic limitations. Rich, poor, citizen, undocumented, all can experience a version of it.
I worry that we do not even know how it is that we give off signals that some people are more welcome at our Churches than others. Maybe the poor think that only people of a certain class can go to that parish. Maybe the immigrant thinks that the community people will stare at them for looking different or sounding different. I tell the people, with a smile, that we have to make el primo tatuado y la tía loca (the tattooed cousin and the crazy aunt) feel welcome at our parish celebrations, and at our feast-days, and at out Sunday Masses. We may be scaring people away because they do not see us welcoming people who are poor, or the immigrant, or the crazy aunt and tattooed cousin.
We need spaces where the poor can come as well as the rich, the young and the old, the immigrant and the longstanding parishioner. The poor need safe and versatile places within which to meet. The physical spaces house the kinds of encounters we were meant to foster and protect. A good parish hall with space for classrooms, and a kitchen says and does a lot. How can we invite people to take time to meet and enjoy each other if there is no way to offer food? It doesn't have to look like the lobby of a five star hotel, in fact it ought not, but it should say something by its design: we like people, we like all kinds of people.
Parish festivals, especially in our poor areas are so important. There are so few places and occasions left in our culture where diversity can encounter itself. Where kids and parents can have a good time together listening to music, eating food, seeing young people, old people rich people and poor people having a good time together. We are the ones who can still provide those occasions, and set up the conditions for those encounters. It is the classic place to put into practice the Gospel injunction: if the invited will not come, then go out to the highways and byways to invite the poor, the cripple and the lame. In other words, like Jesus, we must show the world that we enjoy people, all kinds of people. Even people who have not entered the portal of a Church since their uncle Porfirio died in 1968.
VI. Addressing the poverty of the vulnerable
Holy Father speaks also about the poverty of the vulnerable, that is to say the experience of relegation and exclusion that economic and social structures seem to enforce and certainly do little to address.
In this context the Holy Fathers extended remarks about the protection of the unborn child are particularly powerful. It is the bedrock of a Christian witness on behalf of the respect due to human dignity.
Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or “modernizations”. It is not “progressive” to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.(15)
When properly presented the Church's international efforts to defend the unborn child, and the local efforts in our smallest parishes are a witness as to the deepest why behind our efforts on behalf of the poor, the unemployed, the immigrant, the sick and the elderly. Whatsoever you do to the least,... I think we need to vigorously link the poverty of the child as child, both born and unborn, to the vulnerability that underlies all poverty, and thus to all that we do on behalf of the poor. The vulnerable have only their God-given dignity to protect them from exploitation and manipulation. All vulnerable life must be defended from efforts to relegate and exploit them due to non-person status. As I have repeated elsewhere, the unborn child and the undocumented immigrant have this in common: governments do not recognize their status, thus they have no standing. And we say: God gives them standing because he makes them human. No further document is required. And the young mother who for whatever reason thinks her best option is to abort the child must here our people, not just our bishops and some of our priests say: we will accompany you are not alone. We will help you choose life.
The immigrant is particularly vulnerable. He or she often feels constrained to leave the homeland that he or she loves, because the social conditions and economic prospects at home are inhumane in the extreme. Honduras is a good example. The violence on kids is gruesome and frequent. With few options at home, the poor are victimized by coyotes and cartels alike, for ends that suit their own economic interests. Immigrants from there know this, but accept the manipulation as the only way out of a cruel status quo. If they are among the fortunate, they reach to the Texas-Mexican border so they can connect with relatives here. If not so fortunate, they are made mules in a drug trade, or prostitutes by coercion, or even sold to be harvested for their organs on the black-market. There is greater complicity than we think, the Holy Father cries, this issue involves everyone! This infamous network of crime is now well established in our cities, and many people have blood on their hands as a result of their comfortable and silent complicity.(16) The whole chain of human manipulation for selfish ends finances the lifestyles of the people who make money on the market of human lives. This stinks to heaven and will call down a judgment from God. The 10 year olds bear the marks of the Crucified in our time.
The breakdown of family structures and gang violence have devastated the social life of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. My time with CRS has shown me that there are ways of working with the local community to give kids a safe space and hope for a future. It is an international problem, but I know that similar family disintegration and violence affect the poor in my diocese. Very likely this is also a growing reality in your diocese. I wonder if the human expertise CRS has gained in working these issues internationally could in some way become part of the human resource that mission dioceses here can learn from. Maybe the institutional capital of Catholic Extension, together with CRS, could coordinate an encounter for diverse people who want to discuss causes and alternatives to gang violence, all in the interest of finding out what works. There are ways forward. But time and commitment, and space to learn from the experience is needed.
VII. The Joy of the Gospel and the poverty of indifference
Meanwhile, the cold queen of the north is looking in the glass; the shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass, to paraphrase a Chesterton line that has some applicability here.(17) The Holy Father speaks often of the culture of indifference that neither hears the cry of the poor, nor sees their suffering. What is this phenomenon of indifference? It is as old as Cain who asks am I my brother's keeper, and the doctor of the law who asks who is my neighbor. But it's biting coldness has attained newer, deadlier manifestations.Our task also is to shake our culture, accustomed to the fruits of an economy that serves many but not all of our people well, out of a poverty of indifference. Not in anger but in the realization that salvation is linked inextricably to being awakened from the sleep of indifference that says: It's too difficult to hear of such suffering, speak to me of this another time.
There is a book I read recently, by the noted Spanish novelist Arturo Perez-Reverte, entitled El pintor de batallas, (The painter of battles).(18) It is readily available in English. It is the story of a war-correspondent, photographer, who spent his adult life traveling to places of violence and conflict across the globe so as to take pictures so the general population could see images of war. It is a difficult book to read, as it takes you through a chronicle of late 20th century wars: Somalia, Bosnia, Croatia, Beirut, Gaza, and countless others. At his prime as a photographer he retires to a secluded beach, buys an old light-house and begins to paint a great apocalyptic battle scene upon its interior walls. But the drama of the story is in the dialogue between the photographer turned painter and the man who at the beginning of the novel announces he has come to kill him. The man is someone the painter recognizes but had never met, a soldier in the Bosnian conflict whom he had photographed and whose features he made famous on magazine covers around the world. The visitor intends to kill the painter, but not before explaining to him how the photograph altered the course of his life.
The novel is a brutal narrative of how modern man insulates himself from pain precisely by preventing the suffering he observes close at hand from engendering a relation to the one suffering. Our photographer could not make sense out of the suffering he chronicled, so he cut himself off from any relation to it, or responsibility for it. Without giving you the ending, you should know that the dialogue with the man he photographed but never knew engenders a self-awareness that a life cut off from the suffering of others produces a pain more cruel than the cruelty he photographed from an objective distance. Such perhaps is a way to understand the individualism of many. It is the disciplined indifference of those who would rather avoid the pain of hearing and seeing and thus relating to those who suffer. It is a self-imposed exile from relationships in a futile attempt to build a private space where the pain of others cannot touch me. The reduced horizon of the modern windswept world, where all the gods have gone away, and where we are alone with absurdity, sees this private space as not much, but in the end all we can hope for. Such a pitiable vision, ending in despair.
The novel reminds me of Cardinal Ratzinger's remarks somewhere in Dogma and Preaching that modern atheism is largely an armchair and television phenomenon: look at all that suffering, how could a good God exist and let such things happen? let us make sure it never comes here. But, as Ratzinger emphasizes in that essay, the people who actually work with others to alleviate suffering are usually the ones with deepest faith.(19) And often the poor themselves are the most generous to others in need. That is certainly true in Brownsville.
A world hiding behind objective indifference needs the joy of the Gospel. We will be credible evangelizers if we first do something, namely roll up our sleeves and enter the space where openness to human relations is first, and when encountering the pain of another we embrace the other person. God is there. It is a challenge to the world to believe this and to say it: God is in the embrace of one who suffers. But they will not believe us when we say God is to be found there, in that place where a brother or sister suffers, unless they see the Church dwelling in that place and living the human encounter it brings with it. That, I think is what the Holy Father means when he speaks of evangelization and says he wants a church which is poor and for the poor.
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Notes
1. EG 223
2. See Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 28-31
3. EG 178
4. EG 178
5. EG 180
6. EG 178
7. EG 177
8. EG 187
9. EG 200
10. EG 196
11. EG 189
12. EG 204
13. Summa Theologiae, prologue to the Second Part.
14. EG 190
15. EG 214
16. EG 211
17. See Lepanto, first stanza.
18. Arturo Pérez-Reverte, El pintor de batallas (Alfaguara, 2006).
19. Ratzinger, Dogma and Preaching, Second edition, "Good Friday" (Ignatius, 2011).
