El mal del racismo

El texto que sigue fue publicado en Inglés por Catholic News Service, y se puede encontrar en el siguiente enlace:

https://cnstopstories.com/2017/08/29/commentary-god-in-the-flesh-is-brother-to-the-whole-human-race/amp/

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Existen cosas tales como ideologías racistas y éstas se pusieron en evidencia durante la fea conflagración en Charlottesville, Virginia.

Las ideologías racistas proclaman descaradamente que algunas razas son biológica y culturalmente superiores a otras. El nazismo reforzó sus afirmaciones racistas en los años treinta a través de una seudociencia que argumentaba absurdamente la superioridad física e intelectual de las razas arias y nórdicas sobre todas las demás. La propaganda, el miedo y la manipulación de la ciencia convencieron a muchos de que era socialmente necesario defender la "raza" de elementos "inferiores". Por lo cual, iniciaron un programa de exterminio humano de aquellos a quienes consideraban que pertenecían a razas inferiores tales como judíos, gitanos, polacos y muchos otros. También iniciaron la experimentación eugenésica, la eliminación de los físicamente débiles, y la de aquellos con capacidades diferentes, mental o físicamente, tal como las personas con síndrome de Down.

En su raíz, el racismo es una convicción de que el grupo al que se pertenece (o se quiere pertenecer) es, por cualquier razón, inherentemente superior a todos los demás y por lo tanto tiene el derecho y la obligación de defenderse y de controlar a otros "grupos". En nuestro tiempo, estas ideas se mezclan con nociones deducidas de Darwin y Nietzsche, sosteniendo que la naturaleza está gobernada por la ley de la "supervivencia del más apto". Por lo tanto, los grupos supuestamente superiores se movilizan para combatir la amenaza que los otros grupos presentan. Estos grupos dirían que es su derecho asegurar la supervivencia del más apto. Esta es la razón por la que el racismo nunca está lejos de la pesadilla de la manipulación genética, el aborto selectivo (¿quién es seleccionado?) y la eutanasia del débil (por medio del fuerte).

Todo esto es tan hostil a lo que la fe católica enseña y a lo que los católicos ordinarios tratan de vivir diariamente. Toda la raza humana, todos nosotros, fuimos creados a imagen de Dios y redimidos por la sangre de Cristo. Estamos hechos para la comunión de unos con otros como hijos de Dios. El objetivo de la historia, según las Escrituras, es la reconciliación y la Jerusalén celestial, y no las manos manchadas de sangre del último sobreviviente.

Escarnio de Cristo

Jan Gossaert, 1527

Dios se encarnó en el vientre de la Virgen. Dios en la carne es hermano de toda la raza humana y no sólo una parte selecta de ella. Esta solidaridad con nosotros debería ser suficiente para desterrar de nuestros pensamientos la idea de que cualquier persona o grupo puede ser señalado como inferior, menos merecedor de respeto, cuidado y protección. Pero recordemos también que en la hora de su pasión Cristo completó su identificación con nosotros aceptando la condición del rechazado, el despreciado: “Despreciado, desechado por los hombres, [...] como alguien ante quien se aparta el rostro, tan despreciado, que lo tuvimos por nada (Isaías 53, 3)”. Cristo asumió la condición de despreciado, identificándose para siempre con aquellos que son despreciados por cualquier razón. Por lo tanto, cualquier persona rechazada por razones de prejuicio racial, o por cualquier otra razón, es el mismo Cristo entre nosotros. Y tengamos por seguro que todos seremos juzgados según la manera en que lo tratamos. "Amén, les aseguro, que todo lo que no hicieron por uno de estos más pequeños, tampoco lo hicieron por mí" (Mt 25, 45).

Toda tendencia racista encuentra su parentesco en la historia de Caín y Abel. Es la historia de dos hermanos y su historia es nuestra historia. Caín mató a Abel por resentimiento, miedo, envidia y celos. El resentimiento de Caín se reflejó en el pensamiento de que para que él tuviera paz, su hermano tenía que morir. Y del pensamiento vino la voluntad, y luego la acción violenta. Pero aun en el comienzo del fratricidio, el Señor Dios ofreció esperanza: Y el Señor dijo a Caín: "¿Por qué te enojas y pones mala cara? Si hicieras lo bueno, podrías levantar la cara; pero como no lo haces, el pecado está esperando el momento de dominarte. Sin embargo, tú puedes dominarlo a él” (Gen 4, 6-7).

El "impulso" del pecado mencionado en el libro del Génesis es la misma realidad por la cual Dios actúa para salvarnos al hacerse hombre y soportar la cruz. La lucha cristiana, y de hecho, la verdadera lucha humana es dominar el impulso del desprecio y de la falta de respeto hacia el prójimo que en realidad es mi hermano y hermana. Como el Señor Jesús lo dejó muy en claro en la gran revelación de la Nueva Ley, el pecado está en el consentimiento del corazón antes de que esté en la acción. “Yo os digo: Todo aquel que se encolerice contra su hermano, será reo ante el tribunal, [...] pero el que llame a su hermano imbécil, será reo de la Gehenna de fuego” (Mt 5, 22). Este es el "impulso" sobre el cual Dios advirtió a Caín. Y por gracia es el impulso que debemos dominar.

El Misterio de la Fe confiado a la Iglesia requiere que todos examinemos honestamente nuestras conciencias y pidamos la gracia para ser liberados de cualquier resentimiento oculto, prejuicios y vestigios de racismo. Y habiendo hecho eso, debemos testificar públicamente que el racismo de cualquier tipo es enemigo de la verdad cristiana y también es destructivo para la sociedad humana. Oremos fervientemente por nuestra nación y por el mundo para que terminen los odios raciales y culturales, y para que se abran los corazones a la visión de una humanidad renovada por la gracia con la intención de la reconciliación y formada en una auténtica comunión de los pueblos.

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"The Christian People", the Community and the Future

“The Christian People”. This is an ancient way of describing the Church, the communion of the Baptized. This people is an identifiable body, made up of women and men, the young and the old, saints and struggling sinners. Among the Christian People, the Catholic Church is perhaps the most easily identifiable as a presence in the world. The visible structure of the Church, with clergy and religious, bishops and popes, parishes and dioceses, and a fairly well articulated doctrine of faith, all make us anything but a hidden presence in the world.

Aerial view of new Church construction,
Sacred Heart, Hidalgo, Texas

My hope is that non-Catholics and non-Christians in our local communities of the Río Grande Valley see us as a positive presence, one that strengthens the bonds of friendship with good will and cooperative work for the good of all. It is our mission to serve the whole community, not just the Catholic community. Thus, our Catholic Charities doesn't ask a person’s religion when they come seeking some assistance. We don't ask their immigration status either. This way of serving is in obedience to the Lord Jesus who bids us give water to the thirsty and food to the hungry (see Mt 25).

I am sure that a good number of our non-Catholic neighbors do not agree with all the stands the Church takes on political and social issues of our time. Our unwavering defense of the unborn child, our political advocacy in favor of the humane treatment of immigrants and refugees, and our opposition to the death penalty, for example, are a part of who we are. Yet, again, I hope that those who disagree with us do not perceive in our defense of human dignity any trace of resentment or anger. And to the Christian People I say that we must constantly be on our guard lest our passion for the Social Teaching of the Church degenerate into a reckless hostility towards any person. The Lord strictly forbids us from treating anyone with disrespect. And for the times we have failed to show respect and kindness to others we should seek pardon from Christ and from those we may have offended.

The Church is a great mystery, and as bishop I am principally charged with leading the Church in the Río Grande Valley in her mission to be an effective sign of Christ Jesus, risen from the dead. We can only fulfill our mission to the wider community if we are true to the Lord and to ourselves as a community in the Lord. I want the Catholics in the Valley to know that we have great challenges and opportunities ahead of us. For some time, I have been engaged in discussions with clergy, religious and lay leadership about our need for strategic planning so that we can move consciously and confidently to meet those challenges and seize those opportunities.

New mission chapel of Saint Jude, near Weslaco, Texas

For example, we are in need of establishing new parishes and missions. The Church is growing and our structures must adapt to the new realities unfolding before us. We also need to find ways to make Catholics who have drifted from active participation in our parishes to feel invited and welcomed in our communities. We also must rededicate ourselves to supporting each other in our daily struggles as families and as individuals. This involves a renewal of zeal in our evangelization, catechesis and sacramental preparations, for the grace of the Lord sustains us.

In October the priests of the Diocese and I will continue our strategic planning discussions, and there will be opportunities for parishioners and for persons who are not presently active in the Church to express their concerns and hopes. We are blessed because recently many of our parishes have participated in the Encuentro Process. My hope is that the fruits of those discussions will become a vibrant part of our strategic planning in the coming months. I ask you to be on the lookout for opportunities to join in the discussions.

Perhaps some of you think that this sounds like another Church program and little will come of it. I am not looking for a new program, I am looking for an enduring reorientation of our perspective as Catholics, one that takes to heart Pope Francis’ call for a Church whose every fiber is dedicated to Evangelization, the support of family life, and to keeping the hopes of our young people alive and strong. The work of the clergy is not to substitute for the witness of the Christian People. On the contrary, we are at the service of providing the Christian People with the resources of grace, in the sacraments and in the Gospel announced, so that all of us can be that People whom the Lord calls to announce, witness and be his presence in the world.

May the Eucharistic Mystery be our strength, may Christ our Shepherd guide us always, and may the prayers of the Virgin Mother of God and Saint Joseph accompany us always.

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"El pueblo cristiano", la comunidad y el futuro

"El pueblo cristiano". Esta es una antigua manera de describir a la Iglesia, la comunión de los Bautizados. Este pueblo es un cuerpo identificable, compuesto de mujeres y hombres, jóvenes y ancianos, santos y pecadores que batallan. Entre la gente cristiana, la iglesia católica es quizás la más fácilmente identificable como presencia en el mundo. La estructura de la Iglesia, con el clero y los religiosos, los obispos y los papas, las parroquias y las diócesis, y una doctrina de fe bastante bien articulada, todo esto nos convierte en una presencia plenamente visible en el mundo.

Vista aérea del nuevo templo de Sagrado Corazón, Hidalgo, Texas

Mi esperanza es que los no católicos y los no cristianos en nuestras comunidades locales en el Valle del Río Grande nos vean como una presencia positiva, una que refuerza los lazos de amistad con la buena voluntad y con trabajo cooperativo para el bien de todos. Es nuestra misión servir a toda la comunidad, no sólo a la comunidad católica. Por lo tanto, nuestras Caridades Católicas no preguntan la religión de las personas cuando se acercan buscando algún tipo de ayuda. Tampoco preguntamos su estado migratorio. Esta manera de servir es en obediencia al Señor Jesús que nos ordena dar agua a los sedientos y comida a los hambrientos (ver Mt 25).

Estoy seguro que un buen número de nuestros vecinos no católicos no están de acuerdo con todas las posiciones que la Iglesia toma en los asuntos políticos y sociales de nuestro tiempo. Nuestra defensa inquebrantable del niño por nacer, nuestra defensa política en favor de un trato humano para los inmigrantes y los refugiados, y nuestra oposición a la pena de muerte, por ejemplo, son parte de lo que somos. Sin embargo, una vez más, espero que los que están en desacuerdo con nosotros no perciben en nuestra defensa de la dignidad humana ningún rastro de resentimiento o ira. Y al pueblo cristiano le digo que debemos estar constantemente en guardia para que nuestra pasión por la enseñanza social de la Iglesia no se degenere en una imprudente hostilidad hacia ninguna persona. El Señor nos prohíbe estrictamente tratar a cualquier persona con falta de respeto. Y por las veces que hemos fallado en mostrar respeto y bondad a los demás debemos buscar el perdón de Cristo y de aquellos a quienes pudimos haber ofendido.

La Iglesia es un gran misterio y como obispo estoy encargado principalmente de guiar la Iglesia, en el Valle del Río Grande, en su misión de ser una señal eficaz de Cristo Jesús, resucitado de entre los muertos. Únicamente podemos cumplir nuestra misión hacia la comunidad en general si somos fieles al Señor y a nosotros mismos como la comunidad del Señor. Quiero que los católicos del Valle sepan que tenemos grandes desafíos y oportunidades delante de nosotros. Durante algún tiempo, he estado entablando conversaciones con el clero, líderes religiosos y líderes laicos acerca de nuestra necesidad de una planificación estratégica para que podamos movernos consciente y confiadamente para enfrentar esos desafíos y aprovechar esas oportunidades.

Nueva capilla de San Judas, cerca de Weslaco, Texas

Por ejemplo, necesitamos establecer nuevas parroquias y misiones. La Iglesia está creciendo y nuestras estructuras deben adaptarse a las nuevas realidades que se desarrollan frente a nosotros. También necesitamos encontrar maneras de hacer que los católicos que se han alejado de la participación activa en nuestras parroquias se sientan invitados y recibidos en nuestras comunidades. También debemos dedicarnos a apoyarnos mutuamente en nuestras luchas cotidianas como familias y como individuos. Esto implica una renovación del celo en nuestra evangelización, catequesis y preparación sacramental, porque la gracia del Señor nos sostiene.

En octubre, los sacerdotes de la diócesis y yo continuaremos nuestras pláticas de planificación estratégica y habrá oportunidades para que los feligreses y las personas que no están presentemente activas en la Iglesia puedan expresar sus preocupaciones y esperanzas. Estamos bendecidos porque recientemente muchas de nuestras parroquias han participado en el Proceso del Encuentro. Es mi esperanza que los frutos de esos encuentros se conviertan en una parte vibrante de nuestra planificación estratégica en los próximos meses. Les pido que busquen oportunidades para participar en las pláticas.

Tal vez algunos de ustedes piensen que esto suena como otro programa de la Iglesia y que poco saldrá de él. Yo no estoy buscando organizar un nuevo programa, sino que busco una reorientación duradera de nuestra perspectiva como católicos, una reorientación que tome en serio el llamado del Papa Francisco por una Iglesia cuyas fibras estén dedicadas a la evangelización, al apoyo de la vida familiar, y a mantener vivas y fuertes las esperanzas de nuestros jóvenes. La obra del clero no debe sustituir el testimonio del pueblo cristiano. Por el contrario, estamos al servicio de proveer al Pueblo Cristiano de los recursos de la gracia, en los sacramentos y en el anuncio del Evangelio, para que todos nosotros podamos ser aquel pueblo al que el Señor llama para anunciar, testimoniar y ser su presencia en el mundo.

Que el Misterio Eucarístico sea nuestra fuerza, que Cristo nuestro Pastor nos guíe siempre, y que las oraciones de la Virgen Madre de Dios y San José nos acompañen siempre.

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On some of the reasons Immigration Reform eludes us.

The following text is an excerpt, somewhat adapted, taken from the lecture I gave "On the politics of human dignity" at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, last spring. The excerpt deals particularly with the impoverishment of moral and political discourse, and how this poverty has thus far prevented us as a nation from formulating a coherent national immigration policy. +df

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Pope Benedict XVI said the following in Caritas in Veritate no 7:

The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbors, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practice this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. This is the institutional path — we might also call it the political path — of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbor directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis.

The political world Catholics in the United States inhabit seems to have no room for the kind of political path of charity Pope Benedict wrote about. Charity has been privatized, and as a result, our pursuit of adequately just solutions to contingent social circumstances has become truncated. Further, moral judgment, as an act of prudential reason, has also been privatized, and this has impact on the character of political judgment in the wider public sphere.

Part of the problem is that individuals' relations to the world outside ourselves are increasingly difficult to account for, apart from willing them. Our wider culture has no basis to talk about mutual concern and compassion apart from the language of purely willed associations. These willed associations resolve to the isolated individual who tends to view relations suspiciously. When social relations are conceived as fundamentally voluntary, they are subject to severance for whatever provocation an encounter might unpleasantly cause. The “I do not want to deal with you” that is an ever present temptation to fallen nature becomes a normative and politically acceptable response.

Catholic moral teaching, including the Social Justice magisterium, presumes a metaphysics of human nature in relation, and proposes a healing and strengthening of these relations by faith, hope, and charity. The Church stubbornly insists that human political judgment cannot prescind from a metaphysically prior existential relatedness of all human beings. When there is no intellectual respect within public discourse for the given of human relatedness, we end up with what Pope Francis calls the culture of indifference. Indifference perceives no moral claim based on relation, and it kills by neglect. In the Church's life this breakdown of relationality is reflected in the privatization of charity, the loss of the sense that in addition to being  an individually willed act of selflessness, it is also a robust gift of social cohesion.

The eclipse of human relationality as a fundamental given of politics and law is the legacy of a post-Kantian search for an expression of law that serves as a kind of imperative derived a priori and applied universally. The tragedy of our age is that the a priori universal that seems to govern our moral/political discourse is that of individual autonomy and the radical freedom of the will. Limitation of freedom by secondary laws is permitted only in so far as the freedom is perceived to cause injury to another. At present the “perception of injury” that society permits to be legally prohibited capriciously excludes vast swaths of the population, from the unborn to the comatose patent, with the poor and the immigrant standing temporally somewhere in between.

In our current social predicament law is conceived as primarily a matter of discerning how to avoid the evils that unrestrained relationality might cause to the good of national sovereignty, community safety and personal rights. This state of affairs is precisely the result of the dropping out of our political consciousness a sense of legally expressed positive norms that govern the prior good of human relationality. Law as aimed at promoting the good ordering of relations, so that goods can be achieved by individuals and families within a community, seems to have passed out of our perception of social order.

We seem also to have lost the public habitual ability to derive principles and then discern their applicability within contingent historical circumstances. Politics, and by extension, law, are increasingly perceived as ahistorical. This is to say, the principles, or facts, once assembled, are treated as universal imperatives that admit of no adaptation to particular historical circumstances. The law is the law. If we seem to be facing a choice between extremes, between high border walls on one side and open borders on another, it is because the discourse does not have room for integrating principles. Only in a political universe where law is conceived as essentially a collection of universal norms that are prohibitive of evil—evil understood minimally as causing obvious injury to another-- and not also aimed at promoting the good of human relationality, is this impasse possible.

Catholic moral life and thought is essentially integrative, that is to say, it assembles relevant aspects of a human situation and in so doing begins the work of forming an evaluative judgment about how particular situations do or do not attain to the more universal human goods like life, family and work. The move to the particular application is a move of practical reason that assesses goods and circumstances in a prioritized way. This way of thinking and speaking is essentially dialogical and integrative. It flows from a tradition of moral discourse that finds exemplary, though not exclusive, expression in Saint Thomas. The move from the reality of historical humanity, to the consideration of prioritized universal human goods, and then a renewed consideration of how to support these goods among particular peoples is the social analogue to the Thomistic return to the phantasm. Such dialogical movement is a necessary and always needed verification of a rational adequatio ad rem socialem. The move from the particular to the universal back to the particular again is basic in Catholic social teaching. This way of reasoning recognizes that at times particular laws need to change because human circumstances have changed to such an extent that human goods are no longer protected and are in fact imperiled.

The papacy in contemporary times, from Pope Pius XII to Pope Francis, has spoken with increasing urgency about the phenomenon of human migration, and what a Christian and politically responsible response looks like. Most people migrate not because they want to but because the sense they have to in order to survive. The development of the Magisterium on this issue has been largely a matter of expressing how a theological anthropology rooted in the Scriptural tradition lived in the Church (presupposing as it does a metaphysics of human relationality) impacts good political judgement about the social order as it develops and changes. Obviously this teaching precludes an attitude that says "every country is on its own". This aspect of the Social Magisterium responds to a recognition that the primordial goods of human life, family and social cohesion have been radically affected by the development of the modern nation-state and the emergence of post-modern global economic structures. The papal magisterium thus expresses principles, and then asks that the principles be applied by the responsible political authorities in a practical way to the particular, and often shifting conditions on the ground.

The attempt to formulate a cohesive immigration policy in the United States-- a goal that has to date eluded us-- is by its nature an attempt to move toward the particular application of principles. But there is at present no political consensus on principles, nor is there a will to craft a practical policy that aims to integrate human goods. The Church in the United States talks about these principles and proposes the need to integrate them in a practical way that both respects our national sovereignty and also lives up to our responsibilities to peoples beyond our borders in great, often life-threatening distress. Yet, it is at this more particular level of seeking to integrate principles politically that the Church is often told she has no relevance to the conversation. Often our own people do not know what to make of what bishops say about the application of principles to the issue of immigration. And this is because there is no longer much awareness that Church teaching does in fact impact prudential judgment about the public order and is thus relevant to the moral life of a Catholic.

It is important that we understand, however, that if the Church as teacher, and if Catholics in general, cannot engage actively in the articulation of norms that require careful prudential application in law and in practice, then we are, de facto, limiting ourselves to the poverty of the post-Kantian search for ahistorical universal norms I spoke about earlier. The Church does indeed teach norms that admit of no exceptions, but she teaches much more. The culture suffers and persons suffer if we do not also teach about human goods that must be balanced politically in a prioritized way.

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Knowing Saint Thomas

In my spare moments I have begun the long, slow process of re-reading my doctoral thesis. It is now over 17 years old, and I have not really revisited it since my defense. I expect the exercise of re-reading to be both helpful and painful at the same time. The topic of the thesis is focused upon how Saint Thomas read Sacred Scripture, using his unfinished exposition of the Psalms as the basis for the study. Here is how the dissertation begins:

The Vision of Saint Thomas

Santi di Tito, 1593

1. Knowing Thomas

Thomas appeared to Dante in the neighborhood of Peter Lombard, Gratian and Siger of Brabant, near to Anselm, Albert and Bonaventure.⁽¹⁾  The poet shows Thomas and his friends singing the celestial hymn and moving to the prompting rhythm of wisdom.  Thomas gives Dante three discourses, lectures really, all serving to deepen a pilgrim’s taste for the wisdom that comes from charity.  A generation later, Catherine of Siena will hear Thomas’s name in the same Breath with Augustine and Jerome; he would himself have considered this much higher company.  She knew him as a teacher of Scripture, associated with the two great Latin Doctors of Scripture, suffused with the same light of the intellect’s eye that makes all entrance into the bright darkness of the Sacred Text fruitful for the Church: light for the sake of reading, reading for the sake of light.⁽²⁾  Had Thomas heard Catherine’s word while still in his earthly tent, it would more likely have made him sing a Psalm of gratitude to the Father than would even Dante’s depiction of earthly disputes resolved into heavenly paradoxes of charity. Thomas simply thought of himself as a teacher of Scripture, and on Catherine’s hearing, such is also what the Father sees him to be. Dante and Catherine paradigmatically witness to what would become reflected to us as a varied and lively tradition of reading Thomas the teacher, a tradition not so much filled with opposing characterizations, as filled with diverse accounts of the whole taken from a reading of many parts.  This is of course the only way to account for the whole, but the path through the parts yields assorted depictions of the whole exactly reflective of the length and depth of the stops made along the way.  There is almost too much in Thomas for any one laborer to take into account, and for this reason, Catherine had an advantage over Dante.  She did not labor over Thomas so much as she labored over love, and along the way received a clear perception of Thomas’s teaching exactly proportionate to her passion for the One whom Thomas loved and for whom he labored.  Dante would not have begrudged her the advantage, for he knew something about grace and its providential dispositions.  Thomas’s vision of the mysteries that surround and move us has left deeper impressions upon history than even many of his best students realize. The thoughts and expressions of poets and saints sink deeply into time, even if in a hidden way; but as Thomas would tell us, the hiding has its purposes in the divine pedagogy.  John of the Cross, being both poet and saint, seems a particularly strong witness to this hidden side of Thomas’s influence.  This one, too, knew what Thomas saw, in a way similar to the way Thomas saw it.⁽³⁾  The point is though, that John, Catherine and even Dante, did not strive for an “it” or a “what” at all. Always, with Thomas as guide, they sought the One who willed in the unity of the Godhead first to be our end, consenting in his particular flesh to be also our way.  Words, and the thoughts they struggle to convey, prepare the way for love which propels the soul to seek its proper object who is Truth hidden so that He might be revealed, finally, to trained and clear eyes.  Love attains the res.  Lacking Dante’s lyric grace and Catherine’s burning, bursting heart, and bereft of John’s share in both, most of us seeking to learn from Thomas are left to labor over his texts; we study words and history. We wait for critical editions, reliable sources, cogent, reasonable and persuasive arguments. This is as it should be, according to the wise dispositions of graceful providence. But if we seek to catch a glimpse of Thomas’s vision, honestly approaching him on his own terms, we cannot but have the lessons of those loftier souls habitually and quietly in mind.  Labor that does not stretch toward Him whom Thomas loved will never know Thomas in the way he most would want to be known.  

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1:

Paradiso, Canto X through Canto XIII.

2:

Il Dialogo, cp. lxxxiv-lxxxv.

3:

See especially, Romance sobre el evangelio “in principio erat Verbum,” Canción 7.