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Dom Pedro Casaldaliga is 90 years old: poverty and liberation

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

Dom Pedro Casaldaliga, pastor, prophet and poet, celebrated his 90th birthday on February 16, 2018. We would like to honor him with some thoughts that, in my judgment, reveal the thread running through his life as a Christian and as a Bishop: the relationship he developed with poverty and liberation. Risking his life, he has lived and witnessed both the poverty and liberation of the most oppressed, the Indigenous and the peasants expelled by the land grabbers from the lands of São Felix del Araguaia of Mato Grosso, Brazil.

Poverty is a fact that has always challenged human practices and all types of interpretation. The poor challenge us so much that our attitude towards them ends up defining our ultimate situation before God. This is attested in the Book of the Dead, of Egypt, and in the Judeo-Christian tradition that culminates in the text of the Gospel of Mathew, 25, 31ss, as well.

Perhaps the greatest merit of bishop Dom Pedro Casaldaliga has been that he took absolutely seriously the challenges the poor of the whole world, especially those of Latin America, connected to us; and their liberation.

He certainly lived the following process. Before any reflection or strategy for helping, the initial reaction is profoundly human: to let oneself be moved and filled with compassion. How can we not listen to their pleadings, or fail to understand what their pleading hands seek to tell you? When poverty becomes misery, it raises in all sensitive persons, such as in Dom Pedro, feelings of indignation and holy rage, as is clearly seen in his prophetic texts, especially those against the capitalist and imperialist system that constantly produces poverty and misery.

Love and indignation are at the base of actions seeking to mitigate or abolish poverty. Only those who profoundly love and do not accept this inhumane situation are effectively on the side of the poor. And Dom Pedro witnessed that unconditional love.

But we are also realists, as the book of the Deuteronomy warns: “For the poor shall never disappear from the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to the needy in thy land” (15,11). It is said in praise of the Church of the origins in Jerusalem: “Neither was there any among them that lacked” (Hch 4,34) because they had everything in common.

These feelings of compassion and indignation caused Dom Pedro to leave Spain, to go to Africa and, finally, to land not just in Brazil, but in the interior of the country, where the peasants and the Indigenous endure the voracity of national and international capitalism.

1. Readings about the scandal of poverty

To adequately understand the anti-reality that is poverty, it is good to first make some clarifications that will help us be effective in our presence with the poor. Present in the debate even now are three different understandings of being poor.

First, the traditional, which understands the poor as the one who does not have, who does not have the means of life, not enough rent, no home, in a word: who lacks material goods. The poor survive unemployment, or sub-employment, and with low salaries. The system considers them economic zeros, burned oil, left overs. There, the strategy is to mobilize those who have, to help those who do not. For centuries, a broad assistance was organized in the name of that vision. A welfare policy, but not a participatory one, came into being. It is an attitude and strategy that maintains the poor in a dependent state; the poor have not discovered yet their transformative potential.

Second, the progressive, has discovered the potential of the poor and has already perceived that this potential is not being utilized. Through education and professionalization the poor can become qualified and developed. This way, the poor are inserted into the process of production. They reinforce the system, become consumers, if on a minor scale, and they help perpetuate the unjust social relationships that continue producing poor human beings. The State is assigned the principal role in the task of creating places of work for the social poor. Modern society, liberal and progressive, has taken over this vision.

The traditional reading sees the poor, but does not capture their collective character. The progressive reading discovers this collective character, but has not seen that this character is filled with conflict. Analytically considered, the poor results from mechanisms of exploitation that impoverish them, thus generating a grave social conflict. Having revealed these mechanisms was, and still is, the historic merit of Karl Marx. A critique should always be made of the type of society that constantly produces and reproduces the poor and excluded, before integrating them in the current processes of production.

The third position is la liberadora, that strongly believes that the poor have the potential not only to strengthen the work force and reinforce the system, but principally to transform its mechanisms and its logic. The poor, concientizados, self organized, and joined with other allies, can construct a new type of society. The poor can not only project, but also carry out the construction of a democracy that is open for the participation of all, economic and eco-social. The universality and plenitude of this endless democracy is called socialism. This perspective is neither one of welfare nor is it progressive. It is truly liberating, because it makes the oppressed the main actor of their own liberation and the creator of an alternative vision of society.

The Theology of Liberation assumed this understanding of the poor. This Theology opts for the poor, against poverty and in favor of life and liberty. To make oneself poor in solidarity with the poor, means a commitment against the material, economic, political, cultural and religious poverty. The opposite of this poverty is not wealth, but justice and equity.

This last perspective was and continues to be witnessed and practiced by Dom Pedro Casaldaliga in all his pastoral acts. He even risked his own life to support the peasants expelled by the great landowners. With the Little Sisters of Jesus of Father Charles de Foucauld, Dom Pedro helped with the rescue of the tapir, threatened with extinction. There is no social and popular movement that has not been supported by this pastor of exceptional human and spiritual quality.

2. The other poverty: evangelic and essential

There are still two dimensions of poverty that are present in the life of Don Pedro: the essential poverty and the evangelic poverty.

The essential poverty results from our condition of creatures, a poverty that consequently has an ontological base, that is independent of our will. This poverty arises from the fact that we have not given existence to ourselves. We exist, dependent on a plate of food, some water and the ecological conditions of the Earth. We are poor in this radical sense. The Earth neither belongs to us, nor have we created her. We are her guests, passengers on a journey that goes far beyond. Still more: we humanly depend on persons who welcome us and who live with us, with the ups and downs belonging to the human condition. We are all inter-dependent. No-one lives in himself and by himself. We are all involved in a network of relationships that guarantee our material, psychological and spiritual life. That is why we are poor and dependent one of the other.

To accept this condition humaine makes us humble and human. Arrogance and excessive self-affirmation have no room here because they have no base to sustain them. This situation invites us to be generous. If we receive our being from the others, we must also give it to the others. This essential dependence makes us be grateful to God, to the Universe, to the Earth and to all the persons who accept us just as we are. This is the essential poverty. This type of poverty made Dom Pedro a mystical bishop, grateful to all for everything. There is also evangelic poverty, proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth as one of the beatitudes. In the version of the gospel of Matthew, it is said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (5,3). This type of poverty is not directly linked to having or not having, but to a mode of being, to an attitude that we could call spiritual infancy. Poverty here is synonym of humility, detachment, interior emptiness, renunciation of all will to power and self-affirmation. It implies the capacity to empty oneself to welcome God, and recognition of the nature of the creature, before the richness of the love of God that is gratuitously communicated. The opposite of this poverty is pride, boasting, selfishness and the closing in on oneself to the others and to God.

This poverty signified the spiritual experience of the historical Jesus: He was not only materially poor and assumed the cause of the poor, but He also made Himself poor in spirit, because He “made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And finding fashioned as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Flp 2,7-9). This poverty is the path of the Gospels, which is why it is also called, evangelic poverty, suggested by Saint Paul: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Flp 2,5).

The prophet Zephaniah witnessed this poverty of spirit when he writes: “In that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings, wherein thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of the midst of thee those that rejoice in thy pride, and thou shalt no more be haughty because of my holy mountain. I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord” (3,11-12).

This evangelic poverty and spiritual infancy constitute one of the most visible and convincing attributes of the personality of Dom Pedro Casaldaliga, seen in his poor but always clean dress, in his language filled with humor even when he strongly criticizes the absurdities of the economic-financial globalization and of the neoliberal arrogance, or when he prophetically denounces the mediocre vision of the central government of the Church in the face of the challenges of the wretched of the Earth, or about issues concerning all of humanity. This attitude of poverty is exemplary manifested in the encounters with Christians of the base communities, usually poor, as he sits among them and with profound attention listens to what they say, or when he sits at the feet of lecturers, be they theologians, sociologists or carriers of other qualified knowledge, to listen to them, taking notes of their ideas and humbly asking questions. This openness reveals an interior emptying that makes him capable of continuously learning and presenting his wise thoughts about the paths of the Church, of Latin America, of Brazil and of the world.

3. A  Star in the Sky

When the present turbulent times have passed, when mistrust and meanness have been swallowed by the vortex of time, when we will look back to the past and consider the last decades of the XX Century and the beginnings of the XXI Century, we will identify a star in the sky of our faith, a star shinning after having crossed clouds, endured darkness and overcome tempests: it will be the figure, simple, poor, humble, spiritual and holy, of a bishop who, even though from other lands, became our compatriot, and even though distant, he made himself near, and made himself the brother of all, a universal brother: Dom Pedro Casaldaliga, who celebrates today his 90th birthday.

Leonardo Boff  theologian an philosopher, member of the Earth Charter Initiative

The Patriarchal Scriptures speak of the feminine

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários

We must recognize that the basic lines of the spiritual Judeo-Christian tradition are predominantly expressed in patriarchal language. The God of the First Testament (AT) is seen as the God of the Fathers: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and not as the God of Sarah, Rebekah and Miriam. In the Second Testament (NT), God is Father of only one Son, that was incarnated in the virgin Mary, in whom the Holy Spirit established a definitive dwelling, something to which theology never gave special attention, because it implies the assumption of Mary by the Holy Spirit and for that reason, she is placed besides the Divine. This is why Mary is professed as the Mother of God.

The Church that descended from the inheritance of Jesus is exclusively directed by men, who hold all the means of symbolic production. For centuries the woman has been considered a non-juridical person, and even now she is systematically excluded from all religious decision making power. A woman can be the mother of a priest, of a bishop and even of a Pope, but she will never hold priestly duties. The man, in the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, was made divine, while the woman is maintained, according to common theology, as a simple creature, even though in the case of Maria, she is the Mother of God.

In spite of all this masculine and patriarchal emphasis, there is a truly revolutionary text in the book of Genesis, that affirms the equality of the sexes and of their divine origin. It is found in the priestly text (Priestercodex, written around the VI-V century, B.C.). In that text the author forcefully affirms: “God created humanity (Adam, in Hebrew, means the sons and daughters of the Earth, derived from adamah: fertile Earth) in His image and likeness; man and woman He created them” (Gn 1,27).

As can be seen, the fundamental equality of the sexes is affirmed here. Both find their origin in God Himself. God can only be known through the woman and through the man. Any reduction of this equilibrium distorts our access to God and alters the fundamental nature of our knowledge of the human being, man and woman.

In the Second Testament (NT) we find in Saint Paul the formulation of the equal dignity of the sexes: “there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gl 3,28). In another place he clearly says: “in Christ neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, for as the woman derives from the man, so does the man also derive from the woman; and all things come from God” (1Cor 11,12).

In addition, the woman actively appears in the founding texts. It could have not been otherwise: because the feminine is structural, it always emerges in one form or another. Thus, in the history of Israel, there have been politically active women, such as Miriam, Esther, Judith, Deborah, and anti-heroines, such as Delilah and Jezebel. Ana, Sarah and Ruth will always be remembered and honored by the people. In The Song of Songs, the romance surrounding the love between the man and the woman, is unmatched in its highly erotic language.

Beginning with the third century B.C., Judaic theology developed a reflection about the graciousness of creation and the election of the people in the feminine figure of the divine Sophia (Wisdom; cf. all the book of Wisdom and the first ten chapters of the book Proverbs). Well known feminist theologian E.S. Fiorenza said it well: “divine Sophia is the God of Israel with the figure of a goddess”. E.S. Fiorenza, The Christian origins beginning with the woman, (Los orígenes cristianos a partir de la mujer, San Paulo 1992, p. 167).

But what penetrated humanity’s collective imagination in a devastating manner was the anti-feminist story of the creation, with Eve (Gn 2, 21-25) and the original fall from grace (Gn 3,1-19). The text is actually late (around 1000 or 900 B.C.). According to this story, woman was created from the rib of Adam who, seeing her, exclaimed: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman (ishá) because she was taken out of man (ish); Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gn 2,23-25). The original meaning sought to show the unity man/woman (ish-ishá) and to set the basis for monogamy. However, this understanding, that in itself should avoid discrimination against women, ended up reinforcing it. Adam’s precedence and the formation from his rib was interpreted as the masculine superiority.

The story of the fall is even more forcefully anti-feminist: “And when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good to eat, she took the fruit thereof, and did eat it, and also gave it unto her husband with her; and he did eat it. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they realized that they were naked” (Gn 3,6-7). Etymologically, this story places evil on the shoulders of humanity and not on God, but it articulates the idea in a way that reveals the anti-feminism of the culture of that time. Deep down, it sees woman as the weaker sex, that’s why she fell, and seduced the man. This is the reason for her historical submission, now theologically (ideologically) justified: “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Gn 3,16). In the patriarchal culture, Eve becomes the great seducer, the source of evil. In the next article we will see how this machista narrative twisted a previous feminist one, in order to enforce male supremacy.

Jesus inaugurated another type of relationship with the woman, which we will also see soon.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher, Earthcharter CommissionFree translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Animals: endowed with rights

Leonardo Boff5 Comentários

Whether one acknowledges the dignity of animals depends on that person’s paradigm (vision of the world and values). Two paradigms have been handed down to us since the most remote antiquity, and still endure today.

The first partadigm understands the human being as part of nature and, with her, another inhabitant participating in the immense community of life that has existed for 3.8 billion years. When the Earth was nearly complete, with all her biodiversity, we arose on the evolutionary scene as one more member of nature, one endowed with a singular characteristic; that of having the capacity to feel, think, love and care. This does not give us the right to consider ourselves masters of the reality that preceded us and that created the conditions for us to emerge. The culmination of evolution occurred with the appearance of life, not with the human being. Human life is a sub-chapter in the main chapter of life.

The second paradigm starts with the idea that the human being is the apex of evolution, and that all things are at his disposal to dominate and use as the human being pleases. He forgets that to emerge, humans needed all the natural factors that preceded us. Humans joined everything already in existence; he was not placed above everything else.

The two positions have had representatives throughout the centuries, who exhibited very different behavior. The first position finds its best manifestation in the Orient, with Buddhism and the religions of India. Among us, besides Bentham, Schopenhauer and Schweitzer, its main proponent was Francis of Assisi, considered by Pope Francis in his Encyclical letter “On the caring for the Common Home” as someone «who lived a marvelous harmony with God, with others and with himself… an example of integral ecology» (n. 10). But this tender and fraternal behavior of fusion with nature is not the vision that prevailed.

In the second paradigm, the human being is the “master and lord of nature”, as Descartes put it, who made himself hegemonic. It sees nature from the outside, not part of nature, but as her master. This is the root of modern anthropocentrism. Humans dominated nature, subjugated peoples and exploited all the Earth’s resources, such that we now have reached a critical point of insustainability. Its representatives are the founding fathers of the modern paradigm, such as Newton, Francis Bacon and others, and contemporary industrialism, which views nature merely as a collection of resources for its enrichment.

The first paradigm –the human being as part of nature– enjoys a fraternal and amicable relationship with all beings. The Kantian principle must be widened: not only is the human being an end in itself, but so are all living beings, which therefore must be respected. There is scientific data favoring this position. When Drick and Dawson decoded the genetic code in the 1950’s, it was shown that all living beings, from the most ancient amoeba, through the great jungles and the dinosaurs, and down to us, the human beings, possess the same basic genetic code: the 20 amino acids and four phosphoric bases. This led The Earthcharter, one of UNESCOS’ principal documents on modern ecology, to affirm that «we have a kinship spirit with all life» (Introduction). Pope Francis is more emphatic: «we walk together as brothers and sisters, and a link binds us with tender affection to Brother Sun, Sister Moon, to Brother River and Mother Earth» (n. 92). From this perspective, all beings, since they are our cousins and bothers and sisters, and possess their own form of sensibility and intelligence, are endowed with dignity and rights. If Mother Earth has rights, as the United Nations has affirmed, they, as living parts of the Earth, participate in those rights.

The second paradigm –the human being as the master of nature– has a utilitarian relationship with other beings and animals. On learning how cattle and poultry are slaughtered, we are terrified by the suffering to which they are subjected. The Earthcharter warns us: «wild animals must be protected from hunting methods, traps and fishing that cause extreme, prolonged and avoidable suffering» (n. 15b). Here we remember the wise words of the Suquamish-Duwamish Elder Grandfather Si’aul, aka, Seattle, (1854): «What is man without the other animals? If all the animals disappeared, man would die of spiritual loneliness. Because what happens to the animals will also happen to man. We all are related».

If we do not convert to the first paradigm, we will continue with the barbarity against our brothers and sisters in the community of life, the animals. As ecological consciousness grows, we become ever more aware that we are related, and as such we should treat each other as Saint Francis treated the brother wolf of Gubbio, and the simpler beings of nature.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

What to think of the new forms of cohabitation

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Besides the marriage-families constituted in the socio-juridic and sacramental framework, more and more appear families of simple cohabitation and free unions that are mutually agreed outside the traditional framework that exist as long as the consensus lasts giving origin to the common law non conjugal families.

All over the world grow unions of homoaffective persons, (man-man and woman-woman), who struggle for the creation of a juridical framework that guarantees them stability and social recognition.

It is not licit to pass ethical judgement about these forms of cohabitation without having tried before to understand the phenomenon. Concretely, how to think of the family seeing all the varied forms in which a family is presently being structured?

Marco Antonio Fetter, a Brazilian specialist creator of the first University of the Family, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, that offers all the academic degrees, defines family this way: «the family is a unit of persons with common objectives and with links and strong emotional bonds each one of them with a defined role, where naturally appear the roles of father, mother, children and siblings»(Correio Riograndense, 29/10/2003,11).

On the other hand, an important transformation has happened in the family with the apparition of preservatives and contraceptives, now already incorporated into the culture as something normal and that help avoid AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Moreover, with preservatives and the pill, sexuality has been separated from procreation and from steady love.

Frequently now, sexuality and marriage as well are seen as opportunities for personal realization, without including procreation. Conjugal sexuality gains intimacy and spontaneity because with contraceptives and family planning is liberated from non desired and unwanted pregnancies. The children are wanted and decided in common agreement.

The emphasis in sexuality as personal realization has made possible the apparition of forms of cohabitation not strictly matrimonial. Expression of this are the consensual and free unions without any other compromise than the mutual realization of the partners or of the homoaffective cohabitation.

Such practices, new as they are, must also include an ethical and spiritual perspective. It is important to care that they are expressions of love and mutual trust. From a Christian point of view of the phenomenon, if there is love, has to do with God, because God is love (1John 4,12.16). Hence, neither prejudices nor discrimination are correct. Better, there must be respect and openness to understand those facts and also place them before God. If the persons in the compromise do it this way and assume that relationship with responsibility, religious and spiritual relevance to that relationship can not be denied. An atmosphere that helps overcome the temptation of promiscuity appears, stability is enforced and social prejudices diminished.

If there is sex with no procreation, procreation without sex can exist. Is the complex problem of in vitro procreation, of artificial insemination and of the «uterus for rent». All this question is extremely polemic in ethical and spiritual terms, and there seems not to be consensus.

The official Catholic position often tends to a naturalist vision that demands, with respect to procreation, the direct sexual relationship of the spouses when, in fact, is reasonable to admit the legitimacy of the union of an ovule of the wife with a sperm of the husband in an artificial form; and later to implant in the uterus the fecund ovule, as long as such procedure is justified by love.

About this complex question we rely on the opinion of a Catholic Dutch specialist:

«The technification of human procreation is not free of problems. Artificial insemination in its different forms, the fecundation in vitro and the transplant of embryos permit us to have a pregnancy out of the security frameworks of the traditional marriage. Thus, is possible that a woman gets pregnant by the artificial insemination of the sperm of an anonymous donor; sperms and ovules can be unified in vitro, and later implanted them in the woman, a child can be had through a «mother of rent». These technical means are not at our disposal in a neutral form, as a capability merely instrumental: an ethical responsibility must be present in their utilization» («Concilium» magazine, 260, 1995, 36). These are means at the service of parental love.

Is not enough artificial procreation. The human being has the right to be humanly born, from a father and a mother that in love desired him. If for any problem a technical intervention is used that never has to lack a true human inspiration and a well based ethical purpose.

The son or daughter born that way must be able to have a name and last name and be socially welcome. The social identity, in these cases, is anthropologically more important than the biological identity. Moreover, is important that the creature is included in a familiar environment so that, in the process of individuation, the complex of Electra in relation to the mother or of Oedipus in relation to the father, can successfully be realized. This way irreparable damages are avoided.

Finally, life must be always understood as the culmination of the cosmogenesis and the best gift of the Creator.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.