The Holy Name of Jesus appears four times. "Christ," not once. "Grace" is not to be found. The word "sin" appears four times, three in connection with an apology that the Europeans were so nasty, nothing about individual sin. "Conversion" appears once in the context of social structures. "Change" appears thirty-one times, where have we heard that word before?
Take a look at this one paragraph:
"Today I wish to reflect with you on the change we want and need. You know that recently I wrote about the problems of climate change. But now I would like to speak of change in another sense. Positive change, a change which is good for us, a change – we can say – which is redemptive. Because we need it. I know that you are looking for change, and not just you alone: in my different meetings, in my different travels, I have sensed an expectation, a longing, a yearning for change, in people throughout the world. Even within that ever smaller minority which believes that the present system is beneficial, there is a widespread sense of dissatisfaction and even despondency. Many people are hoping for a change capable of releasing them from the bondage of individualism and the despondency it spawns."
How can there be any change except that based on Our Lord Jesus Christ?
When has a Pope ever spoken in this manner? All that was missing was liberté, égalité, fraternité!
What is most concerning about this speech is that it was not just an off-the-cuff mess that we've become familiar with. It was written down and with footnotes.
The problems of Central and South America are well known. They are not the fault of Europeans who brought the saving news of Christ, the problems is political and economic corruption, criminal domination and a Church which has failed to preach the Truth as clearly seen in the vanishing numbers of faithful, an outright collapse as people leave for other congregations that actually preach about Jesus. Convert the people to Christ and His Church and you will convert the economic and political system.
The liberation theology inspired chickens of the 1970's have come home to roost.
It was a heresy then and it is a heresy now no matter who proclaims it.
The Bishop of Rome's address follows, God help us.
***
Good afternoon!
Several months ago, we met in Rome, and I remember that
first meeting. In the meantime I have kept you in my thoughts and prayers. I am
happy to see you again, here, as you discuss the best ways to overcome the
grave situations of injustice experienced by the excluded throughout our world.
Thank you, President Evo Morales, for your efforts to make this meeting
possible.
During our first meeting in Rome, I sensed something very
beautiful: fraternity, determination, commitment, a thirst for justice. Today,
in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, I sense it once again. I thank you for that. I also
know, from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace headed by Cardinal
Turkson, that many people in the Church feel very close to the popular
movements. That makes me very happy! I am pleased to see the Church opening her
doors to all of you, embracing you, accompanying you and establishing in each
diocese, in every justice and peace commission, a genuine, ongoing and serious
cooperation with popular movements. I ask everyone, bishops, priests and laity,
as well as the social organizations of the urban and rural peripheries, to
deepen this encounter.
Today God has granted that we meet again. The Bible tells us
that God hears the cry of his people, and I wish to join my voice to yours in
calling for land, lodging and labor for all our brothers and sisters. I said it
and I repeat it: these are sacred rights. It is important, it is well worth
fighting for them. May the cry of the excluded be heard in Latin America and
throughout the world.
1. Let us begin by acknowledging that change is needed. Here
I would clarify, lest there be any misunderstanding, that I am speaking about
problems common to all Latin Americans and, more generally, to humanity as a
whole. They are global problems which today no one state can resolve on its
own. With this clarification, I now propose that we ask the following
questions:
Do we realize that something is wrong in a world where there
are so many farmworkers without land, so many families without a home, so many
laborers without rights, so many persons whose dignity is not respected?
Do we realize that something is wrong where so many
senseless wars are being fought and acts of fratricidal violence are taking
place on our very doorstep? Do we realize something is wrong when the soil,
water, air and living creatures of our world are under constant threat?
So let’s not be afraid to say it: we need change; we want
change.
In your letters and in our meetings, you have mentioned the
many forms of exclusion and injustice which you experience in the workplace, in
neighborhoods and throughout the land. They are many and diverse, just as many
and diverse are the ways in which you confront them. Yet there is an invisible
thread joining every one of those forms of exclusion: can we recognize it?
These are not isolated issues. I wonder whether we can see that these
destructive realities are part of a system which has become global. Do we
realize that that system has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with
no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature?
If such is the case, I would insist, let us not be afraid to
say it: we want change, real change, structural change. This system is by now intolerable:
farmworkers find it intolerable, laborers find it intolerable, communities find
it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable … The earth itself – our sister,
Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say – also finds it intolerable.
We want change in our lives, in our neighborhoods, in our
everyday reality. We want a change which can affect the entire world, since
global interdependence calls for global answers to local problems. The
globalization of hope, a hope which springs up from peoples and takes root
among the poor, must replace the globalization of exclusion and indifference!
Today I wish to reflect with you on the change we want and
need. You know that recently I wrote about the problems of climate change. But
now I would like to speak of change in another sense. Positive change, a change
which is good for us, a change – we can say – which is redemptive. Because we
need it. I know that you are looking for change, and not just you alone: in my
different meetings, in my different travels, I have sensed an expectation, a
longing, a yearning for change, in people throughout the world. Even within
that ever smaller minority which believes that the present system is
beneficial, there is a widespread sense of dissatisfaction and even
despondency. Many people are hoping for a change capable of releasing them from
the bondage of individualism and the despondency it spawns.
Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we
are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common
home. Today, the scientific community realizes what the poor have long told us:
harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem. The earth,
entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind
all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of
Caesarea called “the dung of the devil”. An unfettered pursuit of money rules.
The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and
guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire
socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women,
it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we
clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.
I do not need to go on describing the evil effects of this
subtle dictatorship: you are well aware of them. Nor is it enough to point to
the structural causes of today’s social and environmental crisis. We are
suffering from an excess of diagnosis, which at times leads us to multiply
words and to revel in pessimism and negativity. Looking at the daily news we
think that there is nothing to be done, except to take care of ourselves and
the little circle of our family and friends.
What can I do, as collector of paper, old clothes or used
metal, a recycler, about all these problems if I barely make enough money to
put food on the table? What can I do as a craftsman, a street vendor, a
trucker, a downtrodden worker, if I don’t even enjoy workers’ rights? What can
I do, a farmwife, a native woman, a fisher who can hardly fight the domination
of the big corporations? What can I do from my little home, my shanty, my
hamlet, my settlement, when I daily meet with discrimination and
marginalization? What can be done by those students, those young people, those
activists, those missionaries who come to my neighborhood with their hearts
full of hopes and dreams, but without any real solution for my problems? A lot!
They can do a lot. You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged,
can do, and are doing, a lot. I would even say that the future of humanity is
in great measure in your own hands, through your ability to organize and carry
out creative alternatives, through your daily efforts to ensure the three “L’s”
(labor, lodging, land) and through your proactive participation in the great
processes of change on the national, regional and global levels. Don’t lose
heart!
2. You are sowers of change. Here in Bolivia I have heard a
phrase which I like: “process of change”. Change seen not as something which
will one day result from any one political decision or change in social
structure. We know from painful experience that changes of structure which are
not accompanied by a sincere conversion of mind and heart sooner or later end
up in bureaucratization, corruption and failure. That is why I like the image
of a “process”, where the drive to sow, to water seeds which others will see
sprout, replaces the ambition to occupy every available position of power and
to see immediate results. Each of us is just one part of a complex and
differentiated whole, interacting in time: peoples who struggle to find meaning,
a destiny, and to live with dignity, to “live well”.
As members of popular movements, you carry out your work
inspired by fraternal love, which you show in opposing social injustice. When
we look into the eyes of the suffering, when we see the faces of the endangered
campesino, the poor laborer, the downtrodden native, the homeless family, the
persecuted migrant, the unemployed young person, the exploited child, the
mother who lost her child in a shootout because the barrio was occupied by
drugdealers, the father who lost his daughter to enslavement…. when we think of
all those names and faces, our hearts break because of so much sorrow and pain.
And we are deeply moved…. We are moved because “we have seen and heard” not a
cold statistic but the pain of a suffering humanity, our own pain, our own
flesh. This is something quite different than abstract theorizing or eloquent
indignation. It moves us; it makes us attentive to others in an effort to move
forward together. That emotion which turns into community action is not
something which can be understood by reason alone: it has a surplus of meaning
which only peoples understand, and it gives a special feel to genuine popular
movements.
Each day you are caught up in the storms of people’s lives.
You have told me about their causes, you have shared your own struggles with
me, and I thank you for that. You, dear brothers and sisters, often work on
little things, in local situations, amid forms of injustice which you do not
simply accept but actively resist, standing up to an idolatrous system which
excludes, debases and kills. I have seen you work tirelessly for the soil and
crops of campesinos, for their lands and communities, for a more dignified
local economy, for the urbanization of their homes and settlements; you have
helped them build their own homes and develop neighborhood infrastructures. You
have also promoted any number of community activities aimed at reaffirming so
elementary and undeniably necessary a right as that of the three “L’s”: land, lodging
and labor.
This rootedness in the barrio, the land, the office, the
labor union, this ability to see yourselves in the faces of others, this daily
proximity to their share of troubles and their little acts of heroism: this is
what enables you to practice the commandment of love, not on the basis of ideas
or concepts, but rather on the basis of genuine interpersonal encounter. We do
not love concepts or ideas; we love people... Commitment, true commitment, is
born of the love of men and women, of children and the elderly, of peoples and
communities… of names and faces which fill our hearts. From those seeds of hope
patiently sown in the forgotten fringes of our planet, from those seedlings of
a tenderness which struggles to grow amid the shadows of exclusion, great trees
will spring up, great groves of hope to give oxygen to our world.
So I am pleased to see that you are working at close hand to
care for those seedlings, but at the same time, with a broader perspective, to
protect the entire forest. Your work is carried out against a horizon which,
while concentrating on your own specific area, also aims to resolve at their
root the more general problems of poverty, inequality and exclusion.
I congratulate you on this. It is essential that, along with
the defense of their legitimate rights, peoples and their social organizations
be able to construct a humane alternative to a globalization which excludes.
You are sowers of change. May God grant you the courage, joy, perseverance and
passion to continue sowing. Be assured that sooner or later we will see its
fruits. Of the leadership I ask this: be creative and never stop being rooted
in local realities, since the father of lies is able to usurp noble words, to
promote intellectual fads and to adopt ideological stances. But if you build on
solid foundations, on real needs and on the lived experience of your brothers
and sisters, of campesinos and natives, of excluded workers and marginalized
families, you will surely be on the right path.
The Church cannot and must not remain aloof from this
process in her proclamation of the Gospel. Many priests and pastoral workers
carry out an enormous work of accompanying and promoting the excluded
throughout the world, alongside cooperatives, favouring businesses, providing
housing, working generously in the fields of health, sports and education. I am
convinced that respectful cooperation with the popular movements can revitalize
these efforts and strengthen processes of change.
Let us always have at heart the Virgin Mary, a humble girl
from small people lost on the fringes of a great empire, a homeless mother who
could turn a stable for beasts into a home for Jesus with just a few swaddling
clothes and much tenderness. Mary is a sign of hope for peoples suffering the
birth pangs of justice. I pray that Our Lady of Mount Carmel, patroness of
Bolivia, will allow this meeting of ours to be a leaven of change.
3. Lastly, I would like us all to consider some important
tasks for the present historical moment, since we desire a positive change for
the benefit of all our brothers and sisters. We know this. We desire change
enriched by the collaboration of governments, popular movements and other
social forces. This too we know. But it is not so easy to define the content of
change – in other words, a social program which can embody this project of
fraternity and justice which we are seeking. So don’t expect a recipe from this
Pope. Neither the Pope nor the Church have a monopoly on the interpretation of
social reality or the proposal of solutions to contemporary issues. I dare say
that no recipe exists. History is made by each generation as it follows in the
footsteps of those preceding it, as it seeks its own path and respects the
values which God has placed in the human heart.
I would like, all the same, to propose three great tasks
which demand a decisive and shared contribution from popular movements:
3.1 The first task is to put the economy at the service of
peoples. Human beings and nature must not be at the service of money. Let us
say NO to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather
than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes. That economy destroys
Mother Earth.
The economy should not be a mechanism for accumulating
goods, but rather the proper administration of our common home. This entails a
commitment to care for that home and to the fitting distribution of its goods
among all. It is not only about ensuring a supply of food or “decent
sustenance”. Nor, although this is already a great step forward, is it to
guarantee the three “L’s” of land, lodging and labor for which you are working.
A truly communitarian economy, one might say an economy of Christian inspiration,
must ensure peoples’ dignity and their “general, temporal welfare and
prosperity”.[1] This includes the three “L’s”, but also access to education,
health care, new technologies, artistic and cultural manifestations,
communications, sports and recreation. A just economy must create the
conditions for everyone to be able to enjoy a childhood without want, to
develop their talents when young, to work with full rights during their active
years and to enjoy a dignified retirement as they grow older. It is an economy
where human beings, in harmony with nature, structure the entire system of
production and distribution in such a way that the abilities and needs of each
individual find suitable expression in social life. You, and other peoples as
well, sum up this desire in a simple and beautiful expression: “to live well”.
Such an economy is not only desirable and necessary, but
also possible. It is no utopia or chimera. It is an extremely realistic
prospect. We can achieve it. The available resources in our world, the fruit of
the intergenerational labors of peoples and the gifts of creation, more than
suffice for the integral development of “each man and the whole man”.[2] The
problem is of another kind. There exists a system with different aims. A system
which, while irresponsibly accelerating the pace of production, while using
industrial and agricultural methods which damage Mother Earth in the name of
“productivity”, continues to deny many millions of our brothers and sisters
their most elementary economic, social and cultural rights. This system runs
counter to the plan of Jesus.
Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth
and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For
Christians, the responsibility is even greater: it is a commandment. It is
about giving to the poor and to peoples what is theirs by right. The universal
destination of goods is not a figure of speech found in the Church’s social
teaching. It is a reality prior to private property. Property, especially when
it affects natural resources, must always serve the needs of peoples. And those
needs are not restricted to consumption. It is not enough to let a few drops
fall whenever the poor shake a cup which never runs over by itself. Welfare
programs geared to certain emergencies can only be considered temporary
responses. They will never be able to replace true inclusion, an inclusion
which provides worthy, free, creative, participatory and solidary work.
Along this path, popular movements play an essential role,
not only by making demands and lodging protests, but even more basically by
being creative. You are social poets: creators of work, builders of housing,
producers of food, above all for people left behind by the world market.
I have seen at first hand a variety of experiences where
workers united in cooperatives and other forms of community organization were
able to create work where there were only crumbs of an idolatrous economy.
Recuperated businesses, local fairs and cooperatives of paper collectors are
examples of that popular economy which is born of exclusion and which, slowly,
patiently and resolutely adopts solidary forms which dignify it. How different
this is than the situation which results when those left behind by the formal
market are exploited like slaves!
Governments which make it their responsibility to put the
economy at the service of peoples must promote the strengthening, improvement,
coordination and expansion of these forms of popular economy and communitarian
production. This entails bettering the processes of work, providing adequate
infrastructures and guaranteeing workers their full rights in this alternative
sector. When the state and social organizations join in working for the three
“L’s”, the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity come into play; and these
allow the common good to be achieved in a full and participatory democracy.
3.2. The second task is to unite our peoples on the path of
peace and justice.
The world’s peoples want to be artisans of their own destiny.
They want to advance peacefully towards justice. They do not want forms of
tutelage or interference by which those with greater power subordinate those
with less. They want their culture, their language, their social processes and
their religious traditions to be respected. No actual or established power has
the right to deprive peoples of the full exercise of their sovereignty.
Whenever they do so, we see the rise of new forms of colonialism which
seriously prejudice the possibility of peace and justice. For “peace is founded
not only on respect for human rights but also on respect for the rights of
peoples, in particular the right to independence”.[3]
The peoples of Latin America fought to gain their political
independence and for almost two centuries their history has been dramatic and
filled with contradictions, as they have striven to achieve full independence.
In recent years, after any number of misunderstandings, many
Latin American countries have seen the growth of fraternity between their peoples.
The governments of the region have pooled forces in order to ensure respect for
the sovereignty of their own countries and the entire region, which our
forebears so beautifully called the “greater country”. I ask you, my brothers
and sisters of the popular movements, to foster and increase this unity. It is
necessary to maintain unity in the face of every effort to divide, if the
region is to grow in peace and justice.
Despite the progress made, there are factors which still
threaten this equitable human development and restrict the sovereignty of the
countries of the “greater country” and other areas of our planet. The new
colonialism takes on different faces. At times it appears as the anonymous
influence of mammon: corporations, loan agencies, certain “free trade”
treaties, and the imposition of measures of “austerity” which always tighten
the belt of workers and the poor. The bishops of Latin America denounce this
with utter clarity in the Aparecida Document, stating that “financial
institutions and transnational companies are becoming stronger to the point
that local economies are subordinated, especially weakening the local states,
which seem ever more powerless to carry out development projects in the service
of their populations”.[4] At other times, under the noble guise of battling
corruption, the narcotics trade and terrorism – grave evils of our time which
call for coordinated international action – we see states being saddled with
measures which have little to do with the resolution of these problems and
which not infrequently worsen matters.
Similarly, the monopolizing of the communications media,
which would impose alienating examples of consumerism and a certain cultural
uniformity, is another one of the forms taken by the new colonialism. It is
ideological colonialism. As the African bishops have observed, poor countries
are often treated like “parts of a machine, cogs on a gigantic wheel”.[5]
It must be acknowledged that none of the grave problems of
humanity can be resolved without interaction between states and peoples at the
international level. Every significant action carried out in one part of the
planet has universal, ecological, social and cultural repercussions. Even crime
and violence have become globalized. Consequently, no government can act
independently of a common responsibility. If we truly desire positive change,
we have to humbly accept our interdependence. Interaction, however, is not the
same as imposition; it is not the subordination of some to serve the interests
of others. Colonialism, both old and new, which reduces poor countries to mere
providers of raw material and cheap labor, engenders violence, poverty, forced
migrations and all the evils which go hand in hand with these, precisely
because, by placing the periphery at the service of the center, it denies those
countries the right to an integral development. That is inequality, and
inequality generates a violence which no police, military, or intelligence
resources can control.
Let us say NO to forms of colonialism old and new. Let us
say YES to the encounter between peoples and cultures. Blessed are the
peacemakers.
Here I wish to bring up an important issue. Some may rightly
say, “When the Pope speaks of colonialism, he overlooks certain actions of the
Church”. I say this to you with regret: many grave sins were committed against
the native peoples of America in the name of God. My predecessors acknowledged
this, CELAM has said it, and I too wish to say it. Like Saint John Paul II, I
ask that the Church “kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and
present sins of her sons and daughters”.[6] I would also say, and here I wish
to be quite clear, as was Saint John Paul II: I humbly ask forgiveness, not
only for the offenses of the Church herself, but also for crimes committed
against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.
I also ask everyone, believers and nonbelievers alike, to
think of those many bishops, priests and laity who preached and continue to
preach the Good News of Jesus with courage and meekness, respectfully and
pacifically; who left behind them impressive works of human promotion and of
love, often standing alongside the native peoples or accompanying their popular
movements even to the point of martyrdom. The Church, her sons and daughters,
are part of the identity of the peoples of Latin America. An identity which
here, as in other countries, some powers are committed to erasing, at times
because our faith is revolutionary, because our faith challenges the tyranny of
mammon. Today we are dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in
the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed
for their faith in Jesus. This too needs to be denounced: in this third world
war, waged peacemeal, which we are now experiencing, a form of genocide is
taking place, and it must end.
To our brothers and sisters in the Latin American indigenous
movement, allow me to express my deep affection and appreciation of their
efforts to bring peoples and cultures together in a form of coexistence which I
would call polyhedric, where each group preserves its own identity by building
together a plurality which does not threaten but rather reinforces unity. Your
quest for an interculturalism, which combines the defense of the rights of the
native peoples with respect for the territorial integrity of states, is for all
of us a source of enrichment and encouragement.
3.3. The third task, perhaps the most important facing us
today, is to defend Mother Earth.
Our common home is being pillaged, laid waste and harmed
with impunity. Cowardice in defending it is a grave sin. We see with growing
disappointment how one international summit after another takes place without
any significant result. There exists a clear, definite and pressing ethical
imperative to implement what has not yet been done. We cannot allow certain
interests – interests which are global but not universal – to take over, to
dominate states and international organizations, and to continue destroying
creation. People and their movements are called to cry out, to mobilize and to
demand – peacefully, but firmly – that appropriate and urgently-needed measures
be taken. I ask you, in the name of God, to defend Mother Earth. I have duly
addressed this issue in my Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’.
4. In conclusion, I would like to repeat: the future of humanity
does not lie solely in the hands of great leaders, the great powers and the
elites. It is fundamentally in the hands of peoples and in their ability to
organize. It is in their hands, which can guide with humility and conviction
this process of change. I am with you. Let us together say from the heart: no
family without lodging, no rural worker without land, no laborer without
rights, no people without sovereignty, no individual without dignity, no child
without childhood, no young person without a future, no elderly person without
a venerable old age. Keep up your struggle and, please, take great care of
Mother Earth. I pray for you and with you, and I ask God our Father to
accompany you and to bless you, to fill you with his love and defend you on your
way by granting you in abundance that strength which keeps us on our feet: that
strength is hope, the hope which does not disappoint. Thank you and I ask you,
please, to pray for me.
FOOTNOTES
[1] JOHN XXIII, Encyclical Mater et Magistra (15 May 1961), 3:
AAS 53 (1961), 402.
[2] PAUL VI, Encyclical Populorum Progressio (26 March
1967), 14: AAS 59 (1967), 264.
[3] PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE, Compendium of
the Social Doctrine of the Church, 157.
[4] FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND
CARIBBEAN BISHOPS, Aparecida Document (29 June 2007), 66.
[5] JOHN PAUL II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Ecclesia in Africa (14 September 1995), 52: AAS 88 (1996), 32-22; ID.,
Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (30 December 1987), 22: AAS 80
(1988), 539.
[6] Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000
Incarnationis Mysterium (29 November 1998),11: AAS 91 (1999), 139-141.
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