0720 15 July 2020 Monthly Year 4 Philosophers of Contagion: How Intellectuals Perceive Covid-19 A Universal Wage: An urgent social debate Against Religious Nationalism .07 O John Paul II Communicator Syria and Turkey Battle for Idlib Province Rembrandt, the Artist in the Mirror of the Word OLUME 4, N 4, OLUME V Church Numbers in the World 2020 2020 Modi’s India: Between Hindu Traditionalism and Coronavirus The Letter To The Galatians: ‘The Truth of the Gospel’ Death in the Digital Age ‘A New Imagination of the Possible’ Seven Images from Francis for Post Covid-19 BEATUS POPULUS, CUIUS DOMINUS DEUS EIUS Copyright, 2020, Union of Catholic Asian Editor-in-chief News ANTONIO SPADARO, SJ 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. Giovanni Sale, SJ, Claudio Zonta, SJ Federico Lombardi, SJ Title: La Civiltà Cattolica, English Edition Emeritus editors ISSN: 2207-2446 Virgilio Fantuzzi, SJ Giandomenico Mucci, SJ ISBN: GianPaolo Salvini, SJ 978-988-79271-2-9 (ebook) 978-988-79271-3-6 (kindle) Contributors Published in Hong Kong by George Ruyssen, SJ (Belgium) UCAN Services Ltd. Fernando de la Iglesia Viguiristi, SJ (Spain) Drew Christiansen, SJ (USA) P.O. Box 69626, Kwun Tong, Andrea Vicini, SJ (USA) Hong Kong David Neuhaus, SJ (Israel) Phone: +852 2727 2018 Camillo Ripamonti, SJ (Italy) Fax: +852 2772 7656 www.ucanews.com Vladimir Pachkow, SJ (Russia) Arturo Peraza, SJ (Venezuela) Publishers: Michael Kelly, SJ and Bert Daelemans, SJ (Belgium) Robert Barber Thomas Reese, SJ (USA) Production Manager: Paul Soukup, SJ (USA) Grithanai Napasrapiwong Friedhelm Mennekes, SJ (Germany) Marcel Uwineza, SJ (Rwanda) Marc Rastoin, SJ (France) You Guo Jiang, SJ (China) Luke Hansen, SJ (USA) CONTENTS 0720 15 July 2020 Monthly Year 4 1 Philosophers of Contagion How Intellectuals Perceive Covid-19 Cristian Peralta, SJ 13 A Universal Wage: An urgent social debate Gaël Giraud, SJ 27 Against Religious Nationalism Joseph Lobo, SJ 39 John Paul II Communicator Federico Lombardi, SJ 54 Syria and Turkey Battle for Idlib Province Giovanni Sale, SJ 66 Rembrandt, the Artist in the Mirror of the Word Lucian Lechintan, SJ 72 Church Numbers in the World GianPaolo Salvini, SJ 76 Modi’s India: Between Hindu Traditionalism and Coronavirus Giovanni Sale, SJ 89 The Letter To The Galatians: ‘The Truth of the Gospel’ Giancarlo Pani, SJ 98 Death in the Digital Age Giovanni Cucci, SJ 109 ‘A New Imagination of the Possible’ Seven Images from Francis for Post Covid-19 Antonio Spadaro, SJ LCC 0820: AUGUST AUGUST TITLES • What Future for Europe? • The Pandemic has Opened a Breach in the Way We Think INDIVIDUAL SUBSCRIPTION About Reality $49.95 FOR 12 MONTHS • Universalism in The Bible ● Ideal for Church leaders, theologians, scholars, seminarians etc • Working Jesus ● Monthly editions available both in ePub and • Querida Amazonia, between Mobi Story And Metaphor ● Subscriber gets unlimited online access • “I Believe in The Holy Spirit” ● Access to Perspectives Series - Six Thematic Issues of the Journal GROUP SUBSCRIPTION $250 FOR TWELVE MONTHS ● Ideal for Catholic universities, libraries, institutes, congregations etc. ● Multi-user, unlimited access for one year. ● Subscribers access unlimited logins in different devices within the same IP address ● Monthly editions available both in ePub and Mobi ● Access to Perspectives Series - Six Thematic Issues of the Journal For educational and bulk rates, please email [email protected] SUBSCRIBE TODAY AT laciviltacattolica.com Philosophers of Contagion How Intellectuals Perceive Covid-19 Cristian Peralta, SJ The outbreak of a new disease leads to uncertainty and fear, especially if we are among those most vulnerable. Depending on our ability to protect ourselves and our access to medical devices, the threat affects the way we understand it and respond. 1 Here we want to explore a specific characteristic of the viral threat that affects us: its ability to reveal. Covid-19, silent revealer of hidden realities To unveil is to discover something hidden, to bring it to light, to remove the veil and reveal. Covid-19, among its many connotations, is a silent revealer of many realities that often remain hidden in the everyday life of economic, political, social and cultural systems in which we are immersed in one way or another. Crossing rigid and guarded borders, it has denounced xenophobic, nationalist and racist policies whose discourses it has made unconvincing. It is constantly accusing the health systems of those countries which, having neglected to invest sufficiently in public health or having handed over its administration to the private sector, today have no alternative but to recognize the value of a quality health system accessible to all. The virus highlights the true concerns of scientific researchers and the large pharmaceutical companies that finance them. It highlights the voracity of a global market that rubs its hands with the ointment of speculation. This infectious agent brings to light the search for complicit silence by an economic system that puts capital above human beings. At the same time, it bitterly exposes the neglect La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 4, no. 07 art. 1, 0620: 10.32009/22072446.0720.1 PHILOSOPHERS OF CONTAGION: HOW INTELLECTUALS PERCEIVE COVID-19 of education systems, of the protection of the elderly, national production, workers’ rights, the housing sector, the fight against extreme poverty and malnutrition. It rejects the shortcomings of political authorities and lays its eternal allies bare. It unmasks individualists, hoarders, those who seek to engage in corruption. It makes manifest the inequality of peoples, even spreading into countries – unlike other epidemics – by transmission through the wealthier classes, those who can travel. With appropriate distinctions, Covid-19 could be considered the most effective and prophetic Accuser of our times. To carry out its task, however, it uses a cruel method: the death of hundreds of thousands of people. Perhaps this is what Albert Camus was referring to when he wrote that “the plague loves the secret of the nest.”1 It seems apposite to us to consider this effective “revealer” 2 through the reflections it has provoked as it spreads. The Spanish philosopher Patricia Manrique2 has warned, however, of the need to be careful so that the novelty of the events we analyze does not distract us from the actual reality. And she recalls with Emmanuel Lévinas that rushing to say something ends up reducing “otherness” to “sameness.”3 The warning is not out of place. The enormous flow of reflections about the pandemic that come in these times from the intellectual world and the way they flatten out prior thought betrays a reflective haste. For this reason, Manrique relies on the necessary “hospitality of otherness,” which allows ideology and “selfishness” to give way to the novelty born of the reality we are trying to understand. Her invitation suggests letting the new reality evoke questions and generate a calm search for answers. She proposes a countercultural way of analyzing reality. Haste in the process of reflection, in fact, appears curiously akin to the capitalist productivism that many intellectuals wish to counteract. There is an anxiety to fill the open spaces with the criticism of postmodern culture that emerges from contemporary philosophy, anthropology and sociology. 1.A. Camus, “Exhortation to Doctors of the Plague.” 2.Cf. P. Manrique, “Hospitalidad e inmunidad virtuosa”, in L a Vo rá gin e (lavoragine.net/hospitalidad-inmunidad-virtuosa), March 27, 2020. 3.See E. Lévinas, Totalità e infinito, Milan, Jaca Book, 2006. CRISTIAN PERALTA, SJ Reflections on the pandemic from the world of intellectuals Let us now observe some reactions to the pandemic from the intellectual world. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben4 did not hesitate to denounce something that has always been one of his research themes: the state of exception chosen as the normal methodology of government. Starting from this he defined the measures to ensure isolation as disproportionate and referred to the epidemic as a pretentious invention, aimed at limiting one of the most important values of the West: freedom. He branded the confinement measures as an exaggerated reaction to what he claimed was “a normal flu.” He has reduced the virus to a mere ideological substitute for terrorism, insofar as it justifies exceptionality and causes collective panic, a panic 3 that a few days later he denounced as the cause of the abolition of the category of “neighbors” by virtue of the paradigm of the asymptomatic carrier.5 This, according to him, generates fear of encounter and therefore the annulment of political action, the ultimate objective of those rulers, whose adopted measures he has denounced as harsher than those of Fascism and Nazism.6 Camus, in the text we have quoted, states: “It is up to you to think often of your ignorance, to make sure you observe the measure, the only master of the plague.”7 It did not take that many deaths to recognize the threat as genuine, and the measures of distancing as a way of caring for others. The Catalan chemist and philosopher Santiago López Petit8 immediately echoed Agamben, claiming that the virus was produced by capitalism – which he considers in itself murderous – to normalize the state of exception. According to him, unbridled capitalism articulates its agro-industry and shapes the aetiology 4.See G. Agamben, “L’invenzione di un’epidemia”, in Quodlibet (www. quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-l-invenzione-di-un-epidemia), February 26, 2020. 5.See Id., “Contagio”, ibid. (www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-contagio), March 11, 2020.