POVERTY AND SOLIDARITY
(By: Felipe Zegarra)
(Felipe Zegarra is a Peruvian diocesan priest, Professor of Theology at the catholic University of Peru and Pastor of a huge working-class parish in the dock area of Port Callao, Lima. The following is his reflection on the evangelical values and their contribution to social issues.)
The starting point of this reflection is the growing level of personal and community awareness within the new context, which, I feel, makes it necessary for us to rethink our concept of ethics, using solidarity as the central or principal organizing element of life. Solidarity is a good alternative for the overused word “compassion”, allowing us to recover the original meaning of the deep and passionate love of the God of the Bible and his “allies” who identify with the passion of others, I want to stress Pope John Paul II’s valuable insistence on an issue that has been present in his writing from his first Encyclical to his 1996 Lenten message. I will return to this point. I believe it is necessary to make a clarification: I am a middle-class Christian with a good ability to read and a university education. I am almost 60 years old and for the past 20 years I have lived in a poor neighborhood in Callao. It is the second poorest neighborhood in the metropolitan area of Lima, according to the 1981 and 1993 national censuses. The following pages, while not perfect, contain the personal and pastoral experiences I have lived over the years. The poor today Discussing poverty is absolutely pertinent if we agree with Puebla that this serious problem is not merely economic (“extreme poverty”), but human (concrete faces”) and Christian (“suffering faces of Christ”). It is also decisive because many people have learned that by confronting this issue they can objectively evaluate the situation in which we live and the way we react to it. Who are the poor today is a question that not only needs to be added to the list of “faces” of the conferences in Puebla and Santo Domingo, but the poor need to be identified with more precision: who are they, how are they, how do they think culturally, who are their potential allies? I do not, however, intend to answer all these questions here. I believe that we need to prioritize some groups. While this list is not exhaustive, I am going to mention some groups that we see on a daily basis. «Among the elderly, those retired people, who have worked hard all their lives and who suddenly find their possibilities of survival jeopardized because their professional and economic contributions, as well as their family responsibilities, are no longer being taken into account. «Children under the age of seven who are not incorporated into the educational system, which has been demonstrated in some urban zones and rural areas through the comparative indices of illiteracy in children over the age of five. These children run the risk of being abandoned and left behind. «The terminally ill, many times forgotten by their families and the health care system, and in many cases simply treated as burdens. Among these we see people with tuberculosis – Peru has the highest rate of tuberculosis infection in Latin America – and people who have AIDS, a serious disease made worse by some who say it is a “curse from God” and others who, despite the information on infection, avoid people with the disease more than they would those possessed by the devil. «Real and presumed gangs of youngsters who are blamed by adults, for so many social ills without analyzing the personal and generational causes that push young people toward this in urban areas, “the gloomy uprising” that Jose Maria Arguedas wrote about. In reality, they are the young faces of exclusion and frustration, faced with a lack of options and possibilities. Although they are not close-by, I remember the peasants at every meal and see it as a duty to include them in this list, particularly those in the isolated areas of the country, who are forgotten by the stubborn will of “total domination”. What is certain is that beyond determined categories or groups of people, who live in a marginal district in greater Lima, there is a notable and growing difference of what is talked about and experienced there and what can be seen in one of the Wong supermarkets or in the upscale Camino Real shopping mall. While I am not going to include precise information and analysis, I want to point out that world-wide in 1960 the income difference between the richest 20 percent of the population and the poorest 20 percent was 30 times, by 1990 the difference was 63 times – it has more than doubled. In Peru, this difference is evident. Poverty and exclusion are realities that intertwine. Poverty threatens society with increased dehumanization. Although there is stubborn opposition to admitting it, poverty is not only an economic issue, but it affects people in every sense and at the most intimate level – their dignity. “Total domination: is poverty’s principal characteristic because it humiliates and annuls one’s will. Phrases we hear so often, “that’s the way it is”, it’s God’s will”, and ‘what could I do?” show that the people who are excluded believe that it is practically impossible to think about alternatives and even less to create them. Happily, there are people who are searching and there seems to be a growing awareness in respect to poverty. The following document demonstrates this awareness. |
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The reality of hunger: stigma of the world today
In his 1996 Lenten Message, the Pope wanted to think about the extensive reality of hunger. The text that gives the article its title (Mt 14:16) does not correspond to the liturgy for Holy Week. The Lenten liturgy from Matthew (25:31-46), which is alluded to, appears on Monday of the first week of Lent. In addition, the date of the document is surprising early, it was released nearly six months before Ash Wednesday. All of this indicates that the document was meant to communicate to a wide audience the Pope’s huge concern. The Message places us with the context of Christian definition and demand by referring to the “Lenten journey” as a period of renovation. The Pope is even more precise when he talks to us about “a path of dynamic and creative reflection” and ‘a path of love that opens the spirit of believers to their brothers and sisters, guiding them toward God.” He sets forth the fundamental issue of following Jesus Christ, Which the Latin American Church has recovered in recent years, for a new spirituality and authenticity in the life of Christians. Discussing the problem of hunger does not stop the Pope from having a broad vision that is also tied to daily life: “In our daily lives we have the chance to come across the hungry, thirsty, sick, marginalized and the emigrants. During Lent we are invited to look more closely at the faces of the suffering, faces that give witness to the challenge of poverty in our time.” It is easy to find in this document the influence of the Puebla and Santo Domingo conferences and the inspiring passage from the parable of the judgement. The issue is massive and the Pope does not try to skirt the problem. He reminds us that Matthew, mark and Luke mention “give them to eat” in their recounting of the “multiplying” of the bread. The Pope adds: “All of us today… probably do not have sufficient means to attend to the needs of close to 800 million people who are hungry and malnourished, who are fighting to survive on the threshold of the 21st century”. He continues with a recognition of the challenge: “What should we do then? Leave things the way they are, resigned to our impotence?” It should not be like this.” The mass of hungry people, made up of children, women, the elderly, emigrants and the unemployed raise their cry of pain to us. They beg us to hear them. How can our ears and hearts not attend to this cry, offering up those five pieces of bread and fish that God deposited in our hands. We can all do something for them”. It is urgent, then, that “we carry out significance and concrete acts that are capable of multiplying the few pieces of bread and fish that we have”. The Pope invites us to recover our ethics, the effectiveness of love itself. “How can we not feel in our souls a sense of intimate rebellion?” “How can we not feel affected by a spontaneous impulse to Christian charity?” Isolated and individual efforts, however, are not enough: the enormity of the drama (we can remember Rwanda) demands the organized responses of society. More precisely, “to offer generous support to the organizations and movements that spring up to alleviate the suffering of those who run the risk of dying because of a lack of food”. The insufficiency of governmental or international programmes leads the Pope to once again call for a strengthening of civil society and its characteristics institutions, both old and new. The answer of an organized society is possible because “the earth is blessed with the necessary resources to feed all of humankind”. We need to unleash all of the energies of intelligence while incorporating the values of justice, particularly solidarity. We are not talking about a utopia, in terms of a dream that cannot be achieved, because there exits a strong Gospel call to conversion. ‘This project of participation and solidarity is an extraordinary reality”, which is demonstrated by the work of many people, above all women in their soup kitchens, Glass of Milk programmes, community health posts, informal education groups for children, self-management workshops, micro enterprises, etc. I am thinking about a woman who is just over 40. She is the mother and grand-mother to three children. Today she is fighting against two illnesses that are serious and are pitted against each other and which should have forced her to stop all of her activities. She is resisting because habits die hard. She began 15 years ago in a Mother’s club. She became one of the new breed of leaders, with solidarity, democratic and with a great desire to learn. She began working in a grassroots health care post, and when the crisis worsened she joined a soup kitchen. In 1990, with the difficulties getting worse, she was called to form part of a parish Caritas group. She came down with the more serious of her diseases when she was working in the soup kitchen, health post and Caritas simultaneously. I forgot to say that from the beginning she was part of the parish catechetic programme, worked with the adult confirmation programme and in 1995 on the First Communion for young adults programme. She is one of a kind, but she makes me think of many other women and young people. The Lenten Message concludes with a comment, which is a long-term commitment. “Authentic solidarity is not improvised, it is achieved only through patient and responsible work that is undertaken from infancy, the kind of work that becomes a mental habit of the person and involves different fields of action and responsibility. There needs to be a general process of awareness raising that is capable of reaching the entire society”. Awareness, formation, etc., are terms that highlight perspective for the long term, they are more historic and current, and the churches and Christians need to understand them through faith with creative and initiative, and together with all people of “good will”. Reading this important obligation makes us remember the energy with which the pope offered the inaugural address at the meeting of the Latin American bishops in Santo Domingo, which marked the 500th anniversary of the arrival of the first Europeans to the Americas”. We need to give value to the new ideal of solidarity in the face of the old will of domination”. Because of his repeated reference to the same issue it would seem that Pope John Paul II is campaigning. In the Christian demand there is good reason for this. “Recover the meaning of the human person” In the end, this is what it means and it is the goal that solidarity points to every. Located on the ethical plane, it corresponds to an act interdependence and is characterized by the “common good” in its contemporary sense that benefits each and every one of us without any kind of discrimination. Unified by these efforts of looking for the common good, together with the pope we can talk about different ways of doing this: solidarity among workers (a huge number of human beings) and among the poor and poor nations; and solidarity “with” the poorest of the poor, which is only possible when there is a clear awareness of the dignity of each human person and an effective recognition of abilities. This is central in the message of Jesus Christ and in the best tradition of modernity. The Letter to the Hebrews is radical when it calls on us to remember that “we have blood and flesh in common” (2:14). Based on the Christian tradition that was common to them, and alluding to the discussion between different concepts of law (positivist, naturalist), the Anglo-Americans affirmed in 1776 that “all men are born equal”. And the member States of the United Nations stated in 1948, from a perspective that was more plural, that all human beings “given that they possess reason and consciousness, should act fraternally to one another”. It is true that there is a huge gap between what is said and what is done, and that many decades have passed since this last document was signed, so we need to ask ourselves honestly how much has been done and how much more do we need to do to value ourselves and our neighbors, and our dignity as rational beings, created by God in his own image and whom he calls his children. Questioning our attitudes and initiatives is even more intense if we add a theological dimension of profound biblical roots: a commitment to the poor, which has extended to all Christians from the reflection of the Churches in Latin America and which is placed in the hearts of Christians as a fundamental criteria. From the excluded According to the humane passage in Matthew, “the smallest”, the despised, are recognized as “my brother” by Jesus Christ, who invites us to do the same with each human being and with even more force for believers (cf. Mt. 25:40). The rapid and genuine attention to the needs of the poor is a criteria by which we are measures: “in the autumn of life we will be judged by love”, commented Ct John of the Cross. Despite the well-publicized process of globalization, the often-mentioned crisis of paradigms, etc., and beyond appearances, the preferential option for the poor continues to be valid. This is seen by the insistence with which Pope John Paul II and the national and continental church continue to return to the issue. Meeting in Puebla in 1979, the Latin American Bishops, before citing Matthew 25:40, said clearly that it was “from the poor” that we would arrive at a universal truth, an inclusive movement, that would bring us all together. “Our pastoral concerns for the humblest members, filled with a human realism, does not exclude from our thoughts or hearts other representatives of the areas in which we live. On the contrary, they are serious and opportune warnings that the gaps should not be allowed to grow, and the Spirit of God is not forgotten in the Latin American family. And because we believe that the revision of the religious and moral behavior of men should be reflected in the political and economic processes of our countries, we invite all people, without distinction of class, to accept and assume the cause of the poor as if they were accepting and assuming their own cause, the cause of Jesus Christ himself”. The principle of universality from the particularity that the God of orphans, widows and strangers highlighted in the history of salvation and which constitutes a series of warnings against vision and actions of naïve universalism that is not aware of the reality of poverty, humiliation and exclusion. Social value of self- esteem The first thing that must be done “with works and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18) is to encourage the affirmation of the individual. But we need to be careful that self- esteem, an issue and contribution of contemporary society, does not lead to individualism. Hobbes and his followers during their times, the broadest philosophical tradition from the end of the 18th century, is aimed at understanding that subjectively is not equal to intimacy, but is the true foundation of Intersubjectivity, of valuing others, of health and desirable interpersonal relations. “Love of self” and “general will” (Rousseau), the human being as an end (Kant), self-awareness and mutual recognition (Hegel), reciprocity of consciousness (Nedoncelle), life in dialogue (Buber), personalism (mounier), humanism from the “condemned of the earth” (Fanon and Sarte),’from the other” (Levinas), communicative action (Habemas), neo- communitarianism (Scanonne), are good examples of this. One of the texts that is weighed down with modernity proposes: “work in such a way that you take humanity, both in your own person as well as in any other person, always as an end and never as a means” (Kant). Reading this it is easy to call upon the “golden rule” of love: “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you: for this is the meaning of the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 7:12). In the end, the first expression of the rule of love applies: love your neighbor as you would yourself (cf. Mt. 22:39); he who loves and accepts this without serious complexes is capable of loving others and is called to do so. In the development of revelation, the demand that is made of Jesus is a phase whose completion, animated by the Spirit of God, leads to the ultimate invitation of the Easter mystery: “love each other as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34) in which the force of the demand is far outweighed by the recognition of the gift received: a love “to the extreme” (Jn 13:1; 15: 12-13). |
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In search of human realization
The economists of our time and some international organizations are proposing a more integral and radical vision, which is more human in its development. The proposed objective is not the mere multiplication of goods, but the recognition of personal beings who are protagonists in their own history. They talk, with new accents, about human development from the perspective of multiple needs and a wide spectrum, and of abilities that are diverse and valuable. The challenge should be assumed without exception, as the old maxim says: “if some do not enter the city I remain outside:, far removed from all exclusive systems and mechanisms. Jesus himself gave us an example: “he suffered his Passion outside the holy city” (Heb 13:12). The challenge to those who want to confront poverty is very great because it means getting involved for life and “investing” professional and personal skills in an open war against poverty and in solidarity with the poor. The vision of those who still believe that “nothing good can come from the poor” is distorted. Civilization was built thanks to contributions of the barbarians, the thoughts and actions of people who were supposedly savages. Maybe Pope John Paul II and the Bishops thought of them when they called on us to build a truly alternative development. “set the foundation for an economy that is solidarity, real and efficient without forgetting the corresponding creation of socio-economic models that brings together free initiative, the creativity of people and groups, the moderating function of the State”, taking into account the most vulnerable groups of humankind. Capable of governing, capable of reasoning” Through an association of ideas I will conclude by returning to Bartolome de las Casas who, when nearly 80 years old, summarized his Apologetica Historia Samaria, saying to all the Spanish conquers who had contact with the American Indians: “As barbaric as they are, so are we.” This phrase retains all of its force now that enthnocentricism has reared against ‘Latinos” and “Sudacas”, and is even more evident when we take into account how people feel, how others who “are nor like oneself for reasons of skin colour, ethnicity, social class and, above all, economic position. I am convinced that those who have shown themselves capable of tenacious resistance and who have even appropriated cultural elements from those who have come from outside; that is, those who are backed by authentic culture (as Arguedas affirmed and proved), are able to grow in intelligence and humanity in this new moment in history. The condition is uniting the wills and abilities of many people (why not of everyone?) around a great project of “learning to learn” and above all “learning to be” carried simultaneously with the free expression of each one of us and the unleashing of abilities and values in the task of trying to solve the authentic needs of the human species. The Pope has called us to this as church and as individuals. It is urgent and necessary, but also valuable and gratifying (in the strong, theological and spiritual sense of the word) to continue looking together, day after day and for primordial and contemporary reasons, for the paths that will allow us to move toward a more profound life of solidarity, fellowship and, finally, in communion. Ref. LADOC, Vol. XXVII, Nov./Dec. 1996. http://www.sedos.org/english/zegarra.htm |
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