Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns: teacher, refined intellectual, friend of the poor

18/12/2016 Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

I have lost a teacher, a Maecenas, a protector and an intimate friend. Important statements will be proclaimed and written about Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, who died today, December 14, 2016. I will not do so. I will only offer my personal testimony.

I met Cardinal Arns in the late 1950s, when I was a seminarian in the city of Agudos, São Paulo. He was just back from Paris with the prestige of a Doctorate from the Sorbonne. In the seminary, with about 300 students, he introduced new teaching methods. He made us study Greek and Latin literature, languages he knew as well as we know our mother tongue. He made us read the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides in Greek. We learned Greek so well that we even presented Antigone in that language several times, and everyone understood it.

I encountered him again in Petropolis/Rio as a professor of Patristics and of Christian history of the first two centuries. He had us read the classics in their original language: Saint Jerome, his favorite, in Latin, and Saint John Chrysostom, in Greek.

When I visited him in the convent of nuns in the outskirts of Sao Paulo, two years ago, I found him reading sermons by Saint John Chrysostom, in Greek.

He was our head teacher throughout our theology studies in Petropolis, from 1961 to 1965. With interest he followed each of us in our searches, with a profound look in his eyes that seemed to reach deep into our souls. He always sought perfection. Even among us students, we challenged each other to see if anyone could find any defect in his life or activities. He sang the Gregorian Chant marvelously, in the Solesmes style, more delicate than the strict style of Beuron, that had predominated until his arrival.

For four years I accompanied him in the pastoral of the peripheries. Thursday and Saturday evenings and all day Sundays, I went with him to the chapel of the neighborhood of Itamaraty, in Petropolis/Rio. He would visit all the houses, especially the Portuguese families who cultivated flowers and other horticulture. Wherever he went, he would immediately found a school. He encouraged the work of local poets and writers. After the 10 o’clock Mass, he would gather with them to listen to the poems and short stories they had written during the week. He would intellectually stimulate everyone to read, to write and to narrate for everyone the stories they had read.

Cardinal Arns was a refined intellectual, well versed in French literature. He wrote 49 books. He urged us to follow Paul Claudel’s example, who used to write at least a page every day. I followed his advice, and now I have written more than 100 books.

What always impressed me most about Cardinal Arns was his Franciscan love and affection for the poor. When he was made Auxiliary Bishop of São Paulo, he immediately went to work in the peripheries of the city, encouraging the ecclesiastic base communities and personally committing himself to Paulo Freire. Since this was the period of the Brazilian dictatorship, which was especially fierce in São Paulo, he immediately undertook the cause of the refugees who had fled the horrors of the dictatorships of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. His special mission was to visit prisons, see the wounds of torture, courageously denounce them and defend the human rights that were so savagely violated. He risked his life, in the face of threats and attempts on his life. But as a Franciscan, he always maintained serenity as one who is in the palm of the hand of God rather than the claws of police repression.

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the Brazil Project: Never again, which he developed with Rabbi Henry Sobel, the Presbyterian pastor Jaime Wright, and a team of researchers. It collected reports consisting of more than 1,000,000 pages, from the 707 processes of the Superior Military Tribunal. The book, Brazil Never Again, published by Editora Vozes, played a key role in the identification and unmasking of the torturers of the military regimen, and helped accelerate the fall of the dictatorship.

Personally, I am deeply grateful to Cardinal Arns for having stood by me in the doctrinal process carried out against me by the former Sacred Office, (the Inquisition), in Rome, in 1982, under the presidency of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. In the dialogue that followed my examination, between Cardinal Ratzinger, Cardinal Lorscheider and Cardinal Arns, in which I also took part, Cardinal Arns courageously made clear to Cardinal Ratzinger: «That document you published a week ago about the Theology of Liberation, does not correspond with the facts, facts that we know very well; this theology is beneficial for the faithful and for the communities; you have accepted the version of the enemies of this theology, namely, the Latin American military and the conservative groups of the episcopate, who are unsatisfied with the changes in the pastoral and the modes of living the faith that this type of theology implies». And he added: «I await from you a new, positive, document, that recognizes this form of theology, starting from the suffering of the poor and in function of their liberation». And that happened, three years later.

All this is already the past. There remains the memory of a Cardinal who was always on the side of the poor and never let the cry of the oppressed for the violation of their rights be ignored. Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns is an everlasting reference to the Good Shepherd who gives his life for the smallest and those who suffer most in this world.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher and of the 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.

Leonardo Boff | Francis of Rome; Francis of Assisi

15/12/2016 Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Book Reviews , Uncategorized
December 8, 2016

Interview with Leonardo Boff
Author of Francis of Rome, Francis of Assisi:
A New Springtime for the Church (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2014).
Interview by Jonathan J. Armstrong
Interview received on: September 12, 2016

Translation from Spanish into English by Jonathan Salas, Catherine Christian, and Haley O’Neal.

To download a PDF version of this interview, please click here.

Jonathan J. Armstrong: In the chapter titled “Can We Save the Catholic Church?”, you allude to the many sexual and financial scandals that have plagued the institutional Roman Catholic Church in the past decades. You conclude this chapter: “But the church can be saved as long as it is inspired by the tradition of Jesus, returns to drink from the well of the gospel, sets out to serve the world rather than itself, and puts the poor at the center in a quest for liberation and social justice. Then it is good not only for Christians but for the whole world. It is a force for humanization and peace among peoples” (p. 25). When you express hope that the church can be saved, you seem to be writing about the institutional church. But, isn’t institution necessarily resistant to the “tradition of Jesus”? Is it reasonable to ask an institution to “set out to serve the world rather than itself?”

Leonardo Boff: We have to make a distinction between the church as a community of faith―the people of God―and a group of leaders who are the ecclesiastical authority. In the organization of the church, the authority is concentrated in the hands of a few. The church is commonly talked about as a hierarchal body. However, this common understanding is not true. The hierarchal body, which is part of the institution of the church, has the responsibility to lead the community, or the people of God, in the faith. The body of leaders, however, are disconnected from the community of faith, which is a big problem. I believe that this is not the way Jesus would act. Jesus wanted hierodulia, sacred service, instead of hierarchy, which is sacred authority. Unfortunately, the hierarchy is not practicing love and mercy; they are rude, legalistic, and arrogant, and because of this they are distanced from the community of faith. This type of organization has always created conflicts throughout history between the body of people and the hierarchal leaders.

The problem is that the hierarchal leaders exclude and condemn the people. This current type of organization serves themselves before serving the people of God and the world. I don’t see how we can save the church as an entity. The church has to go back to the practice of humility like Jesus and the apostles, where the priority is to first serve the community of faith and then the body of leaders. It is in this way that Vatican Council II, in Lumen Gentium, is serving the community of faith before the hierarchal leaders. For example, in his first public appearance, Pope Francis cared more about the approval and blessing of the people of God rather than that of the hierarchal leaders.

Jonathan J. Armstrong: You write of the pope’s humility and simplicity: “It would not be surprising if one day, as John Paul II wanted, the pope should decide to abandon the Vatican and go off and live in a modest lodging, with plenty of outside space to receive visits from the faithful. The times are ripe for this type of revolution in papal customs” (p. 49). You also write: “It is not unthinkable that representatives of the people of God, from cardinals to women, should be invited to elect a pope for the whole Christian world. It is urgent to reform the curia so that it becomes decentralized. Surely Pope Francis will do this” (p. 52). It is now the third year that Pope Francis I has held office; do you see from Pope Francis I the kind of radical action that had you hoped for when you first published this book?

Leonardo Boff: I suggested to Don Helder Camara, the bishop prophet of Brazil and very close friend of Pope Paul VI, that the pope should leave the Pontifical Palace and live away in the outskirts of Rome, in the “borgattas” near the poor. There he could receive the faithful in Christ and not refuse anyone. The Pope was sad and said that he would want that but the Curia and all of the apparatus of the Vatican opposed it strongly. The popes before Pope Francis had a way of living which looked more like Caesar’s lavish palace rather than the humble scene of the nativity. But Francis has made the first step. He actually left the Pontifical Palace and went to live in Santa Marta, a hotel attached to the Vatican. There he lives like the others do. He eats together with the others, and even gets in line to get his plate of food. He comments with humor: “Here is very difficult to have me poisoned.”

I think that the church needs to change several things: it should not follow Western church practices, pagan practices, and should get rid of the symbols that have been influenced by the Roman emperors.

Pope Francis acted symbolically. He took the mozetta, a cloak worn over the shoulders which demonstrates the authority of the Roman emperor, and handed it over to the secretary. He said that this symbol of power was not necessary. He wanted to lead the church not with power of the law but with the gentle power of love. As a result, he preferred to be called the bishop of Rome, and only after that he would accept to be the pope of the universal church, which is collegially directed along with a few cardinals. These are some of the changes in the way that the pope’s ministry is being understood. Pope Francis also proposed a reform of the curia so that it would be decentralized. He wanted to put individuals in the curia positions who would represent the whole church, such as woman and notable laity. He has promised this. However, we know that one finds terrible oppositions within the body of the curia because of the habits and privileges they have had for more than a thousand years. In this case, one does not do what one wants to do but one does what one is allowed to do. I desire that Pope Francis will take on this difficult work of reforming the management structures of the Universal Church. For now, though, he focuses on the central issue at hand, which is the basis of all the other projects: to ensure a future for humanity and the earth, which is being seriously threatened. For the systematic crisis right now is the ecological crisis. He wrote the encyclical letter, On Care of Our Common Home.

Jonathan J. Armstrong: Please expand on your chapter “What Has Pope Francis Brought Us That Is New?” (pp. 87–89). If you were writing this chapter today, are there additional accomplishments that you would mention?

Leonardo Boff: What is new about Pope Francis compared to the popes prior to him? His practices and acts are revolutionary. First, he doesn’t think of himself as a doctor of faith but as a pastor who encourages the Christian community to produce an attractive message. His focus is on encountering the Lord and meeting with all people despite their backgrounds. In light of this, he receives everyone: Muslims, refugees, atheists, and everyone else who comes to him. He insists that pastors, bishops, and priests must have a revolution of tender compassion and mercy.

He says what many theologians have been thinking: the message of condemnation will not last forever. We should stop using the message of the fear of hell to win people. Rather, we should encourage them by using the beautiful message of love, compassion and mercy, which is a more attractive message than one of hellfire and damnation. Maybe the difference between Francis and the other popes is that he does not simply speak about the poor, but he embraces them and defends their rights. Francis is the only pope that has directly condemned the system of anti-life. He is impartial, one-sided, and on the side of the poor. Never in the history of the papacy has a pope ever insisted on social programs that analyze the causes of exploitation and denounce the factors responsible for the misery in the world. He has done the same while visiting Santa Cruz, Bolivia in Latin America, the city where representatives of the social movements in all Latin America were gathered. The pope has become a worldwide example of humility and courage through ethical and humanitarian movements. Everyone listens to the pope because he has a message for humankind and not only for Christians. The pope represents the movement of a church that practices humility, fellowship, sympathy, compassion, a culture of peace, and dialogue.

Jonathan J. Armstrong: You write: “The church, as we have it today, will never be like the poor, but it can be for and with the poor” (p. 75). Please explain in detail.

Leonardo Boff: The church has had a history of taking care of the poor, following the practical example of Jesus and the apostles. The church used the strategy of assisting the poor like a father would. While they helped the poor, they never explained the reason for poverty, nor how to overcome it. The church in Latin America, in their documents of Medellin and Puebla, assumed a different position. This position is to work and live with the poor, thus participating in their way of life, culture, and ways to pray to God. This act of sympathy acknowledges that although they lack material things, they possess much else. They have a culture, they have faith, and they have knowledge on know how to survive in the midst of poverty.

Jonathan J. Armstrong: Throughout your book, you use the phrase the “tradition of Jesus,” dedicating a chapter to the exposition of this principle (“The Tradition of Jesus and the Christian Religion,” pp. 114–117). There, you describe the “tradition of Jesus” as composed of certain values, such as unconditional love for others and the use of power in the service of the community. In your view, does the tradition of Jesus have a doctrinal content? If so, what are the precise bounds of this doctrinal content?

Leonardo Boff: The expression “tradition of Jesus” is a recent issue of the new Christology that is being established in Spain with Pagola and Castillo and in Latin America with various authorities like Jose Comblin, Carlos Mesters, and others. This expression presupposes all of the meticulous work of contemporary and ecumenical exegesis.

It gives insight that what we know about Jesus is from sources written 40–50 years after the crucifixion. Jesus left nothing written. Many people of the ancient world, including people among the Jews, were illiterate.

During the time of silence between the death of Jesus and the New Testament writings―beginning with Apostle Paul and the rest of the Gospels―the information was gathered from different Christian communities. Each of the writers elaborated about his vision of Jesus. Thus arose the four gospels. But before all is the practice of Jesus, his way of relating with God as his Father, his perception of being Son of the Father, his conflicts with the religious traditions of the time and his resistance to the imperial power of Rome. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is greater than the kingdom of Caesar, something that would be a crime against the majesty.

The book of Acts speaks of “the way of Jesus”, that is to say, to live according to the standards of the Kingdom of God, of unconditional love even of enemies, of love for the poor, of compassion with those that suffer, humility, and service to others. Jesus did not create a new religion just because there were many at that time. Jesus taught us to live the values of the Kingdom, live in love, in unity and committed to the Father.

Jesus’ teachings are more than doctrines but are a way of life. They obviously imply a vision of things, but the important thing is to follow the way and manner of the life of Jesus. This is the tradition of Jesus, an original and primitive element that precedes the Gospels and where these writers take their theological elaborations. The Gospels are more than history; they are theology, an attempt to understand what happened to Jesus after being crucified; God raised him. They gave him a thousand titles. At the end they stated: Jesus is God, he is not simply human. They started to call him the son of God and finally God incarnate in our misery.

Jonathan J. Armstrong: Do you believe that Pope Francis I will call an ecumenical council? If such a council were to be convened, what do you see as the most pressing matters requiring resolution?

Leonardo Boff: I don’t think that the Pope is going to convene a council. I personally talked with the Pope and suggested having a council with all the churches. His response to me was that a council is a Catholic thing. It is necessary to have an assembly of all the churches, religions, and spiritual people in order to help humanity find a resolution to the systemic crisis we live in, and find another way to live together. The primary problem does not revolve around the future of the Catholic church and Christianity, or western culture. Rather, it is about the future of humankind, and how the churches and religions should help guarantee a better future with hope. This is the primary question to be asked. We are not sure that doing what we are doing right now will answer this question. For this reason, the pope does not emphasize the role of the church but rather the condition and suffering of the poor. According to my judgment, this is the vision that the pope has. He confessed that nobody knows where we are going, not even the Dalai Lama or the pope. All together, we must find a common way that will save us all. This time Noah’s ark is not there to save us from death. We have two options, either we will die together or we will be saved together. The papal encyclical calls for a collective responsibility, for a great hope because, “God is the sovereign lover of life” (Wisdom 11:24, quoted three times by the Pope), and he will not permit a tragic end of life like the time of Noah.

Little known facets of Fidel Castro

11/12/2016 Leonardo Boff1 comentário

Each thing and each person has many facets. As I have said, each point of view is the view from a point. Everyone occupies a point on this planet and in the society of which we are a part. And from that point, each sees such reality as can be seen from that point. That is why we cannot treat any point of view as absolute, as if it were the only one. This is the origin of fundamentalism and discrimination.

That thought is worth keeping in mind with respect to the many points of view that are being expressed about the saga of Fidel Castro. No point can encompass all the views.

Something else must be considered. Each human possesses his share of light and his share of darkness. Spoken in the dialect of the new anthropology: each human being is sapiens and simultaneously demens. Thus, each human is a carrier of intelligence and of a sense of life. That is his sapiens moment. And he simultaneously displays deviations and contradictions. That is his demens moment.

Both always appear together. That is not a defect in our being. Is an objective fact of our human reality that must always be taken into account. It is also important when we evaluate Fidel Castro’s complex figure: his light and his darkness.

I want to make some points, beginning with those which enabled me to have a unique visit with Fidel Castro. The first is the negation of TINA (There is No Alternative ). The prevailing capitalist system maintains that “there is no alternative to capitalism,” that capitalism represents the pinnacle of human societies. Fidel Castro showed that socialism can offer a very distinct alternative to capitalism, which is now in a radical crisis of survival. The fury with which the United States attacked Cuba and Fidel, so as to destroy Cuban socialism, was intended to show that there can be no alternative to capitalism. Good or bad, with all its known defects, socialism is another possible means of organizing society.

A second point worth noting was Fidel Castro’s interest in the Theology of Liberation. He even confessed that if the Theology of Liberation had existed in his time, (it only began in 1970), he would have incorporated its lessons in the development of Cuban society. Under the pressure of the Cold War he was forced to side with the Soviet Union and from there to adopt Marxism. Fidel read and noted our principal works, those of Gustavo Gutierrez, Frei Betto, the works of my brother Fray Clodovis and my own. The books were all annotated with various colors. And in the margins were lists of questions and expressions about which he asked for clarification.

Another relevant point was his invitation, during the time of “polite silence” that was imposed on me in 1984 by the former Holy Office (the Inquisition). Fidel invited me to spend 15 days with him on the Island to explore questions of religion, Latin America and the world. He was a friend of the Apostolic Nuncio. As soon as I arrived he phoned the Nuncio, and in my presence, he told him: “Boff is here with me. I myself will ensure that he observes the polite silence. He will only talk with me”. In effect, we visited the whole island through our conversations, which lasted very late into the night. I recorded almost everything in three thick notebooks, because I wanted to turn them into material for a book. A few days after I returned from Cuba I left the three notebooks in the trunk of the car while I went to talk for a moment (some 15 minutes) with Don Aloisio, Cardinal, Lorscheider, who was the guest in the house of a friend in Copacabana. When I returned, I saw that the trunk of the car had been opened. Nothing was taken, except my three notebooks. I suspect that the security services of Brazil, or from the exterior, appropriated the material.

Another fact shows Fidel Castro’s tender dimension, to which many can attest.

I have a niece with a type of rheumatism that no physician could treat. I asked Fidel whether it was possible to treat her in Cuba. He asked me for all the medical information from Brazil, and he personally spoke with the Cuban doctors.

In effect, there was no cure. Each time Fidel saw me, the first thing he would ask was: “¿How is your niece Lola doing?” That affectionate and tender memory is not common in heads of state. Generally, where power predominates love does not prevail, nor does tenderness flourish. It was different with Fidel. He was extremely happy when I told him that a Brazilian physician had created a vaccine, of which a side effect was that it cured that type of rheumatism.

These are small gestures that show that power does not need to fatally undermine so profound a dimension as tenderness and concern for the destiny of the other.

The legacy of his charismatic persona will remain as a reference point for those who refuse to further the culture of capitalism, with all the injustices to the social and ecological order that accompany it.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher and of the 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.

Life as a cosmic imperative

27/11/2016 Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

For centuries scientists have tried to explain the universe with laws of physics, expressed through mathematical equations. The universe was viewed as an immense machine that always functioned in a stable form. Life and consciousness did not have a place in that paradigm. They were matters for the religions.

But everything has changed since the 1920s, when astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that the natural state of the universe is not stability, but change. The universe began expanding with the explosion of a point: extremely small but immensely hot, and full of potential: the big bang. Then the quarks and leptons were formed, the most elemental particles that, once combined, gave rise to protons and neutrons, the basis of atoms. And starting from there, everything.

Expansion, self-organization, complexity, and the emergence of order, ever more sophisticated, are characteristics of the Universe. And life?

We do not know how it emerged. We can only say that it took the Earth and all the Universe billions of years to create the conditions for the birth of this beautiful thing that is life. Life is fragile because it can easily get sick and die. But life is also strong, because until now nothing, not volcanoes, earthquakes, meteors, or the massive extinctions of past eras, has managed to totally extinguish life.

For life to emerge the Universe had to be endowed with three qualities: order, arising from chaos, complexity, derived from simple beings and information, created by the connections of everything with everything else. But one factor was still lacking: the creation of the bricks with which the house of life is built. Those bricks were forged within the heart of the great red stars that burned for several billion years. They are the chemical acids and other elements that enable all the combinations and transformations. Thus, there is no life without carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, phosphorus, and the 92 elements of the Mendeleyev periodical table.

When these varied elements are united, they form what we call a molecule, the smallest piece of living matter. The joinder with other molecules created the organisms and organs that form living beings, from the bacteria to human beings.

Ilya Prigogine, 1977 Nobel laureate for chemistry, is credited with showing that life results from the intrinsic self organizing dynamics of the Universe itself. He also showed that a factory exists that continuously produces life. The central motor of this factory of life is the combining of 20 amino acids and 4 nitrogenous bases.

Amino acids are a group of acids that when combined permit life to emerge. They are comprised of four nitrogen bases that function like four types of cement, joining the bricks to build the most diverse kinds of houses. This is biodiversity.

Consequently, the same basic genetic code creates the sacred oneness of life, from micro-organisms to human beings. We all are, in fact, cousins, brothers and sisters, as Pope Francis affirms in his encyclical letter on integral ecology (n. 92) because we are made of the same 20 amino acids and 4 nitrogenous bases (adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine).

But the cradle that could welcome life was missing: the atmosphere and biosphere with all the essential elements to life: carbon, oxygen, methane, sulphuric acid, nitrogen and others.

With these pre-conditions, some 3.8 billion years ago something portentous happened. Possibly from the sea or a primitive marsh where all the elements bubbled like a kind of soup, suddenly, from the impact of a great bolt of lightning from above, life emerged.

Mysteriously, there has been life for 3.8 billion years on the minuscule planet Earth, in a fifth order solar system, in a corner of our galaxy, 29 thousand light years from the center of that galaxy. Here, the most unique event of the evolution occurred: the emergence of life.

Life is the original mother of all living beings, the true Eve. All other life forms descend from her, including we humans, a subchapter of the chapter of life: our conscious life.
Finally, I would dare join biologist Christian de Duve, also a Nobel laureate, and cosmologist Brian Swimme, in saying that the Universe would be incomplete without life. Whenever a certain level of complexity is reached, life will always emerge as a cosmic imperative, in any part of the Universe.

We must overcome the common idea that the Universe is merely a physical and dead thing, with some specks of life to adorn the picture. That is a poor and false understanding. The Universe seems to be full of life and it exists for that, as the cradle that welcomes life, especially our life.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher, of the 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.