La-Civilta-Catto

CONTENTS 0319

BEATUS POPULUS, CUIUS DOMINUS DEUS EIUS

All rights reserved. Except for any fair Editorial Board dealing permitted under the Hong Kong Antonio Spadaro, SJ – Director Copyright Ordinance, no part of this Giancarlo Pani, SJ – Vice-Director publication may be reproduced by any Domenico Ronchitelli, SJ – Senior Editor means without prior permission. Inquiries Giovanni Cucci, SJ, Diego Fares, SJ should be made to the publisher. Francesco Occhetta, SJ, Giovanni Sale, SJ Claudio Zonta, SJ Title: La Civiltà Cattolica, English Edition Federico Lombardi, SJ

ISSN: 2207-2446 Emeritus editors Virgilio Fantuzzi, SJ ISBN: Giandomenico Mucci, SJ 978-988-79387-6-7 (paperback) GianPaolo Salvini, SJ 978-988-79387-7-4 (ebook) 978-988-79387-8-1 (kindle) Contributing Editor Luke Hansen, SJ Published in Hong Kong by UCAN Services Ltd. Contributors George Ruyssen, SJ (Belgium) P.O. Box 69626, Kwun Tong, Fernando de la Iglesia Viguiristi, SJ (Spain) Hong Kong Drew Christiansen, SJ (USA) Phone: +852 2727 2018 Andrea Vicini, SJ (USA) Fax: +852 2772 7656 www.ucanews.com David Neuhaus, SJ (Israel) Camillo Ripamonti, SJ (Italy) Publishers: Michael Kelly, SJ and Vladimir Pachkow, SJ (Russia) Robert Barber Arturo Peraza, SJ (Venezuela) Production Manager: Bert Daelemans, SJ (Belgium) Grithanai Napasrapiwong Thomas Reese, SJ (USA) Rangsan Panpairee Paul Soukup, SJ (USA) Friedhelm Mennekes, SJ (Germany) Marcel Uwineza, SJ (Rwanda) Marc Rastoin, SJ (France) Joseph You Guo Jiang, SJ (China) CONTENTS 0319

15 March 2019 Monthly Year 3

1 The Priesthood of Christ and Other Religions Gerald O’Collins, SJ

13 Catholic Social Teaching in China: A Role for Business Ethics Stephan Rothlin, SJ

25 Money and Happiness Giovanni Cucci, SJ

38 How to Communicate in a Polarized Society Diego Fares, SJ - Austen Ivereigh

53 A New Crisis between Russia and Ukraine Giovanni Sale, SJ

67 ‘Every Morning the World is Created’ Nature and transcendence in the poetry of Mary Oliver Antonio Spadaro, SJ - Elena Buia

80 Human Rights in Amazonia Arturo Peraza, SJ

94 The Way of Ignatius: A spiritual portrait of dialectical oppositions Maurice Giuliani, SJ ABSTRACTS

ARTICLE 1 THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST AND OTHER RELIGIONS

Gerald O’Collins, SJ

This article presents the teachings of Vatican II and the New Testament that illustrate the priesthood of Christ and its importance for the salvation of all human beings. Some of that testimony is explicit (Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Letter to the Hebrews); some of the testimony is expressed equivalently (Paul and John). It is high time for this testimony about the priesthood of Christ to be incorporated into the theology of religions. That would rework the theology of religions into new shape and help change this discipline into a richer Christology of religions. The author is professor emeritus of fundamental theology at the Gregorian University.

ARTICLE 13 CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN CHINA: A ROLE FOR BUSINESS ETHICS

Stephan Rothlin, SJ

The article consists of two parts. First, in order to highlight the role of the Church’s social doctrine in the construction of a framework for international business ethics, we revisit the document “The Vocation of the Business Leader” published by the then Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in 2011 and recently translated into Chinese. Second, it shows how the substance of the Church’s social doctrine can agree with Confucian moral philosophy, specifically with modalities that assure an improvement in international commercial ethics in China. The author is the director of the Macau Ricci Institute, China.

ABSTRACTS

ARTICLE 25 MONEY AND HAPPINESS

Giovanni Cucci, SJ

One of the most deeply rooted symbols in people’s imagination today is the association between happiness and wealth with its many derivatives (consumerism, power and accumulation). Yet this axiom is not only false, it is also one of the major causes of unhappiness. This article presents some detrimental cultural and social consequences of this mentality, also in light of research carried out in the psychological sphere. These all arrive at the same conclusion attributed to Jesus: “There is more joy in giving than in receiving.” Even so, trust in the binomial of happiness and possession-of- goods shows no sign of relenting. It is a typical example of what researchers call “intellectual distortion.”

ARTICLE 38 HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN A POLARIZED SOCIETY

Diego Fares, SJ - Austen Ivereigh

How can we be good communicators when all public and private discourse tends toward polarization? Pope Francis proposes a strategy with four elements. First, do not argue with those who accuse and try to polarize. Second, avoid getting dragged into false contradictions. Next, with deeds more than words, say yes to mercy as the highest paradigm; and finally, do so in a “maternal dialect” that reaches the heart of every person in their own culture. Pope Francis wrote to the Chilean bishops: “Brothers, ideas are to be argued, situations to be discerned. We are gathered to discern, not to argue.” The article was written by Fr. Diego Fares and Austen Ivereigh, journalist and author of The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope. ABSTRACTS

FOCUS 53 A NEW CRISIS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

Giovanni Sale, SJ

PROFILE 67 ‘EVERY MORNING THE WORLD IS CREATED’ NATURE AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POETRY OF MARY OLIVER Antonio Spadaro, SJ - Elena Buia

Mary Oliver, one of the most widely read and appreciated poets in the United States, recently passed away at age 84. She was the author of a clear and direct poetry that drew inspiration from the world of nature: her eyes gazed at the world, returning its glorious and reconciling vision, perceiving from concrete experience the echo of the beginning, the call of Creation. Her success was due to the use of a direct, colloquial language and a clear, simple style with which the poet directly addressed the reader after interpreting images seen and sounds heard. The appeal is to put oneself into play, to completely review one’s own life, to recover one’s own authenticity and immediacy, to abandon false turns and wrong objectives. It is a poetry marked by a profound spirituality of gratitude that gives voice to a soul tuned through contact with nature into the wavelength of transcendence. Co-author Elena Buia, who has degrees in literature and philosophy, has collaborated on the cultural programs of Radio 3 and currently works at Rai Educational as a television author. ABSTRACTS

FOCUS 80 HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMAZONIA

Arturo Peraza, SJ

The Church wants to discern its pastoral action in Amazonia. The pope has therefore convened a Synod later this year focused on defending the rights of the peoples who inhabit the Amazon Basin against the reality of “extractivism.” This economic model of exploitation undermines the life of indigenous communities that are forced to move and adopt new lifestyles unrelated to their traditions, which is almost ethnocide. There are reports of the murder of leaders who attempt to defend these communities and their environment. Faced with this situation, the Church wants to have a prophetic voice that opens the way to hope. The author is Deputy Director of the Guayana section of the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas.

ARTICLE 94 THE WAY OF IGNATIUS A SPIRITUAL PORTRAIT OF DIALECTICAL OPPOSITIONS Maurice Giuliani, SJ

This article analyzes the life, work and spirituality of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. His long convalescence after being wounded at Pamplona led him to conversion and to commitment to the service of God. With his first companions and always attentive to the action of the Spirit, he constitutes a new religious order. In the Spiritual Exercises he invites us to free ourselves from all “attachments” before making decisions, and teaches us to “love God in all things and all things in God.” The illumination of Manresa leads him to a universal apostolate under the guidance of the pope. The two most important aspects are the separation of the Society from the monastic traditions and the spirit of union in the “community of companions.” LCC 0419:

APRIL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ‘Humana Communitas’: Human Life in the web of Relations

• Climate, The Church and COP24 In Katowice Annual Digital Subscription • Truth Waits In All Things’ $79 The poetry of Walt Whitman

• Green Urbanization: Annual Print Subscription A conversation with John Asia: $160* Degioia Australia/NZ/Oceania: $200* • Human Fraternity For World USA/UK/Ireland/ Peace and Life Together Europe: $220* • Pedro Arrupe: The Cause for Rest of the world: $260* Beatification is Open Print + Digital Bundle • Restlessness, Incompleteness Asia: * and Imagination $200 Australia/NZ/Oceania: $240* • Three Times, a film by Jafar USA/UK/Ireland/ Panahi Europe: $260* Rest of the world: $280*

Prices in US Dollars * Rates include postage & handling

For educational and bulk rates, please email [email protected] The Priesthood of Christ and Other Religions

Gerald O’Collins, SJ

In recent decades Christian scholars have written much about the saving work of Christ reaching those who follow other religions. A dimension needing more consideration is that of the priesthood of Christ. How can the theology of religions be enriched by reflection on the high priesthood of Christ? 1 We begin with the Second Vatican Council, then focus on the Letter to the Hebrews, and finish with Paul and John.

Vatican II on Christ’s priesthood Writers on Christianity and other religions have remained unaware that an image used by Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) is highly relevant for their area of specialization. The constitution quotes a passage from Pius XII’s 1947 encyclical on liturgical worship, Mediator 1 Dei, significantly replacing “the Word of God” with “Jesus Christ, the High Priest of the New and Eternal Covenant.” The language evokes the teaching on Christ’s priesthood developed by the Letter to the Hebrews: “Jesus Christ, the High Priest of the New and Eternal Covenant, when he assumed a human nature, introduced into this land of exile the hymn that in heaven is sung throughout the ages. He unites the whole community of human kind with himself and associates it with him in singing the divine canticle of praise” (SC 83)

La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 3, no. 3, article 1, Mar. 2019: 10.32009/22072446.1903.1 1.“The Word of God, when he assumed a human nature, introduced into this land of exile the hymn that in heaven is sung throughout all ages. He unites the whole community of humankind with himself and associates it with him in singing this divine canticle of praise” (No. 144). GERALD O’COLLINS, SJ

Earlier Sacrosanctum Concilium had limited itself to the Church, and taught that the risen Christ is present “when the Church prays and sings” (SC 7). Now the document speaks of one “divine canticle of praise,” led by the High Priest himself, who unites the whole human race in singing this heavenly hymn that he has brought to earth. Whether they are conscious of this or not, all human beings, no matter what shape their religious affiliation takes, are joined with the incarnate High Priest in the priestly act of praising God. It is only in Sacrosanctum Concilium that Vatican II links all human beings to Christ, presented explicitly in his universal, priestly role of praising God the Father. What sources does Sacrosanctum Concilium retrieve when it pictures Christ the 2 High Priest as Choirmaster of this universal hymn of praise? An immediate source is found in what the constitution quotes from Mediator Dei, which in turn cited St. Augustine’s Exposition of the Psalms: “it is the one Savior of his [mystical] body, our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God who prays for us, who prays in us, and who is prayed to by us. He prays for us as our priest; he prays in us as our head; he is prayed to by us as our God. Let us therefore recognize in him our voice and in us his voice.”2 Augustine invokes here the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ, but understands the Psalms as the voice not of all humanity but of the Church, the head and members who make up the totus Christus. Sacrosanctum Concilium could have looked back before Pope Pius XII and St. Augustine to retrieve even earlier witnesses: for instance, Clement of Alexandria (ob. circa 215). At the start of his Protrepticus, Clement speaks of the Word, who was in the beginning and has now appeared on earth, as “the New Song” (1.3).3 Later in the same work, he pictures

2.St. Augustine, Exposition of the Psalms, 85.1 (italics mine). The Psalms were interpreted as “the voice of Christ to the Father (vox Christi ad Patrem)” as well as “the voice of the Church about Christ to the Father (vox Ecclesiae ad Patrem de Christo)” and “the voice of the Church to Christ (vox Ecclesiae ad Christum).” 3.With this title for Christ, Clement echoed the language of the Psalms about “singing a new song to the Lord,” who comes to rule and bring salvation (Ps 96:1; 98:1; 149:1). THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST AND OTHER RELIGIONS

“the eternal Jesus, the one, great high priest,” who “raises the hymn with us,” invites us to “join the choir,” and cries aloud: “I summon the whole human race… Come unto me and gather together as one, well-ordered unity under the one God and under the one Logos of God” (12.33). We might put together the two passages and speak of “the New Song,” who as “the one, eternal high priest” gathers together “the whole human race” into the “well-ordered unity” of an immense choir to sing a hymn of praise to the one God. Whatever its precedents, Sacrosanctum Concilium portrays Christ the high priest actively present for all human beings. Through his incarnation, he inaugurated his high-priestly role of singing the divine praises. In doing that he associated with 3 himself not only those who would come to know and believe in him but also the whole human community. Together they all form a choir of which Christ the high priest is the leader. This priestly unity of the human race with him began at the incarnation, and would be strengthened and perfected by the crucifixion, resurrection and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It will be finally consummated when human beings enter the halls of heaven and share in the eternal praise of God. By naming Christ as “the High Priest of the New and Eternal Covenant,” Sacrosanctum Concilium sends us back to the Letter to the Hebrews. It contains the only explicit biblical account of Christ as priest. Written between 60 and 95 A.D. (more plausibly before 70), Hebrews aims at encouraging the faith and hope of a specific community, which had suffered considerable hardship (Heb 10:32-34). How does this particular message also yield a narrative of Christ the high priest, exercising a universal office and offering salvation to the whole world?4

4.On Hebrews, see R. C. Bauckham et al. (eds.), The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology, Grand Rapids (MI), Eerdmans, 2009; C. R. Koester, Hebrews, New York, Doubleday, 2001; and P. T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Hebrews, Grand Rapids (MI), Eerdmans, 2010. For Hebrews on priesthood, see J. M. Scholer, Proleptic Priests: Priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1991; A. Vanhoye, Sacerdoti antichi e nuovo sacerdote GERALD O’COLLINS, SJ

The Letter to the Hebrews on Christ’s high-priestly intercession When the author of Hebrews first mentions explicitly the priestly identity of Christ, he links it at once to sacrificial activity: Christ became “a merciful and faithful” high priest to expiate the sins of the people” (Heb 2:17). “People” points, at least immediately, to the descendants of Abraham and Sarah. Nevertheless, Hebrews envisages a group that is much broader than the one it addresses, a particular community that is being “tested” (Heb 2:18). The horizon that the letter opens up will be as large as the entire human race. The author lists three qualifications that make Jesus the high priest of the new dispensation: “every high priest is [1] taken from among human beings and [2] appointed on behalf of 4 human beings with respect to the matters pertaining to God, [3] in order to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin” (Heb 5:1). In other words, Christ has been (1) chosen from human beings, and (2) not self-appointed, but called by God to represent humanity (3) in the sacrificial offering he makes, in particular, for the expiation of sins. At the incarnation (Heb 1:1-4), the Son of God took on the human condition. As high priest, he could represent all human beings, precisely because he shared their condition. As “high priest” he could “sympathize” with their “weaknesses,” by being tested in all ways (Heb 4:15). He grew, was tested, and made perfect through suffering Heb ( 2: 10, 18), above all through enduring death (Heb 2:9, 14; 5:7), a death by crucifixion (Heb 6:6). As priest, Jesus shares humanity with all human beings, who are “the children” of the one God and Father, “for whom and though whom all things exist” (Heb 2:10). As “originator” of their salvation, Christ goes before his “brothers and sisters” to deliver them from being enslaved to the fear and power of death (Heb 2:10-15). Creation by the one divine Father makes one human family, who have been redeemed by the high

secondo il Nuovo Testamento, Leumann (To) Elledici, 1985; Ibid., Gesù Cristo il mediatore nella Lettera agli Ebrei, Assisi (Pg), Cittadella, 2007; Ibid., L’Epistola agli Ebrei, ‘Un sacerdote diverso,’ Bologna, EDB, 2010. THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST AND OTHER RELIGIONS priestly work of Christ. He became high priest not only for the descendants of Abraham and Sarah but also for all who belong to the human family. While death and exaltation proved the defining moment of Christ’s priesthood, a priestly self-offering characterized his whole human existence (Heb 10:5-7). Hebrews links his priestly activity of purifying from sin (Heb 1:2-4) with the incarnation, through which he entered into solidarity with all human beings. The incarnation allowed the Son of God to become a high priest and become that for everyone. This global perspective also builds on the priest-king Melchizedek, who blesses Abraham (Gen 14:17-20) and is called “a priest forever” (Ps 110:4). The priesthood of the mysterious priest-king is earlier and greater than the 5 Levitical (Jewish) priesthood (7:1-28). He “remains” a priest forever, unlike the Levitical priests who all died and could not continue in office. Abraham gives Melchizedek a tenth of the spoils from a victory over “the kings” and receives a blessing from him, thus showing how the mysterious priest- king is greater than Abraham and his descendant Levi (the head of the priestly tribe). With the cornerstone of Melchizedek in place, Hebrews argues that, being “a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” Christ is superior to any Levitical high priest. He “holds his priesthood permanently” and “always lives to make intercession” for those who “approach God through him” (Heb 7:24-25). Christ is not only a priest for everyone but for always. His priesthood is exercised for all people and for all time.

Mediator of a new covenant for all As high priest, Christ functions as the “mediator of a new covenant” (Heb 9:15; 12:24). The new covenant provides a lynchpin, without which Hebrews would fall apart. This definitive commitment of God is interpreted against the background of the Mosaic covenant with the Jewish people, but stands in contrast with it as the “better” or fully efficacious covenant (Heb 8:7-13). Does this covenant mediated by GERALD O’COLLINS, SJ

Christ the high priest apply to the whole human race? At first glance, it appears to be limited to Christian believers. The sacrifice of Christ, Hebrews declares, has opened a new way into the divine presence, and allows his followers to move toward the inner shrine of heaven, where Jesus their “forerunner” and high priest belongs forever (Heb 10:19-20). They continue to share in Christ’s self-offering, knowing that he constantly “appears in the presence of God” on their behalf (Heb 9:24). He “lives always” to “make intercession” for those who “approach God through him” (Heb 7:25). But what of all “the others,” who do not know him and so cannot consciously “approach God through him”? Sometimes Hebrews seems comprehensive about the 6 beneficiaries of Christ’s priestly work. Jesus, it announces, “tasted [that is to say, experienced] death for everyone” (Heb 2:9). Yet it can also propose that he “became the source of salvation [only?] for all who obey him” (Heb 5:9). But what of those who, through no fault of their own, have never heard of Jesus and thus are not in a position to “obey” him? Can they be delivered from death, and enjoy in heavenly glory the presence of God? Is salvation available only for those who know Christ’s priestly work, and consciously approach through him God’s “throne of grace” to “receive mercy” for past sins, and find grace for present and future “need” (Heb 4:16)? Here we should remember the roll call of heroes and heroines of faith (Heb 1:1-12:1). It lists only those who lived before Christ and hence could not have consciously accepted redemption coming through his priestly work. Not surprisingly, Hebrews proposes an “open” version of faith: “the reality of things hoped for” and “the proof of things not seen. By this [faith] the elders received approval. By faith we understand that the universe was fashioned by the word of God, so that from what cannot be seen that which is seen has come into existence” (Heb 11:1-3). Another verse adds two rather general requirements for this “open” account of faith: “without faith it is impossible to please God; for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb 11:6). THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST AND OTHER RELIGIONS

Thus Hebrews 11 highlights faith but says little about its content. The passage hints at the future. Divine promises (presumably of some eternal inheritance) have aroused the hope of human beings and their trust that God will keep these promises, which concern future things that are “not seen.” Faith also involves a conviction about the past. One understands by faith the unseen origin of the world: it was “fashioned by the word of God.” Just as people of faith rely on the word of God about the genesis of the universe, so they rely on God’s promise when expecting the goal of the world and of their own existence. This account of faith makes no mention of Christ. He will appear later, when the list of heroes and heroines of faith finally reaches “the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Heb 7 12:2). Hebrews 11 invokes “the elders” or “ancestors,” people whom God honored for their persevering faith. Then follow examples of those who have lived on the basis of faith, with specific attention paid to Abraham, Sarah and Moses. Some of those who exemplify faith (Abel, Enoch and Noah) existed prior to Abraham, Sarah and the formation of the chosen people. One figure of faith is “Rahab the prostitute” (Heb 11:31), an outsider involved in the conquest of the promised land (Josh 2:1-24; 6:22-25). Hebrews 11 sketches the shape that the faith of outsiders can take. “Pleasing God” means doing the divine will (Heb 13:16, 20-21). Such conduct need not depend upon a conscious relationship to Christ the high priest. A faith that “pleases” God is a possibility open to all. “Approaching” God in prayer does not necessarily come from being aware of the priestly intercession of the exalted Christ. Hebrews spells out an “open” account of faith. Salvation through such faith is offered to all people and offered on the basis of the self- sacrificing priesthood of Christ, even if many are not (or not yet) able to follow him in conscious obedience.5

5.See further G. O’Collins, Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, 248-59. GERALD O’COLLINS, SJ

When we pursue the biblical witness to the relationship between the priestly work of Christ and the salvation offered to all people, Hebrews is the standout. It is the one book of the New Testament that gives him the title of “priest” (six times) or “high priest” (10 times). Nevertheless, other New Testament authors also illuminate the priesthood of Christ and its impact on the whole human race.6 Let me limit myself to Paul and John.

Paul the Apostle Paul writes of the risen Christ who “intercedes for us” at the right hand of God (Rom 8:34). Without applying to Christ the title of “priest,” the apostle expounds themes about the 8 priesthood of Christ and its universal significance.7 The “us” for whom Christ intercedes includes everyone, as earlier chapters of Romans make clear. Paul establishes that “all” human beings, Jews and Gentiles alike, “have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). At once the apostle introduces sacrificial, priestly imagery to present Christ as the means for wiping away the 8 sins of humanity (Rom 3:25). He then contrasts the surpassing work of Christ for human salvation with the universal effects of Adam’s disobedience. Paul passes from speaking of “all” (Rom 5:12) to speaking of “the many” (Rom 5:15), then back to “all” (Rom 5:18), and, finally, back to “the many” (Rom 5:19). For the apostle, “the many” are equivalent to “all.”9 Elsewhere, the apostle simply uses “all”: “One has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves” (2 Cor 5:14-15). The priestly redemption, effected by Christ’s death, resurrection and exaltation, has a universal impact.

6.On the New Testament and Christ’s priesthood, see G. O’Collins and M. K. Jones, Jesus Our Priest, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, 1-68. 7.Ibid., 27-35. 8.On Rom 3:23, 25, see J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans, New York, Doubleday, 1993, 341-359. 1 John 2:2 speaks of Christ as “the means of expiating” not only “our sins” but also “the sins of the world”; see G. O’Collins - M.K. Jones, Jesus Our Priest, op. cit. 30-31. 9.See J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans, op. cit. 405-428. THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST AND OTHER RELIGIONS

In the first of the Pastoral Epistles (which most scholars would not simply attribute to Paul), Jesus is called “the one mediator between God and human beings, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:5). Hebrews also calls Christ “mediator” when presenting his priestly work as that of “the mediator of the new/ better covenant” (Heb 8:6; 9:15; 12:24). Mark’s Gospel portrays Jesus as the Son of Man who came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Here “many” is equivalent to the “all” of 1 Timothy and Romans 5. The priestly redemption mediated by Christ affects everyone.

The Gospel of John John’s Gospel gets close to giving Jesus the title of “priest” through applying to him priestly imagery and themes. His 9 presentation of the priestly office of Caiaphas was involved in words that expressed simultaneously “a criminal human calculation and a divine plan of redemption.”10 He said: “It is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (John 11:50). A central truth about Jesus as priest and victim was revealed: he was about to die for the sake of and on behalf of the whole people, and that people would include not only Israel but also all the scattered children of God (John 11:49-52). The plan of Caiaphas to do away with Jesus had unwittingly set in motion a “universal plan of salvation to produce one people of God.”11 This strikingly universal passage about Christ’s redemptive work as priest and victim should nourish any Christian theology of religions. But Christ as priest and victim remains sadly absent from theologies of religion. Unlike the other Gospels, John does not report the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. Nevertheless, one finds clear Eucharistic references in Jesus’ earlier discourse about “my flesh for the life of the world” and the invitation to “eat my flesh and drink my blood” (John 6:51-58). By “becoming

10.A. Vanhoye, Old Testament Priests and the New Priest, St. Bede’s Publications, Petersham, MA, 1986, 14. 11.A. T. Lincoln, The Gospel According to John Continuum, London, 2003, 330-331. GERALD O’COLLINS, SJ

flesh” and assuming a complete human nature (John 1:14), the Logos became a priest.12 He could now surrender himself in death “for the life of the world.”13 Eating his flesh and drinking his blood involved the flesh being broken and the blood being shed.14 These verses in John 6, without explicitly referring to the institution of the new covenant, propose a priestly, sacrificial meal and a violent, sacrificial death, which bring life to the whole world. Unlike the other Gospels, John links the cleansing of the Temple in Jerusalem with some words of Jesus about the coming destruction of the Temple and its rebuilding. To critics who demanded a “sign” to justify what he had done in driving out of the Temple those whose business defiled it, Jesus replied: 10 “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The evangelist comments: “he was speaking of the Temple of his body” (John 2:21). Jesus will replace the Temple and its priestly cult with a new, better and final priestly temple that will bless everyone: his risen body.15 When talking with a Samaritan woman (John 4:5-26), Jesus announces that the time has come when God will be worshiped in “Spirit and truth,” now made available in abundance by Jesus himself who is full of the Spirit (John 1:32- 33; 3:34) and truth (John 1:16-17). It is no longer appropriate to worship in Jerusalem or on Mount Garizim (where the Samaritans worshiped). Jesus himself is the new place of the divine presence, the new priestly Mediator between God and all human beings.

12.That the priesthood of Christ, mediator between God and human beings, began with the incarnation is teaching common to Hebrews, St. John Chrysostom, Pierre de Bérulle, the Second Vatican Council (see above), and other notable Christian teachers and witnesses; see G. O’Collins and M.K. Jones, Jesus Our Priest, op. cit. 80; 184-188. 13.Lincoln writes: “As a result of Jesus giving up his life, the world, which is at present alienated from the divine life, will be enabled to experience the gift of this life. A central theme of the Gospel is sounded here: life for the world is at the expense of death for Jesus” (Gospel According to John, 231). 14.Ibid., 232. 15.On the “replacement” motif that expresses aspects of Jesus’ priestly identity and function, see ibid., 76-77. THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST AND OTHER RELIGIONS

In the Fourth Gospel’s portrayal of Jesus, he fulfills the significance of several major festivals, above all, the Passover. The feeding of the five thousand and the discourse on the bread of life occur, as only John observes, at the time of the Passover (John 6:4). Andrew Lincoln writes: “As the true bread from heaven, Jesus fulfills what was signified not only by the manna of the exodus but also by the unleavened bread of Passover, and Jesus’ flesh and blood are now the food and drink of the true Passover meal (6:51-58).”16 Through his priestly self-gift Jesus has replaced the Passover meal and done so for everybody. At the start of the Fourth Gospel, John the Baptist witnesses to Jesus as “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29, 36). At that point the remark remains 11 mysterious and is left unexplained. But in this Gospel the death of Jesus occurs at the hour when the Passover lambs are being slaughtered (John 19:14, 31). Through citing in 19:33 some words from Exodus 12:46, John compares the crucified body of Jesus with that of the Passover lambs and invests the Jewish “lamb-cult” with new meaning. In his sacrificial death Jesus proves to be not only the priestly mediator but also the acceptable victim who takes away the sins of the world and pours out on the world the superabundant gift of the Holy Spirit (John 7:37-39; 19:30, 34; 20:22-23). John never explicitly calls Jesus a “priest.” But – in particular, through the replacement motif – his Gospel allows us to glimpse aspects of Jesus’ priesthood. Add too the prayer about Jesus “consecrating” himself “for the sake of” his friends (John 17:19). He is replacing the activity of the Jewish high priest on the Day of Expiation. As priest and victim, Jesus is preparing to die for his friends, who are in fact all people. He is sanctifying himself for his priestly task.

16.Ibid. 77. GERALD O’COLLINS, SJ

Conclusion This article has sampled teaching from Vatican II and the New Testament that illustrates the high priesthood of Christ and its significance for the salvation of all human beings.17 Some of that testimony is explicit (Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Letter to the Hebrews); some of the testimony is expressed equivalently (Paul and John). It is high time for this testimony about the priesthood of Christ to be incorporated into the theology of religions. That would rework the theology of religions into new shape and help change this discipline into a richer Christology of religions.

17.See G. O’Collins, A Christology of Religions, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books, 2018 treats this theme much more fully. Catholic Social Teaching in China: A Role for Business Ethics

Stephan Rothlin, SJ

Introduction The recent translation into Chinese of the document by the then Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace,The Vocation 1 of the Business Leader (VBL), provides an opportunity for introducing Catholic Social Teaching (CST) not only to 13 Chinese Catholics, but also to non-Catholics with the aim of promoting high standards in international business ethics. One of the most attractive aspects of the VBL document is that it focuses rigorously on the challenge of forming the conscience of those who conduct business. It does not focus on the broader range of public policy questions, such as human rights, which while usually identified with CST, may hinder it from making much of an impact in China. Precisely because the VBL document is relatively neutral when it comes to questions of political ideology, it may allow for a fresh reading of CST’s basic orientation to moral leadership,

La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 3, no. 3, article 2, Mar. 2019: 10.32009/22072446.1903.2 1.The Vocation of the Business Leader: A Reflection (VBL) was published in 2011 and is available at http://www.humandevelopment.va/it/risorse/archivio/ economia-e-finanzia/la-vocazione-del-leader-d-impresa-una-riflessione. html in its original English (4th Edition) and many other languages including Chinese (“企业界的使命” “qiyejie de shiming”). The present approach is based on experiences acquired through several workshops and conferences, notably a workshop on the VBL that the author conducted for over 100 Chinese Catholic entrepreneurs in the Catholic parish of Wuxi in May 2015 as well as his presentation on “Catholic Social Teaching in a Chinese Context” at the International Society of Business, Ethics and Economics (ISBEE) held at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in July 2016. In 2016, the second edition of International Business Ethics: Focus on China, featuring 20 original case studies with analyses informed by Catholic Social Teaching, which was co-authored by Professor Dennis McCann. STEPHAN ROTHLIN, SJ

and how it may be integrated into China’s own struggle to establish a public morality capable of sustaining a genuinely civil society. In what follows, two basic tasks will be highlighted: one is to review the VBL document, indicating its relevance for highlighting CST’s role in constructing a framework for international business ethics; the other is to suggest how the VBL’s perspective may converge with Confucian moral philosophy in ways that promise specifically to enhance international business ethics in China.

The Vocation of the Business Leader in Catholic Social Teaching The VBL document offers a challenge specifically addressed 14 to business leaders. How do the basic principles of CST suggest the ways in which they should organize and manage their businesses? Do these principles – human dignity and the common good, as well as solidarity, subsidiarity, prudence and justice – amount to a distinctive model of business management, one in which the vocation of the business leader is realized through habits of mind and heart that can create corporate cultures in which people can flourish? The focus of the VBL document, then, clearly aims at the micro level embodied in the business leader’s personal sense of responsibility so that a transformation might occur at the meso level of business organization. Given that focus, the VBL does not hesitate to offer business leaders a model examination of conscience, by which to evaluate their own performance by the principles of CST. The exercise – informed by the Catholic Church’s traditional teachings about the virtues, the means of cultivating them and their sustainability through participation in the means of grace offered by the Church’s sacraments, especially the Eucharist – is best structured through the threefold pattern of the Catholic Action method: “To see, to judge and to act.” Under each of these headings – to see, to judge and to act – the VBL document offers observations intended to assist business leaders to understand what is going on in the challenges they face and how to respond constructively to them. At all levels, but especially at the micro level, what the business leader CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN CHINA: A ROLE FOR BUSINESS ETHICS should see is the risk of living a “divided life,” that is, a life that is fragmented morally and spiritually, one in which the leader is increasingly alienated from his or her family, internally caught in a conflict between the vision that may have inspired his or her willingness to assume responsibility as a leader, and the constraints of “business-as-usual.” What business leaders may have previously experienced in isolation, as a hollowing out of their personal and business relationships, as pressure to console themselves with alcohol, drugs or sex to commit themselves to the demands of ruthless profit maximization, the VBL document invites them to see as part of a larger pattern of disorders that are likely to increase unless they learn to judge them properly and act to overcome them, not only in their personal lives but also in the organizations 15 that they manage. There are terms that the VBL document attaches to the challenging patterns that define the situation in which business leadership must be exercised: “(1) globalization, (2) new communication technologies, and (3) the financial aspects of the economy” as well as the inevitable “(4) cultural changes” that accompany these processes of change. Consistent with the overall perspective of CST, the VBL document does not condemn any of these patterns as such, but highlights the moral and spiritual hazards to be discerned in each of them. “To see,” then, means to recognize both the risks as well as the opportunities implicit in each. While globalization, for example, brings with it “an increasing web of social interconnectedness,” it does so by accelerating and intensifying the worldwide “movement of both outputs and inputs, especially labor and capital.” “To judge,” then, means to understand the profoundly disruptive effects that globalization will have on local communities. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “as society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbors but does not make us brothers” (Encyclical Letter, Caritas in Veritate, 19; VBL, 19). “To act,” then, does not require us to renounce globalization as such, but to conduct business in such a way that the risks STEPHAN ROTHLIN, SJ

are minimized while the benefits, consistent with the principles of CST, are maximized. The VBL document points out that exercising the vocation of business leadership in the context of globalization requires a degree of self-discipline, particularly in resisting the “cultural changes” that may accompany it, namely, the drift toward an amoral individualism that is indifferent to family values and the common good. The mentality symptomatic of amoral individualism “fuels the drive of top management to claim a disproportionate share of the wealth created, for employees to nurture an attitude of entitlement, and for customers to expect instant gratification” (VBL, 24), each of which is profoundly threatening, not only to the common good but also to prospects for long-term business success. 16 Having identified the challenges facing business people, managers and entrepreneurs, the VBL document proposes a model of business ethics that foregrounds the importance of business leadership and the virtues that will sustain the personal character of those who would take on such responsibilities. Not all models of business ethics demonstrate the same priorities. Business ethics in the USA, the UK and Europe, by contrast, is typically construed as an expansion of “Applied Ethics,” a discipline that seeks to show the practical relevance of the theories of analytic moral philosophies such as utilitarianism (teleological ethics) and Kantianism (deontological ethics), employing these to resolve moral dilemmas that are dramatized in business case studies. This approach, however, offers a paradigm of business decision-making that ignores the natural priority of moral virtue and its cultivation, issues that are central to the VBL document and CST.

Cultivating the vocation of business leadership through Confucian moral philosophy The translation of the VBL document into Chinese characters provides an opportunity to mutually enrich the traditions of CST and Chinese moral philosophy. Like CST, the Confucian tradition of moral philosophy (Rújiā: 儒家) has the cultivation of virtue as its central focus. The pioneering Jesuit missionary to China, Fr. Matteo Ricci, SJ (Lì M dòu: 利玛窦) (1552-1610), ǎ CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN CHINA: A ROLE FOR BUSINESS ETHICS

well understood that Rújiā provided the most promising point of convergence with the philosophia perennis that informs not only Catholic moral theology but also CST. The translation of the VBL document into Chinese, therefore, reopens a bridge to China that was originally opened by Ricci’s Essay on Friendship 2 (Jiaoyou lun: 交友論). Confucian tradition, today, is preserved primarily in the texts of the four great classics: The Analects (Lúny : 論語), The Great Learning (Dà xué: 大学), The Doctrine of the Mean ǔ (Zhōngyōng: 中庸) and the Book of Mencius (Mèngz : 孟子). While only the Analects is directly linked by Chinese tradition with Confucius (K ngz : 孔子), (551-479 B.C.), fromǐ the time of the great Southern Song dynasty philosopher, Zhu Xi (Zhū Xī: 朱熹) (1130-1200ǒ ǐ A.D.), these four books were 17 regarded as canonical. Not only were they esteemed as the definitive expression of Confucian wisdom, but also as the required subject matter for the examinations by which scholars qualified for appointment as Imperial administrators until the fall of the Qing dynasty and the advent of the Republic of China in 1911 A.D. In the sketch that follows we rely primarily on a new translation of the Zhongyong, the notable work of Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, suggestively titled, Focusing the 3 Familiar. Ames and Hall’s translation reveals the Zhongyong as an invitation to those who would learn from Confucius the spiritual discipline of focusing (“zhong”) the familiar (“yong”), that is, cultivating a proper self-understanding in which “the ten thousand things” – the “interactive field of

2.Ricci’s essay, composed in 1595 A.D. in Chinese characters, adapts 100 maxims or aphorisms taken from Western classical sources for use among Chinese literati. They are designed to suggest a deep convergence between Western and Chinese values, as honored in their respective traditions of moral philosophy. An English translation, along with the Chinese original of Ricci’s essay, as well as an insightful scholarly introduction, are available in M. Ricci, On Friendship: One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince, Translated by Timothy Billings, New York, Columbia University Press, 2009. 3.R. T. Ames - D. L. Hall, Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the ‘Zhongyong,’ Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. STEPHAN ROTHLIN, SJ

processes and events” – can be responded to harmoniously, or resonant with humanity’s own role in the dynamic unfolding of Heaven and Earth. While “focusing the familiar” is a discourse that models a religious way of being in the world it is also, in Ames and Hall’s interpretation, emphatically nontheistic. The very first sentence of the Zhongyong is a fitting summary of its overall perspective: “What tian commands (ming) is called natural tendencies (xing); drawing out these natural tendencies is called the proper way 4 (dao); improving upon this way is called education (jiao).” Tian (天), of course, is the Chinese word for “Heaven” which Western missionaries were struggling to identify with the term “God.” Nevertheless, though Heaven commands (tiānmìng: 天 18 命), it may not be equated with personal characteristics of the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition whom Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus and their followers have experienced. How the otherness of tian may be understood depends upon a critical appropriation of the “correlative cosmology” generally presupposed in all schools of Chinese philosophy. Within this cosmology there is a continuous and primordial “creativity” (chéng: 成) operative in the myriad things that make up this world, but it cannot be abstracted from the “interactive field of processes and events” or apprehended as some ultimate and personal form of Divine transcendence, as in the Biblical tradition’s affirmation of God as “Father, “Creator,” or “Lord of the Universe.” Despite its nontheistic status or because of it, tian, nevertheless, is the source of ming, those “specific conditions that define existence in the world, such as one’s lifespan, one’s social and economic status, one’s physical health”5 which must be responded to and brought into harmony (hé: 和) as one takes up one’s Way (Dào: 道) in the world. Those who apprehend the Way, and seek to improve, that is, cultivate themselves properly, through education (jiào: 教), are regarded as wise (shèngrén: 圣人) and, to the extent that they make progress along the Way they embark on the holy

4.Ibid., 89. 5.Ibid., 71. CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN CHINA: A ROLE FOR BUSINESS ETHICS

journey as Zhuang Tzu puts it (shèngyou :圣游) and they may achieve the status of “exemplary, morally refined persons” (jūnz : 君子). Making progress means achieving one’s own full humanity (rén: 仁) which is constituted by the cultivation ǐ of certain basic virtues (dé: 德), which are always construed relationally as in the “five ways forward” – “ruler and minister, father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, friend and mentor” – and the three methods of advancing on them: wisdom (zhì: 智), authoritative conduct (rén: 仁) 6 and courage (y ng: 勇). Chinese “correlative cosmology” thus establishes not only the ultimate basis, that is, the Way ǒ (Dào: 道), for authentic development, but also an objective theory of virtue, stipulating the roles and relationships, the objective expectations specific to each, according to which 19 that development may be realized. Confucian virtues are never considered in the abstract, but in the relationships by which personal character is revealed. The difference between exemplary (jūnz ) and petty (xi orén) persons is asserted as a difference in their capacities for practicing virtue, or, in Ames and Hall’s terms, focusingǐ the familiar.ǎ Here is Confucius’ personal comment on the challenge of cultivating virtue: “Putting oneself in the place of others (shu) and doing one’s best on their behalf (zhong) does not stray far from the proper way. ‘Do not treat others as you yourself would not wish to be treated’ (Lunyu, 12:2 and 15:24). Of the four requirements of the exemplary person’s proper path, I am not yet able to satisfy even one. I am not yet able to serve my father as I would expect a son to serve me. I am not yet able to serve my lord as I would expect a minister to serve me. I am not yet able to serve my elder brother as I would expect a younger brother to serve me. I am not yet able to first treat my friends as I myself would wish them to treat me. Where in everyday moral conduct and in everyday attention to proper speech I am lacking in some respect, I must make every effort to attend to this; where there is excess in some respect, I must make every effort to constrain myself. In speech pay attention

6.Ibid., 102. STEPHAN ROTHLIN, SJ

to what is done, and in conduct pay attention to what is said. How could an exemplary person not but earnestly aspire to behave in such a manner?”7 In comparison with Aristotle’s Golden Mean, which regards virtue as a perfect balance between excess and defect, in the Confucian Golden Rule (Lunyu, 12:2), the perfect balance is never fully realized, but must be pursued continuously through the practice of reciprocity (shu). Efforts to become virtuous are rooted in human nature, which, being inherently social, must be realized in social consequences, that is, in bringing “order to the world, the state and the family.” Though the Way of virtue is open to all, it requires the cultivation of our capacities for concentration and 20 self-discipline. In other words, exercising moral leadership means we must learn to focus the familiar: “Only those of utmost creativity (zhicheng) in the world are able to make the most of their natural tendencies (xing). Only if one is able to make the most of one’s natural tendencies is one able to make the most of the natural tendencies of others; only if one is able to make the most of the natural tendencies of others is one able to make the most of the natural tendencies of processes and events (wu); only if one is able to make the most of the natural tendencies of processes and events can one assist in the transforming and nourishing activities of heaven and earth; and only if one can assist in the transforming and nourishing activities of heaven and earth can human beings take their place as members of this triad.”8 The triad, of course, is the harmonious interrelationship of heaven, earth and humanity (tiān rén hé yī: 天人合一) by which the Dao is constituted and continually reenacted in 9 ritual (l : 礼). The cultivation of virtue is not only the creative transformation of “natural tendencies of processes and events” but alsoǐ a participation in the cosmic purpose that each person may discover in fulfilling his or hertianming . This brief sketch suggests that the Confucian Way (Dao) of self-cultivation, converging ultimately on one’s tianming, may

7.Ibid., 94. 8.Ibid., 105. 9.Ibid., 50. CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN CHINA: A ROLE FOR BUSINESS ETHICS

be compared with the way vocation discourse functions in the VBL. A major question opened up by this comparison, is whether and how an understanding of business ethics might be developed within the Confucian paradigm of self-cultivation. While the obstacles to such a development are formidable, they are no more insuperable than similar difficulties that occur within, for example, the Aristotelian tradition of moral philosophy or the CST tradition that inspires the VBL document. The Mengzi, for example, begins with a pointed exchange between the sage and King Hui of Liang, in which Mengzi makes a strong contrast between profit (lì: 利) and righteousness (yi): “Your majesty,” answered Mencius, “What is the point of mentioning the word ‘profit’? All that matters is that there should be benevolence and righteousness” (Book 1A, No. 1).10 21 Though Mencius’ point specifically focuses on statecraft in Liang, and thus on scholar-officials seeking to become jūnz , it seems easily extended to merchants and others who live by profit-seeking, whose goal in life presumably would make themǐ prime candidates for criticism as petty persons (xiaoren). Indeed, throughout the history of Imperial China merchants or business people, as opposed to scholar-officials, landowners, peasants and religious functionaries, are usually regarded as low in status, amoral, antisocial and often in need of punitive government regulation. The Confucian classics, however, do not ever explicitly declare that it is impossible for a merchant or business person to become a shengren or junzi. Indeed, one of Confucius’ eminent disciples, Zi Gong (Tzu-kung), known for his unusually filial piety toward the Master, was a successful businessman and diplomat. The Lunyu offers at least one passage in which Zi Gong, referred to as Ssu, is also praised for his skill in business: “The Master said, ‘Hui is perhaps difficult to improve upon; he allows himself constantly to be in dire poverty. Ssu refuses to accept his lot and indulges in money-making, and is frequently right in his conjectures’” (Book XI, No. 19).11

10.Mencius. Translation and Introduction by D. C. Lau, London, Penguin Books, 2005, Revised Edition. 11.All quotations from the Lunyu are taken from the translation done by D.C. Lau, The Analects, London, Penguin Books, 1979. STEPHAN ROTHLIN, SJ

While admittedly obscure, this passage suggests that the problem is not with money-making as such, but with the petty ways in which it is usually undertaken, presumably to the detriment of righteousness (yi) or the common good. Seeking the proper harmony in the relationship of profit (li) and righteousness (yi), however, requires the cultivation of moral and intellectual virtues that assume neither the glorification of business nor its fundamental depravity. Fortunately, the Lunyu is studded with passages that show the proper Way, some of these conveyed in snatches of conversations remembered between Zi Gong and the Master: “The Master said, ‘Wealth and high station are what men desire but unless I get them in the right way I would not remain in them. Poverty 22 and low station are what men dislike, but even if I did not get them in the right way I would not try to escape from them’” (Lunyu, Book IV, No. 5). “The Master said, ‘The gentleman (junzi) is easy of mind, while the small man (xiaoren) is always full of anxiety’” (Lunyu, Book VII, No. 37). “The Master said, ‘The gentleman (junzi) is easy to serve but difficult to please. He will not be pleased unless you try to please him by following the Way (Dao), but when it comes to employing the services of others, he does so within the limits of their capacity. The small man (xiaoren) is difficult to serve but easy to please. He will be pleased even though you try to please him by not following the Way, but when it comes to employing the services of others, he demands all-round perfection” (Lunyu, Book XIII, No. 25). In the light of their cumulative insights, these and the other aphorisms of the Lunyu suggest that it is possible to do business in a manner consistent with the Confucian Way of self- cultivation. The familiar (yong) to be focused (zhong) would, of course, be the ordinary activities of the marketplace, organizing and managing the mundane transactions of buying and selling. Given the advice that Confucius gives to aspiring scholar- officials, it seems likely that he would offer a similar hope to his disciples in the business community. You are more likely to fulfill even your business goals by following the proper Way of CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IN CHINA: A ROLE FOR BUSINESS ETHICS focusing your familiar routines and activities, than by aiming – as the petty person invariably does – exclusively at the pursuit of profit for its own sake. Precisely how such “focusing the familiar” is to be maintained may seem somewhat elusive, but only until one considers the extraordinary significance of ritual (li) in the Confucian Way of self-cultivation. It is also ritual that embodies Confucianism’s authentic dialectic of immanence and transcendence. By observing and practicing li, we come to know not only the Dao prescribed in the basic harmony of heaven, earth and humanity, but also our own tianming. The proper practice of self-cultivation affords us access to the specific ways in which our own lives unfold in a dialectic of immanence and transcendence. The Lunyu’s final aphorism, for example, points this out: “Confucius 23 said, ‘A man has no way of becoming a gentleman (junzi) unless he understands Destiny (ming); he has no way of taking his stand unless he understands the rites (li)…’” (Lunyu, Book XX, No. 3). Perhaps the biggest obstacle for Confucius’ disciples in the business community would be to so order their daily routines that they, in fact, made time for the many rituals, invariably religious as well as social, by which the basic fabric of the moral and spiritual life is preserved and enhanced. However difficult the challenge, the lives of business people may exemplify the harmonious interrelationship of heaven, earth and humanity (tianren heyi). Tianming, after all, is as universally present in humanity as the “calling from God” is universally recognized in Christian tradition.

No easy convergences Just as CST has developed an affirmation of “business as vocation” that renders business both religiously significant and morally demanding, so the Confucian Way of self-cultivation appears to contain resources for a similarly transformative perspective on business ethics. Whether any closer comparison between Confucian business ethics and the VBL’s vocation discourse can be realized, seems to depend on approaching certain metaphysical questions that must, for now, remain STEPHAN ROTHLIN, SJ

unresolved. Since the specific tendency of vocation discourse is to situate ordinary business activities squarely within a Christian’s ongoing personal relationship with God, comparison ultimately leads to a consideration of the significance of “Destiny” (ming) and/or the mandate of Heaven (tianming) in the Confucian ethic of self-cultivation. The appeal to Heaven may be a functional substitute for Christian God-talk, but the two are not easily compared, let alone mutually intelligible. Nevertheless, a more fruitful dialogue may emerge from the practical convergence of Confucian ethics and the principles of CST. The key challenges of the VBL document have the potential to contradict the statement of the Sinologist E. Zürcher who was aware that Confucianism may bear the risk of leaving 24 behind “a monumental ruin.” China’s current concern with “Confucian Entrepreneurship” would make a useful case study. How does the Confucian entrepreneur’s business practices and his or her personal character reflect Confucian values? Is Jack Ma and his impressive success with Alibaba and related enterprises of peer-to-peer platforms an authentic model of Confucian entrepreneurship which allows small and medium-sized companies a more equal access to the market? The VBL document may inspire business people to find concrete answers to their struggles. It updates the temptations to immoral behavior in a highly competitive marketplace that obscures the difficulties of rising above the ways of thexiaoren . Money and Happiness

Giovanni Cucci, SJ

Money, symbol of happiness One of the most deeply rooted symbols in people’s imagination today is the association between happiness and wealth with its many derivatives (consumerism, power and accumulation). Even when the dream is never realized, the 25 conviction remains that it is the lesser evil. As Woody Allen says, “If money can’t make us happy, forget about poverty.”1 Nevertheless, throughout history we see how the unhindered pursuit of profit is the cause of humanity’s worst evils. Daniel Bell, in his cutting analysis of capitalist culture, shows the radical antithesis between the inclination toward personal profit, a fruit of the industrial mindset, and the decisions oriented toward the common good, which is indispensable for society. Such an irresolvable contradiction is the basis of ever worsening economic crises, among which the most blaring was that of 2008 when a very small number of the very rich became even richer at the expense of an always poorer multitude. But the worst thing is that these very few super-rich do not understand that they have opened an abyss into which they themselves risk falling. Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 after showing that a large part of the wealth in the USA is concentrated in the hands of one percent of the population, comments: “Those who are part of the first one percent have the most beautiful houses, the best education, the best doctors,

La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 3, no. 3, article 3, Mar. 2019: 10.32009/22072446.1903.3 1.On this subject, cf. also G. Cucci, “Happiness, a delightful forestaste of eternity” in Civ. Catt. Eng. Ed. June 2017 https://laciviltacattolica.com/happiness- a-delightful-foretaste-of-eternity/ GIOVANNI CUCCI, SJ

and the most comfortable style of life, but there is one thing that money does not seem to have bought: the understanding that their destiny is tied to that of the other 99 percent of existence. As history shows, this is something that the first one percent will understand in the end. Often, however, they learn too late.”2 What interests us in this regard is, above all, to uncover the reason for which the association between riches and happiness is so resistant to every possible refutation, notwithstanding all the contrary evidence. Paraphrasing Descartes, one may affirm that if modern people have learned to doubt everything, they have never doubted the almighty dollar: this is the highest truth, a clear and distinct idea, a foundation stone of the edifice of 26 Western societies. But why is such an association so resistant to every possible denial?

Mimetic desire as source of action Among the various possible hypotheses, especially interesting in this regard is the analysis of René Girard. Making use of the contributions of previous authors (Alexis de Tocqueville and Adam Smith), he has individuated the tendency to identify happy people with rich people in the mechanism of imitation (what he calls “mimetic desire”) and in the symbolic value of money, which is synonymous with security and social recognition. The fashion and advertising phenomena come to mind: what they use for leverage, more than the need to survive, is the need to be appreciated and recognized. Those engaged in these fields are masters at arousing induced desires. These are not by chance the object of significant research and economic investment: by presenting the images of successful, attractive and respected people, advertising links such characteristics to a product, transmitting the message that the consumer can

2.J. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future, W.W. Norton 2012 Cf. T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Belknap Press, 2014; D. Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, New York, Basic Books, 1996, 237f. MONEY AND HAPPINESS become like them. It is a subliminal message, not logical, but which in fact pushes us to possess things that we do not need – and which we do not even want – only because we see that others have them. Parents know this mechanism well: one has only to think of the insistent demands of children who want something just because their friends or a television personality have one, just to immediately abandon it and long for something else or a newer model. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, these dynamics have become ever more powerful and invasive. Adam Smith notes that the inclination toward the acquisition of goods is owed, more than to the desire to live a better life (a desire quickly disregarded), to our preoccupation with how others see us: “To what end is all the effort and exhaustion of this 27 world directed? What is the goal of the greed and ambition, the search for well-being, the power, and the domination? Maybe to satisfy natural needs? […] They believe that their stomach is better off, or their sleep is deeper in a mansion rather than in a hut? The opposite has been observed so often, as everyone knows. So where does this emulation that crosses all the different ranks of humanity come from, and what are the advantages that we place before ourselves in the great purpose of human life which we call the improvement of our condition? To be seen, receive attention, to be sympathized with, to be satisfied, and approved of are all the advantages that come from it. What interests us is vanity, not well-being or pleasure.”3

The cost of mimeticism The idea that happiness is associated with earning and always having more stuff brings an increase of stress and unhappiness, a dehumanization and loss of one’s dignity, because it generates the so-called “rat race.” The American entrepreneur Robert Kiyosaki, in order to describe this mechanism, uses the image of the mouse that runs on a wheel in a cage without ever arriving anywhere: the effort of those who aim at a level of

3.A. Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments. Cf. R. Girard, Les origines de la culture. Entretiens avec Pierpaolo Antonello et João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 2004, 9f. GIOVANNI CUCCI, SJ

well-being placed always just beyond what we have already attained points us in the same direction as the mouse. The more we earn the more we feel ourselves needy. This image also suggests the disturbing degradation to which the human being is finally reduced, until becoming nothing more than a trained guinea pig. Kiyosaki applies this image to an entire way of life imposed upon Western peoples by able speculators, beginning in the 1960s, and unthinkingly made their own by the people who find themselves at the end of their lives with the sensation that they have wasted their energy and have been robbed of their dreams. However, the worst thing is that the wheel continues to turn, and the illusion is passed on to the following generation 28 without even asking about the goodness of the promises and the effective costs of such a race: “They work for the owners of the company in which they are employed, for the taxes which sustain the state, to pay for their credit cards, and to pay off the mortgage with the bank. Meanwhile, they admonish their children ‘to study hard, get the best grades, and to find a permanent position somewhere.’ They do not learn anything about money, but they learn a lot about those who profit from their ingenuity, ending up working like slaves for their whole lives. The process is passed on to the following generation of ‘great workers.’ This is the Rat-race.”4 Mimeticism is a powerful mechanism that persuades and determines behavior. It also reveals, however, an empty interior, which is mostly unconscious, that one tries to fill with something that in reality one does not really want. When a person tends to focus on material goods, he or she does so at the expense of other goods, which come to be disregarded in this way, leaving an internal frustration, which one tries in turn to compensate for with other goods proposed by the market: dissatisfaction is a conspicuous source of profit. However, the end result is that one finds oneself quite far from attaining that which the products seemed to have promised. The accumulation of material goods – really, an attempt to

4.R. T. Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Goldmann TB, 2007 MONEY AND HAPPINESS confront one’s psychological insecurity – tends, in this way, to exacerbate that same sentiment of insecurity which it was meant to eliminate. Thus, the increase in the tendency to accumulate is inversely proportional to the quality of life and perceived sense of satisfaction. Unhappiness increases.

Solomon’s interval No one denies the importance of material goods. However, sobriety is indispensable for enjoying them freely, just as with food. In the Bible, King Solomon asks the Lord the grace of having what is necessary, nothing more, nothing less, because in either of these extremes a danger to his quality of life lay hidden: “Two things I ask of you; do not deny them to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me 29 neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need, or I shall be full, and deny you, and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or I shall be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God” (Proverbs 30:7-9). Studies completed on the subject have shown the efficacy of what is called “Solomon’s interval,” above all in its “upper” side, the limit above which happiness, instead of increasing, decreases, bringing with it sadness, desperation and death. As we have seen with regard to the “rat race,” it is shocking to calculate the amount of stress incurred in the search for wealth and its ramifications, not only on the quality of life but also on its length. It seems strange but the richest countries do not have a longer life expectancy than poor countries: in the USA, the average is lower than in European countries with small economies, like Greece, and the African-Americans of Harlem arrive less often at 65 years of age than the inhabitants of Bangladesh.5

5.Cf. C. McCord - H. P. Freeman, “Excess mortality in Harlem,” in The New England Journal of Medicine, No. 322, 1990, 173-177; P. Wickramaratne et al., “Age, period and cohort effects on the risk of major depression: results from five United States communities,” in Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, No. 42, 1989, 333-343; P. M. Lewinsohn, “Age-cohort changes in the lifetime occurrence of depression and other mental disorders,” in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, No. 102, 1993, 110-120. GIOVANNI CUCCI, SJ

The truth of “Solomon’s interval” is confirmed from one generation to the next. It has often been calculated, being updated in accordance with the cost of living. One of the most recent investigations, under the auspices of Purdue University (USA), quantifies it at between 45,000 and 77,000 euros per year. The authors studied 1.7 million individuals in 164 countries. Beyond that ceiling, the level of satisfaction does not increase, on the contrary, it tends to worsen.6 This does not refer only to money. Even those who have a sudden stroke of good luck, or an equally unexpected stroke of bad luck, manifest the same tendency to homeostasis, a constant, almost uniform way of dealing with life, present in the upper as well as in the lower classes of the population, in 30 good as well as bad fortune. “The studies of people who have won the lottery or who have a particularly lucky day at the races, mirror what has been discovered to happen to accident victims: after a brief period of euphoria, they inevitably turn back, like a wave, to their point of departure, oscillating around what psychologists call the ‘point of equilibrium’ on the ‘thermostat of humor.’”7 Einstein observed that it is easier to divide the atom than to overcome prejudice. The identification of money with happiness is, in effect, a difficult concept to refute: blind faith in money, as Kiyosaki found, is passed on almost intact from father to son, feeding that which de Tocqueville had called “imagined inequality.” And, it is just this sense of inequality that influences one’s health in a more significant way than income, because it shapes one’s self-perception.

6.Cf. A. T. Jebb - L. Tay - E. Diener - S. Oishi, “Happiness, income satiation and turning points around the world,” in Nature Human Behavior, No. 2, January 2018, 33-38. Similar research has been done in the past: cf. R. Inglehart, “Globalization and Postmodern Values,” in The Washington Quarterly, No. 23, 2000, 215-228; E. Diener - S. Oishi, “Money and happiness: Income and subjective well-being across nations,” in E. Diener - E. M. Suh (eds.), Culture and Subjective Well-Being, Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press, 2000, 185-218. 7.D. McMahon, Happiness, a History, Grove Press, 2007, 513. Cf. M. E. P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness. Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, New York, Free Press, 2002, 47f; R. Layard, nd Happiness, Lessons from a New Science, 2 ed., Penguin, 2011 MONEY AND HAPPINESS

The British Medical Journal conducted intense research in the 1990s on the factors that influence the relation between goods and quality of life, including in terms of mortality. The conclusion of the research was published in an editorial in 1996 with the significant title “The Big Idea”: “The big idea is that what matters in determining mortality and health in a society is less the overall wealth of that society and more how evenly wealth is distributed. The more equally wealth is distributed the better the health of that society.”8 The most interesting aspect of the Big Idea is that it is the entire society that benefits, not just the poor, since inequality damages the health and the quality of life even of the richer part of the population, if for no other reason than that increasing disparity augments criminality and violence; from this, 31 insecurity and stress grow, with the fear of finding oneself in a situation of constant danger.

Does everything have a price? One of the most deleterious effects of this mentality is to hold that everything may be converted into money, that everything has a price, from ova to kidneys, people and leisure. But when this happens, quality of life tends to vanish, because it is irreducible to the “dictatorship of the GDP.” Arlie Russell Hochschild, a teacher of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, studied the question of the “limits of an object of trade” through an experiment. She sent to the 70 students of her course a message seeking the presence of a companion who was “beautiful, intelligent, expert masseuse, between 22 and 32 years of age.” Precise services were requested with a price list: “Receive guests at home ($40 per hour); sweet and sensual massages ($140 per hour); escort at social events ($40 per hour); travel together ($300 per day, plus expenses); take care of some domestic tasks

8.Editor’s choice, “The Big Idea,” in British Medical Journal, No. 312, April 20, 1996; cf. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.312.7037.0 K. Pickett - R. G. Wilkinson. GIOVANNI CUCCI, SJ

like commissions and payment of bills ($30 per hour).”9 The announcement explicitly excluded sexual propositions. The reactions from the students were various, but one struck Hochschild in particular because it presents precisely the novelty of this approach to existence, the loss of sentiment, of that romantic and slightly simple-minded dimension that characterizes the one in love and remains one of the most beautiful and unrepeatable experiences of life: “The wonderful intertwining of love, with the two partners who take care of each other, love each other and are bound together spiritually, is reduced to a paid service, mechanized and without sentiment. Should we be surprised that there is so much hate in this graceless world?”10 The increased possibility of having 32 it all leaves an interior frustration, a disappointment, which is a sort of protest over something that has been stolen from us or disregarded, but that, at the same time, remains indispensable if we are to live well. The iniquitous aspect of the commercialization of the good is not only the growth of inequality, forming a society in which the richest can permit themselves everything and the poor nothing, being limited to dreaming of that which the rich possess. The problem is that in both situations the good is corrupted in an irreversible way. The good has an essentially gratuitous character: in the moment in which it is monetized, it perishes. The most beautiful things do not have a price, even if they are for sale. The Divine Comedy or Hamlet have a cover price, but their value – the creativity and geniality expressed in those pages – can never be quantified. They are not reproducible, because beauty is not reducible to a technique, in the industrial sense. Michael Sandel notes in a book with the significant title That Which Money Cannot Buy: “To assign a price to goods may destroy them. This is because markets do not only distribute goods: they also express and promote determinate orientations in the face of goods, the objects of exchange.”11

9.Arlie Russell Hochschild The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, University of California Press, 1983. 10.Ibid., 48. 11.M. J. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2014 MONEY AND HAPPINESS

Fifty years ago the dream of a well-to-do person was to be able to acquire a beautiful home, a luxury automobile, or a family vacation in an exotic location. The pretentious modern permits himself to buy an entire family (in times and places to be established), to rent people to take care of his relatives in every possible circumstance (illnesses, birthdays, home visits). Any space whatever of ordinary life may be occupied by paid personnel, capable of undertaking tasks in the most efficient and qualified way. However, in this way, even the most intimate aspects of life are given into the hands of others: not just house cleaning, but even the family photos, the organization of a party, a family visit. It is enough to pay someone to do it in our stead. Thus, people do not exist anymore, just services. And in this way, as the aforementioned students noted, money finishes 33 by limiting the range of possible relationships: among them, it separates sexual acts and sentiment, eliminates the rules of affection, and the sharing of intimacy, bringing us to what Hochschild calls “the culture of coldness.” When you seek to monetize a good, you lose it. To pay a child to read a book may encourage reading, but it robs them of the joy of reading, which is essentially gratuitous. Maybe a child will read more, but limiting herself to short and easy books to be finished as quickly as possible. She has lost the dynamic of motivation and desire. If a teacher knows how to share his passion with his students, they will learn much more than if they were constrained by coercion. It is not for this reason that the payoff does not come, but it is of a different kind. This is one of the motives for which play, applied to teaching, may motivate a child, at first incapable of paying attention to the subjects proposed in class, to apply themselves and to acquire a complex understanding. The profit/loss polarity ends up by extending itself to all areas of life: to pay someone to wait in line for us, tattoo the body with publicity for various products, to sell blood, rent a uterus, sell sex acts. When the human being tends to become a product for sale, it loses its peculiar characteristics, to which it has access only gratuitously: creativity, affection, generosity, dedication, passion, altruism, intimacy, tenderness, sharing, everything that GIOVANNI CUCCI, SJ

makes life human and beautiful. The same is true of volunteer work or care professions: in the moment in which they are paid, they inevitably suffer a drop in the quality of the relationship. The commercialization of goods has another grave consequence: it makes people selfish and less disposed to give, with the result that goods, instead of being more available, in the end become more scarce. The world of the gratuitous is killed by this mentality, and the whole of society pays the price, finding itself deprived of essential services. It has been noted that a good, like the donation of blood, becomes more scarce from the moment in which one decides to pay for it: ceasing to be a gesture of solidarity, the satisfaction which it procured ceases. The civil virtues, which solidify the sense of national belonging, 34 thus disappear: all is simply left to the logic of the market, which annuls the dignity of the donor and degrades the meaning of the gift, until it kills it.12 The first to understand this are the young. Hochschild understood the gravity of this way of thinking when her daughter discovered that her birthday party was in reality decorated by a person paid by her mother. The delusion on her face was more eloquent than any speech. As much as the organization was impeccable, it was artificial, heartless; in it, both the sentiments and the persons were lost: “‘In that moment, I knew I had gone beyond the limit’ […], the limit of having crossed the confines of what may be bought and sold marked out by her daughter […]: wives who are not mothers, mothers who are not wives, second wives and stepmothers.”13 And, the limit is the willingness to lose time, lost altogether, with the persons we love.

“There is more joy in giving than in receiving” Reflecting on what renders us effectively happy forces us to contest some fundamental axioms of today’s society: wealth, individualism, the race for success, accumulation. The communal dimension of happiness negates its evaluation

12.Cf. R. M. Titmuss, The Gift Relationship. From Human Blood to Social Policy, New York, Pantheon, 1971, 223f; 270; 274; 277. 13.A. Russell Hochschild, Per amore o per denaro…, op. cit., 55-58. MONEY AND HAPPINESS in terms of personal property or consumer goods. Paul Ricœur has reflected fully on this dimension, playing with the two-fold meaning of the word “recognize/recognition.” The highest level of the relation is strictly tied to the polarity gratuitous/gratitude. One may know the other, simply speaking, when one gratuitously recognizes the other as being other from oneself. This is fundamental for constructing the relationship. The category of the gift, not by accident, is born in this context; it can never be reduced to a commercial contract, to a do ut des [I give that you may give] in order to obtain alliances or to return favors received. Anyone who has reflected on the gratuitous has also noted that the gift is not synonymous with the absence of motivations: it is intimately connected with interest for the other. The peculiar character 35 of the gift is that of revealing the possibility of a relationship irreducible to it, that which Alain Caillé calls “the third paradigm,” irreducible to what is materially exchanged between the donor and the recipient.14 The relational and affective dimension is indispensable for happiness, precisely because it pertains to the category of the gratuitous, of the “priceless”15: when it tends to become commercialized, it is perverted, generating malaise. Economic research has determined the association of money and happiness in the sense of the saying attributed to Jesus: “It is more blessed to give than to receive!” (Acts 20:35). Research conducted by a team of the University of British Columbia (Canada) has shown that there does not exist any relation between money spent on ourselves and the joy of living. On the contrary, in the end one feels sadness. When, on the other hand, one buys something for others, one feels happier than before, and this independently from the profit perceived.

14.“In the gift […] the fundamental fact is that the bond is more important than the goods. The gift is […] at the same time and paradoxically obligatory and free, interested and disinterested” (A. Caillé, Il terzo paradigma. Antropologia filosofica del dono, Turin, Boringhieri, 1998, 6f). For a deeper analysis of the subject, cf. G. Cucci, Altruismo e gratuità. I due polmoni della vita, Assisi (Pg), Cittadella, 2014, ch. IV-V. 15.P. Ricœur, Percorsi del riconoscimento, Milan, Cortina, 2005, 272. Cf. G. Salvini, “Il malessere nella società del benessere,” in Civ. Catt. 2006 II 332-344. GIOVANNI CUCCI, SJ

The researchers tried to test this difference, furnishing a sum of money (circa $5,000) to 16 employees, asking them how happy they felt (in a hypothetical “scale of happiness”) a month before receiving the sum and then one and two months after having spent it. Those who felt happier, not only with respect to the rest of the group but also with regard to the preceding period, were those who had used the money to make others happy. “The way in which the bonus was spent influenced the degree of happiness of those who received it to a greater degree than the size of the bonus.”16 Not content, the authors of the study undertook the same investigation with 46 students, with the same results: the sum received, however modest (from $5 to $20), rendered its possessor happier when it was used for the 36 needs of another. Giving makes us happy. This is a fact seen in all cultures and societies.17 Nevertheless, when one asks what happiness is associated with, the majority of people respond: when money is received and one spends it on oneself. These are two erroneous presuppositions, though they are present in each of us. For the researchers, this is a typical example of “cognitive distortion” or an automatic thought about the interpretation of reality. What is typically thought about happiness is the opposite to what happens in reality. A situation seen also with regard to the sense of justice, very clear on paper, but often forgotten in concrete circumstances, especially when one is subjected to social pressure.18 In reality, one is happy only when seeking to make others happy. To attain happiness, one requires above all an “intellectual conversion” about the criteria with which to read life. Giving to others makes us content, always: poor or rich, it makes no difference.

16.E. W. Dunn - L. B. Aknin - M. I. Norton, “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness,” in Science, No. 319, March 21, 2008, 1687f. 17.Cf. L. B. Aknin et al. “Prosocial Spending and Well-Being: Cross- Cultural Evidence for a Psychological Universal,” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, No. 104, 2013, 635-652. 18.Cf. G. Cucci - A. Monda, L’arazzo rovesciato. L’enigma del male, Assisi (Pg), Cittadella, 2010, 50-63. MONEY AND HAPPINESS

It happens, on the contrary, that the poor are more generous than the rich. Strange, but true: in the Gospel, generous gestures come from those who seem not to count at all, as in the passage of the forgiven sinner (cf. Luke 7:36-50); those who are rich are more reluctant to give, often they give the superfluous, unwillingly, and making it weigh heavy upon the receiver. Jesus, looking at the offerings thrown into the treasury of the temple, draws our attention to the fact that the only person able to make a free offering was a poor widow who gave all that she had to live on, literally “she gave her whole life” (Mark 12:44), differently from those around her. “It seems strange that the woman makes a gift of everything beginning precisely with her misery, from that limitation which might have been invoked as an excuse, as an unfair debt, to save herself from giving. The Gospel teaching 37 moves in the opposite direction: only those who do not possess, who are truly poor, may give. Maybe this is the meaning of the evangelical beatitude of the poor in spirit […]. Only those who are poor, who do not pretend to possess and recognize with gratitude that which they receive, may truly give, or better, that person becomes a gift.”19

19.E. Parolari, “Debito buono e debito cattivo. La psicologia del dono,” in Tredimensioni 3 (2006) 42-44. How to Communicate in a Polarized Society

Diego Fares, SJ - Austen Ivereigh

How do we communicate in a polarized society? How do we promote unity, encounter and reconciliation while remaining faithful to diversity? What is the attitude, the mindset required to be good communicators in a context where polarization seeks 38 to impose itself on every public or private discussion? Polarization is as old as humanity, but today it tends to increase exponentially in the face of large-scale changes and uncertainties. In the U.S., where nearly half of voters, both Democrats and Republicans, currently see their political opponents as a threat to the welfare of the nation, the growing polarization has given rise to studies and projects aimed at overcoming it.1 Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is at the forefront of this effort. In The Righteous Mind, he stressed the importance of “moral intuitions” and the fact that people seek arguments to defend them.2 Liberals and conservatives need to learn what moral intuitions respectively motivate each other if they are to cross the gap separating them. The civic organization Better Angels tries to “depolarize America” by implementing practical projects in which it brings together supporters of Democrats and Republicans.3 Its founder, David Blankenhorn, who describes himself as a person injured

La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 3, no. 3, article 5, Mar. 2019: 10.32009/22072446.1903.5 1.See the results of the survey by the Pew Research Center, “Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016,” June 22, 2016, in http://www.people-press. org/2016/06/22/partisanship-and-political-animosity-in-2016/. 2.J. Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, New York, Vintage Book, 2012. 3.Cf. www.better-angels.org HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN A POLARIZED SOCIETY by the American culture wars, has identified seven attitudes to depolarize conflict, deriving them from the seven classical virtues of Christianity. According to Blankenhorn, the three highest virtues are: 1) “criticizing from within,” which means to criticize the other starting from a shared value (recognizing that moral intuitions are usually universal); 2) “considering the assets at stake,” that is, to acknowledge that while some conflicts concern good as opposed to evil, most of them occur among goods, and the task therefore is not so much to separate good from evil as to recognize and weigh goods in competition with each other; 3) “count higher than two,” that is, to overcome the tendency to divide according to antagonistic pairs, which leads to pseudo-contrasts.4 We can also find attempts to overcome the acute inter- 39 ecclesial divisions between “progressive” and “conservative” groups within the Catholic Church in the United States. In June 2018, for example, Georgetown University sponsored a meeting of 80 authoritative Catholic figures with the aim of overcoming polarization on the basis of the social doctrine of the Church and the teaching of Pope Francis.5 One of the speakers, Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, noted a distinction between “partisanship” and “polarization.” The first involves division or disagreement, yet allows for working together to achieve shared purpose. In contrast, in the latter case, isolation and mutual mistrust prevent cooperation. Cupich recalled that, to Saint John Paul II, polarization is a sin, “because it raises seemingly implacable obstacles to fulfilling God’s plan for humanity.”

4.The other four attitudes concern the importance to doubt, to specify, to qualify, and to keep the conversation going. Cf. “The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People,” in The American Interest, February 17, 2016, in https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/17/the-seven-habits-of- highly-depolarizing-people/; D. Blankenhorn, “Why polarization matters,” in The American Interest, December 22, 2015, in www.the-american-interest. com/2015/12/22/why-polarization-matters. 5.Cf. “Though Many, One: Overcoming Polarization through Catholic Social Thought,” promoted by the Initiative for Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University. See C. White, “Georgetown summit looks to Francis in overcoming polarization,” Crux, June 7, 2018. DIEGO FARES, SJ - AUSTEN IVEREIGH

The pope’s stance on polarization Pope Francis has observed that “we live at a time in which polarization and exclusion are burgeoning and considered the only way to resolve conflicts.”6 In his latest message for World Communications Day, he said, “In the social network, identity is too often based on opposition to the other, the person outside the group: we define ourselves starting with what divides us rather than with what unites us, giving rise to suspicion and to the venting of every kind of prejudice (ethnic, sexual, religious and other).”7 The pope reflected on belonging to each other as the deepest motivation of the duty to guard the truth, which indeed is revealed in communion.8 And he described 40 the Church as “a network woven together by Eucharistic communion, where unity is based not on ‘likes,’ but on the truth, on the ‘Amen,’ by which each one clings to the Body of Christ, and welcomes others.”9 One of the most important speeches delivered by Pope Francis on this matter is his address to the joint session of the United States Congress: “But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism that sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds that affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps.10 The pope went on to note a possible paradox: “In the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place. That is something which

6.Pope Francis, Homily for the Consistory, November 19, 2016. 7.Pope Francis, “We are members one of another” (Eph 4:25): From social network communities to the human community. Message for the 53rd World Day of Social Communications, January 24, 2019. 8.Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum, 2. 9.Francis, “We are members one of another,” op. cit. 10.Pope Francis, Address of the Holy Father to the Joint Session of the United States Congress, September 24, 2015. HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN A POLARIZED SOCIETY you, as a people, reject.”11 From the Christian point of view, this rejection, this resistance, is a “criterion of sanctity and Christian orthodoxy [which] is not so much in the way of acting as in the way of resisting.”12 It is a personal choice to withhold, one that recognizes that polarization originates in the human heart, and is subsequently fueled by the media and politics. In his message for the 50th World Day of Social Communications, the pope noted how the misuse of the media can lead to “further polarization and division between individuals and groups.”13 Similarly, politics is unhealthy if it thrives on conflict, escalating it to increase the power or influence of the “middleman” politician, unlike a healthy politics, which strives to reconcile people for the sake of the common good and in 41 which the “mediator” politician sacrifices him or herself in favor of the people.14 In 1974, when he had just been appointed provincial of the Jesuits, Bergoglio highlighted the fact that in the Spiritual Exercises, sin is “the disruptor of our belonging to the Lord and our holy mother, the Church.”15 Sin disintegrates even our belonging to humanity. He also stated that “the only real enemy is the enemy of God’s plan,”16 since as Paul says, “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Rom 8:28). He

11.Ibid. On another occasion the pope also said: “The virus of polarization and animosity permeates our way of thinking, feeling and acting. We are not immune from this and we need to take care lest such attitudes find a place in our hearts, because this would be contrary to the richness and universality of the Church” (Francis, Homily during the Consistory, cited above). 12.Cf. Augustine, Sermons 46: Pastors, n. 13, in D. Fares, “Io sono una missione,” in Civ. Catt. 2018 I 430ff. 13.Francis, Communication and Mercy: A Fruitful Encounter, Message for the 50th World Communications Day, January 24, 2016. 14.J. M. Bergoglio, transcript of the inaugural lecture of a course on political formation and reflection, Centro de estudios, formación y animación social, Argentina, June 1, 2004. The distinction between the mediador (mediator) and intermediario (middleman) is one he has made often: the first brings the two parts together, sacrificing himself; the second enriches himself at the expense of both. Jesus was the ultimate “mediator.” 15.Pope Francis, Nel cuore di ogni padre. Alle radici della mia spiritualità, Milan, Rizzoli, 2014, 139. 16.Ibid., 37. DIEGO FARES, SJ - AUSTEN IVEREIGH

added: “And this is the hermeneutic to discern what is primary from what is accessory, what is authentic from what is false,”17 the “contradictions of the moment from God’s time,”18 which is “the greatest of our contradictions.”19

A de-polarizing mindset Let us examine four attitudes of Pope Francis that help us identify the mindset needed to discern how to communicate well in a polarized society.20 There are two noes and two yeses. First, do not argue with people trying to polarize, and do not be confused by false contradictions. Then, say yes, more with actions than with words, to mercy as the ultimate paradigm, and say it in that “maternal dialect” which reaches the heart of every 42 person in his or her specific culture. Let us look at some situations where the pope, with a few words (sometimes a gesture, a pause or a meaningful silence), communicated well in a polarized environment. Consider the conference held at the Augustinianum (Pontifical Patristics Institute, Rome) on intergenerational dialogue, on the occasion of the presentation of the book Sharing the Wisdom of 21 Time. Pope Francis dialogued with a pair of grandparents who expressed the need for help in communicating well with their children. They told him: “despite our best efforts, as parents, to transmit the faith, children sometimes are very critical, they dismiss us, they reject their Catholic education. What should we tell them?”

17.Ibid. 18.Ibid., 46. 19.Ibid., 42. With respect to the weight that this theory had on the thought of Bergoglio, we must remember that decisive for him were the influence, dialogue and collaboration of the Jesuit Miguel Ángel Fiorito (1916-2005); see M.A. Fiorito, “La opción personal de San Ignacio: Cristo o Satanás,” in Ciencia y Fe XII-46 (1956) 23-56. 20.Speaking of mindset, think of what Paul says: “We have the mind [noun] of Christ”, referring to the fact that” the things of the Spirit” are not understood only through natural criteria, and can be judged [ἀνακρίνεται] through the Holy Spirit” (cf. 1 Cor 2:14-16). 21.Francis, La saggezza del tempo. In dialogo con papa Francesco sulle grandi questioni della vita, Milan, Rizzoli, 2018. In English: Pope Francis and Friends, Sharing the Wisdom of Time, Loyola Press, 2018. HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN A POLARIZED SOCIETY

The pope paused briefly, and then answered firmly: “There is a thing I said once, spontaneously, on the transmission of faith: faith is transmitted ‘in dialect.’ Always. The familiar dialect, the dialect ... Think of the mom of those seven brothers we read about in the Book of Maccabees: the biblical account says twice that the mom encouraged them ‘in dialect,’ in their mother tongue, because the faith had been transmitted so, faith is transmitted at home.”22 Then he added: “Never argue, never, because this is a trap: children want to provoke parents into arguing. No. Better to say: ‘I cannot answer this, look for another answer elsewhere, but search, search....’ Always avoid direct disagreement because this creates distance. And always give witness ‘in dialect,’ that is, with gestures and caresses that they understand.”23 43 The strength of that brief dialogue between the pope and the couple of parents/grandparents contains a core of communication that disarms those who polarize, willfully or involuntarily. We should adopt these two attitudes: bear witness ‘in dialect’ and avoid arguing. Avoiding arguing presumes that one makes a discernment: saying no to a false polarization and saying yes to a paradigm that overcomes it, that of mercy. These attitudes appear in two more episodes of the pontificate of Francis. The first during the return flight from the apostolic journey to Ireland. A reporter asked a question about accusations of a cover-up launched that morning by the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.24 The question attempted to get the pope to declare clearly whether those accusations (on the episodes of sexual abuse involving the former Cardinal McCarrick) were true. Instead of responding within the terms set by Viganò, Francis replied that at that moment he would not say a single word about it. Rather, he invited journalists to investigate on

22.Id., Intergenerational dialogue, meeting with young people and the elderly at the Augustinianum, Rome, October 23, 2018. 23.Ibid. 24.Cf. Id., Press conference during the return flight from Ireland, August 26, 2018. DIEGO FARES, SJ - AUSTEN IVEREIGH

their own the truth of the accusations. His silence has been interpreted in various ways, more or less favorably. But the important thing is that the pope chose to keep silence. We will return to this later. The other episode was the return flight from the apostolic visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh.25 During the visit, a polarization had been created around the question of the pope using the term Rohingya, an ethnic group that the Myanmar military authorities refuse to acknowledge. The pope avoided using the term while in Myanmar but, on arriving in Bangladesh, held a poignant encounter with 16 refugees of that ethnic group, in which he said that “the presence of God today is also called Rohingya.”26 44 During the onboard press conference, the pope explained that using the name in his official speeches would have meant to slam the door in the face of those he was dialoguing with, an aggressive act that would ensure that his “message does not reach its destination.” Rather, in his speeches in Myanmar he had spoken of the importance to include everyone, of rights and citizenship, and that subsequently, in his private meetings, he was then allowed to “go further.” During the interreligious meeting in Dhaka, that term escaped from his mouth spontaneously when he greeted the refugees. The pope says: “I began to feel something inside: ‘I cannot let them go without saying a word,’ and I asked for the microphone. And I started to talk ... I do not remember what I said. I know at one point I asked for forgiveness. [...] I was crying. I cried in a way that could not be noticed. They were crying as well.” Francis completed his reflection: “Once I saw the entire path, the entire journey, I felt that the message was delivered.” He had a message to be communicated, a message focused on mercy and inclusion. And in order to transmit it, he had been able to overcome the polarizations.

25.Id., Press conference on the return flight from Bangladesh, December 2, 2017. 26.A. Tornielli, “The Pope, ‘The presence of God today is also called Ro- hingya,’” in Vati can In side r, December 1, 2017. HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN A POLARIZED SOCIETY

Do not argue with those who accuse The example and counsel of Francis is to refrain from arguing within a polarized environment, whether it is a familial context, with the recommendation addressed to parents when their children try to drag them into an argument, or whether it is in public discussions, where accusations full of media aggression are launched, as in the situation involving Viganò. The familial context in which the pope has highlighted his policy of refraining from argument shows us how the “virus of polarization” finds its home even among those who love each other. This very fact helps to understand the trick that usually trips us up when we let the spirit of argumentation take over. With those who love us, avoiding argument goes together with speaking “in dialect,” knowing that they will 45 understand this language of love. With those who do not love us, and attack us, avoiding argument goes well with being silent and behaving as the Lord did when he did not respond to the provocations of the Scribes and Pharisees, letting them “stew for a while.” The pope says: “With people who have no goodwill, with people who seek only scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction even in families: silence. And prayer.”27 Silence prevents us from being caught in the spiral of charges and convictions, behind which there is always the evil spirit of the “Great Accuser.”28 Faced with an aggressive crackdown it is only possible to have one attitude: that of Jesus. “The pastor, in difficult moments, at times when the devil attacks, where the pastor is accused, but accused by the Great Accuser through so many people, so many powerful people, he suffers, he offers his life and prays.”29 It is a silence that reveals the only real contradiction: that which is

27.Francis, Homily in Santa Marta, September 3, 2018. 28.Between September 3 and 20, 2018, after the media silence that was imposed regarding the accusations of Viganò, the pope gave eight sermons against “the Great Accuser,” of which he described extensively the attitude in the appropriate context, the preaching of the Word of God. 29.Id., Homily in Santa Marta, September 18, 2018. DIEGO FARES, SJ - AUSTEN IVEREIGH

established between the Father of Lies and Christ crucified.30 “In moments of darkness and great tribulation, when the knots and the tangles cannot be untangled or straightened out, nor things be clarified, then we have to be silent. The meekness of silence will show us to be even weaker, and so it will be the devil who, emboldened, comes into the light, and shows us his true intentions, no longer disguised as an angel but unmasked.”31 Against the Great Accuser the way to behave is that of the Lord, who does not speak of himself, yet wins with the word of God.32 This refusal to argue has nothing to do with a quietist peace or false irenicism, which according to the logic of polarization, would imply bias (“he who is silent consents”). 46 Nor is it about avoiding conflict. Nothing could be further from the thoughts and attitudes of the pope, who welcomes conflict and tension as creative opportunities. Rather it is about discerning the action of the evil spirit in his attempt to disguise true contradiction, and propose peace as if it were a bargain rather than a long journey.33 In a meditation offered to the students of the Jesuit Colegio Máximo in Buenos Aires, to mark the end of the year 1980,34 Bergoglio pointed out that temptations against unity may be many, but principally “a refusal to accept that the model of the spiritual life is a battle; you can dismiss it either because you are deceived by irenicism, or because you are lured by the prospect

30.Satan saw Jesus in such a bad state, and like a hungry fish that goes after the bait attached to the hook, he swallowed Him [...], but in that moment, he also swallowed His divinity because that was the bait attached to the hook” (Ibid. September 14, 2018). 31.Id., Non fatevi rubare la speranza, Milan, Mondadori, 2013, 85-108. Cf. A. Ivereigh, “A time to keep silence,” in http://www.thinkingfaith.org/ articles/time-keep-silence; D. Fares, “Against the Spirit of Fierceness” in Civ. Catt. English Ed. Sept. 2018. 32.See Francis, Homily in Santa Marta, September 3, 2018. 33.In a conversation with Fr. Spadaro, the pope said: “The opposition opens a journey [...]. I must say I love opposition” (J. M. Bergoglio, Nei tuoi occhi è la mia parola. Omelie e discorsi di Buenos Aires 1999-2013, Milan, Rizzoli, 2016, 19.) 34.Cf. J. M. Bergoglio, Natale, Milan, Corriere della Sera, 2014, 107ff. HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN A POLARIZED SOCIETY of a premature harvest, accentuating contradictions.”35 He added: “[False] irenicism offers a deceptive kind of ‘peace at any price’ in which you negotiate what should be non-negotiable and you lose the ability to condemn. [...] The other temptation is a caricature of the meaning of life as a battle.”36 Similarly, he says in Evangelii Gaudium (EG): “When conflict arises, some people simply look at it and go their way as if nothing happened; they wash their hands of it and get on with their lives. Others embrace it in such a way that they become its prisoners; they lose their bearings, project onto institutions their own confusion and dissatisfaction and thus make unity impossible. But there is also a third way, and it is the best way to deal with conflict. It is the willingness to face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain 47 of a new process” (EG 227). Faced with an intensely polarized world, trying to remove yourself from it or ignoring it is not an option, but rather a temptation. An understandable one, perhaps, in a mimetic context in which the risk of being contaminated, as we have seen, is very great. Yet what Francis urges us to do is to enter that world, to take risks, but with discernment. He urges us to assume a clearly missionary attitude: to accuse ourselves, which brings us into contact with God’s mercy, rather than being drawn into the dynamics of feeling victimized and accusing others.37 It is an attitude that goes hand in hand with the missionary going out to preach the Gospel. Rather than remaining stuck in arguments and making “countermoves,” the Church makes a step forward “toward those who need her the most,” toward those who have not yet received the Gospel. The Church, when persecuted, becomes missionary.

35.Ibid., 113. 36.Ibid. 37.“Accusing oneself is the feeling of my misery, feeling miserable, miserable before the Lord. The feeling of shame. And in fact accusing oneself cannot be done in words, but should also be felt in the heart (Francis, Homily in Santa Marta, September 6, 2018). DIEGO FARES, SJ - AUSTEN IVEREIGH

Do not see contradictions where there are only contrasts Instead of arguing, we must discern. Where there is polarization, it is not just a clash of ideas, but also of spirits.38 The bad spirit, especially in a context of tribulation, seeks to turn disagreements into conflicts. As Gustave Thibon says, “one of the key signs of mediocrity of spirit is to see contradictions where there are only contrasts.”39 The four principles of Francis, above all two of them, are the criteria for such discernment. The clarity that is required to discern that “unity prevails over conflict”40 is a patient lucidity that “agrees to endure the conflict” in order to solve it, without remaining imprisoned in it. Lucidity is also required to discern that “reality is more important than ideas.” It is more important 48 because contradiction occurs at the level of ideas, not of reality. For Romano Guardini, contradiction is something that exists only in thought and language, not in reality. Reality – what he called the “living concrete” – is always complex. All poles find a place here. Every human being is a web of relationships that involve contrasts, but these are not opposed or in contradiction. Guardini describes tensions between above/below, internal/ external, shape/fullness, structure/vital force. A reality does not contradict the previous one, but assumes it, transforms it or leaves it behind.41 Therefore, as the pope wrote to the Chilean people, “Discerning assumes learning to listen to what the Holy Spirit wants to tell us. And we can do so only if we are able to listen to the reality of what happens.”42

38.Cf. J. M. Bergoglio, “Doctrine of Tribulation,” Civ. Catt. Eng. Ed. May 2018 https://laciviltacattolica.com/the-doctrine-of-tribulation 39.G. Thibon, El pan de cada día, Madrid, Rialp, 1952, 63, quoted by López Quintás nell’Introduzione a R. Guardini, El contraste, Madrid, BAC, 1996, 11. 40.EG 226-230. Cf. Francis, Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Chile, May 31, 2018; D. Fares, “Francis and the abuse scandal in Chile,” in Civ. Catt. Eng. Ed. Safeguarding 2019, https://laciviltacattolica.com/francis-and-the-abuse-scandal- in-chile-letters-to-the-bishops-and-to-the-holy-faithful-people-of-god/ 41.On the influence exerted by Guardini on Bergoglio, cf. D. Fares, “Prefazione. L’arte di guardare il mondo,” in R. Guardini, L’opposizione polare, op. cit.; M. Borghesi, Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Una biografia intellettuale. Dialettica e mistica, Milan, Jaca Book, 2017. 42.Francis, Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Chile, op. cit. HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN A POLARIZED SOCIETY

In his article “Some Reflections on the Union of Souls,” published in 1990, Bergoglio clarifies the difference between contradiction on the one hand and contrast on the other: contradiction always closes off alternatives, refuses to accommodate them; it is disjunctive. Contrasts, however, would rather indicate things which – being apparently and/ or actually in tension – can nonetheless be brought into agreement.43 The diversity of ideas, feelings, imaginations and movements surfacing when one prays and discerns can reach a “new inner unity, continued but distinct from the one which was there before the beginning of the process of discernment.”44 This new harmony can always be lost, and this demands that we are constantly open to new synthesis. “The entire process 49 configures what we could define etymologically as a ‘conflict’ […].45 This inner conflict, which I prefer to call “opposition” rather than “contradiction,” is the interior reference that we have unity in diversity in order to understand what unity in diversity is in the body of the Society,”46 and by analogy what unity is in the diversity of the Church and society. For this reason the pope could trust the sometimes turbulent and confrontational Synod process, which gave rise to the new pastoral practice of Amoris Laetitia. Through reflection, the exchange of views, prayer and discernment, “the good spirit has prevailed,” despite the temptations along the way.47

43.Cf. J. M. Bergoglio, Non fatevi rubare la speranza, Milan, Mondadori, 2013, 152. 44.Ibid., 151. The process takes place in the inner dialogue, marked by peace. Bergoglio said, “If we carefully examine our inner experience, we can see that tensions are resolved on an upper level, keeping – in the new harmony reached – the potential of the different particularities” (ibid., 152). 45.“Saint Ignatius does not fear conflict. Indeed, he grows suspicious when he does not find it in making spiritual exercises, privileged moment of discernment and struggle of spirits” (ibid.). 46.Ibid. 47.See the pope’s letter to Stephen Walford, author of the book Pope Francis, The Family and Divorce. In Defense of Truth and Mercy (New York, Paulist Press, 2018). DIEGO FARES, SJ - AUSTEN IVEREIGH

The yes to the paradigm of mercy The discernment which strengthens us in saying no to polarizing arguments has its source and foundation in a deeper and more radical yes: the yes of divine mercy to all creation. The unconditional mercy of God, which for us has become concrete in Jesus, is the only reality able to heal and harmonize every false contradiction with the strength of God’s love, which “by its very nature, is communication.”48 Mercy “is the fullness of justice and the brightest manifestation of the truth of God,”49 as the pontiff succinctly states. It is the final paradigm, the highest, and our mission is to proclaim it with works and with words. We find its model in the parable of the Good Samaritan 50 taught by Jesus. This not only contains a supernatural revelation, but also a revelation of what is most tenderly human. The practice of corporal works of mercy, so called because they concern the flesh of others, is complementary to the spiritual works of mercy, which consist in good communication: instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, admonishing the sinner, forgiving injuries, comforting the sorrowful, bearing wrongs patiently, praying for the living and the dead. Practicing these works of mercy means to launch a clear message, which touches the heart of whoever witnesses them. The pope points out: “What we say and how we say it, every word and every gesture should be able to express mercy, tenderness and forgiveness of God for everyone. [...] The mild mercy [of Christ] is the model of our proclamation of the truth and condemnation of injustice. It is our primary task to assert truth in love (cf. Eph 4:15). Only words spoken with love and accompanied by mildness and mercy touch the hearts of us sinners.”50 Francis asks that “the style of our communication be such as to overcome the logic that clearly

48.Francis, Comunicazione e misericordia: un incontro fecondo, op. cit. 49.GE 105; cf. AL 311. 50.Francis, Comunicazione e misericordia: un incontro fecondo, op. cit. HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN A POLARIZED SOCIETY separates the sinners from the righteous” and that at the same time generates “proximity [...] in a divided, fragmented, and polarized world.”51 The criterion of discernment for good communication is the same as the one of the life of every Christian, and of the life of the Church in general: the increase of mercy. “The best way to discern whether our prayers are authentic will be to observe to what extent our lives will be transformed in the light of mercy” (GE 105).

Giving witness in a dialect To bear witness “in dialect” is, therefore, saying and doing things “in the style of Jesus,” with a good spirit, as St. Peter Faber used to say. The expression used by Francis is “to give 51 witness in dialect.” The contents of this witness are what the pope calls “doctrine”: truths which are lived, not merely known. The doctrine shapes the real unity, because “the things of God always add up. They never subtract. They gather up.”52 However, for the same reason it generates opposition and resistance: “Only when the Church affirms doctrine does the real schism surface.”53 The thought and the testimony of Francis offer, therefore, a path of depolarization that might apply to many contexts in which there are conflicting parties: for example, between liberals and conservatives in the Church or, in England, between the supporters of Remain and Leave, divided over Brexit. It is a journey that welcomes tension and disagreement as an opportunity to create something superior on the basis of a reconciled diversity and the paradigm of mercy, avoiding the death-dealing traps of sterile polarization. It is a way of dialoguing that does not start with disagreements, but by listening to each other’s dreams. Finding ways to give witness to love and mercy in “maternal dialect” is the nucleus of a behavior that applies to both the restricted family environment and wider public

51.Ibid. 52.J. M. Bergoglio, Natale, op. cit., 116. 53.Ibid., 114. DIEGO FARES, SJ - AUSTEN IVEREIGH

discussions. In essence: in order to communicate well, the key task is to locate the thread of that language which is at the basis of life, where behind the words it is possible to find the source of tenderness that made possible the communal life of each family, every community and every people. This is the challenge: find and not lose the thread of that native language which unites all reality, to deal with the abstract language of ideologies that divide. “Brothers, ideas are to be argued, situations to be discerned. We are gathered to discern, not to argue.”54

54.Francis, Letter to the Bishops of Chile, May 15, 2018. A New Crisis between Russia and Ukraine

Giovanni Sale, SJ

The maritime accident that occurred on November 25, 2018, in the Kerch Strait – connecting the Sea of Azov with the Black Sea – is considered by those involved, by all European governments, and others as a very grave incident. Although it may be mistaken for a simple misunderstanding of navigation 53 law between neighboring nations, it was, instead, the first direct – though limited – confrontation between Russian armed forces and the Ukrainian navy. The Russian military, with the support of the Federal Services for Security of the Russian Federation (FSB), opened fire on three Ukrainian naval ships trying to cross the Strait en route to the Port of Mariupol. In the exchange, Ukraine states that six sailors suffered light injuries, though Moscow contests it was only three. The ships were then inspected and seized by the Russians, who took the 25 sailors on board and the three ships into custody. To fully appreciate the severity of this event, it has to be considered in light of the tension that has existed between Moscow and Kiev since 2014 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. This is compounded by the outbreak of a long war – though undeclared as such – between two pro-Russian regions (self-proclaimed Autonomous Republics) in Eastern Ukraine; a conflict which has already caused approximately 11,000 deaths. Following the Kerch Strait incident, Kiev promptly retaliated with heavy artillery in the suburbs of the separatist city of Doneck. The Ukrainian population now fears a dangerous escalation is about to emerge. This could lead to an open conflict between the two nations, in particular in the Donbass regions. GIOVANNI SALE, SJ

Relations between Moscow and Kiev At the present time, Ukraine is particularly hopeful of the European Union and NATO’s diplomatic and military support, as President Poroshenko stated in an interview December 1, 2018, 1 with Corriere della Sera. However, there is widespread concern among Ukrainians that the Europeans will sacrifice their cause in exchange for Russian gas supplies. Yet the Maidan Square Revolution, which cost the lives of 130 civilians, occurred and developed with all its consequence precisely to defend the pacts entered into by the Ukrainian government with the EU (the so-called “association agreement,” which envisaged partnership between Kiev and Brussels in various sectors), that is, to defend European values in the cultural and economic contexts. At the 54 beginning of 2014, these facts forced the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee to Russia, after which the leaders of the protest formed a new pro-European government. In an interview conducted on the night of February 22-23, 2014, prior to the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sochi, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, indicated to his collaborators to begin preparations for the “return” of Crimea to Russia.2 This interview was included in Andrey Kondrashov’s documentary Crimea: The Return to the Homeland, broadcast by Russia-1 TV, March 2015. The deteriorating relationship between Ukraine and Russia worsened further following the vote held February 24, with which the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) decided to repeal the law on linguistic minorities that had been approved by the previous government in 2012. The law had provided that the language spoken in a region by at least 10 percent of the

La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 3, no. 3, article 5, Mar. 2019: 10.32009/22072446.1903.5 1.In the interview, President Poroshenko said that in order to stop “Russian aggression,” Europe should take certain important steps; for example, blocking the North Stream 2 Project (which was requested above all by Germany); enhancing the presence of NATO in the Black Sea; impose new sanctions on Russia following the Azov Sea crisis; banning Russian ships from European ports; finally, he called for Ukraine “to be politically, economically and militarily supported” (L. Cremonesi, “Poroshenko: ‘Non fidatevi di Putin’. Atti concreti contro l’aggressione russa,” in Corriere della Sera, December 1, 2018) . 2.Cf. tass.ru/politika/1816491 A NEW CRISIS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE population could become an official language there. Thus, in Crimea, where more than half of the population is Russian- speaking, it would have become the official language; with the new provision, however, Russian would lose such recognition and be considered a local language.3 In the context of the intense criticism voiced by numerous politicians, representatives of civic and religious society, including representatives of the Kiev Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and the Latin rite Church, the decision reached by the Verkhovna Rada was not promulgated because of the veto opposing it by its ad interim president, Alexander Turchinov. Nonetheless, it fueled numerous protests by the Russian-speaking population. This fact officially initiated the protest in Crimea. This small peninsula positioned on these “hot seas” is 55 very important for Russia from a military and strategic point of view. The naval base of Sevastopol, which was “rented” to Moscow until 2042, is located there, plus a series of barracks and important military posts. This site permits the Russian fleet to quickly reach the Mediterranean, the Balkan Peninsula and the Middle East, in particular Tartus in Syria, Russia’s only naval base outside its territory. Following these events, the Crimean parliament held a referendum March 16, 2014, on the peninsula’s annexation to Russia. According to observers, more than 97 percent of voters were in favor.4 Thereafter, Putin gave orders to occupy the region militarily, which happened without a single bullet being fired. The United States and European governments protested against the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. However, to their objections, the Russian president merely responded abruptly that the measures his government had resorted to were entirely reasonable in light of recent events in Kiev.5

3.It should also be remembered that Crimea in 1954 was “donated” by the president (of Ukrainian nationality) Nikita Khrushchev to Ukraine to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Perejaslav between the Ukrainian Cossacks and Russia. 4.Cf. G. Sangiuliano, Putin. Vita di uno Zar, Milan, Mondadori, 2017, 255. 5.Cf. G. Sale, “Putin and the beginnings of the Ukrainian crisis,’” in Civ. Catt. Eng. Ed., June 2018 https://laciviltacattolica.com/putin-and-the-beginnings-of- the-ukrainian-crisis GIOVANNI SALE, SJ

In the Kremlin on March 18, 2014, Putin ratified the annexation of Crimea to Russia. The international community – in particular the EU – immediately applied the threatened economic sanctions, which President Putin had already foreseen. In the same period, in the Donbass region, the pro- Russian separatists, with Moscow’s assistance, declared the independence of two regions: the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic. This gave rise to a very bloody conflict that continues to claim victims on both sides, although with reduced intensity. Recent events related to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church have contributed to making relations between Moscow and Kiev even more difficult. In Ukraine, the Orthodox faithful 56 were divided between three different “obediences”; on one hand, the Patriarchate of Moscow (under the Metropolitan Onufriy), and on the other, the Patriarch of Kiev, Philaret, and Metropolitan Macarius.6 On October 11, 2018, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, presided over by Bartholomew I, primus inter pares among the patriarchs of the Orthodox world, decided to proceed with the granting of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church. “It has been decided,” his communiqué stated, “to ‘revoke the juridical bond of the Synodal Letter dated 1686, and issued for the circumstances of that time,’ which granted ‘the right to the Patriarch of Moscow to ordain the Metropolitan of Kiev,’ ‘affirming his canonical dependence on the Mother Church of Constantinople.’”7 The Patriarchate of Moscow considered this decision to be catastrophic for the entire Orthodox world. The Holy Synod of Minsk, October 15, 2018, defined “illegal” the decisions taken unilaterally by Constantinople, and reiterated the right of the Patriarch of Moscow to appoint the Metropolitan of Kiev8 on

6.Cf. M. Ventura, “Lo scisma degli ortodossi,” in La Lettura, November 25, 2018, 8. Those who remain faithful to the Moscow Patriarchate are around 20 percent of the total. 7.“Patriarcato Costantinopoli: nuovo passo verso autocefalia Chiesa ortodossa ucraina,” October 12, 2018, in www.vaticannews.va/it/mondo/news/2018-10/ patriarcato-costantinopoli-autocefalia-chiesa-ortodossa-ucraina.html. 8.In this regard, the Synod declared that “in the Synod Act of 1686 and in the other documents that accompany it, nothing is said about the temporary nature A NEW CRISIS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE historical and religious grounds. From now on – as established by the synodal document – and as long as the Patriarchate of Constantinople does not change its position on this matter, it is forbidden “to all clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church to concelebrate with the clergy of the Church of Constantinople,” and to the faithful to participate in the sacraments celebrated in its churches. On Saturday, December 15, in the Basilica of Saint Sophia in Kiev, the “Council of Unification” was opened, convened by the Ecumenical Patriarch. All the bishops of the various Ukrainian Orthodox Churches were invited. After days of tension leading up to the event, the Council elected as head of the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church the 39-year-old Metropolitan Epiphanius, the second most important position 57 in the Kiev Patriarchate Church, led by Philaret. On January 5 (which is the Christmas vigil for the Julian calendar), the newly elected head went with the metropolitans and certain Ukrainian civil authorities – including President Poroshenko – to Constantinople to receive from the hands of Bartholomew I the Tomos, which determines the autocephaly of the new Church and its full communion with the ecumenical patriarchate. After signing the decree, the Ecumenical Patriarch said: “The pious Ukrainian people have been waiting for this blessed day for centuries [...]. Now they can enjoy the sacred gift of emancipation, independence and self-government, becoming free from all external pressure and intervention.”9 Many observers believe that both political and nationalistic factors were determining in reaching these decisions. In fact, President Poroshenko commented positively on the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church, which he will try to exploit to his advantage in the next election campaign. Putin, on the contrary, of the transfer of the Kiev metropolia to the Moscow Patriarchate, or that this act can be cancelled.” Thus, the attempt by the Patriarchate of Constantinople to “reconsider this resolution for political and self-serving reasons more than 300 years after it was enacted contradicts the spirit of the holy canons of the Orthodox Church” (http://bologna.cerkov.ru/2018/10/23/dichiarazione-del- santo-sinodo-della-chiesa-ortodossa-russa). 9.P. Galimberti, “Così nasce la nuova Chiesa ucraina libera da Mosca,” in la Repubblica, December 6, 2018. GIOVANNI SALE, SJ

considers this fact a humiliation – desired and influenced by the West – to his policy of influence in nations bordering Russia. This is the context within which to understand the Kerch Strait incident. By reconstructing the dynamics, it is possible to consider the way in which it has been witnessed and divulged by the parties involved.

What happened in the Kerch Strait? On November 24, 2018, three Ukrainian military ships – a tugboat (the ‘Jany Kapu’), and two corvettes (‘Berdjansk’ and ‘Nikopol’) – left the Ukrainian port of Odessa, in the Black Sea, heading for Mariupol, in the Sea of Azov. This port is one of the more important in the country and is an important strategic 58 hub for the Ukrainian economy. The three Ukrainian ships were blocked by the Russian armed forces (Coast Guard, Navy and FSB) near the Kerch Strait. The Russian Navy has admitted to firing shots at the ships, which injured some of the sailors on board. Next, a Russian ship – the ‘Don’ – rammed the ‘Jany Kapu,’ then slowly conducted it to the Port of Kerch. A video shot by a Russian soldier, perhaps ordered to do so by the FSB, was posted on the internet; evidently, Moscow wants to send a warning to the West, indicating that it intends to take the Crimean question seriously, even at the cost of resorting to arms.10 The operation was also carried out, moreover, with airpower and other military units. After that the three ships were blocked and seized by FSB special forces, while the 24 sailors who were on board were arrested on charges of having crossed the border illegally.11 The Ukrainian Navy said it had previously communicated to the Russian authorities that three of its ships would be heading to Mariupol, while the Russians claim that this had not occurred

10.Cf. F. Bonnet, “Alta tensione tra Russia e Ucraina,” in Internazionale, November 30, 2018, 20. 11.Cf. F. Dragosei, “I marinai umiliati alla tv russa: ‘È colpa nostra,’” in Corriere della Sera, November 28, 2018. A NEW CRISIS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE and that the three ships were passing through their territorial waters, as some captured Ukrainian sailors, whose families live in Crimea, also declared.12 In this specific incident, maritime law is of only marginal importance, not least because the annexation of Crimea is not recognized by the international community, and therefore territorial waters have not been defined. However, it should be recalled that on December 24, 2003, Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement for the navigation of the Sea of Azov and for the common passage in the Kerch Strait. The agreement established that “commercial and military ships, as well as other state vessels under the Russian and Ukrainian flags used for non-commercial purposes, had the right to navigate freely”13 in the waters thereof. This agreement is still in force, although 59 the situation in the region, after the Crimea annexation, has changed significantly. For Moscow, this stretch of sea is very important from a military-strategic point of view, partly because much of its navy is stationed in Crimea. In addition, Russia does not view favorably the fact that the Ukrainian government has decided to locate part of its fleet (now greatly reduced) near the Port of Berdjansk because it fears that in retaliation it could carry out sabotage activities (above all against the Kerch bridge), perform customs checks, or, policing of Russian merchant ships.14 Immediately following the Crimea annexation, Putin set about the construction of a 19-kilometer-long bridge over the Kerch Strait. It was completed in under three years and is today the longest in Europe. The realization of this ambitious project, originally dating back to the Czarist era, cost almost 3 billion euros. With the construction of the Crimean Bridge, today Crimea, whose economy is totally supported by Moscow,

12.The statement was broadcast by State TV, and it seems that the arrested sailor, rather than making a free confession, read an already prepared text. Cf. ibid. 13.F. Bonnet, “Alta tensione tra Russia e Ucraina,” op. cit., 21. 14.Cf. M. Mussetti, “Dove può arrivare la tensione tra Russia ed Ucraina,” in Limes, November 26, 2018, in www.limesonline.com/russia-ucraina-mar-azov- escalation-legge-marziale-/109806. GIOVANNI SALE, SJ

is directly connected to Russia, and the Sea of Azov is entirely under its control, even though most of eastern Ukraine borders its waters. The bridge itself represents a sort of barrier which can be either opened or closed to maritime traffic between the Black and the Azov Seas; in short, it “is an expression of the Russian government’s desire to break the Ukrainian sea routes.”15 Its limited height (35 meters) prevents, in fact, the passage of many cargo ships and oil tankers, which until a few years ago docked in Ukrainian ports. Effectively, since May 15, 2017 – the date of the bridge’s inauguration by President Putin – the Sea of Azov has become a Russian sea. Immediately following the seizure of the Ukrainian ships, 60 both countries appealed to the United Nations Security Council, but following Russia’s opposition – it is one of its permanent members – the Council decided not to convene. With varying intensity, many in the international community condemned Moscow’s behavior, considering it contrary to the rules of international law. In seeking a solution, and to prevent the situation from deteriorating, France and Germany, which had participated in the Minsk agreement in September 2014 aiming to end the war in eastern Ukraine, offered to mediate. Without delay, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, rejected their offer, saying: “We must do everything we can to prevent an escalation of the conflict from turning into a crisis for the security of the whole of Europe.” And he said: “The authorities of our two nations can discuss this on their own. If technical issues arise, which are not clear to the Ukrainian side, they could be resolved at the level of border authorities.”16 In short, Russia does not want EU countries (except in exceptional cases) to perform mediation roles on issues – including those concerning international law – which concern it. The situation now worries the governments of the most important countries, as well as international institutions. The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, has called on Ukraine

15.F. Bonnet, “Alta tensione tra Russia e Ucraina,” op. cit., 22. 16.P. Valentino, “Crisi con l’Ucraina. Da Mosca arriva l’alt ai mediatori. L’Ue valuta sanzioni,” in Corriere della Sera, November 28, 2018. A NEW CRISIS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE and Russia to take concrete steps to reducing the tension and reach a shared solution. NATO, after inviting the parties to calm the waters, renewed “its full support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine”17 and asked Moscow to free the captured Ukrainian sailors and to deliver the seized ships. In fact, in the case in question it called the use of force by the Russian navy illegitimate. In the meantime, the EU has made it known that it is considering the possibility of new economic sanctions “based on the behavior of the two parties.”18 European countries (especially those that buy gas from Russia) are not being insensitive to these concerns, nor is the Russian government. However, the latter immediately responded to the EU’s threats, stating that such a decision would certainly not help resolve the crisis. 61 The day after the Kerch Strait incident, President Poroshenko asked the Ukrainian parliament to introduce martial law, which grants full powers to the executive for a period of 30 days. Furthermore, entry into the Ukraine of all male Russian citizens aged between 16 and 60 has been prohibited, except for provable humanitarian or work-related reasons. The president specified: “The martial law is simply designed to efficiently organize the mobilization of our military and defenses against the violent and threatening moves of Moscow. In this way we will not lose precious time in moving the troops for there will be no bureaucratic hindrances. Of course, this emergency measure has nothing to do with our domestic democracy, which is by no means questioned.”19

The fallout on the Ukrainian economy The current crisis between the two countries will have a very heavy impact on the Ukrainian economy. While the feared armed conflict between the two states will probably not come to pass, the “trade war” began some time ago. Approximately 40 percent of Ukrainian exports transit from the ports of Mariupol

17.Ibid. 18.Ibid. 19.L. Cremonesi, “Ucraina-Russia, sale la tensione. ‘L’attacco di Mosca è solo l’inizio,’” in Corriere della Sera, November 29, 2018. GIOVANNI SALE, SJ

and Berdjansk (in close proximity), in particular of cereals, of which this territory is rich, and metallurgical products from the large factories in the area. As a consequence of the region’s instability (in the vicinity of Donbass) and, above all, the controls that shipping is subjected to by the Russian authorities in the Azov Sea, in recent years port traffic (and therefore commercial exchange) has decreased by 30 percent. In fact, ship owners do not intend to pay tens of thousands of euros to cover the costs of waiting days to get permission to cross the Kerch Strait, or to pay higher insurance policies. According to data provided by the Institute of Strategic Black Sea Studies in Kiev, since last April, about 730 Ukrainian ships, or those flying foreign flags, departing or arriving at the ports 62 of Mariupol and Berdjansk were stopped by the Russian Coast Guard for periods between eight hours and four days. All this, the Institute’s managers comment, has strong repercussions on the economy. Especially since the actions carried out by the FSB are completely arbitrary and therefore illegitimate.20 Moscow justifies its modus operandi citing “reasons of national security” and its “fight against terrorism,” but without ever specifying the detail of such concerns. This stretch of sea, after all, is unnecessary for the delivery of supplies to the pro- Russian separatists in the Donbass, which can be done by land. Following the annexation of Crimea, Russia’s real strategic intention is to make the Sea of Azov a sort of large internal lake and as far as possible eliminate Ukraine’s commercial and military shipping from within. After the Kerch Strait clash, Russia deployed an additional battery of S-400 missiles in Crimea on November 28 as a show of strength to its Western rivals. These anti-aircraft missiles are considered the flagship of the Russian military. With the engagement of a very powerful radar, these can be used to attack aircraft and intercept missiles at a distance of over 600 kilometers. These missiles are of significant concern for NATO strategists, and Moscow intends to send an unequivocal message to the Atlantic Alliance and to Ukraine: “Krym Nash, Crimea

20.Cf. ibid. A NEW CRISIS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

is ours!”21 and show that the Kremlin is ready to defend its sovereignty over that territory at all times. This fact has been interpreted by the EU and the U.S. as a real provocation, which will result in a greater European rearmament by NATO.

The two positions compared The positions of the two states on the Kerch Strait incident, as well as on other issues, diverge considerably. Even in their most recent statements, the Russians insist that the whole operation was a “provocation” organized by President Poroshenko for electoral purposes, so as to increase his consensus – which, according to the polls, has recently decreased significantly22 – in view of the presidential elections on March 31, and to ensure that for the subsequent parliamentary elections the pro-Western 63 party would not lose power. Russians add that the proclamation of martial law by the Rada could lead, even for trivial reasons, to a direct confrontation between the two countries.23 The Ukrainians accuse Moscow of premeditated aggression, since they had been warned of the three ships’ navigational route. In any event, the Russians had long known that the three Ukrainian ships were moving, keeping in mind the deployment of military means to intercept them, as well as the use of various maritime units, and Ka-52 assault helicopters. In short, Moscow intervened with force against what it considered an actual provocation, as well as a violation of its territorial waters (although unrecognized by international

21.S. Benazzo, “Missili russi in Crimea,” November 28, 2018, in www. limesonline.com. 22.The latest polls attribute about 8-10 percent of the votes to President Poroshenko; therefore he is behind the challengers Yulia Tymoshenko and Vladimir Zelensky. Cf. “Russia-Ukraine. The tension remains high,” in Internazionale, December 7, 2018, 22. 23.It should also be recalled that at first Poroshenko had proposed adopting the aforementioned provision for 60 days in the border areas, blaming the neighboring state for “manifest will of aggression” against Ukraine. But he was accused of postponing, for personal reasons, the presidential elections, which led him to reduce his request by 30 days, which was approved by a large majority of the parliament. It is clear that a new exacerbation of the conflict would end up prolonging the times established so far and strongly influence the electoral debate, favoring the President-in-Office. GIOVANNI SALE, SJ

law). The speed with which its military units responded, according to some observers, would leave no room for doubt: “Russians expected the Ukrainian attempt to force the naval and commercial blockade at the mouth of the Sea of Azov and they were waiting for the boats. The suspension of any naval transit under the bridge was immediate.”24 This interpretation, somewhat simplified, seems to logically explain the dynamics of the events. For its part, Ukraine has long sought to involve Western governments in the resolution of its conflict with Russia, and urged them to increase economic sanctions against Moscow and to obtain greater military assistance from NATO. The fear is, in fact, that without any leverage for blackmail, Russia this 64 coming winter (or on the occasion of the announced elections) can definitively cut off gas supplies to Ukraine, which would be a disaster for the civilian population. Furthermore, senior Ukrainian military officials believe that the Kerch Strait Crisis is a pretext for Russia’s actual aim, which is to take the pro-Russian city of Mariupol, avoiding as such a head-on collision, which would be disastrous for both militaries in the field, but through the technique of siege. Today, this military-strategic scenario appears rather theoretical and has not taken into account certain decisive elements, namely that the Kremlin by all means would not undertake such a daring operation. The consequences if it did would be widespread condemnation by all Western governments, and by the international organizations of which it is a member.25 In reality, an escalation of this type is not desired by Ukraine, either – which depends almost entirely on the gas originating from Russia – because it would help to destabilize the whole area, with rather uncertain results. Despite the formal statements of support for the Ukrainian cause, the EU seems more interested in maintaining good relations

24.M. Mussetti, “La crisi nel Mar d’Azov non riguarda naturalmente solo il Mar d’Azov. Ma un’escalation non conviene a nessuno,” in Limes, November 26, 2018, in www.limesonline.com/ russsia- ucraina-mar-azov-escalation-legge- marziale-/109806. 25.Ibid. A NEW CRISIS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE with Moscow, especially since some countries – first and foremost Italy – have long been insisting on reducing the economic sanctions imposed on Russia after its occupation of Crimea. In this regard, in 2015 the Hungarian billionaire philanthropist (U.S. naturalized) George Soros had provocatively pointed out that the sum of money allocated by the EU in favor of Greece – “reluctant subject of Europe” – was at least 10 times higher at the time to that destined for Ukraine, “a country,” he said, “which asks nothing more than to advance in reform.” The new Ukraine, continued Soros, born out of the Maidan Square Revolution, “would be a great resource for Europe,” and it would be really worth investing there. But this has not been understood by most EU countries, and “this total lack of understanding has threatened the very survival 65 of Ukraine, Europe’s best ally, when confronted by pressure from Putin’s Russia.”26 Apart from Soros’ slight exaggeration, this statement undoubtedly contains elements of truth. In fact, Europe on this issue is akin to a two-faced Janus who, on the one hand, looks to Putin’s Russia (or rather to its market and its precious raw materials), often letting itself be bewitched by his flattery and, with the other, it looks to Ukraine and its pro- European and pro-Atlantic vocation, but without siding with one side or the other. Important international organizations have returned to this sensitive issue, most recently at the Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting held in Milan, December 6. In attendance at the meeting were Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers, who reaffirmed their respective positions on the ongoing conflict. The European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, asked Moscow to “immediately release the ships and sailors, while the US representative, Wess Mitchell, openly siding with Ukraine, declared that ‘Russia has thrown Europe into the most serious

26.Soros’ speech is quoted in P. Mieli, “La questione russa: Europa distratta su Kiev,” in Corriere della Sera, December 3, 2018. GIOVANNI SALE, SJ

humanitarian crisis of this generation’”27 and that his country would soon send a warship to the Black Sea and a military plane to observe the Ukrainian territory. At his end-of-year conference, President Putin stated that, with regard to the fate of the Ukrainian sailors, it will be decided upon only when the judicial proceedings against them have concluded. He added that “the world is underestimating the danger of nuclear war.” According to the Russian President, the “collapse” of the nuclear deterrence system in the global arms race, exacerbated by Trump’s decision to exit the INF treaty, “increases uncertainty, it is difficult to imagine how the situation will evolve.”28 He also said that Russia has already developed new nuclear weapons, which in fact were tested a few days later. 66 At this juncture, for the good of all, in order to not exacerbate the situation further, it would be advisable to maintain a moderate tone and work to reach an honorable agreement between Russia and Ukraine on their respective positions regarding the Sea of Azov, and on other equally burning issues. After all, neither of the two nations has an interest in making the situation worse.

27.G. Rizzardi, “Sorvolo in Ucraina la risposta a Mosca dagli Stati Uniti,” in la Repubblica, December 7, 2018. 28.G. Gaetano, “Putin: ‘C’è il rischio di una guerra nucleare e della fine della civiltà,’” December 20, 2018, in www.corriere.it/esteri/18_dicembre_20/putin- grande-conferenzaa-rischio-una-guerra-nucleare. ‘Every Morning the World is Created’ Nature and transcendence in the poetry of Mary Oliver

Antonio Spadaro, SJ - Elena Buia

Mary Oliver passed away at age 84 in Hobe Sound, Florida, January 17, 2019. She was one of the most widely read and appreciated poets in the United States. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1984) and numerous other honors, including four honorary doctorates and the National Book Award (1992), 67 Mary Oliver owed the success of her vast poetic and non-fiction output (almost 30 volumes of poetry, and prose) to her ability to touch the key questions of existence through an immediate and familiar dialogue with the reader.1 She was the author of a clear and direct poetry that drew inspiration from the world of nature, which she observed on her long, daily walks in the woods of Provincetown (Massachusetts) where she lived. “Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And calls for a vision – a faith, to use an old style term. Yes, that’s it. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”2 This is Mary Oliver’s essential definition of poetry, which she gives at the end of her

La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 3, no. 3, article 6, Mar. 2019: 10.32009/22072446.1903.6 1.Here are details of just two of the many anthologies of Mary Oliver’s work: New and selected poems, Boston, Beacon Press, 1992 and New and selected poems, vol. II, ibid., 2005. The last published collection of her work is Devotions. The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, New York, Penguin Press, 2017. Among her collected essays, in addition to A Poetry Handbook, also of note is Long Life. Essays and other writings, Cambridge (MA), Da Capo Press, 2004. In addition, there are two recordings of the poet reading some of her poems: At Blackwater Pond: Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver, Beacon, Boston (MA), 2006 and Many Miles: Mary Oliver Reads Mary Oliver, ibid., 2010. 2.Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, New York, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994, 122. ANTONIO SPADARO, SJ - ELENA BUIA

manual, A Poetry Handbook. This definition, which takes faith into consideration, is also sustained by it so as to understand the value and meaning of words. In some ways it is as if prayer were called into question to explain to us what poetry really 3 is. In addition, in her verses Oliver refers to the holy words (Percy [Four]) of a prayer, to the religious rites; indeed, some of her poems are prayers. The fact that her work has rarely been translated is due to the wish of the poet herself who did not grant permission for her work to be translated because she was not able to accurately verify the result.4 In our journal we spoke of her work in 2007, observing in her verses the search for a grace in a very distinct way, yet comparable with the literary work 68 of two other great contemporary poets, Mark Strand and Louise Glück.5

Attention and simplicity Mary Oliver’s writing is inextricably bound up with her observations of nature, which commenced every day at five o’clock in the morning, the time when she woke and began her daily walk in the woods taking along her notebook. These walks were well known among the inhabitants of Provincetown, who were accustomed over the years to seeing the writer out wandering then stopping and looking, motionless, focusing in on some detail that had stirred her interest and then she would begin jotting down notes on what she had observed. Indeed, her approach to poetry commenced with extraordinary attention to the outside world, a directing of the gaze repeatedly reaffirmed and encouraged by the compositions themselves.

3.For a spiritual reading of her work see T. W. Mann, God of Dirt. Mary Oliver and the Other Book of God, Cambridge (MA), Cowley, 2004. Someone has even talked about the “Theology of Mary Oliver,” cf. http://serenityhome. wordpress.com/2008/09/15/the-theology-of-mary-oliver. 4.An exception is a handful of poems translated into Italian by Elena Buia: M. Oliver, “Poesie,” in Testo a fronte XLVII (2013) 115-129, and the Catalan translation, by Corina Oproae, Ocell Roig, Bilingual Edition. Godall Edicions, Barcelona, 2018. 5.Cf. A. Spadaro, “Nuova poesia statunitense,” in Civ Catt 2007 II 447-460. NATURE AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POETRY OF MARY OLIVER

The greatest tension present in her poetry seems to be that which leads to the dialectical confrontation between the poetic-lyric self on the one hand, and the more objective dimension of existence on the other. The reconciliation of this dialectic is found in a sort of open and inclusive interiority toward the world, which enters the verse with great force. This happens thanks to a power of vision that turns Oliver’s eye away from subjective responses to focus on what falls under her eyes. Consequently, life is fixed with intensity or contemplated with amplitude in search of a sense, of an opening, of a mystery or an expectation of grace; her poetry is a reaction to the grace of life. This is confirmed by Mary Oliver in the introduction to her Long Life: “And that is just the point: how the world, moist 69 and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. ‘Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?’”6 It is what we could call “attention.” Here is Oliver’s existential posture: I bow down / participate and attentive, she writes in On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate. Here the poet finds in this attention – somehow sisterly to Simone Weil – a first form of faith, In the Storm she says: Belief isn’t always easy. / But this much I have learned – / if not enough else – to live with my eyes open. Mary Oliver lived poetry as a full-time occupation. Following a series of earlier publications, she rose to fame with the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for American Primitive in 1984, and from that moment on the poet from Ohio became an author with a wide following, beloved by a public of readers of every cultural origin and social class, and highly regarded in the academic and critical field. While she rarely agreed to the numerous requests for interviews from newspapers and television programs – saying she preferred to let her writing speak for itself – she did accept many invitations to conferences and readings in various universities throughout the United States.

6.M. Oliver, Long Life… op. cit. XIV. ANTONIO SPADARO, SJ - ELENA BUIA

The reasons for such wide success are to be found in her use of a direct, colloquial language and a clear, simple style, with which the poet directly addresses the reader after interpreting images seen or sounds heard. The appeal is to prove oneself, to completely review one’s own life, to recover one’s own authenticity and immediacy, to abandon false turns and wrong objectives. Hers is a poetry that questions, without fear of indicating an answer, one’s own conduct, for the attainment of a harmonious and peaceful condition of life that is reintegrated into the context of nature of which we are part but from which we have become wrongly detached. Her creative intuition is thus born by virtue of an external vision, without her own inner states being projected onto reality. 70 She stared at the world, returning its glorious and reconciling vision, perceiving, from the concrete experience, the echo of the beginning, the call of Creation.

The celebration of the world In light of such a vast number of poems, it is still possible to present those verses that best exemplify the fundamental elements of the American writer’s vision of the world. In the same way as the poetry of Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and even Elizabeth Bishop,7 the natural world catalyzes the contents of verses, where it is rare to come across human figures, if not the poet herself describing her experience as viewer. Indeed, one might add that the classic dichotomy between nature and culture, as addressed by Mary Oliver, is sharpened and resolved without lingering, with a total alliance in favor of the natural world, as an embodiment of wisdom, patience, humility and harmony, as well as an expression of dazzling beauty. In this sense her poetry is heir to the great American tradition from Whitman onward. Her poetry is simple, immediate, and as polished as a pebble in a flowing river, but able to unfold ways of seeing and to lead the reader to intense interior discoveries. Her gaze, attentive to

7.Cf. A. Spadaro, “‘Le verità attendono in tutte le cose’. La poesia di Walt Whitman,”Civilta Cattolica ibid. 2003 II 429-442 and Ibid., “‘Nell’immersione totale’. La poesia di Elizabeth Bishop”, ibid. 2006 III 354-366. NATURE AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POETRY OF MARY OLIVER the natural world, finds there a unique beauty that her poems render unforgettable. Indeed, the end of the poem itself creates a relationship of affection with reality: My work is to love the world, she writes in Messenger: a world made of sunflowers, hummingbirds and blue plums... The soul and landscape correspond, and writing poetry for Mary Oliver means to give praise in the Franciscan sense. Her key word is gratitude. Even when life offers a box of darkness, this can eventually turn out to be a gift, she writes in The Use of Sorrow. In the mystery of existence there is an invincible grace. Visions of reality and imagination blend and unfold to a pause for meditation on life. But imagination and grace are in turn joined as the poet says in On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate. 71 Why I Wake Early is a poem which abruptly introduces us to what may be considered the distinctive characteristic of Mary Oliver’s poetry: the celebration of the world. A world with its natural elements, in this case the sun, observed and interpreted as a magnificent vital power, as a creative energy that works for a continual renewal, for the ceaseless and joyous process of ongoing creation: Hello, sun in my face, / Hello, you who make the morning / and spread it over the fields / and into the faces of the tulips / and the nodding morning glories. It is a world for which it is worth rising early and whose extraordinary nature attracts, astonishes, makes happy, consoles to the point that the poet’s greeting bursts forth with delight and praise. Every morning / the world / is created, begins Morning Poem, carrying on with the same celebrating line of reality, whose concrete data, in this case the morning, the sun, the awakening, refer to the echo of the beginning, become a mirror of the glory of creation, a true exaltation of the abundance of a reality, whose seduction seems impossible to escape, a world “charged with the grandeur of God,” to use the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet read and loved by Mary Oliver,8 and by whom she was inspired without doubt

8.Cf. A. Spadaro, “‘Vive in fondo alle cose la freschezza più cara’. La poesia di Gerard M. Hopkins,” in Civ Catt 2006 IV 234-247. ANTONIO SPADARO, SJ - ELENA BUIA

when rewriting Psalm 145 in On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate: Glory / to the rose and the leaf, to the seed, to the /silver fish. Glory time and the wild fields. In the poem titled This World, ants, peonies, spider webs, music from the leaves of the trees are all natural realities which live a condition of perfect happiness and harmony, which the poet is called on to recognize, admire and celebrate. Here is a sort of parallel universe, endowed with its own laws and its own language, which we can hear only if we rediscover in ourselves the innate capacity for astonishment and wonder. Therefore, as the final verses of poetry declare, stones are more meaningful and happier on the seashore, rather than set in gold; that is, reduced to slavery by the blind arrogance of a 72 man who tries to assimilate and devour the natural world, the depositary of an authentic and spontaneous wisdom, lived without intellectual mediation. In Black Oaks, the voice of ambition tempts the poet and tries to push her to do and to have more, instead of wandering in the oak woods, lashed by the rain. But the answer remains firm in reiterating the importance of delay, idleness, slow rhythm; unique possibilities of getting a clear vision and empathizing with the majestic patience and solidity of the admired oaks: And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, / I don’t want to sell my life for money, / I don’t even want to come in out of the rain. Wandering among the oaks is much more important and worthier of consideration than a life whose goals are success and gain; Oliver’s poetry indicates, if not exhorts the reader to an alternative and counter-cultural style of life compared to the dominant social model. In In Praise of Craziness, of a Certain Kind, the poet recalls her grandmother’s care in rolling out newspapers on the porch floor, so that the ants could be heated underneath. And itis precisely a thoughtful, kind, attentive disposition, one which claims an indispensable existential demand to listen to the voice of the world, to learn from it, to return to being part of it. This disposition to listen is well exemplified in Mockingbirds where the song of a pair of mockingbirds calls to mind the image of an old couple who in ancient Greece had opened their door to NATURE AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POETRY OF MARY OLIVER two strangers without hesitation, who then discover they were deities. It is my favorite story – / how the old couple / had almost nothing to give but their willingness / to be attentive – / but for this alone / the gods loved them /and blessed them. The couple showed care, attentiveness to the other, openness. The listening and the way of seeing suggested by Mary Oliver therefore entail a kindness that is experienced not as a formal courtesy, but as a tension toward the other, capable of recognizing a link between all creatures and the presence of the sacred in the world. In Entering the Kingdom the human figure– that of the poet who wanders through the woods – is perceived by the crows as a threat, for their intuition not only of a “biological difference” but also of a spiritual distance: They know me for what I am. /No 73 dreamer, /No eater of leaves. To enter the kingdom a willingness to attentiveness, to openness, to wonder is necessary: it is necessary to break the chains of a rationalistic and scientific approach to reality and instead to abandon oneself to the enchantment and authenticity of a primitive and wild dimension. And the dream of the poet’s life is precisely that of entering the natural kingdom, of plunging into it; to slowly enjoy peace and harmony, continuing to learn from it: The dream of my life / Is to lie down by a slow river / And stare at the light in the trees – / To learn something by being nothing / A little while but the rich / Lens of attention.

Nature and transcendence Attention directed to a world outside the self is the necessary attitude for human beings to renew their awareness of belonging to the family of things, as found in the splendid finale of Wild 9 Geese . This is without doubt the most famous poem of this American writer. Here Oliver communicates the sense of the power of imagination, capable of empowering realistic detail in the direction of a meaning and a vocation in a broad cosmic 10 context : You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk

9.M. Oliver, Dream Wo rk, New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986, 14. 10.We suggest readers listen to the poem directly from Oliver’s voice in a video on YouTube: http://youtu.be/lv_4xmh_WtE. ANTONIO SPADARO, SJ - ELENA BUIA

on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves. / Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. / Meanwhile the world goes on. / Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain / are moving across the landscapes, / over the prairies and the deep trees, / the mountains and the rivers. / Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, / are heading home again. / Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things. The simplicity of this poem’s assumption is precisely what empowers its ability to disclose a vision, permeated by grace, of 74 the world, seen inexhaustibly as fresh and precious (Wage Peace). Oliver suspends all forms of asceticism or voluntarism to achieve a deep self-reappropriation. The appeal to recognize the “soft animal” condition of one’s body must not be misunderstood. There is no reductionism here. There is, if anything, a desire to recognize each other – as Ungaretti writes in the poem The Rivers (I fiumi) – as A docile fiber / Of the universe (Una docile fibra / Dell’universo). The poet of the Karst region of Italy wrote: My torment / It is when / I do not believe it / In harmony (Il mio supplizio / È quando / Non mi credo / In armonia). Oliver’s appeal is to avoid this torment, to feel the creaturely harmony as docile fiber, as soft animal, inside thecosmos , recognizing the original, “ontological” vivacity of things. There lives the dearest freshness deep down things, wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet loved by Oliver, as mentioned before. In Wild Geese, in particular, there is a sense of a vocation to being, in which there is nothing abstract. The call of the geese is wild, because they are such. Hopkins in his verses combined various words with wild- such as wilderness, wildflowers, wildfire... The sense of the vocation to being has something indomitable, a magnetic power about it. In Oliver this sense of the wild is combined with a cosmic harmony, the family of things which brings together opposites: harshness and excitement. This vision can only happen when humans, paying attention to the nature which surrounds them, learn from it NATURE AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POETRY OF MARY OLIVER and recognize themselves as creatures, brothers and sisters. For example, the human being can discover a relationship with the little sparrow with the pink beak, in the poem Just Lying on the Grass at Blackwater: All afternoon / I grow wiser, listening to him, / soft, small, nameless fellow at the top of some weed, / enjoying his life. The sparrow’s song is read as a universal call to a different possibility of life, based on the acceptance of one’s own creatureliness lived with modesty and fullness, returned to the Creator’s hands. This is a condition of fulfillment with respect to existence which constitutes the highest lesson of happiness that nature can impart to humans: happiness is a key and frequently recurring word in Mary Oliver’s poetry. The same goes for the cricket in Song of the Builder, where 75 the humble but tenacious effort of the small insect, intent on pushing the beans up the slope, downsizes even the highest and noblest purposes of the writer, sitting down in the grass to think about God. Mary Oliver’s poetry encourages, therefore, a joyous and full acceptance of one’s own existence in the world, the unconditional consent to an earthiness understood as a gift, as an opportunity. It is a poetry that exhorts the reader, not without self-irony, to abandon deep thoughts and to hurry into a heavenly bright morning, made up of exquisite moments that follow each other, as she writes in Trying to be Thoughtful in the First Bright of Dawn. Her poems ponder the value of the gift received and unfold as a song of gratitude. It is a poetry marked by a profound spirituality that gives voice to a soul that is tuned into the wavelength of transcendence through contact with nature. This religious tension emerges in much of her work, and certainly occupies a privileged place 11 in her collection Thirst. Here, Oliver clearly states that the “physicality of the religious poets should not be taken idly” (Musical Notation: 1). However, it is not a pure and abstract sense of panic, but a real Christian religiosity that refers to a transcendent God: Lord, I would run for you, loving the miles for

11.Ibid., Thirst, Boston, Beacon Press, 2006. ANTONIO SPADARO, SJ - ELENA BUIA

your sake. / I would climb the highest tree / to be that much closer, she writes in Coming to God: First Days. More specifically, the sense of closeness often returns: I wanted Christ to be as close as the cross I wear, she writes in More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord. Oliver’s work is radically sacramental. In the same poem she makes direct reference to liturgies; she frames the altar linen within a burning double perception of the eternity of God and of the simple day that passes, while loving both together. But the reference is also to the sacraments, to the Eucharist in particular as indicated by the long title of the poem The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside. Our Church: The Eucharist. Sacramentality is extended and involves, as also happens 76 in Emily Dickinson’s poems, the elements of nature because “everything is His” (Musical Notation: 2). For example, it appears forcefully in the splendid verses of the prayer-poem Six Recognitions of the Lord in which we read: Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with / the fragrance of the fields and the / freshness of the oceans which you have / made, and help me to hear and to hold / in all dearness those exacting and wonderful / words of our Lord Jesus Christ, saying: / Follow me. Or as in the verses of the previously mentioned More Beautiful…: When I wake, and you are already wiping the stars away, / I rise quickly, hoping to be like your wild child / the rose, the honey-maker the honey-vine: / a bird shouting its joy as it floats / through the gift you have given us: another day.12

Look, see, listen The power of the world is therefore a vital energy inexorably attracting the poet’s ego to itself, distracting her from the temptation of a solipsistic inner withdrawal. It is precisely the amazement experienced in the presence of nature, of a marvelous “out-of-oneself,” to trigger the fuse of creativity, to become the irrepressible generative tension which finds its way into the

12.For the reference to Dickinson and her sacramental attention, notwithstanding her puritan background, cf. A. Spadaro, “‘Nel cuore dell’enigma’. La poesia di Emily Dickinson,” in Civ. Catt. 2002 IV 356-369. NATURE AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POETRY OF MARY OLIVER poetic word, a sort of dazzle, a blow received from the outside, which unbalances and lets the music flow. It is not a coincidence that in Mary Oliver’s poetry the most common verbs are to look, to see and to listen. In the presence of a reality perceived at the level of the senses without intellectual filters, the mediation of writing comes later, declaring its own inadequacy with humility. In the poem titled Stars, the poet, contemplating the starry sky, is dominated by an enchantment that condemns her to ineffability: How can I hope to be friends / with the hard white stars / whose flaring and hissing are not speech / but pure radiance? It is difficult to dialogue or even more to compete with the hundred thousand pure contraltos which populate the world; voices that seem to overwhelm the human voice in harmony 77 and relevance. Despite this, the advice repeated in Stars is always the same: Listen to the river, to the hawk, to the hoof, / to the mockingbird, to the jack-in-the-pulpit – / then I come up with a few words, like a gift. Poetry, closely resembling the tenacious and careful observation of William Carlos Williams, can only be born in the moment that follows listening and looking: it becomes a report, a description of an encounter.13 Creativity presents the characteristics of an acceptance of an external word, which we are predisposed to receive as if it were a gift, not forgetting then to express profound gratitude for what we have just received. This is a celebrated gratitude of what is humble, small, ordinary, but which reveals its belonging to a greater and meaningful reality, if observed with the right focus of the gaze. And so, in While I Am Writing a Poem to Celebrate Summer, the Meadowlark Begins to Sing, the poet has nothing left but to modulate her voice to that of the lark, whose song is one of praise, an hallelujah directly addressed to the Creator. The natural world proves capable of perfect prayer, as in the case of the lily (as in the poem The Lily), whispering in a secret language (lily language) imperceptible words, which the poet strives to hear but in vain,

13.Cf. A. Spadaro, “‘Nelle vene dell’America’. William Carlos Williams (1883-1963),” in Civ Catt 2003 III 221-234. ANTONIO SPADARO, SJ - ELENA BUIA

even if it is not windy. Perhaps, Oliver meditates, the tongue of the lily is actually just the simple “being” of the flower: it just stands there / with the patience / of vegetables / and saints / until the whole earth has turned around. The enormous power of attraction on the part of nature, as well as beauty, is based on the fact that it is interpreted as a holder of truth, wisdom and knowledge, but also of that “holiness” the poet tries to draw from: a wisdom based on patience and acceptance of the harmonious laws of creation.

The song of the kingdoms In Mary Oliver’s poetry, attention to nature releases a continuous vision. This is the case with First Snow where 78 the slow fall of the first snow cover of winter calls to why, how, / whence such beauty and what / the meaning. But the temptation to intellectualize is immediately constrained by the ironic exclamation: such / an oracular fever! In fact, if nature imparts a teaching to us, this has to do with the spur to live the present with fullness, with joy and without postponement, relying on the knowledge of the senses, rather than on cerebral abstractions. This does not mean pushing away the final questions, or ignoring the great lesson of death, of loss – of course / loss is the great lesson, the verses of Poppies declare – but trying to ensure that the extraordinariness of a world, enjoyed in the present, could be the most concrete, honest and constructive reply that we have at our disposal to death itself. Mary Oliver’s poetry, far from being a celebration of the hic et nunc, sees in happiness, arising from the immersion in the river of earthly delight, a kind of holiness, / palpable and redemptive. What “saves” is therefore the maturation of an attitude, of a spiritual posture that informs the whole of our being, until it becomes a habitus, a way of life. A spiritual disposition capable, through the beauty of creation, of discovering and knowing the figure of the Creator. Death, in fact, often represented in these poems by the images of the hook, the owl or the intense blue darkness, never has the last word, and its horror cannot compete with a life lived with fullness. NATURE AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POETRY OF MARY OLIVER

The only weapon that human beings have against the destructive power of death is, therefore, to rediscover their own condition of belonging to a created totality, the beauty of which is synonymous with eternity. As the beautiful concluding verses of The Ponds illustrate, the poet senses a meaning that goes beyond the cyclical birth and death of all things: I want to believe I am looking / into the white fire of a great mystery. / I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing – / that the light is everything – that it is more than the sum / of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do. Before such mystery, here is her poetic response to life and death, found among the lines of the poetic prose that gives its name to the collection Thirst: “I have given a great many things / away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, / except the prayers 79 which, with this thirst, / I am slowly learning.” Human Rights in Amazonia

Arturo Peraza, SJ

Pope Francis has called for a Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region to be held in October, dedicated to the theme, “Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology.” The goal of the Synod is to 80 discuss how the Church can preach the message of Jesus more effectively in light of what is happening in the vast territory referred to as “Amazonia” or “Pan-Amazonia.” The discussions of the Synod are also intended to address situations analogous to those of the Amazon Basin. A further goal will be to assist the universal Church in understanding her current role in the mission of evangelization. This is the way the Preparatory Document for the Synod1 (PD) describes the pan-Amazonian territory: “The Amazon Basin encompasses one of our planet’s largest reserves of biodiversity (30 to 50 percent of the world’s flora and fauna) and fresh water (20 percent of the world’s fresh water). It constitutes more than a third of the planet’s primary forests and – although the oceans are the largest carbon sinks – its work of carbon sequestration is quite significant. It covers more than seven and a half million square kilometers, and nine countries share this great biome (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela, and French Guyana, an overseas territory)” (PD I, 1). The document goes on to state that “in the Amazon rainforest, which is of vital importance for the planet, a deep

La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 3, no. 3, article 7, Mar. 2019: 10.32009/22072446.1903.7 1.“Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology,” Preparatory Document of the Synod of Bishops for the Special Assembly for the Pan-Amazon Region, June 8, 2018. HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMAZONIA crisis has been triggered by prolonged human intervention, in which a ‘culture of waste’ (Laudato si’, 16) and an extractivist mentality prevail” (PD, Preamble). This is the crisis to which the Church wishes to respond with renewed vigor, especially since it is so prevalent in the region. Hence the Synod intends to listen not only to the bishops of the area, but also to members of the communities for which they are responsible, especially indigenous peoples, those living close to the river basin, and those in the surrounding areas. The Synod asks: “How do you imagine your ‘serene future’ and the ‘good life’ of future generations? How can we work together toward the construction of a world which breaks with structures that take life and with colonizing mentalities, in order to build networks of solidarity and interculturality? And, above all, 81 what is the Church’s particular mission today in the face of this reality?” (Ibid.) The present article places itself within this broad framework and addresses issues regarding human rights in the Amazon Basin, particularly with regard to its indigenous communities and the basic challenges introduced by an “extractivist” attitude throughout Amazonia.

Extractivism A precise definition of “extractivism” does not come easily. The word refers to a model of production with “a high dependency on intensive extraction (i.e. huge quantities) of natural resources with a low need of processing (i.e. aggregate value) for the purposes of selling abroad (i.e. export).”2 There are two sides to this model: (1) intense harvesting of agricultural and forest resources, and (2) the exploitation of mineral resources and hydrocarbons. Both have a strong impact upon the environment in which they take place, especially on freshwater resources, either through depletion or contamination. They affect, in turn, biodiversity and the Amazonian ecosystem in general.

2.This definition, used by the Colectivo de Coordinacion de Acciones Socio Ambientales, seems clear enough. Cf. “Extractivismo, Dependencia y Desarrollo,” in www.colectivocasa.org.bo/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=140:e xtractivismo dependencia-y-desarrollo&Itemid=124. ARTURO PERAZA, SJ

This model presupposes a primary resource market that needs little by way of processing. Countries heavily endowed with these resources are normally bound tightly to fluctuations in the price of these resources. Their value increases at times, but countries cannot detach themselves from these resources when their value drops. This model, besides encouraging predatory behavior, is incapable of enhancing a nation’s overall wealth. It only sets up structures of dependency that leave them in an even greater state of need. Venezuela, whose economy virtually hinges on crude oil, is an emblematic case of this dependency.3 Many look to the Amazon basin as a repository of mineral resources to which nations have a right because of their need for internal “development.” They view it as a sort of terra nullius 82 insofar as they take little or no consideration of the population that has made its living there for centuries. Accordingly, these nations make concessions without consulting the native population, who then suffer the consequences. Examples of this behavior can be found in the case of many governments, be they liberal, conservative or socialist, hence the protests of many internal, indigenous communities in the Amazon basin who seek a way to survive after having been robbed of their traditional means of sustenance.

The social and environmental consequences In this regard, we can cite the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) which, in a report on this topic, said that, “At the same time, the IACHR has noted that very often, extraction and development projects coincide with lands and territories historically occupied by indigenous peoples and Afro-descendent communities. This is linked to the fact that the lands and territories traditionally inhabited by these peoples and communities are often situated in areas containing significant natural resources. These are also populations which are often in conditions of exclusion, poverty, and marginalization.”4

3.Cf. A. Peraza, “Venezuela: The Misery of King Midas” in Civ. Catt. Eng. Ed. April, 2017 4.Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Indigenous Peoples, Afro-Descendent Communities, and Natural Resources: Human Rights HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMAZONIA

The extraction model is applicable to many areas of Latin America, but it is in the Amazonia where its destructive effects are most evident. Amazonia is a fragile ecosystem that depends heavily on the surrounding rivers, especially the river basins of the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, the Essequibo and, obviously, the Amazon River itself. Pope Francis, in the encyclical Laudato Si’, describes the situation: “The ecosystems of tropical forests possess an enormously complex biodiversity which is almost impossible to appreciate fully, yet when these forests are burned down or leveled for purposes of cultivation, within the space of a few years countless species are lost and the areas frequently become arid wastelands” (38). The most salient reason for this is the type of soil that covers most of Amazonia, the so-called “Guiana Shield.” “The 83 soil in this region is generally weak in nutrients and acids and has a low capacity for cationic exchange and minimal hope of development; facts that would initially lead one to doubt whether it could sustain the enormous expanse of forest that characterizes the region. Once again, science has shown that this is possible thanks to the development of rapid cycles of decomposition and replenishment of minerals not in the soil, but rather in the biomass and layers of residual deposits beneath the surface.”5 The extractivist model seeks to exploit resources without taking into account the concomitant effects it has upon the environment as described in the reports of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: “In the case of mining, the most frequently reported effects refer to the destruction of ecosystems where the quarries are located, the physical removal of rocks, the impact on the hydrological system, and water pollution, explosions, dust emissions, among other problems. Some types of mining tend to concentrate and release pollutants into the

Protection in the Context of Extraction, Exploitation, and Development Activities,” December 31, 2015, No. 16. 5.Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Vicariato apostolico de Puerto Ayacucho, “Red de Defensores y Defensoras de Derechos Indígenas y de la Naturaleza,” Diagnostico socioambiental municipal geografia del Estado Amazonas, Puerto Ayacucho, Venezuela, 2017, 19. ARTURO PERAZA, SJ

environment. Mercuric pollution is an important concern in small-scale mining, while the use of cyanide in the leaching process is a concern with large-scale gold mining. Further problems exist in relation to the dismantling of mines and environmental remediation. Hydrocarbon exploitation involves opening trails, seismic assessments and pollution by spills or leaks in the extraction. These projects, in addition to the works for the extraction of natural resources, require other associated works, such as trails or roads to ensure access. Monocultures also have acute environmental effects such as loss of biodiversity and food security, increased use of agrochemicals, and the advance of the agricultural frontier on natural areas, among other problems. Informal mining generates an intense pace in deforestation and 84 pollution of soil and waters.”6 In a report released by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 2016, titled “Living Amazon Report 2016: A regional approach to conservation in the Amazon,” we read: “Overall 4.7 percent of Amazon forests were lost from 2000 to 2013, with coverage falling from 575 million hectares to 548 million hectares. This was mainly through replacement with pasture and crops, which increased by 22.9 million hectares. While total losses in Brazil remain dominant, the country has also made the greatest efforts to reduce the rate of loss; this falling by 75 percent from 2010 to 2013.”7 There are no official figures about the deforestation rates in Venezuela (as in other territories), but, as the Mining Arc of Orinoco website shows, between 2001 and 2014, analysis of satellite images taken by NASA of the mining zone of Bolívar (within the Guiana Shield) concludes that 1,058 square kilometers were deforested, an area equivalent to 141,000 soccer fields.8 The World Wide Fund for Nature report notes the impact of the use of mercury in mining: “Over twenty

6.Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, Pueblos indigenas, comunidades afrodescendientes, industrias extractivas, op. cit., No. 17. 7.Living Amazon Report 2016: A regional approach to conservation in the Amazon, in http://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/wwf_living_ amazon__report_2016_mid_res_spreads.pdf. 8.For more, see arcominerodelorinoco.com. HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMAZONIA years ago, it was estimated that 90-120 tons of mercury were discharged annually into local rivers in the Amazon, and mining activity has increased dramatically since. Research in Suriname found 41 percent of predatory fish had mercury levels exceeding European Union standards for human consumption.”9 There are cases of illegal mining activity. But in other cases, it is a matter of concessions made by the state, and this is where the report is most alarming: “Recent research by the WWF found that 15 percent of the Amazon biome is potentially covered by mining claims and oil and gas contracts; although this figure is much higher, 30 percent, if claims in just protected areas are considered. Over 800 mining and fossil fuel claims have already been granted in protected areas and approximately another 6,800 are under application. … In addition, over 37 85 percent of indigenous territories are affected by over 400 mining contracts and 100 oil and gas contracts. Overall, the Amazon has 1,400 extractives claims already granted; contracts that overlap and potentially impact up to 24 million hectares. The large majority are in Brazil and there is potential for other countries to expand.”10

Extractivism and human rights The people hit hardest by these developments are those living in river settlements and near river mouths, either because there tends to be a confluence of contamination in those places, or they are accustomed to being constantly on the brink of survival. The indigenous communities are damaged the most because they have a special relationship with the land due to their world vision, culture and economy, and they are deeply tied to the land. Changing any of these basics is equivalent to denying their right to exist as a culture and a society. For this reason, the Inter-American “System” for promoting and protecting human rights – formed by the Inter-American Commission and Court for Human Rights – has imposed some limits within which nations can make concessions, especially in

9.S. Charity, N. Dudley, D. Oliveira, and S. Stolton (eds.), Amazonia Viva, op. cit., 55. 10.Ibid., 53. ARTURO PERAZA, SJ

areas inhabited by indigenous, tribal or Afro-descendent peoples: “The Inter-American Commission considers the State obligation in this context to act with due diligence in these six dimensions: (i) the duty to adopt an appropriate and effective regulatory framework, (ii) the duty to prevent human rights violations, (iii) the obligation to supervise and tax the activities of extraction, use and development, (iv) the duty to ensure mechanisms for effective participation and access to information, (v) the duty to prevent illegal activities and forms of violence, and (vi) the duty to guarantee access to justice through the investigation, punishment and adequate reparation of human rights violations in these contexts.”11 The Inter-American System for the promotion and 86 protection of human rights has made a significant step forward in connecting the theme of the environment to that of the rights of indigenous peoples. The report says that “the issue that has required greater attention from the Commission is the right to collective property of indigenous and tribal peoples over their lands, traditional territories and the natural resources that lie in or within.” As recognized by the IACHR “its enjoyment involves not only protection of an economic unity but also protection of the human rights of a collectivity whose economic, social and cultural development is based on its relationship with the land.” The Inter-American Court, in turn, has highlighted that the territorial rights of indigenous peoples are related to “the collective right to survival as an organized people, with control over their habitat as a necessary condition for reproduction of their culture, for their own development and to achieve their life aspirations.”12 The survival of the indigenous, rural, river and municipal communities in Amazonia is at risk for several reasons. We have already written about the issue of how the ecological damage that results from extractivist activities compromises the traditional lifestyle of indigenous communities that support themselves by fishing, hunting and small communal gardening,

11.Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, http://www.oas.org/ en/iachr/reports/pdfs/extractiveindustries2016.pdf, No. 65. 12.Ibid. No. 151 HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMAZONIA activities rendered nearly impossible when water and land conditions deteriorate below a sustainable level. There is also the issue of their land being occupied. Many of these developments threaten the right of indigenous communities to demarcate ancestral territory. In some cases, such demarcations cannot even be made, and in other cases those already demarcated are violated, and in others the community in question has been declared “extinct” so that its land can be occupied by others, or they are forced to give up the land by pressure and threats, or exploitative commercial enterprises are imposed on the territories of indigenous peoples without their being informed and without prior consultation. Sometimes there is not even a preliminary study of the impact upon the environment, and there have been reports of mining exploitation 87 on the part of irregular agencies tolerated by the state, which in some cases is even conniving in this exploitation. Not only are these attacks on a lifestyle, but in some cases there are attacks on life itself to the extent that powerful entrepreneurs and land-confiscating entities have encountered firm opposition from indigenous people and farmers who protest against the indiscriminate exploitation of resources against their will. For this reason, the Commission raises an alarm in their report: “The IACHR is concerned that with alarming frequency killings of authorities and other indigenous leaders as well as defenders of their rights, are considered to be commonplace crimes, and are attributed to the violence and insecurity that exist in several countries. Despite the alleged links of these killings with activities in defense of human rights… these allegations are not diligently investigated nor are there sanctions against the possible perpetrators and those who have planned the crimes.”13

The Belo Monte Dam in Brazil A paradigmatic example of this situation can be found in the construction and inauguration of the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil. Connected to this dam is one of the most serious cases of ethnocide and environmental devastation in Amazonia.

13.Ibid., No. 269. ARTURO PERAZA, SJ

Situated on the Xingu River in the state of Pará, Brazil, the dam is the third largest in the world and, as an article published by Greenpeace describes it, “Belo Monte is more than a mere dam; it is a symbol of corruption in this country. And the Xingu River, which was previously one of the richest sources of biodiversity in the Amazon Basin, is now a problem for both Brazil and for the world’s climate.”14 15 Zoe Sullivan wrote in the environmental journal Mongabay : “Late in 2015, Brazil’s Public Federal Ministry (Ministério Público Federal, MPF), launched legal proceedings against the government’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), and Norte Energia, the consortium that built the Belo Monte mega-dam on the Xingu River in Pará state. The MPF accused 88 both of the crime of ‘ethnocide,’ committed against seven indigenous groups displaced and/or heavily disrupted by the hydroelectric dam, a construction project that, investigators say, wrecked indigenous homes, lives, livelihoods, communities and cultures.”16 It is interesting to note that “genocide” is not equivalent to “ethnocide,” because the former, I believe, refers to the mass killing on grounds of race or social class, or on the basis of some other quality that differentiates a group from those responsible for their extermination, while the latter refers to the destruction of a culture or a lifestyle. As Sullivan explains in her article, it is akin to killing the soul of a people. Specialists in the field affirmed that the construction of the dam was an attack on the traditional way of life of the indigenous community, who supported themselves with fishing from the banks of the Xingu river: “(It was) argued that the Juruna, Arara, Xipaya, Kuruaya and Kayapó tribes had lived for centuries along the Xingu River’s Big Bend (Volta Grande) and

14.M. Soto, La presa de Belo Monte en la Amazonia, un error que no puede volver a repetirse, in archivo-es.greenpeace.org/espana/es/Blog/la-presa-de-belo- monte-en-la-amazonia-un-erro/blog/56552. 15. Zoe Sullivan, “Brazil’s dispossessed: Belo Monte dam ruinous for indigenous cultures,” December 8, 2016, in https://news.mongabay. com/2016/12/brazils-dispossessed-belo-monte-dam-ruinous-for-indigenous- cultures/. 16.Ibid. HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMAZONIA depended on it for their livelihoods … Huge fish kills on the Volta Grande, occurring since the dam became operational in 2016, seem to point toward that forecast becoming a reality.”17 The problem is even worse when we consider that a community accustomed to making a living by fishing, hunting and farming – in other words, resources supplied by the natural environment – was forced to find a new model of survival by buying food with money it could not procure for itself (especially in light of a depressed economy and local unemployment) and to adapt to a model of living that depended on an hourly wage and according to a schedule quite foreign to the culture, as well as living in houses situated in an unknown and dangerous place characterized by aridness and asphalt. For this reason, the Inter-American Commission on 89 Human Rights took some cautionary measures on behalf of the indigenous communities on the banks of the Xingu river. At first, on April 1, 2011, it asked the Brazilian government to suspend work on the dam. This request was not granted and the Brazilian government filed an appeal. Then, in July 2011, another cautionary decree was released to protect the life, health and integrity of those affected by the construction of the dam. However, the initial request to suspend work on the dam was abandoned.18 The case was officially filed in December 2015 and it is still in court awaiting a decision from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.19 We must keep in mind that this reprehensible human and ecological damage is not a thing of the past. Plans continue to be implemented as I write. In fact, even more complex plans are being developed for the Tapajós River Basin to “build 40+ dams, new roads and railways at the heart of the Amazon to

17.Ibid. 18.Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, Relatoria sobre los derechos de los pueblos indigenas. MC 382/10. Comunidades Indigenas de la Cuenca del Rio Xingu, Para, Brasil, in www.oas.org/es/cidh/indigenas/proteccion/ cautelares.asp. 19.Cf. “Brasil debe responder ante la CIDH por violaciones de derechos humanos derivadas de la represa Belo Monte,” May 7, 2018, in obccd. org/2018/05/07/brasil-debe-responder-ante-la-cidh-por-violaciones-de- derechos-humanos-derivadas-de-la-represa-belo-monte ARTURO PERAZA, SJ

transport soy from the interior to the coast and foreign markets, turning the Tapajós Basin and its river systems into an industrial waterway, leading to unprecedented deforestation, leading researchers say.”20

Venezuela: the ‘Mining Arc of the Orinoco’ An example of the attitudes described above can be found in the “so-called ‘Orinoco Mining Arc’ of Venezuela, an area of 111,846.86 square kilometers … possessing 7,000 tons of gold reserves, as well as copper, diamond, coltan, iron, bauxite and other ores of high industrial value.” This description reveals what the Venezuelan government has in mind for the region and underscores a passage in the 90 Preparatory Document that quotes Pope Francis’ speech at Puerto Maldonado, Peru: “Pope Francis, in his visit to Puerto Maldonado, called for a change in the historical paradigm, as a result of which states view the Amazonia as a storage room filled with natural resources, with little regard for the lives of indigenous peoples or for the destruction of nature. The harmonious relationship between God the Creator, human beings, and nature is broken by the harmful effects of neo- extractivism; by the pressure being exerted by strong business interests that want to lay hands on its petroleum, gas, wood and gold; by construction related to infrastructure projects (for example, hydroelectric megaprojects and road construction, such as thoroughfares between the oceans); and by forms of agro-industrial mono-cultivation” (I, 5). In the case of Venezuela and the Mining Arc, the Venezuelan government failed to fulfill two fundamental preliminary obligations: (1) there was effectively no consultation of the indigenous peoples living in the area, which they were entitled to by law; (2) there was no study on the socio-environmental

20.Cf. Claire Salisbury, “Top scientists: Amazon’s Tapajós Dam Complex ‘a crisis in the making,” November 28, 2016, in https://news.mongabay. com/2016/11/top-scientists-amazons-tapajos-dam-complex-a-crisis-in-the- making/ HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMAZONIA impact of the project.21 The Venezuelan government set up flawed consultations and did not take into account the traditional ways in which the indigenous people make their decisions, and they did not respect their legitimate rights.22 Furthermore, there were hasty studies that did not reflect reality, and there were contracts made with entrepreneurs with no previous mining experience or experience with any analogous work.23 The presumed desire to monitor mining activity gave way to an illegal exploitation of mineral resources controlled by dubious groups. Various terms were used to define this situation depending on which group exercised control over the area: these included pranes (criminal gangs), labor unions and guerrillas.24 Violence was endemic to the region, and for some years now a region that had few incidents of criminality 91 has become a theatre for massacre. Francisco Sucre, the Brazilian deputy to the National Assembly, laments that “since that year there have been more than 30 killing sprees in the mining territory. The most recent occurred on February 10 in Cicapra, in the municipality of Roscio, where 18 people were murdered, including a woman and a 17-year-old youth. Eleven of the victims were killed by a gunshot to the head. ‘They were killed by members of the 51st Brigada de Silva of the army. They claimed to have been ambushed, but none of them even suffered a scratch.’”25 The same news service cites various other murders in the region that make the state of Bolívar the fourth most violent district in the country. The model of exploitation that has been adopted has also caused serious health problems. The use of mercury has

21.Cf.revistasic.gumilla.org/2018/arco-minero-sigue-sin-estudios-de- impacto-socioambiental-a-dos-anos-de-su-creacion 22.Cf. revistasic.gumilla.org/2016/rechazo-del-arco-minero-orinoco-ye- kwuana-sanema-y-pemon-de-la-cuenca-del-caura 23.Cf. “Gold Reserve,” in arcominerodelorinoco.com/capitulo-02. 24.Cf. “Crimen, Corrupción y cianuro,” in arcominerodelorinoco.com/ capitulo-01 25.Cf. Omarela Depablos, “La violencia como efecto colateral,” El Nacional, February 25, 2018, in www.el-nacional.com/noticias/sociedad/violencia-como- efecto- colateral_224411. ARTURO PERAZA, SJ

poisoned rivers and people.26 Some studies have shown that the hair of indigenous peoples in the area contains mercury levels 40 times higher than accepted standards. There is a major increase of autism and Asperger syndrome, as well as endemic diseases such as jungle fever27 that cannot be treated due to a lack of pharmaceuticals. There is also a new outbreak of measles. Furthermore, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV are on the rise among the indigenous population and these have spread beyond the mining community.

The Church’s stance in the face of this reality We could include many other examples of damage caused by industrial mining in countries such as Ecuador, Peru and 92 Bolivia, as well as the exploitation of hydrocarbons in some areas, seriously contaminating local water supplies and other environmental resources. The Synod is an invitation not to lose sight of the Amazonian situation, dear to the heart of God. It reminds us of how Saint Ignatius of Loyola visualized Christ’s mission in his Spiritual Exercises: “I will see and consider the Three Divine Persons seated on the royal dais or throne of the Divine Majesty. They look down upon the whole surface of the earth, and behold all nations in great blindness, going down to death and descending into hell” (Spiritual Exercises, 106). The three Divine persons therefore decide: “Let us work the redemption of the human race” (Spiritual Exercises, 107). The Church, invited to follow Christ’s mission, seeks to be a true path toward redemption in the Amazon Basin even in the face of the hell created by extractivist structures. The Synod will be an occasion to denounce practices that pollute the land and water and place the population in danger. It is a truly sinful situation. Jeremiah and other prophets noted

26.Cf. “Minería ilegal y la contaminación por mercurio en El Callao,” Observatorio de Ecología Política de Venezuela, in www.ecopoliticavenezuela.org/ georreferenciacion/52. 27.Consider the reporting of the BBC in 2014. Cf. Daniel Pardo, “El lugar de Venezuela donde 8 de cada 10 personas tienen malaria,” BBC, August 25, 2014 in www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2014/08/140820_venezuela_malaria_ mineria_dp. HUMAN RIGHTS IN AMAZONIA how the land of Israel was contaminated by idolatry, and how this led to its destruction. Today, there are new forms of idolatry founded on a thirst for riches and power and based on extractivism. These contaminate the Amazonian territories and their peoples, destroying lives and ecosystems and causing havoc within races and nations. The Synod takes up the task of denouncing these sins. Moreover, it is called to announce with Christ the will of the Father to save his creation. Hence it needs to look upon all of Amazonia as a biome: “In the Amazon Basin, integral ecology is key to responding to the challenge of caring for the immense wealth of its environmental and cultural biodiversity. From an environmental point of view, the Amazonia, in addition to being ‘a source of life at the heart of the Church’ (REPAM), is 93 a lung of the planet and one of the sites of greatest biodiversity in the world (cf. LS 38). In fact, the Amazon Basin encompasses the last great rainforest, which, despite the interventions it has suffered and continues to suffer, is the largest forested area in our Earth’s tropical zone. Recognizing the Amazon territory as a whole, transcending the borders between countries, facilitates a unified view of the region, and is essential for the promotion of integral development and ecology” (PD, II, 9). As the text states, this integral ecology implies that the ecological and social dimensions can coexist, together with respect for cultural diversity and an appreciation of ancestral wisdom that is interwoven with the environment and takes care of it. At the same time, this will require an attitude of personal and collective conversion to counteract the dynamics of death that are destroying the situation. It also means changing the rhythms of a consumerist society accustomed to extracting and discarding, so that it becomes a society that cares for its people and for the land God has entrusted to us. The Way of Ignatius A spiritual portrait of dialectical oppositions

Maurice Giuliani, SJ

Ignatius is born in 1491: Catholic Spain is completing the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula and consolidating its unity and the triumph of its faith; monarchs (and Christopher Columbus too) see themselves as invested with a divine mission. 94 Ignatius dies in 1556 at the height of the Renaissance, which has succeeded in developing a new conception of humanity and its relationship with God. Between these two dates, we see the slow evolution of a person who discovers little by little the form of life to which he is being gently led; his inspiration comes from above and leads him from service of a king to the service of God, from Jerusalem to Rome, from local interests to universal tasks. Ignatius himself reveals the secret of this interior power: the name of “Jesus, Savior of Humanity,” expressed with the three letters IHS. The personality of Ignatius is made up of contrasts, whose unity comes from an equilibrium of action: rigor in his reasoning and a taste for “great things”; firmness and tenderness; “a fixed and immovable determination like a nail securely hammered in place” and extreme flexibility before situations and persons; a gaze always turned toward what is most universal and an almost scrupulous passion for the apparently smallest detail. Jesuit theologian Hugo Rahner affirmed that “we can never correctly speak of Ignatius without using dialectical oppositions.”1

La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 3, no. 3, article 8, Mar. 2019: 10.32009/22072446.1903.8 1.H. Rahner, “Die Grabschrift des Loyola” in Stimmen der Zeit 72 (1947) 335, Cf. Ibid. Come sono nati gli Esercizi. Il cammino spirituale di sant’Ignazio di Loyola. Rome AdP, 2004. THE WAY OF IGNATIUS: A SPIRITUAL PORTRAIT OF DIALECTICAL OPPOSITIONS

Trust in the present time A number of significant features nonetheless seem to indicate unity within the life of Ignatius. They contain a message that our time is particularly capable of understanding. After his conversion, during the long months of convalescence2 in his father’s house at Loyola, Ignatius discovers “the diversity of the spirits that move him.” He seeks out their meaning and draws conclusions from them for the reform of his life and, above all, for the definitive undertaking of the service of God alone. Next he learns progressively not only to practice the virtues, but also “the discernment to regulate and measure them.” Considering events, situations and persons, he becomes ever more aware of their “circumstances,” that is, of everything that explains the origins of choices, their evolution, and their 95 conflict in the reactions of his entire being, and he becomes aware of the fidelity to which he is called. The gaze of Ignatius interiorizes continually the event he is experiencing: In what way, under what “spirit” and with which variations are these events unfolding? When in 1539 he wants to give a title to the document that renders an account of the deliberations in common from which had come the decision of the first group of companions united around him to make a vow of obedience and thus seal the birth of a new religious order, Ignatius uses a word that he would make his own: “the way in which the Society was instituted.” What is important is not that the Society was founded, but that it was founded in such a way that it could be sure that it was an authentic fruit of the Spirit. In a sense, it is a matter of a second reading of the event, to recognize the stability of the choice and then to be able to cope with all the consequences. The importance of the “way” is evident most of all in the fragments of his Diary that have survived. Ignatius never tried to write a “spiritual diary.” But he does want to make note every day and almost every hour of the “movements” that he experiences, in

2.Ignatius had been wounded by a cannonball in the siege of Pamplona in 1521 involving the Spanish army and that of the Kingdom of Navarre, supported by France. MAURICE GIULIANI, SJ

one sense or another, until he discovers with certainty how God is leading him. He searches unceasingly in order to recognize the smallest and most hidden “movement,” which underlies what subsequently becomes clearer or more complex. This subtlety of analysis carries with it certain limitations and Ignatius lets himself sometimes be drawn into a seemingly obsessive quest. This also is a feature of his temperament, which leads him toward the interiority of each and every thing, and toward silence, rather than toward expression. But this is the secret of his power: where the action of the Spirit has been recognized, human action can proceed with assurance and – to use a formula Ignatius uses often – he “would not have the audacity to doubt it.” 96 In order to facilitate clear and firm decisions, and to receive the grace of God that works in the heart of the person, Ignatius proposes his Exercises. The word is not his own; he borrows it from a spiritual tradition that dates back to the origins of monasticism, to the Desert Fathers and to Greek culture; but the pedagogy that gives value to the exercises is completely his own. The exercise, clearly unfolding freely throughout the course of the day, has a beginning and an end; it gradually uncovers more and more the way in which the conscience is moved, agitated and oriented; it creates interior time; it is a generator of motions, cycles and alternations. Exterior time, which supports the exercise, certainly continues to exist, but reveals the time of the conscience, which, through a progressive interiorization, leads out into the light what was in the shadows, to formulate the unexpressed, to receive unconscious powers that create a new being. With each exercise, the interior times appear one after another, in their insistence, in their alternations. Each moment is situated in a story, which is made up of “passages” from one spiritual situation to another, from a “consolation” to a “desolation” or, on the contrary, from a certainty that is born, vanishes and is reborn to a certainty that in the end asserts itself and opens itself to a decision completely established “in God.” The exercise makes for an entrance into a fullness of life, because, with the experience of these interior movements and of their alternations having been received and recognized, THE WAY OF IGNATIUS: A SPIRITUAL PORTRAIT OF DIALECTICAL OPPOSITIONS everything comes together and becomes a source of power. Thus Ignatius comes very close to the movement that passes through his time. The Renaissance had accomplished a revolution, introducing time to domestic life itself, and multiplying the technical ways of measuring it, putting it at the service of navigators, with devices that made them more independent of the stars. Ignatius applies this revolution to the way we listen to God. In fact, his reference is not the monastic succession of the canonical hours, which spells out the rhythm of nature and the cosmos, but the succession of interior moments of the history of a conscience. The life of the exercise not only does not draw away from concrete and immediate existence, but presupposes that it be entered into fully, with an ardent trust in the present time that is to be received and lived. 97 This trust in the present time is one of the clearest strengths of the temperament of Ignatius. He gazes on the world and persons with attention, usually in silence, without judging, but trying to go beyond what is said and what appears. Mirar is the Spanish word that Ignatius prefers to use. Looking at the present, and in the present recognizing the future possible: looking, but with the nuance that the etymology of the word proposes and that fills the gaze with a controlled “admiration.” Looking, for him, is to perceive what is present, but also to reflect, evaluate and let himself be questioned by it; and, still more, pray. The word returns above all when it is a matter of preparing oneself for a decision, of evaluating the pros and cons, of discerning the times and the passages that we have indicated. Looking at what is real without fear, but also without illusions: looking at it as God looks at it, but also, and at the same time, as people look at it. In this way Ignatius is fully open to life and the adaptations that it imposes. In the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus he repeats continually that something is more “fitting,” more “useful,” more “opportune” to do, unless circumstances lead to a preference for something else: the decision remains open to consider any other urges and any new appeal, on the condition that the heart be free from any “disorder” and any “attachment” that does not have as its rule and measure the exclusive love of God. MAURICE GIULIANI, SJ

This complete openness to life is clearly seen in Ignatius in an experience that gives him an extraordinary depth of reflection: the experience of death. At Loyola, while physicians and surgeons attend to his wounds, Ignatius, as he would confide later, found himself very close to that moment in which “he could be considered dead.” He recounts also that many times, during a storm or in the course of a “very grave illness” he was at the point of death. “Thinking about death at this time he had such great joy and such great spiritual consolation at being due to die, that he was melting totally into tears. And this came to be such a recurring thing that he often used to refrain from thinking about death so as not to have so much of that 3 consolation” (Autobiography [A], No. 33). 98 Death is not an experience of rupture or a shadow thrown across daily existence, but a light that illuminates the present moment and confers on it a kind of absoluteness: “Considering how I might find myself on the day of judgment, the way of proceeding and the norm that I would wish to have followed in the manner of making the present election” (Spiritual Exercises [SE], No. 187). Let us examine well each of these words: “way of proceeding,” “norm,” “manner.” At this level of truth death is a companion of life, as the arbiter of the movement with which freedom asserts itself within human choices to be made or confirmed. Therefore, one does not marvel therefore that, in the gaze that Ignatius turns to events and persons, there is at the same time an acceptance and a distance, communion along with alienation. He is present, but distant. When he speaks, one cannot be sure that he has yet said everything, and not even that he has said what is essential. Sometimes he is looking for the word to write; he finds it, but suddenly he crosses it out. He knows he is being listened to, but in what he says there is always what is not said, which will later give birth to another discourse, and that, already in the moment itself, provokes in those who are listening to him the sensation that “the Father” is beyond reach.

3.English translation from “Reminiscences (Autobiography)” in A. Munitiz and P. Endean, Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, London, Penguin Books 1996, 28. THE WAY OF IGNATIUS: A SPIRITUAL PORTRAIT OF DIALECTICAL OPPOSITIONS

In this case, the experience of death is continuous. Not physical death; or rather not this physical death, but as death that is already present in its permanent sign, which is “mortification”: the rejection of all that, though in order, is still disorder; mastery of all the senses; an offer constantly renewed of the “more” that assures the permanence of the urge toward the better. Ignatius lives this “continuous mortification” that should be practiced “in all things possible” to the point of “loving God in all creatures and loving all creatures in God,” “removing from themselves as far as possible love of all creatures in order to place it in 4 the Creator of them” (Constitutions 288). It is this gesture of “distancing” that gives Ignatius his true insight: love for God does not diminish love for created things, but purifies it from any merely human satisfaction; death continually makes life 99 manifest, in every decision, in every gift of oneself, in every word as well as in every silence.

Unity God and creatures: will the heart remain thus divided between these two attractions, between two loves? The response of Ignatius is dazzling: God alone, and all things in God. Love for God admits no compromise, nor does it abolish “the other things on the face of the earth”: it integrates them in the movement of love that comes from God and that returns to God. This is the attitude, writes Ignatius, of those who “are not divided, and who have their eyes fixed on heaven,” at the very time that they are involved in human labors requiring all their strength. “It is our duty toward him who is our ultimate end and highest and infinite good to return to him alone all our love and to love him in all creatures.”5 The essential message that Ignatius intends for our time is found perhaps in the union between “creatures” and “him alone.” “Creatures” are the entire

4.English translation taken from The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms, St. Louis, The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996, 124. 5.Ignatius of Loyola, “Letter to Emmanuele Sanches,” Rome, May 18, 1547, in Ibid. Gli scritti¸ Rome, AdP, 2007, 1048. MAURICE GIULIANI, SJ

created universe, in its complexity and in its power of seduction; but “him alone” is an absolute, who does not allow us “to rob him of any part of ourselves.”6 We know that this is the way followed by Ignatius in the course of his life. Fr. Jerome Nadal, a close collaborator and companion of the saint, has testified to this with a formula that, although not in Ignatius’ words, clearly expresses his ideal: “In all things, actions and conversations, he experienced and contemplated the presence of God, and had a refined sensibility for spiritual realities, being contemplative in his very actions [simul in actione contemplativus.] His preferred way of expressing this was: one must find God in all things.”7 This spiritual life was evidently the expression of his temperament. Ignatius, who 100 was inclined to extremes, could not love God unless absolutely, but he was also led toward “great things,” toward “conversation” with persons, toward relationships with others (which he called by the term tratar). He had been confirmed in this way by the experience at Manresa when he was still searching for his own interior way after many months of prayer and suffering. We read 8 in his Autobiography dictated to Luís Gonçalves de Câmara : “Going along thus in his devotions, he sat down for a little with his face toward the river, which was running deep below. And as he was seated there, the eyes of his understanding began to be opened: not that he saw some vision, but understanding and knowing many things, spiritual things just as much as matters of faith and learning, and this with an enlightenment so strong that all things seemed new to him” (A 30). A marginal note, added later by Fr. Luís Gonçalves, specifies that: “It seemed to him as if he were a different person, and he had another mind, different from that which he had before.” The light that then opens his eyes produces diverse effects, to which the testimonies of Ignatius and his acquaintances return significantly. First of all, this permits him to unite his previous

6.Ibid. 7.J. Nadal, “In Examen annotationes,” in Ibid., Commentarii de Instituto, Rome, MHSI, 1962, 162. 8.Luís Gonçalves de Câmara (1519-75) was the Jesuit to whom Ignatius chose to dictate his Autobiography because of his gifts of precision and memory. THE WAY OF IGNATIUS: A SPIRITUAL PORTRAIT OF DIALECTICAL OPPOSITIONS experiences. His “great will to progress in the service of God” is no longer blind: Ignatius abandons the “excesses” of his past; instead of being frightened by the “alternations” through which he had to pass, they open a way for the Spirit to work in him. All the variety of past experiences are found transported in a new stream. This illumination transforms a man passionate for God, but violent and scattered, into a “modest and humble” servant. Nadal, who was very close to him, says: “From that time on his face began to shine with eagerness and light. He had acquired a notable experience of spiritual things and the discernment of spirits, a habitual familiarity with God, with Christ, with the Virgin Mary and the saints.” Nadal expresses in an even more insistent manner a second effect of the grace received that day: “In that light 101 he understood and contemplated the mysteries of the faith and spiritual things, as well as things relative to the sciences (ciencias) and the truth of everything seemed to him to be new and clearly understandable.” The light received extends to all human knowledge, in a vision that Nadal defines with a strange, but evocative term: “as if he had then received everything from the Lord, in a sort of architectonic spirit of wisdom.” This vision that constructs and organizes the world starting from fundamental causes is similar to what Ignatius lays down in the “Principle and Foundation” of the Exercises: the understanding of things at their source, in their origin, in their exact value, with a faith that in every human reality recognizes the divine order. Finally, it is at this point in time that Ignatius begins resolutely “to communicate to his neighbor the things of the Lord […] as he had received them from God.” He gradually came to this transformation through “finding by experience that, when he communicated to his neighbor the things that God was giving him, these things did not decrease in him, but rather grew even more.” A fundamental discovery. The “apostolic” vocation of Ignatius is imposed on him with the force of an interior impulse that has in itself its own validation: communicating to one’s neighbor “the things of God” is to open oneself even more to God himself. MAURICE GIULIANI, SJ

Ignatius has by now discovered who he is. He is a man of action whose strong dynamism is solidly united to the fact that love and works are one: love manifests itself through works, and works inspire unceasing purification that intensifies love. In this regard Nadal speaks of a circle between action and prayer. Ignatius says this more simply with a beautiful word that is out of favor today but to which we can restore its proper value: “he was growing always in devotion” or, as he explains, in the “ease at finding God.” Human action is no longer an obstacle but has become the way to make progress in fidelity to the Spirit of God, who leads in every moment to the precise choice that is undoubtedly the choice to act according to God and takes into account the entire human situation. 102 We first tried to differentiate, in the gaze of Ignatius, his acceptance at a distance, his communion along with alienation. Now we ought to add that all this is the fruit of a twofold depth. Every “created thing” is appreciated at the same time in itself and in its cause, in its full immediate truth and in the divine power that has conferred being upon it. After the illumination of Manresa and the awareness of what it had provoked in him, Ignatius comprehends with one gaze both the God who is the source of every good and the world that comes from God’s creative hands. With the years, he grows in this unifying vision, contemplating “how all our eternal good is in all created things.” The same experience of faith leads him to love God, radically and alone, and at the same time, he has the same love for the world in which the glory of God is present and is acting. Of the grace received from Ignatius “to find God in all things,” Nadal says: “We felt somehow the flow of this grace into us.” It is true that the Society founded by Ignatius carries in itself, even in its fundamental structure, the sign of this grace: the work to be accomplished at the service of humanity is seen directly as the end that is proposed to us, and it is this same work that guarantees the “glory of God.” But Ignatius has opened up much more fully a spiritual way to which not only every Christian but any person desiring to give meaning to the world can be dedicated without risk of taking away its truth. THE WAY OF IGNATIUS: A SPIRITUAL PORTRAIT OF DIALECTICAL OPPOSITIONS

The Church, the universal Nadal himself adds that at Manresa Ignatius had received “a great understanding and very lively feelings for the divine mysteries and for the Church.” Hugo Rahner has placed the accent on the transformation made by Ignatius in his behavior: “Iñigo, therefore, from being a purely interior man becomes an apostolic man. […] The Imitation of Jesus […] is transformed into a ‘following’ of Christ present in the Church Militant. The Kingdom of Christ is the Church in which are gathered all the other mysteries.”9 Christ becomes for him “the living and active King, who has not yet finished the mission entrusted to him by the Father to conquer the entire world.” But even if he has received a better understanding of the 103 mystery of the Church, Ignatius does not discover the reality of the Church. He has known it, as it were, forever. Through his birth, his education, the convictions expressed in his social and political environment, Ignatius belongs to the Catholic and Roman Church in an institutional way. Neither its hierarchical character, with the obedience that derives from it, nor the temporal power that it exercises before kings and princes, often in competition with them, is subject to discussion. He can affirm without contradicting himself that every choice of life or state is made “within the limits approved by the Church.” Why do Ignatius and his companions, on the occasion of the vows at Montmartre in 1534, resolve to turn to the pope to decide on their apostolic mission, if events prevent them from accomplishing their own projects? No document informs us with precision about the reasons for this appeal to the authority of the pope, which is even more surprising in those years when the papacy did not enjoy great credit, compromised as it was by much trickery and scandals and still weakened by the recent sack of Rome. But we know that in 1538, when Ignatius and his companions, to fulfill the vows pronounced at Montmartre, effectively make the “oblation” of themselves to the pope, they indicate clearly the motive

9.H. Rahner. Come sono nati gli Esercizi…, op. cit. 81f. MAURICE GIULIANI, SJ

that animates them: the pope is “the lord of all the harvest of Christ” and it is he who has “the best understanding of what is best for the Christian universe.” This is the decisive word: “universe.” Ignatius, in his faith, recognizes the plan of God who wants “to save the human race.” The Church is for him the spiritual place in which the universal Kingdom of Jesus Christ is progressively realized, and it alone can define and guarantee a mission that avoids particular interests. The meeting of the “companions” is itself a living sign that expresses and confirms the desire that Ignatius has of going “to every country of the world.” The companions form an international group by reason of their origins and their cultures: even if the Spanish are the most numerous – and they 104 will be for a long time – a will prevails among them to agree in spite of differences and for openness beyond any frontiers, as the sign of the Spirit that leads them. If these companions gradually specify their will to make a vow that ties them to the pope, it is first of all in order to be faithful to that universal desire which, through every particular task, remains alive and working in them in their common passion for the universal Kingdom of God, which is realized in human kingdoms. Ignatius is perfectly at his ease in this permanent vision of the universal, as the new-found worlds offered by the explorers expand year by year. His former dream of being a “pilgrim” to Jerusalem, but also through all the roads of Europe, is realized through the work that he is driven to accomplish. With his will to conserve resolutely this universal character of the Society that he founds and directs, Ignatius affirms the originality of the service that he intends to lend to the Church. No task is excluded, except whatever would limit the effort, reducing its scope to local or particular interests. But he is more and more open to the privileged task of human, spiritual and doctrinal formation of those who would subsequently work for the reform of the Church. The “illumination” of Manresa continues here to light up his path. “Faith and letters” are held together in a single gaze, and in the guidelines that he gives to his nascent Order, the unity of its members is to be conserved more than ever: preaching the THE WAY OF IGNATIUS: A SPIRITUAL PORTRAIT OF DIALECTICAL OPPOSITIONS word of God, the teaching of theology, but also the integration of the disciplines that then formed the basis of a healthy human culture. When he obtains the approval, only a short time before his death and after years of continuous petitions, that the Roman College founded by him could confer academic degrees in philosophy and theology, and that it would join the ranks of the universities, or when he supports the plan to create in that Roman College a printing office, Ignatius has not at all abandoned his love for the Kingdom of God, but holds ever present the world of humanity: No value of the spirit can be foreign to him.

The most radical change accomplished by Ignatius The Society of Jesus is born in a period when strong currents 105 of internal Church reform are asserting themselves. These take shape with the creation of new religious orders around men who are known for their moral authority and their ability to get things done: Gaetano da Thiene and Gian Pietro Carafa found the Theatines, Matteo da Bascio the Capuchins, Antonio Maria Zaccaria the Barnabites, Girolamo Mani the Somaschi, Philip Neri the Oratory. The list could go on. All are animated by the same desire to reform a Church whose decadence had been analyzed unsparingly by Carafa in his 1532 Memoria sullo stato religioso di Venezia (Memorial on the Religious State of Venice). All of these reformers foresaw the reform of the Church coming from personal conversion, the restoration of Religious Institutes that had become decadent, the service of the poor and the sick, faithfulness to preaching, the renewal of the sacramental life. These initiatives rose up independently of the stimulus of the Protestant crisis and unrelated to it. The Society of Jesus inserts itself wholeheartedly in this stream, which leads to the creation of associations of clerks regular or of reformed priests. It is the fruit of its time and participates in the same effort of spiritual renewal of the Church. But Ignatius achieves an even more radical change, one that the founders of these other new institutes do not dare to make. He introduces for his religious a form of life that breaks with an age-old tradition, eliminating every observance of monastic MAURICE GIULIANI, SJ

origin: a stable residence around an “abbot,” community life marked by office in choir, penances by rule, distinctive habit. The Society, for which Ignatius in 1539 established firmly the institutional foundations, is an order of priests, not of monks, nor of brothers; its “parish” is the world, as Fr. Nadal will say later; the exterior form of life is indistinguishable from that of other priests; the choice of activities at the service of the neighbor is determined by diverse criteria of universality and urgencies that the Constitutions spell out at length. This ideal of a religious consecration outside any monastic form creates surprise and opposition. This will continue after Ignatius, and traces can still be found in our time. But Ignatius never stepped back on this point. In his opinion it could not be 106 touched without destroying the Society, and he understood it as the foundational intuition revealing the fruitfulness of the Society. The Society, instituted for the “propagation of the faith,” spontaneously amplifies its action in “defense of the faith” when faced with the advance of Lutheran ideas. The urgency of the tasks of formation and education give rise to the creation of colleges, something that had not been foreseen. The expeditions of the explorers and navigators open up unknown fields, and those who are anxious to carry the faith to the ends of the world set out on this mission. Alongside the monastic forms of the “work of God” there now stands a “missionary” form. In the Church this becomes a means by which to open oneself up completely to the world, with a movement that also seeks to consecrate oneself to God alone.

A community of companions Finally, in the life of Ignatius one can perceive continually a presence that, without confusing itself with him, accompanies him closely and helps him affirm his work: “companions” who are intimately associated with his enterprise. The first companions of Ignatius said: “All of us had the same mind, the same will, that is: to seek with perfection the will and the good pleasure of God, as our vocation requires […] We should not break that union and community willed by God; we should rather maintain it and strengthen it, uniting ourselves in a single THE WAY OF IGNATIUS: A SPIRITUAL PORTRAIT OF DIALECTICAL OPPOSITIONS body.”10 Ignatius would not have realized his design without them and without the link that unites them in their common experience of God for the universal mission. Ignatius is indisputably the one who “generates” his companions in the life of the Spirit. “My one father in the heart of Christ,” Xavier wrote to him. “We have come to have only one desire and only one will,” confided Peter Faber in his Memoriale, as he remembers his relationship with the saint, beginning in the time in Paris. But Ignatius, for his part, respects the originality of each individual; for every single one of “those who had signed” he has an attention that is a true obedience to the Holy Spirit. Beyond the group of the “founders,” all of his companions become for him “friends in the Lord.” He wants to commit himself to them with complete trust. This is 107 an essential characteristic, to such an extent that in all things, even in the editing of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius leaves to others the task of bringing to its conclusion an initiative he had taken. Even this incompleteness is one of the characteristics of Ignatius. The work that he accomplishes always seems to him to be incomplete, and he desires it to remain so, because, if complete, this might interrupt the movement that had given it birth. There is some irony but also much truth in some words that, according to his first biographers, Ignatius would often repeat: “Those who come after the first companions will be better and will do more. As for us, we have done what we could.”

10.“Deliberations of the First Fathers,” in Sant’Ignazio di Loyola, Gli Scritti, [The Writings] op. cit 483f.