Archbishop Martin on Church in Europe: from crisis to hope
(Vatican Radio) - The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has outlined his vision
of the Church's contribution to social cohesion in Europe, as one of the invited speakers
at the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) Assembly currently underway
in Nicosia, Cyprus.
He told participants: “We have to speak of the Church,
not just in terms of Bishops and Church organizations, but also in terms of the calling
of lay men and women in their Christian responsibility in the family, in their professional
and cultural and political responsibilities”. Archbishop Martin also spoke of
the challenge of presenting Church teaching in the public square : “The Church’s social
doctrine must always be animated with charity and must be accompanied by charity and
will only really be understood through the lens of charity. When the Church’s organizations
simply become lobbying bodies alongside other lobby organizations or social commentators
alongside other social commentators then they loose their real originality and therefore
their original contribution to the debate about the formation of society”.
The
Archbishop noted that defending the faith is important, but how we defend it is equally
important: “Today we are often in a situation in which we have to defend Catholic
teaching within a cultural framework which is not of our creation and indeed may be
hostile to our thought. This is especially the case when a culture becomes dominated
by individualism. It is very difficult, for example, to defend the Catholic understanding
of marriage and sexuality in a culture of individualism, when sexuality involves by
its very nature the concept of mutuality and self giving. If we end up simply defending,
there is the danger that we will end up being trapped within the categories of someone
else’s culture and only present a negative vision of our teaching.
It is
important at times to be against, but there is the more fundamental task of illustrating
the real nature of our teaching. If sexuality is seen only in terms of individual
rights, then any expression of sexuality, unless it is patently exploitative, will
be acceptable. In today’s society we have to be able to illustrate the values of
a vision of society which springs from our faith, but we have to be able to do so
through rational argument”.
Below the full text of Archbishop Martin’s
address:
FROM CRISIS TO HOPE
Speaking Notes of Most
Rev. Diarmuid Martin Archbishop of Dublin
------------------
Nicosia
(Cyprus) 4th September 2012
Fifty years ago at this very
time I was getting ready to enter the Major Seminary in Dublin. I was 17 years of
age. I entered the seminary on the 4th October 1962, just one week before
the opening of the Second Vatican Council. I was not absolutely certain what seminary
life was going to be like and was naturally somewhat apprehensive about leaving home
for the first time into an unknown environment. I would have been much more certain
in my mind about the future of the Church at that moment and about the future of Irish
society.
The seminary was a surprise and a shock when I finally entered it.
What was to happen in the fifty years since then in the Church and in society was
however even more remarkable. Many years later I remember preaching a homily at
our weekly Mass when I was working in the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace
saying that I had entered into the seminary in 1962 and came out seven years later
“into a different Church and into a different Ireland”.
Cardinal Etchegaray
said to me afterwards that he appreciated my homily but he then reminded me: “In my
life time I have gone through that experience of great change five or six times already.
The important thing is that you come out each time looking in the right direction
with your faith more mature”. In these fitly years the Church and its role in Irish
society and in European society have changed enormously. I can say that when I returned
to Dublin as Archbishop, eight years ago, I could not have imagined the change that
was about to take place in Ireland and its place Europe in the years that were to
follow. Ten years ago, Ireland was the model economy: low unemployment, low inflation,
remarkable growth. Jobs were plentiful. Ireland which had for long being a country
of emigration began to receive workers from all over Europe and farther afield.
A country which had for so long been a poor relation in Europe out on its
Western margins seemed to have found a formula for bringing sustainable economic growth
combined with social progress. People were prosperous and it seemed that such prosperity
was here to stay. Indeed for one coming from outside there seemed to be a touch almost
of arrogant certainty in the air. Many traditional values seemed to be giving place
to a new ideology of prosperity.
Now the image of Ireland has changed and
the situation in society has changed. Ireland has its own problems for which Ireland
must take responsibility. These are problems are exacerbated by the complex situation
in Europe. The end result is that Ireland, like many other countries, has had to rely
on a bail-out from the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank
and the cost of that bail-out and the economic reform programmes fall above all on
the weakest and the most fragile. Cuts in public expenditure have had dramatic effects
on education and health care. Jobs in both the public and the private sector have
been reduced. Pension schemes are fragile and heavily indebted. Emigration, which
has a very special and traumatic historical significance in Irish social history,
has begun again. Young people in whom the country had invested and placed hope are
now leaving the country in large numbers.
It was almost like an icon of the
current situation in Ireland to watch last year the scene at a major conference venue
in Dublin. The Party Conference of what had been the largest political party in the
country for many years was to take place. This was the party which had been the driving
force of the Irish economic model. The Party Conference which was normally celebrated
with fanfares of self-satisfaction had to take on much more sombre tones and was reduced
to a small section of the Conference centre, while the larger area was given to a
jobs-fair, attracting huge crowds of young Irish men and women to look for work in
Canada and Australia and in other lands abroad. How do we talk to our young people
about social cohesion in such a situation or in the more general situation of such
high levels of youth unemployment which exist around Europe? Can anyone wonder why
there is a dichotomy between young people and political and economic model which excludes
them? What can be done to involve our young people to take up the challenge, as part
of their Christian life, of working for social cohesion in a different future?
Probably
every European country has a similar tale to tell, about a certain euphoria of progress
which resulted to be unsustainable and in which for many reasons the underlying failures
and fault lines had not be noted – or had not wished to be noted – by politicians,
by those who form public opinion or by the appropriate regulatory authorities and
indeed very often not recognised and evaluated by the Church.
In the epoch
of growth perhaps the Church had not always come out as having been looking, to use
Cardinal Etchegaray words, “in the right direction”, courageously indicating what
had been going wrong and offering principles of discernment for leaders within society.
Faced today with an extremely complex economic and social scenario, the Church seems
still at times to be at a loss as where it should begin to address questions which
seem to puzzle even the most experienced politicians and economist. There is a natural
sense of powerlessness in the face of such complex realities.
I remember when
he was preparing to write the Encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II
invited a group of leading economists to discuss the effects of the change from centralised
economies in Central Europe to a market-driven situation. He listened to each of
the distinguished speakers, many of whom felt that the transition would be rapid and
relatively painless. At the end, Pope John Paul simply said: “I do not often have
leading economists here at my table, but I daily have bishops and they seem to be
giving me a different picture” and he simply set out the questions arising on the
ground, especially for the marginalized. The second round of the discussion saw the
economists using the conditional much more often. The fact that it may not be possible
to provide magic answers does not mean that we should feel powerless if the Church
is truly in contact with the situation on the ground.
Change is difficult
to live with and to manage at any time. The pace of change in society today is, however,
such as to challenge fundamental assumptions; it is all the more necessary therefore
for the Christian in today’s world to work towards the elaboration, founded on our
faith in Jesus Christ, of adequate principles of discernment adapted to the new situation:
hence the importance of a correct understanding of Catholic Social Doctrine.
I
have to be careful when I use the term the Church. The Social Doctrine of the Church
embodies theological principles, founded on Christian anthropology and moral theology,
which form part of the overall teaching of the Church and which the teaching authority
in the Church has the mandate and an obligation to proclaim. The Social Doctrine
of the Church is not however like a political platform which can or should enter into
details of economic policy which go beyond those basic moral principles. Every Christian
enjoys legitimate autonomy and indeed also responsibility and obligation to grapple
with how those basic principles of the social teaching can best be applied in their
daily commitment in society. In that sense, we have to speak of the Church, not
just in terms of Bishops and Church organizations, but also in terms of the calling
of lay men and women in their Christian responsibility in family, in their professional
and cultural and political responsibilities.
This is why I believe that National
Commissions on Justice and Peace or social questions or Caritas in Veritate
should assume a more decisive role in providing programmes for the formation of the
Christian community. This role of formation can be partly exercised through the production
of documents on specific themes, which illustrate applications of the Church’s social
doctrine. The fundamental need in today’s complex situation is to make known and
understood criteria of Gospel discernment to enable Christians in our local Churches
to be critically active in society.
The Church has to do more through its
ongoing educational opportunities to prepare a new generation of men and women who
will dedicate themselves to public service as a dimension of their Christian calling.
This applies to politics and economics, to the world of communications and to the
area of international relations. My personal experience in working in international
life over many years has shown me that Catholic Christians have a special calling
and ability to work in the area of international relations. But that service requires
a presence in the public square with confidence in the value of the unique contribution
of wisdom which comes from our faith. Those working in public life need support to
enable them to defend and illustrate that contribution through rational argument and
scientific competence. They must have a personal cohesion within their own understanding
of life.
Pope Benedict in Caritas in Veritate (31) noted that this
bond between rational argument and scientific competence had been stressed by Paul
VI fifty years earlier: “Paul VI had seen clearly that among the causes of underdevelopment
there is a lack of wisdom and reflection, a lack of thinking capable of formulating
a guiding synthesis, for which “a clear vision of all economic, social, cultural and
spiritual aspects” is required. The excessive segmentation of knowledge, the rejection
of metaphysics by the human sciences, the difficulties encountered by dialogue between
science and theology are damaging not only to the development of knowledge, but also
to the development of peoples, because these things make it harder to see the integral
good of man in its various dimensions. The ‘broadening [of] our concept of reason
and its application’ is indispensable if we are to succeed in adequately weighing
all the elements involved in the question of development and in the solution of socio-economic
problems”.
This capacity to integrate what I call “conscience and competence”
is part of the genius of the Church’s Social Doctrine. Pope Benedict has however stressed
the need to complement “conscience and competence” with charity. He notes that: “moral
evaluation and scientific research must go hand in hand, and [that] charity must animate
them in a harmonious interdisciplinary whole, marked by unity and distinction. The
Church's social doctrine, which has ‘an important interdisciplinary dimension’
can exercise, in this perspective, a function of extraordinary effectiveness. It allows
faith, theology, metaphysics and science to come together in a collaborative effort
in the service of humanity. It is here above all that the Church's social doctrine
displays its dimension of wisdom”.
The Church’s social doctrine must always
be animated with charity and must be accompanied by charity and will only really be
understood through the lens of charity. When Church’s organizations simply become
lobbying bodies alongside other lobby organizations or social commentators alongside
other social commentators then they loose their real originality and therefore their
original contribution to the debate about the formation of society.
I can
see this as a Bishop when I notice that voluntary financial contributions to many
of our social services and Catholic aid organizations have been going down noticeably
as a result of the economic crisis. There is one noteworthy exception and that is
the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. The secret of the Society of St Vincent
de Paul is that its work is marked almost totally by a sense of gratuity in doing,
rather than just by social commentary from the sidelines.
The credibility
of the Church comes in a special way through the witness of those of its members who
bring to the world that concept of gratuitousness which is the opposite of market
consumerism, where everything has its price tag and you only get what you pay for.
This sense of gratuitousness is not just about doing something over and above what
one does daily. It is a call for a different way of living and forming society which
is inspired by the life and teaching and mission of Jesus himself, who revealed the
gratuitousness and the superabundance which are the marks of God’s love. Hope
is restored when men and women encounter gratuitous love, which does not seek to exploit
or make use of them. Society is enriched when that principle of gratuitousness becomes
present in society not just in the generosity of individuals but as a real operative
principle in the economy and in political life. Caritas in Veritate (38)
places a great emphasis on models of the economy which integrate this idea of gratuitousness
into the understanding of the market: “While in the past it was possible to argue
that justice had to come first and gratuitousness could follow afterwards, as a complement,
today it is clear that without gratuitousness, there can be no justice in the first
place. What is needed, therefore, is a market that permits the free operation, in
conditions of equal opportunity, of enterprises in pursuit of different institutional
ends. Alongside profit-oriented private enterprise and the various types of public
enterprise, there must be room for commercial entities based on mutualist principles
and pursuing social ends to take root and express themselves. It is from their reciprocal
encounter in the marketplace that one may expect hybrid forms of commercial behaviour
to emerge, and hence an attentiveness to ways of civilizing the economy”. Where
is gratuitousness learned? It is learned obviously in the first place within the
family. But in today’s culture families have also to be educated to understand gratuitousness
as an essential dimension of love. Caring and sharing are as important has having.
Education to gratuitousness must become a pillar of all forms of education. I am
often struck when I visit schools to read Mission Statements which focus on the school
as the place where young people encounter excellence in education which enables the
talents of the young people to flourish. This is certainly a worthy goal, provided
it does not stop there. Educational excellence must also be oriented to giving the
young people enthusiasm for contributing to society. Otherwise it can quickly descend
into narcissism.
Education can easily become a product, rather than a path
leading towards a maturity not just in achieving but also in giving. Without that
sense of giving then real social cohesion will be hard to achieve. One of the challenges
in our societies is to address what Pope Benedict called a crisis of education. The
current economic situation with its financial cut backs could well indeed lead to
further undermining of the value of a broad sense of education in favour of narrow
utilitarianism.
We need to educate young people in their faith so that they
can, as I have said earlier, “defend and illustrate” the significance of that faith
in society. I use the two words deliberately: “defend and illustrate”. When faith
and Catholic culture are under attack it is important to defend the values that derive
from faith and their relevance to society. Today we are often in a situation in
which we have to defend Catholic teaching within a cultural framework which is not
of our creation and indeed may be hostile to our thought. This is especially the
case when a culture becomes dominated by individualism. It is very difficult, for
example, to defend the Catholic understanding of marriage and sexuality in a culture
of individualism, when sexuality involves by its very nature the concept of mutuality
and self giving. If we end up simply defending, there is the danger that we will
end up being trapped within the categories of someone else’s culture and only present
a negative vision our teaching.
It is important at times to be against, but
there is the more fundamental task of illustrating the real nature of our teaching.
If sexuality is seen only in terms of individual rights, then any expression of sexuality,
unless it is patently exploitative, will be acceptable. In today’s society we have
to be able to illustrate the values of a vision of society which springs from our
faith, but we have to be able to so through rational argument.
This is an
area which Pope Benedict addressed in some detail in his first Encyclical Deus
Caritas Est. Some of his suggestions caused a certain surprise in Catholic social
activists. The Pope forcefully stressed the role of politics in the search for a just
society. Let us look at some of his affirmations: “The just ordering of society
and the State is a central responsibility of politics” “The Church cannot and
must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society
possible. She cannot and must not replace the State” “We have seen that the formation
of just structures is not directly the duty of the Church, but belongs to the world
of politics, the sphere of the autonomous use of reason” or even more strikingly “A
just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church”. To many,
this seemed to be a turning back from one of the most quoted affirmations of the 1971
Synod of Bishop on Justice in the World which affirmed that “working for justice was
a constitutive element of the preaching the Gospel”. Is Pope Benedict asking the
Church to retreat back from action in the world into the sacristy? Is he saying
that the Gospel is not a “social Gospel”? Pope Benedict is not claiming that Christians
should not be present in the task of building a more just society. But does he not
seem to be affirming that working for a just society is something which belongs to
rational reflection rather than directly to the Gospel? Does he not seem to be in
some sense “privatizing” down the task of working for justice to the individual believer
rather than fostering it as a “constitutive element” in the preaching of the Gospel
and of Church action? Let us carefully look at his words again: “The direct duty
to work for a just ordering of society… is proper to the lay faithful. As citizens
of the State, they are called to take part in public life in a personal capacity.
So they cannot relinquish their participation in the many different economic, social,
legislative, administrative and cultural areas, which are intended to promote organically
and institutionally the common good. The mission of the lay faithful is therefore
to configure social life correctly, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating
with other citizens according to their respective competences and fulfilling their
own responsibility” The Pope emphasises clearly that the Church does have a role
to play. However he notes that “She has to play her part through rational argument”.
Whereas he adds further that: “the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about
openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns
the Church deeply”, this still seems to be a long way away from calls for a more political
role on the part of the Church – as many would wish - in social reflection. At
this point Pope Benedict introduces an important corrective into reflection of the
relationship between faith, knowledge, and experience. He affirms that the Church
is called “to the purification of reason and to the reawakening of those moral forces
without which just structures are neither established nor prove effective in the long
run”. The Pope who stresses in such a stark way the vital and autonomous role of
politics as an exercise of the application of human reason to the task of building
a just society now talks of purification of reason. What is the process of purification? In
affirming that working for justice is a constitutive element in the preaching of the
Gospel and in the building of the kingdom, we must have a clear understanding of what
the kingdom is. There is the challenging phrase in Spe Salvi “There is
no doubt, therefore, that a “Kingdom of God” accomplished without God—a kingdom therefore
of man alone—inevitably ends up as the “perverse end” of all things as described by
Kant: we have seen it, and we see it over and over again. or again “Our contemporary
age has developed the hope of creating a perfect world that, thanks to scientific
knowledge and to scientifically based politics, seemed to be achievable. Thus Biblical
hope in the Kingdom of God has been displaced by hope in the kingdom of man, the hope
of a better world which would be the real “Kingdom of God”. This seemed at last to
be the great and realistic hope that man needs. It was capable of galvanizing—for
a time—all man's energies. The great objective seemed worthy of full commitment”. Pope
Benedict recalls starkly that: “It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed
by love. Science and human progress are marked by a fundamental ambiguity. Progress
offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for
evil—possibilities that formerly did not exist… we have all witnessed the way in
which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying
progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress
in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth then it is not progress at all,
but a threat for man and for the world”. Reason needs purification. Reason and
progress require something else if they are to truly serve their purpose. Again we
see that reason and faith need one another in order to fulfil their true nature and
their mission. Reason then therefore needs faith if it is to be completely itself.
The fight for justice cannot be reduced simply to calls for structural change or political
action. Justice will never be achieved without love. To deny the need for love is
to deny the fundamental nature of the human person and also to remove from the orbit
of human relationships that which is really a witness to the nature of God and the
presence of God in our world. But Pope Benedict stresses that while God is the
foundation of hope, we are not talking about any god, but the God who has loved us
unconditionally to the end. Without such absolute love there can be no hope so strong
that it can remain in spite of all disappointments and failures and therefore no sense
of redemption from the ambiguities of our own actions and of the ambiguities of the
human project. The human project can never be guaranteed simply through structures
alone. It requires a deep engagement with the God who loves us. That engagement
is attained in prayer. Prayer, seen as placing oneself in the presence of God in
all his transcendence and otherness, is an essential component of the purification
of reason. Pope Benedict notes that: “To pray is not to step outside history
and withdraw to our own private corner of happiness. When we pray properly we undergo
a process of inner purification which opens us up to God and thus to our fellow human
beings as well. In prayer we must learn what we can truly ask of God—what is worthy
of God. We must learn that we cannot pray against others. We must learn that we cannot
ask for the superficial and comfortable things that we desire at this moment—that
meagre, misplaced hope that leads us away from God”.---------------- Social cohesion
and hope will only be attained by that combination of which I have spoken of “conscience,
competence and charity”. Without that combination justice will not be achieved.
Pope Benedict noted this in Caritas in Veritate: “The conviction that the
economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from “influences” of a moral
character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way.
In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems
that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver
the justice that they promise”. While it is important to stress the place of reason
and politics in working for social cohesion, in today’s individualist culture the
danger is that each one makes his or her choices on the basis of personal interest
or preference and in the end there is more confusion then cohesion. Rational argument
must be combined with what Pope Benedict called “the spiritual energy without
which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper”. The
Church in Europe has to find new ways of speaking about and bringing to the forefront
in public discussion those spiritual energies about which the Pope spoke and
also indicate where those spiritual energies are missing or have been betrayed. The
complexities of a modern economy and the diverse ways in which these may be legitimately
pursued make comments by the Church on economic matters certainly more problematic
today. But there are questions about poverty and equity, about privilege and under-privilege,
about opportunity and exclusion, about simple honesty, about greed and corruption
and about generous commitment in society which the Church should have been addressing
more coherently in the context of the common good of Europe. We can see the
notion of common good being easily recognised in smaller and traditional communities
where people are closely knit and where there is a realisation that survival requires
working together. On national level the sense of the common good is more complex.
It involves taking responsibility at different levels and in different ways. In the
past the Church was somewhat reticent in speaking about the responsibility of paying
taxes in a responsible way. Today we realise that tax evasion is a serious challenge
to the ability of governments and societies to attain the common good. However appeals
to more responsibility must be accompanied by public administrations which allocate
public expenditure in a way which fosters and equitably benefits society across the
board. Today we have to look at the particular question of what solidarity for
the common good involves on a European level. We have a particularly difficult situation
in Europe today which can only be resolved in terms of solidarity, but where national
interest and at times national stereotyping can lead to a return of isolationism and
protectionism. This symposium is an opportune occasion to look at how we understand
social cohesion on a European level, both in the current emergency situation and for
a sustainable future. Christians have a special responsibility for the future of
Europe. The legitimate demands of Christian to see the Christian toots of Europe
affirmed and recognised, will be all the more credible in the measure that Christian
commit themselves to ensure a future of cohesion and solidarity and equity of Europe
and the more the stress the vocation of Europe to foster cohesion and solidarity and
equity in the wider world.---------------I have tried to address some questions concerning
social cohesion in today’s Europe where Catholic Social Teaching can contribute to
the reawakening of hope. Catholic Social Doctrine has indeed a unique relevance precisely
today, both as a doctrine about human dignity and human interaction and about a sense
of commitment to realising a society seeking to be a civilization of love. It is
not just that Catholic Social Doctrine has a unique opportunity in today’s’ situation.
We have to realise that the Catholic Church in itself, as the community which witnesses
to the significance of Communion with Christ and with each other, has a unique opportunity
to be a driving force in generating communion among people in today’s Europe and in
today’s world. To contribute to social cohesion in Europe and in the wider world
the Catholic Church has to witness more convincingly to its own internal cohesion.
While respecting legitimate autonomy of expression, it must be said that divisiveness
within the Church damages the Church. As someone who has been fortunate to have
a broad experience of the Church around the world, I am surprised and stunned by attempts
by some to subtly undermine authority and status of Pope Benedict XVI. I believe
that we should all be more forceful in rejecting a negative climate which I believe
has been deliberately injurious to the Pope and thus to the Church. A divided
squabbling Church will not attract young people but only alienate them. On the other
hand, no one should fear the message of the Gospel. It would be falsehood to deny
the contribution that that Gospel has brought to the evolution of Europe and the contribution
it can and will bring to create a future of hope for Europe and its peoples. I
come back to the words of Cardinal Etchegaray which I have often remembered at difficult
moments in the life of the Church in my diocese, in my country and in Europe. Faith
requires courage. Men and women of faith have the ability to face crises and come
out of crises with their faith strengthened. The Gospel must be preached courageously
even if it does not seem to find roots in people’s lives. Resignation and keeping
things ticking over will never renew the Church. But we must also come out of crises
looking in the right direction, not entrapped in the negatives of today, or indeed
in the empty promises of the ideologies of the day, but more capable of giving an
account of the hope that is in us.