Categoria: Idiomas

Letter of Support to Pope Francis, who was very glad with this letter

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Dear Pope Francis:

In Brazil, the Caribbean, in all of Latin America, and in other parts of the world, there are many who follow with concern the strong opposition and the attacks on you by small, but powerful, conservative minorities from both within and outside of the Church. Perplexed, we have seen something unusual during recent centuries: a rebellion of conservative cardinals against your way of conducting the Synod and, above all, the Universal Church.

That group of cardinals wrote you a strictly personal letter that was leaked to the press and published, as occurred with your encyclical letter Laudato Si’, before it was released, in clear violation of the principles of ethical journalism.

These conservative groups seek to return to a model of the Church from the past, conceived of more as a closed fortress than as «a working hospital with open doors to welcome all those who come»; a Church that must «seek and make company with the humanity of today with open doors, because with closed doors, she betrays herself and her mission and instead of being a bridge, she becomes a barrier». These were your courageous words.

The pastoral approach of the type of Church your speeches and symbolic gestures propose are characterized by warm love, by a living encounter among persons and with Christ present among us, by limitless mercy, by a “revolution of tenderness” and by a pastoral conversion. This implies that the pastor must bear the “odor of sheep”, because the pastor lives with the sheep and accompanies them during their entire journey.

We lament that what such conservative groups do best is to say no. No to communion for those who divorced and remarried; no to recognition of the homo-affective; no to any opening to the world that may imply substantive changes.

We must remind these brothers of the more obvious aspects of the message of Jesus. He did not come to say no. To the contrary, He came to say yes. Saint Paul, in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, reminds us that “in the Son of God all has been yes … because all God’s promises are yes in Jesus” (2 Corinthians 1,20).

In the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus explicitly says: “If someone comes to me I will never reject him” (John 6,37). It could be a prostitute, a leper, or a frightened theologian such as Nicodemus: He welcomes all with His love and mercy.

The fundamental features of the God of Jesus, “Abba”, are His infinite mercy (Luke 6,36) and His preferential love for the poor, for the sick, and for the sinners (Luke 5,32; 6,21).

More than founding a new religion with pious parishioners, Jesus came to teach us to live and bring to life the tenets of His central message, the kingdom of God, namely: love, compassion, forgiveness, solidarity, a hunger and thirst for justice, and for us to sense that we are the beloved sons and daughters of God.

The attempts to deny legitimacy to your way of being, as the Bishop of Rome and Pope of the Universal Church, will be in vain because nothing can resist the goodness and tenderness of which you are giving us such a splendid example. Through history, we know that when power prevails, as they would like it to prevail, love disappears and mercy is extinguished – eliminating the central values preached by you, and by Jesus.
In this context, we Christians who are open to the challenges of the present world, to facing up to the new planetary phase of history and the threats that weigh down the life-system and the Earth-system, courageously addressed in your encyclical letter Laudato Si’ on “the Caring for the Common Home,” want to close ranks around you and show our total support for your person and your ministry, for your pastoral vision of an open Church, and for the charismatic form by which you make us feel once again that the Church is our spiritual home. And many people from other Churches and religions and from the secular world support and admire you for your manner of acting and speaking.

Much meaning can be found in the fact that the great majority of Catholics live in the Americas, in Africa and in Asia, where one sees great vitality and creativity in the dialogue with the different cultures that reflect the multiple faces of the same Church of Christ. The Catholic Church is now a Church of the Third World, because only 25% of Catholics live in Europe. The future of the Church is unfolding in these regions, where the Spirit blows with great strength. Not to see this fact is to continue being Euro- and Vatican-centered.

The Catholic Church cannot be hostage to the Occidental culture. That is a regional culture, no matter how big and important its accumulated merits may be. The Church must stop being Occidental, and open herself to the process of being worldwide, one that favors encounters among cultures and spiritual paths.

Dear Pope Francis: You are a participant in the destiny of the Master and of the Apostles, who also were misunderstood, slandered and persecuted.

But we are tranquil because we know that you accept such tribulations in accordance with the spirit of the beatitudes. You endure them with humility. You ask for forgiveness for the sins of the Church, and follow in the footsteps of the Nazarene.

We want to be close to you, support you in your evangelical and liberating vision of the Church, to give you the inner courage and strength to modernize, with words and gestures, the tradition of Jesus, that is comprised of love, mercy, compassion, intimacy with God and solidarity with the suffering humanity.

Finally, dear Pope Francis, continue showing us all that the Gospel is for humanity, that the Christian message is an inspiring force in “caring for the Common Home” and a small forerunner of an Earth reconciled with herself, with all of humanity, with nature and especially with the Father who displayed the characteristics of a Mother of infinite goodness and tenderness.

In the end, together we will be able to say: “all is very good” (Genesis 1,31).

The Pope Francis was very glad to receive this support, according voices from Vatican

A translation from the Spanish sent by
Leonardo Boff, lboff@leonardoboff.com.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Religion can make the good better and the bad worse

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

Everything that is healthy can get sick, including religions and churches. Particularly today that we are afflicted by the disease of fundamentalism, that contaminates important sectors of virtually all religions and churches, including the Roman Catholic Church. Sometimes there is a true religious war. One need only follow some religious programs, especially those on television of a neo-Pentecostal tendency, but also some conservative sectors of the Roman Catholic Church, in order to hear how they condemn people or groups of certain theological tendencies, or demonize the Afro-Brazilian religions.

The main expression of this war-like and exterminating fundamentalism is the Islamic State, ISIS, that turns violence and the murder of those who are different into expressions of their identity.

But there is also another religious vice, found in the mass media, especially on radio and television: the use of religion to recruit people, to preach the gospel of material prosperity, to extract money from the faithful to enrich their pastors and their self proclaimed bishops. We have to deal with commercial religions that obey the logic of the market, namely, competition and recruitment of the greatest possible number of people, with the greatest possible accumulation of cash.

If we look carefully, the majority of these mass media churches rarely mention the New Testament. The Old Testament predominates. This is understandable. In the Old Testament, except in the Prophets and other texts, material well being is emphasized as an expression of divine pleasure. Wealth holds centrality. The New Testament exalts the poor, preaches mercy, forgiveness, love for one’s enemy and boundless solidarity with the poor and the downtrodden. Where does one hear, even in Roman Catholic radio and TV programs, the words of the Master: “Blessed you poor, because yours is the kingdom of God”?

There is too much talk of Jesus and God as if they were something found in the market. By their nature, these sacred realities demand reverence and devotion, respectful silence and devout unction. The most prevalent sin is against the Second Commandment: “Do not take the holy name of God in vain”. That name is affixed on car windows and even found in people’s wallets, as if God were not everywhere. And having Jesus this and Jesus that in an irritating trivialization of the sacred.

What is even more painful and truly scandalous is that the names of God and of Jesus are invoked for purely commercial ends. Or worse, they are used to cover up embezzlements, the theft of public funds and money laundering. Someone has an enterprise whose title is “Jesus”. In the name of “Jesus” millions are amassed in bribes, hidden in foreign banks, and other forms of corruption occur involving public goods. And this is done with absolute shamelessness.

If Jesus were among us, without a doubt He would do what He did with the merchants of the temple: He took a whip and chased them away, trashing their money bags.

Due to these distortions of the sacred reality, we lose the humanizing inheritance of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, particularly of the liberating and humane character of the message and practice of Jesus of Nazareth. Religion can make the good better, but it can also make the bad worse.

We know that it was not Jesus’ original intention to create a new religion. There were many religions at the time. Nor did He contemplate reforming Judaism. What He wanted was to teach us to live our lives guided by the values of his main dream, the kingdom of God, comprised of unconditional love, mercy, forgiveness and total surrender to a God, called “Father”, (Abba in Hebrew), with characteristics of a mother of boundless goodness. He set in motion the creation of the new man and new woman, humanity’s eternal search.

As the book Acts of the Apostles show, initially Christianity was a movement more than an institution. It was called “the way of Jesus”, where reality was open to the fundamental values Jesus of Nazareth preached and lived. But as the movement grew, it was inevitably converted into an institution, with rules, rites and doctrines. And then the sacred power (sacra potestas) became the organizing principle of the whole institution, now called Church. The character of the movement was absorbed by the Church. Through history we know, however, that where power prevails, love disappears and mercy vanishes. Sadly, that is what happened. Thomas Hobbes warned that power protects itself only by seeking more and more power.

And this is how Churches appeared that were powerful by virtue of institutions, monuments, material wealth and even banks. And with power comes the possibility of corruption.

We are witnessing something good that we must welcome: Pope Francis is retaking Christianity for us, more as a movement than as an institution, more like an encounter between people and the living Christ, and more as mercy without limits than discipline and orthodox doctrine. He has placed Jesus, the person, at the center, rather than power, dogma, or the moral framework. This allows everyone, even those who are not part of the institution, to feel that, to the degree that they opt for love and justice, they are on the path of Jesus.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Religion can make the good better and the bad worse

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

Everything that is healthy can get sick, including religions and churches. Particularly today that we are afflicted by the disease of fundamentalism, that contaminates important sectors of virtually all religions and churches, including the Roman Catholic Church. Sometimes there is a true religious war. One need only follow some religious programs, especially those on television of a neo-Pentecostal tendency, but also some conservative sectors of the Roman Catholic Church, in order to hear how they condemn people or groups of certain theological tendencies, or demonize the Afro-Brazilian religions.

The main expression of this war-like and exterminating fundamentalism is the Islamic State, ISIS, that turns violence and the murder of those who are different into expressions of their identity.

But there is also another religious vice, found in the mass media, especially on radio and television: the use of religion to recruit people, to preach the gospel of material prosperity, to extract money from the faithful to enrich their pastors and their self proclaimed bishops. We have to deal with commercial religions that obey the logic of the market, namely, competition and recruitment of the greatest possible number of people, with the greatest possible accumulation of cash.

If we look carefully, the majority of these mass media churches rarely mention the New Testament. The Old Testament predominates. This is understandable. In the Old Testament, except in the Prophets and other texts, material well being is emphasized as an expression of divine pleasure. Wealth holds centrality. The New Testament exalts the poor, preaches mercy, forgiveness, love for one’s enemy and boundless solidarity with the poor and the downtrodden. Where does one hear, even in Roman Catholic radio and TV programs, the words of the Master: “Blessed you poor, because yours is the kingdom of God”?

There is too much talk of Jesus and God as if they were something found in the market. By their nature, these sacred realities demand reverence and devotion, respectful silence and devout unction. The most prevalent sin is against the Second Commandment: “Do not take the holy name of God in vain”. That name is affixed on car windows and even found in people’s wallets, as if God were not everywhere. And having Jesus this and Jesus that in an irritating trivialization of the sacred.

What is even more painful and truly scandalous is that the names of God and of Jesus are invoked for purely commercial ends. Or worse, they are used to cover up embezzlements, the theft of public funds and money laundering. Someone has an enterprise whose title is “Jesus”. In the name of “Jesus” millions are amassed in bribes, hidden in foreign banks, and other forms of corruption occur involving public goods. And this is done with absolute shamelessness.

If Jesus were among us, without a doubt He would do what He did with the merchants of the temple: He took a whip and chased them away, trashing their money bags.

Due to these distortions of the sacred reality, we lose the humanizing inheritance of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, particularly of the liberating and humane character of the message and practice of Jesus of Nazareth. Religion can make the good better, but it can also make the bad worse.

We know that it was not Jesus’ original intention to create a new religion. There were many religions at the time. Nor did He contemplate reforming Judaism. What He wanted was to teach us to live our lives guided by the values of his main dream, the kingdom of God, comprised of unconditional love, mercy, forgiveness and total surrender to a God, called “Father”, (Abba in Hebrew), with characteristics of a mother of boundless goodness. He set in motion the creation of the new man and new woman, humanity’s eternal search.

As the book Acts of the Apostles show, initially Christianity was a movement more than an institution. It was called “the way of Jesus”, where reality was open to the fundamental values Jesus of Nazareth preached and lived. But as the movement grew, it was inevitably converted into an institution, with rules, rites and doctrines. And then the sacred power (sacra potestas) became the organizing principle of the whole institution, now called Church. The character of the movement was absorbed by the Church. Through history we know, however, that where power prevails, love disappears and mercy vanishes. Sadly, that is what happened. Thomas Hobbes warned that power protects itself only by seeking more and more power.

And this is how Churches appeared that were powerful by virtue of institutions, monuments, material wealth and even banks. And with power comes the possibility of corruption.

We are witnessing something good that we must welcome: Pope Francis is retaking Christianity for us, more as a movement than as an institution, more like an encounter between people and the living Christ, and more as mercy without limits than discipline and orthodox doctrine. He has placed Jesus, the person, at the center, rather than power, dogma, or the moral framework. This allows everyone, even those who are not part of the institution, to feel that, to the degree that they opt for love and justice, they are on the path of Jesus.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Aylan Kurdi, the drowned little boy, makes us cry and think

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

The Syrian little boy of 3 or 4 years, lies drowned on the beach, pale and still dressed in his little boy’s clothes. Face down and with the face turned to one side, as if he would want to still breath. The waves had pity on him and carried him to the beach. The fish, always voracious, respected him because they also had pity of his innocense. Aylan Kurdi is his name. His father could not keep hold of them and they escaped of his hand; and the boys were swallowed by the waters. .

Dear Aylan: you were flying from the horrors of war in Syria, where the troops of President Assad, backed by the rich Arab Emirates, fight against soldiers of the cruel Islamic State, that beheads all those who do not convert to their religion, sadly supported by Western forces of Europe and the United States. I imagine that you were scared by the sound of the supersonic planes that launch murderous bombs. You did not sleep by the fear that your house would fly in flames through the airs.

How many times you would have heard your parents and neighbors say how dreadful are the planes that fly without a pilot, the drones. The drones persecute and chase human beings through the arid hills, and kills them. Wedding festivities, celebrated with great happiness, in spite of all the horror, are also bombed, because it is supposed that there must be a terrorist among the guests.

Perhaps you do not imagine that who practices such barbarity and who is behind all this is a young soldier, who lives in a military barrack in Texas. He is peacefully sitting in his living room in front of an immense TV screen. Through satellite the screen shows the battle fields of your country, Syria, or Iraq. When the young soldier suspects, with a simple touch of a bottom fires a weapon held by the drone. The young soldier feels nothing. Hears nothing. He does not even has pain. On the other side, thousands of kilometers away, 30 or 40 human beings, children as yourself, fathers and mothers like your father and mother, persons who have nothing to do with the war, suddenly die. They are coldly murdered. From the other side, the young soldier smiles because he had hit the target.

Due to the terror that comes from skies and land, facing the dread of being killed or beheaded, your parents resolved to flee. They took all the family. They do no think of looking for a job. They only want neither to die nor to be killed. They dream of living in a country where they are no longer scared, a place where they can sleep without having nightmares.

And you, dear Aylan, could happily play in the street with little playmates whose language you do not understand but that you do not need, because you the children have a language that all boys and girls understand.

You, Aylan, have not been able to reach a place of peace. But now, in spite of all the sadness we feel, we know that you, so innocent, have arrived to a paradise where you can at last play, jump and run everywhere in the company of a God that was also a child, of name Jesus, and who, not to leave you alone, has become once a gain a child. And he will play soccer with you, he will grab a little cat by the neck, run after after a little dog; you will understand each other so well, as if you had been friends forever; together you will do colored drawings, will laugh at the dolls you will make and share beautiful stories with each other. And you will feel very happy. And see, what a surprise: with you there will be your little brother who also died, and your mother will be able to embrace and kiss you, as she did so many times.

You have not died, my dear Aylan. You have gone to live and to play in another place, a much better place. The world was not worth your innocence.

And now let me think with myself. What world is this that frightens and kills the children? Why the majority of the countries do not want to receive refugees from terror and war? Are not these refugees our brothers and sisters who live in the same Common Home, the Earth? Those refugees ask for nothing. They only want to live. They want to be able to have some peace and not to see their children crying scared and jumping out of bed with the thunder of the bombs. They are human beings who want to be welcome as human beings, without threatening nobody. They only want to live their manner of venerating God and to be clothed the way they have always clothed.

Have not been enough two thousand years of Christianity to make the Europeans minimally human, solidarians and hospitable? Aylan, the little Syrian dead on the beach is a metaphor of the Europe of today: prostrated, lifeless, incapable of crying and of welcoming threatened lives. Had the Europeans not heard so many times that who welcomes the stranger or the persecuted is anonymously hosting God?

Dear Aylan, that your image thrown on the beach elicits in us some of the humanity that always stays in us, a thread of solidarity, a tear of compassion that we cannot contain in our eyes tired of seeing so much useless suffering, especially of children, like yourself. Help us, we beg you, because if not the divine flame that trembles inside us, can extinguish. And if that flame is extinguished, we all will drawn, because without love and compassion nothing will make sense in this world.

*Leonardo Boff, a Grandfather of a distant country that has already received many persons from your country, Syria, who took pity when he saw your image on the beach and painful tears of compassion escaped from his eyes.

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