HUMANITAS REVIEW 9 by Revista Humanitas

year V

c h r i s t i a n a n t r hop ol o gic a l a n d c u lt u r a l r e v i e w / n º 9 / y e a r v

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HOPE Giovanni Cucci S.J. IS IT STILL POSSIBLE TO EDUCATE? José Savagnone

PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE CHILE

Interview to William Carroll THE RAISING INTEREST ON SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS IN CHINA THE BEAUTY OF ART A conversation with Marko Rupnik

HUMANITAS

Council of Consultants and Collaborators

Christian Anthropological and Cultural Review HUMANITAS REVIEW came into being to provide the University with a source of reflection and study at the service of the academic community and a wider public in general. Its objective is to reflect on the concerns and teachings of the Papal Magisterium (Decree of the Rector from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile 147/95, par. 2). EDITOR Jaime V. Antúnez EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Francisco Claro Hernán Corral Carmen Domínguez Gabriel Guarda, O.S.B. Pedro Morandé Rodrigo Polanco Ricardo Riesco Eduardo Valenzuela Carvallo Juan de Dios Vial Correa Juan de Dios Vial Larraín Arturo Yrarrázaval ASSISTANT EDITOR Paula M. Jullian

COUNCIL OF CONSULTANTS AND COLLABORATORS Honorary President: H.E. Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz, Archbishop Emeritus of Santiago de Chile. Héctor Aguer, Anselmo Álvarez, O.S.B., Carl Anderson, Andrés Arteaga, Francisca Alessandri, Antonio Amado, Felipe Bacarreza, Rafael Benguria, Rémi Brague, Jean-Louis Bruguès, O.P., Rocco Buttiglione, Massimo Borghesi, Carlos Francisco Cáceres, José Manuel Castro, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, Guzmán Carriquiry, William E. Carroll, Inés de Cassagne, Fernando María Cavaller, José Luis Cea, Fernando Chomali, Francesco D’Agostino, Adriano Dall’Asta, José Granados, Vittorio di Girolamo, José Manuel Eguiguren, Carlos José Errázuriz, José María Eyzaguirre, Samuel Fernández, Alvaro Ferrer, María Esther Gómez de Pedro, Juan Ignacio González, Stanislaw Grygiel, Gonzalo Ibáñez, Henri Hude, Reinhard Hütter, Raúl Irarrázabal, Lydia Jiménez, Paul Johnson, Jean Laffitte, Nicolás León Ross, Alfonso López Quintás, Alejandro Llano, Raúl Madrid, Guillermo Marini, Javier Martínez, Patricia Matte, Carlos Ignacio Massini, Livio Melina, René Millar, Rodrigo Moreno, Andrés Ollero, José Miguel, Mario Paredes, Bernardino Piñera, Aquilino Polaino-Lorente, Cardinal Paul Poupard, Javier Prades, Dominique Rey, Florián Rodero L.C., Cristián Rocangoglio, Alejandro San Francisco, Cardinal Angelo Scola, Cardinal Fernando Sebastián, David L. Schindler, William Thayer, Eduardo Valenzuela, Juan Velarde, Alberto Vial, Aníbal Vial, Pilar Vigil, Richard Yeo, O.S.B.

Héctor Aguer: Archbishop of La Plata, Argentina. Anselmo Álvarez, OSB: Abbott emeritus of Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos. Carl A nderson: Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. Andrés Arteaga: Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago. Francisca Alessandri: Associate Professor, Faculty of Journalism, UC. Antonio Amado: Associate Professor of Philosophy, Universidad de los Andes. Felipe Bacarreza: Bishop of Los Ángeles, Chile. Rafael Benguria: Associate Professor of the Faculty of Physics, UC. National award for Exact sciences (2005). Rémi Brague: French philosopher. Ratzinger Prize 2012. Jean-Louis Bruguès, OP: Archivist of the Vatican Secret Archives and Librarian of the Vatican Library, Bishop Emeritus of Angers, France. Massimo Borghesi: Italian philosopher. Senior professor of the University of Perugia, Italy. Rocco Buttiglione: Italian philosopher and politician. Carlos Francisco Cáceres: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. José Manuel Castro: Historian. MA in History, UC Cardinal Antonio Cañizares: Archbishop of Valencia, Spain. Guzmán Carriquiry: Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. William E. Carroll: Aquinas Fellow in Theology and Science, Blackfriars. Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford. Inés de Cassagne: Argentinian writer. Fernando María Cavaller: President of the Association of Friends of Newman, Argentina. José Luis Cea: President of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Fernando Chomali: Archbishop of Concepción, Chile. Francesco D’Agostino: Professor of Philosophy of Law at the University Tor Vergata of Rome. Former President of the National Bioethics Committee of Italy. Adriano Dall’Asta: Vice President of the Christian Russian Foundation. José Granados: Vice president of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family. Vittorio di Girolamo: Professor and Art Historian José Manuel Eguiguren: Founder apostolic movement Manquehue. Carlos José Errázuriz: Consultant of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, professor at Pontifical Università della Santa Croce. José María Eyzaguirre: Senior Professor at the Faculty of Law, UC. Samuel Fernández: PhD in. Associate Professor of Patristic Sciences at the Faculty of Theology, UC. Postgrad and Research Director. Álvaro Ferrer: Professor at the Faculty of Law, UC. María Esther Gómez de Pedro: Member of the circle of disciples of Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedicto XVI. Juan Ignacio González: Bishop of San Bernardo, Chile. Stanislaw Grygiel: Polish philosopher, tenured lecturer of the John Paul II Chair, Lateranense University, Rome. Henri Hude: French philosopher, former Rector of the Stanislas College, Paris.

Gonzalo Ibáñez: Professor and former Rector of the University Adolfo Ibáñez. Reinhard Hütter: Theologian. Professor of the Catholic University of America. Raúl Irarrázabal: Architect. Lydia Jiménez: General Director of the Holy Mary Crusaders Secular Institute. Paul Johnson: British historian. Jean Laffitte: Bishop of Entrevaux. Prelate of the Order of Malta. Nicolás León Ross: Former CEO of Idea-País, Chile. Alfonso López Quintás: Spanish philosopher. Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Moral and Political Science. Alejandro Llano: Spanish philosopher, former Rector of the University of Navarra, Spain. Raúl Madrid: Professor, Faculty of Law, UC. Guillermo Marini: Associate Professor of the Faculty of Education UC. Javier Martínez: Archbishop of Granada, Spain. Patricia Matte: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Science, Institute of Chile. Carlos Ignacio Massini: Professor at the National University of Cuyo, Argentina. Livio Melina: Professor of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family. René Millar: Former Dean of the Faculty of History UC. Member of the Chilean Academy of History. Rodrigo Moreno: Member of the Chilean Academy of History. Andrés Ollero: Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. José Miguel Oriol: President of Editorial Encuentro, Madrid, Spain. Mario J. Paredes: Director of Catholic Ministries at American Bible Society. Bernardino Piñera: Archbishop emeritus of La Serena, Chile. Aquilino Polaino-Lorente: Spanish psychiatrist. Cardinal Paul Poupard: President emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Javier Prades: Rector of San Dámaso University, Madrid, Spain. Dominique Rey: Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, France. Florián Rodero L.C: Professor of Theology, Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, Rome. Cristián Rocangliolo: Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago. Alejandro San Francisco: Professor at the Institute of History, UC. Cardinal Angelo Scola: Archbishop of Milan, Italy. Cardinal Fernando Sebastián: Archbishop emeritus of Pamplona, Spain. David L. Schindler: Editor of Communio International Catholic review. William Thayer: Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences, Institute of Chile. Juan Velarde: Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Prince of Asturias Prize in Social Sciences (1992). Alberto Vial: PhD. In Philosophy by the Paris-Sorbonne University. Aníbal Vial: Former Rector of the University Santo Tomás. Pilar Vigil: Professor at the Faculty of Medicin, UC. Richard Yeo, OSB: Abbott and President of the Benedictine Congregation, England.

H U M A N I T A S

Humanitas Nº9 2017- Year V

english digital edition

IS IT STILL POSSIBLE TO EDUCATE? José Savagnone

Interview to William Carroll THE RISING INTEREST ON SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS IN CHINA Paula Jullian 20 HUMAN LIFE AND FREE TIME Josef Pieper

ART AND THE SACRED Andrea Dall' Asta S.J.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HOPE Giovanni Cucci S.J.

THE FORMATIVE POWER OF MUSIC Alfonso López-Quintás

Art and religion A CONVERSATION WITH MARKO RUPNIK 72 THE CHRISTIAN VOCATION OF THE BUSINESS LEADER. Interview to Michael Naughton

notes

GERTRUD VON LE FORT AND A LITERATURE THAT STIRS THE HEART Clemens Franken

Summary Editorial Notes The Pope in his words Books About the authors

3 5 87 92 105 112

Front cover: Detail on Marko Rupnick's work.

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See the Digital Version of English and Spanish edition on our page www.humanitas.cl

HUMANITAS

Serving the encounter of faith and culture

HUMANITAS (ISSN 07172168) publishes articles by its regular, national and foreign collaborators as well as authors whose subject matter is in harmony with the goals of HUMANITAS. The total or partial reproduction of articles published by HUMANITAS requires authorization, with the exception of commentary or quotes. Design and production: María Pía Toro | Abril Diseño Letters: HUMANITAS / Centro de Extensión de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile / Av. Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins 390, 3rd floor, Santiago, Chile. Tel: +562 2354 6519 — email: humanitas@uc.cl

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HUMANITAS

Summary n°9 · Year V, 2017 English Digital Edition

IS IT STILL POSSIBLE TO EDUCATE?, by José Savagnone. The great problem discussed nowadays is not “how” to educate, but “if” it is still possible to do so. The environment in which family life and school life develop seem to impose models and suggestions that are stronger than the input from parents and teachers, dominant in a different time. However, we must acknowledge that in this education crisis there is also a weakening –if not, in fact, a loss - of the ideal coordinates where education used to find its own significance and the conditions for its success. Humanitas 2017, V, pp. 8

THE RISING INTEREST ON SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS IN CHINA, an interview to William Carroll. William Carroll, converses about his impressions of the positive reception of academics in some Chinese universities of St. Thomas’s philosophy. Thomas Aquinas’s commitment to the importance of reason and its universal role in defining what it means to be human makes him an attractive thinker for contemporary Chinese scholars. Speaking of the ways in which Thomas’ understanding of the relationship between philosophy, theology, and the natural sciences, he discusses how these can be used to disentangle the contemporary confusion about the philosophical and theological implications of evolutionary biology and cosmology. Humanitas 2017, V, pp. 20 HUMAN LIFE AND FREE TIME, by Josef Pieper. Nowadays, the expression «free time» generates, in the individual, a defensive reaction against a rival seemingly determined to dominate him. The situation is compounded by the fact that this opposition does not spring from his neighbour, because it certainly is a purely internal conflict. And our difficulties do not end there. If we consider that the same individual will be unable to provide a relatively accurate answer, if what s/he wants to defend is challenged. Thus, we are forced to confess our ignorance regarding what is implied by Aristotle’s often discussed statement: «We work so that we may have free time». Humanitas 2017, V, pp. 31 ART AND THE SACRED, by Andrea Dall' Asta S.J. The concept of sacred is an essential point of reference for the understanding of Western civilization. Religion historians, ethnologists, anthropologists, psychologists and theologians have tried to tackle this concept many times, as it may be used in a wide range of inclinations and articulations. We consider sacred that which establishes a relationship between man and his own origin. Humanitas 2017, V, pp. 38

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PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HOPE, by Giovanni Cucci. The encyclical Spe salvi, issued by Benedict XVI1, addresses the virtue of hope, an essential aspect of human life which has received scarce attention in today’s cultural reflection. This lack of interest has also been highlighted by the lack of discussion about it, which stands in contrast with the discussion of other matters like political-social issues or sexual ethics. Yet, hope is decisive for living a sensible life, since the answer to the question of hope is present in all human events that concern the search for meaning. Humanitas 2017, V, pp. 50 THE FORMATIVE POWER OF MUSIC, by Alfonso López-Quintás. Music has an extraordinary formative capacity when seen in its deepest sense and practiced creatively. The interpreter and the listener have to actively receive the possibilities that every piece offers. That active reception of possibilities is the quintessence of creativity. In a special way, music promotes the creative capacity of those who cultivate it, since, just like dance and theatre – “temporal” arts – it has to be re-created time and time again in order to enjoy its real existence, and not just a virtual one. Humanitas 2017, V, pp. 62 A CONVERSATION WITH MARKO RUPNIK. Recently, Marko Rupnik was invited by the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile to take part in a colloquium about art. In that occasion, he also attended a very friendly and informal get-together with a few academics and artists. HUMANITAS REVIEW took part in this close and familiar question-and-answer gathering, which is now presented in this issue. Humanitas 2017, V, pp. 72

THE CHRISTIAN VOCATION OF THE BUSINESS LEADER, an interview to Michael Naughton. Professor Michael Naughton, is one of the authors of the document “The Vocation of the Business Leader: A reflection”, created to summarize the teachings of Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical on the Christian’s place and thinking in economic life. In an exclusive Interview granted to HUMANITAS REVIEW, Prof. Naughton talked about the anthropological dimension of business, the vocation of the Catholic leaders and their social responsibility to make the world a better place. Humanitas 2017, V, pp. 80 GERTRUD VON LE FORT AND A LITERATURE THAT STIRS THE HEART, by Clemens Franken. According to German writer, Gertrude von le Fort, poets have an evangelizing mission. Although religious fervour has diminished among authors with time, the image of the poet as priest, prophet and decipherer of the secrets of the world and men still provokes contradictory reactions. The German writer, essayist and poet, who is part of the renewal of European Catholic literature, is identified as a poet of the loving mercy of God, who embraces and covers everything in a motherly gesture. Literature, according to her conviction, “does not strive for a moral recognition, but a stirred heart.” Humanitas 2017, V, pp. 87

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1 Cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical letter Spe salvi, 30 November 2007.

EDITORIAL

A “PONTI-FICAL” SERVICE

s our 9th issue of humanitas review goes into press, we renew our commitment with our English-speaking readership, to whom we have strived to be faithful to since 2011. In addition, we also take on the challenge of preparing the recently announced visit of His Holiness Pope Francis to Chile and Peru. These nations of old Catholic tradition in the South Pacific will be two of the nine Latin American countries that the Pope will have honoured with an apostolic visit in his four years as Peter’s successor. His visit to Chile will take place almost exactly at the thirty-year anniversary of the unforgettable first visit to the country by a Pope, Saint John Paul II.

We expect to communicate to our English-speaking readers and make them part of all the different initiatives we will be planning for this Papal visit, translating as much as we can into English. For instance, Pope Francis will visit the city of Iquique, in the middle of the Atacama Desert. It is a legendary city that has been called the “Marian capital of the North of Chile,” due to the nearby sanctuary devoted to Our Lady of Carmel, patron saint of the country. This place has been named “La Tirana” and its beautiful story mirrors America’s evangelization, from Guadalupe in the north to Chile in the south. A text that was especially written by a commission of experts, and which can be read in Spanish in humanitas 82, will be edited for the occasion and distributed to the travellers visiting the sanctuary. Today, we offer you this HR9 edition, which we hope, appealing to your generosity, you will forward to others, so many more people may benefit from its reading. It gives you, through the section The Pope in his own Words (p.92), an organized series of texts by the last three Popes – John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis– about “Gender Ideology,” a matter that humanitas has covered in an introductory study that can be accessed through our website www.humanitas.cl. The whole Church awaits an official magisterial statement from a high authority about such a serious matter. With some authors that are internationally known, like the German philosopher Josef Pieper, this issue delves right into the anthropological question of education: its current problems (José Savagnone), showing new and inspiring horizons, from the already mentioned by Pieper, or the praised Spanish Emeritus professor Alfonso López Quintás (read about the School of Thought and

HUMANITAS Nº 9 pp. 5-7

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EDITORIAL Creativity in fundaciónlopezquintas.org). All these converge into the “education emergency”– a worldwide problem that Benedict XVI talked about to the teachers of his Roman diocese years ago. On this same line, we find the reflections on beauty in itself, as food and language of the soul, from a conversation with the famous religious mosaic artist, Father Marko Rupnik, as well as the relationship between art and the sacred that Andrea Dall' Asta offers to the readers. We save for last the reference to the very relevant interview made for this issue to the science philosopher and Professor at Oxford University, William Carroll. Besides the topics of his specialty covered in the interview, the core theme of his account is the surprising and great interest Professor Carroll has encountered in China for the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas in four visits to universities in the country. This is an almost explosive phenomenon which shows, as he explains, connections with the roots of that nation’s millenary culture, especially with Taoism. This phenomenon acquires incalculable projections if we consider that, as statistics from reliable sources have already started to confirm (mentioned in the introduction to Professor Carroll’s interview), that by the year 2030, we will find the world’s largest Christian population in Chinese territory. The Church, aware of the challenge and the responsibility this entails, takes particular care of the believers in those vast territories where she carries out Her mission. In keeping with this concern for China and other Asian countries, humanitas review will take the necessary measures to serve those millions of people who inhabit that country of continental dimensions and with whom the English language might serve as a tool to come together. So, following the steps of St. Francis Xavier and Father Ricci, we will strive to offer them a special “ponti-fical” service, that is to tend bridges, in order to build communicational liaisons concerning the essence of our Christian bonds. JAIME V. ANTÚNEZ Editor

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is it still possible to educate? BY JOSÉ SAVAGNONE

THE GREAT PROBLEM DISCUSSED NOWADAYS IS NOT “HOW” TO EDUCATE, BUT “IF” IT IS STILL POSSIBLE TO DO SO. THE ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH FAMILY LIFE AND SCHOOL LIFE DEVELOP SEEM TO IMPOSE MODELS AND SUGGESTIONS THAT ARE STRONGER THAN THE INPUT FROM PARENTS AND TEACHERS, DOMINANT IN A DIFFERENT TIME.

he great problem discussed nowadays is not “how” to educate, but “if” it is still possible to do so. The environment in which family life and school life develop seem to impose models and suggestions that are stronger than the input from parents and teachers, dominant in a different time. However, we must acknowledge that in this education crisis there is also a weakening –if not, in fact, a loss - of the ideal coordinates where education used to find its own significance and the conditions for its success. Our objective here is to identify some aspects of that weakening and to, at least, suggest a way to overcome it. Our thoughts focus on the school, but to some extent, they could also be linked to the family. Education implies three fundamental dimensions for human beings: to “belong-to,” to “be-with”, and to “be-for.” This refers to, respectively, to being generated by and dependent on something or someone that existed previously; to cooperating with others and being available to them; to regarding ends as elements endowed with truth and value to the point of being able of giving direction, a “sense” for life. Nowadays, in the field of education, especially in the school context, there is a crisis that can also be one of growth. And so, it certainly gives these three dimensions a problematic character.

“Belong-to”: the importance of narration We see in today’s society a generalised loss of memory and a tendency to break away from our roots. Yet, it is precisely in contemporary hermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadamer) that tradition is revalidated as an indispensable condition for building our future. Certainly, tradition is not simply the past, but a vital relationship among all three dimensions

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«Without the logos of the narration, which implies the past-present-future bond, there are not even significant experiences, even though there can be the illusion of living many. These are experienced, however, as dot-like flashes, lacking a relationship that assigns them value. They are not able to become history.» Valentin Serov watercolour painting.

HUMANITAS Nº 9 pp. 8-19

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UNLIKE NON-HUMAN ANIMALS, A PERSON IS NOT BORN JUST ONCE IN THE ACT OF BIOLOGICAL GENERATION. MAN IS BY NATURE A CULTURAL ANIMAL AND NEEDS CULTURE TO BE ABLE TO COMPLETELY ACQUIRE HIS OWN CHARACTER. IF HE GOES TO SCHOOL, HE DOES IT NOT ONLY TO LEARN, BUT ALSO TO BE BORN.

of temporality. Loss of memory also annuls the ability to intelligently interpret the era in which one lives, circumscribing it to the a-historic immediacy of moods. This is especially evident if we think of a subject that is closely related to what was referred to above: narration. Our experiences cannot be reduced to a mere succession of specific events. Indeed, a fact that is isolated from its context is not a fact anymore, but a mere physical phenomenon, which needs to be granted meaning from the history in which it is inserted for it to be a fact. Without the logos of the narration, which implies the past-present-future bond, there are not even significant experiences, even though there can be the illusion of living many. These are experienced, however, as dot-like flashes, lacking a relationship that assigns them value. They are not able to become history. Nevertheless, we cannot learn to tell our own history to others or to ourselves if we do not listen at the same time. In a different era, the family would gather round to listen to the grandfather narrate his past experiences uncountable times. Young people today spend hours playing video games, which fix them in an eternal present. The school’s main activity is precisely narrating. Its programmes are mainly made up of stories: from literature, art, philosophy… However, this is only valuable in the case of a true tradition, which, to be so, does not need to limit itself to safe-keeping the past, as we mentioned, but to establishing a vital relationship between past, present, and future. Otherwise, it is only archaeology. This is usually the risk taken by our schools. In fact, tradition, to be so, needs for each generation to vitally re-claim it, updating it every now and then and reinterpreting it in the light of its own cultural context. This is precisely the school’s function. It should be the place par excellence where this critical re-appropriation of the past can and must be institutionally conducted.

Masters must be brought back To “belong-to” is not a purely cognitive fact, but also an existential one. In our society, apart from the memory of the past,

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«We see in today’s society a generalised loss of memory and a tendency to break away from our roots. However, it is precisely in contemporary hermeneutics that tradition is revalidated as an indispensable condition for building our future.» German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, 1900-2002.

SCHOOL CAN ONLY STILL EDUCATE IF THERE ARE “MASTERS” IN IT, I.E. PEOPLE CAPABLE OF EXERCISING AUTHORITY AND THUS OF CONTRIBUTING TO THE “BIRTH” OF THEIR STUDENTS.

the sense of having been generated is also lost. We live in a society in which the father has been “killed,” understanding this as the elimination of all dependent relationships with somebody who came before us and whom we acknowledge as having authority over us. Authority has a very bad reputation today – to the point that those who have it try to get rid of the responsibility of exerting it – because it is systematically confused with power. But there is a great difference between both: power is the capacity to physically, economically, and socially coerce, while authority is linked to origin. If it operates in the present it is because authority has a past. The Latin verb augere means “to cause to originate,” “to make grow,” and from it comes the noun auctor, “author.” Authority, unlike power, is not a mere fact, but a quality based on the history of the relationship

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IN OUR SOCIETY, BINDING AFFILIATIONS ARE EVADED. THE INDIVIDUAL RELATES TO OTHERS, BUT HIS INCREASING AUTONOMY ALLOWS HIM TO CHANGE PATHS AND COMPANY AT ANY TIME.

between people and linked to the fact that somebody helps somebody else be born. Thus, authority is bound to education. As Latin etymology suggests, e-ducere, “to conduct outside,” is a metaphor for the action that facilitates birth and has its model in Socratic maieutic. Unlike non-human animals, a person is not born just once in the act of biological generation. Man is by nature a cultural animal and needs culture to be able to completely acquire his own character. If he goes to school, he does it not only to learn, but also to be born. School can only still educate if there are “masters” in it, i.e. people capable of exercising authority and thus of contributing to the “birth” of their students. It is not about going back to certain past authoritarian practices. For the teacher’s authority to subsist, it is essential to acknowledge that, just as in any birth, the object of the process is not the obstetrician, but the child. The need for a dialogue that admits a true reciprocity arises from this. The current challenge is to save this dialogue, with all the freedom and authenticity that it entails. At the same time, this dialogue recovers authority, with all the respect that comes from the “disciple’s” act of listening to his master.

“Be-with”: the crisis of affiliations In our society, binding affiliations are evaded. The individual relates to others, but his increasing autonomy allows him to change paths and company at any time. This is evidence of the crisis of the very idea of community. For it to be real, a cooperative action must be established and directed towards a shared objective. It is not enough to have a coordination that seeks to attain similar ends. For instance, when organizing a poker game or a tennis match, everyone wants the same thing (to win), but only one will be able to effectively accomplish that objective. There is an abyss between having similar ends and seeking a common objective. The limitations that characterize a society exclusively built on this first level of relationships among people are evident. Here we observe dramatic effects on the family, where often each individual develops their

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"IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EDUCATE WITH THE PRESENT SCEPTIC AND NIHILISTIC RELATIVISM" We need to recover a Socratic attitude to search for truth in the world of education, as proposed by José María Barrio, professor of Education Anthropology in Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in the First International Conference of Catholic Education in May 2016, in Valencia. Inmaculada Álvarez reviews professor Barrio’s words.

he ever-greater despondency of teachers is, according to Barrio, one of the biggest problems that the world of education is facing right now. “That discomfort from teachers has to do with the distressing feeling of intellectual and moral disarmament that many co-workers experience in the face of he banal nihilism of today he asserted. “It is impossible to educate with sceptic relativism. We can only educate based on an ideal conception of the best way of being a human person, or at least a better one than others. Only with this evidently non-sceptic conviction that an ideal of humanity deserves to be transmitted, does it make sense to say it and try to live it, that is, profess it.” The education crisis is twofold: on the one hand, teachers feel there is a “despondency as they see themselves trying to provide references of sense in a context of nonsense,” while among students, “postmodern and post-Enlightenment nihilism knocks down floods of young people, leaving them without any moral or vital resources to face the future with hope.” This current nihilism, according to Barrio, “is not aggressive, as it used to be. It can be broken down, however, into soft and harmless propositions such as “weak thinking” (Vattimo), “reality as a joke and a game” (Derrida), and the “priority of democracy over philosophy” (Rorty), etc. – all very welcome by the society of wellbeing, characterized by its scrupulous zeal for avoiding all sorts of points of view.” Barrio defined this society of wellbeing as “a society that is anaesthetized against all conflict in order to domesticate discourse by means of the exponential multiplication of political correctness and ethical and academic protocols.” “Ours is a society of disassociation and lack of commitment that, shapeless and invertebrate, increasingly reproduces that decadence that scared Nietzsche away. And this goes against all forecasts, given that this postmodernity that longs for ideological peace is precisely the one that claims to be the heir of Nietzsche, the great transgressor.” “The relativism proclaimed by this stance supposes a surrender of thought. It is impossible to live humanely, let alone to educate, with sceptic and nihilistic relativism,” he assured. Looking for truth In this context, he proposes a return to the Socratic principle of searching for the truth: “Truth is a properly human good, the one that can satisfy the rational animal (homo sapiens). And vice versa, to live without truth is the worst tragedy, much worse than only half-living. Centuries later, Thomas Aquinas would explain that this happens to non-cognisant animate beings. But the fact that truth is the most important human good and that man is capable of truth means that it can always enrich him because he never comes to completely grasp it.”

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“This Socratic attitude of the search for truth, linked with the culture of interiority, has given Europe its best accomplishments of humanism. Socratism has also transmitted a peculiar perception of practical truth to the West. This is a truth that is not only known, but uttered and lived.” According to Barrio, today there is a “cultural discredit of the notion of truth – even rejection in some intellectual and academic contexts.” “Reality always demands commitment, and young people are very prone to commitment, sometimes unreasonably so. If all human paths are equally valid – which is the same as saying that they are equally false- all that can result is perplexity, not ample choice. The great current challenge for education is to grant language the possibility of saying something serious about what man is, what the meaning of life is, and how a life can be accomplished and full.” “To recover that essential conversation of humanity, and to give voice to reason in order to claim and contrast arguments, is precisely what sceptic nihilism tries to make impossible. But education lacks meaning outside that conversation,” he concluded.

CURRENTLY, THERE IS A RISK OF FORGETTING THAT THE SCHOOL IS A COMMUNITY. OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM HAS A CHARACTER THAT IS INCREASINGLY INDIVIDUALISTIC, MAYBE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE ‘PERSONALIZATION.”

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own project of self-realization, so that the bond is at risk of a crisis every time there is a clash between similar subjective ends. Something comparable can be said about the way in which many conceive political community. True community only exists if it goes from coordination to cooperation, i.e. if it exists in order to attain an end that is truly common, so that none of the participants can achieve it if the others do not. This means that there is a reciprocal responsibility that goes beyond mere coordination. A poker player has nothing to reproach his peers for if they make mistakes nor is his responsibility to help them. In fact, if personal success depends as much on the effort of others as on personal effort, it is normal to pay attention to the frailty of the other and strive to support him. In addition to that, in cooperation, participants give life to an action that they would have never been able to perform individually. Thus, the harmonious climate of a family or class arises from individual behaviours. However, it is something more than these behaviours in isolation or the sum of them, given that the subject is not one or another member, but the family or school community as such. It only takes one out-of-tune string to ruin a symphony.

The school as community Currently, there is a risk of forgetting that the school is a community. Our education system has a character that is increasingly individualistic, maybe in order to achieve ‘personalization.” In the logic of an “educational offer,” there is a multiplication of activities and opportunities offered to students looking to satisfy their requirements, using the most sophisticated media (computers, audio-visual instruments, trips, instruction). But this offer does not propose goals that give meaning to these media or teach how to put them into practice. A contemporary school runs the risk of becoming a huge supermarket. Everyone goes in looking for whatever serves their own subjective self-realization project, without liaising with anybody in order to make the project happen and not even suspecting that the school institution can be the place where values that guide their own lives can be discovered. No community can be born from this. The clients of a supermarket (“clients” is the new term to talk about students) lack deep shared bonds. They have similar goals, but they neither answer for the others nor generate a common action that overcomes each individualism.

IN THE LOGIC OF AN “EDUCATIONAL OFFER,” THERE IS A MULTIPLICATION OF ACTIVITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED TO STUDENTS LOOKING TO SATISFY THEIR REQUIREMENTS, USING THE MOST SOPHISTICATED MEDIA. BUT THIS OFFER DOES NOT PROPOSE GOALS THAT GIVE MEANING TO THESE MEDIA OR TEACH HOW TO PUT THEM INTO PRACTICE.

«A contemporary school runs the risk of becoming a huge supermarket. Everyone goes in looking for whatever serves their own subjective self-realization project, without liaising with anybody in order to make the project happen and not even suspecting that the school institution can be the place where values that guide their own lives can be discovered.»

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«There is a lot of insistence today, also in schools, regarding the value of tolerance. Young people are warned against all self-claimed truths that generate violence. The Inquisition and totalitarian regimes are brought up as examples. Nobody says that without aspiring to truth and confidence in the possibility of knowing it Socrates, Galileo, and Martin Luther King, on the one hand, would not have existed, nor would philosophy, science, and human progress, on the other.»

THERE IS A TENDENCY TO REPEAT THAT EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN TRUTH. THIS WOULD MEAN THAT NO TRUTH EXISTS. IN THIS WAY, TOLERANCE, WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY BORN TO GUARANTEE THE INDIVIDUAL’S FREEDOM TO SEARCH FOR TRUTH, HAS INSENSIBLY BECOME A RESIGNATION FROM IT.

A school conceived in this way is instructing egoism. Because of this, it is not a good laboratory for members of society and it does not prepare young people for democracy, which is centred in the search for the common good by each member. In this regard, we shall recall what was written four hundred years go by the English poet John Donne (1573-1651): “no man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am invoked in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Only if this perspective is adopted can the school find its special role again – in a world of solitudes and masses – as an educating community.

“Be-for”: true and false tolerance There is a lot of insistence today, also in schools, regarding the value of tolerance. Young people are warned against all self-claimed truths that generate violence. The Inquisition and totalitarian regimes are brought up as examples. No-

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«Individuals retreat to a private world, where their conscience decides without any objective control, often on the basis of moods and emotional impulses. Contrasts are only linked with interests, not deep conviction.»

IF THERE NO LONGER IS A TRUTH THAT CAN GO BEYOND THE SUBJECTIVE GAME OF INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCE, THE POSSIBILITY FOR AN ETHIC COMMUNITY VANISHES. IN OTHER WORDS, THERE CANNOT BE A SHARED HERITAGE OF VALUES CAPABLE OF GENERATING CIVIL COEXISTENCE.

body says that without aspiring to truth and confidence in the possibility of knowing it Socrates, Galileo, and Martin Luther King, on the one hand, would not have existed, nor would philosophy, science, and human progress, on the other. There is a tendency to repeat that everyone has their own truth. This would mean that no truth exists. In this way, tolerance, which was originally born to guarantee the individual’s freedom to search for truth, has insensibly become a resignation from it. Such ambiguity makes dialogue useless and impossible, as it excludes the existence of a common ground for confrontation. Therefore, today we are witness to the crisis of that

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THERE IS NO EDUCATION WITHOUT ESTABLISHING OBJECTIVES, THAT IS, WITHOUT ASSUMING GOALS DEEMED MORE VALID THAN OTHERS. IF THE ONLY END OF EDUCATION WERE TOLERANCE AS A RESIGNATION FORM TRUTH AND THE VALUE OF ANYTHING THAT IS NOT TOLERANCE ITSELF, THERE WOULD ONLY BE NOTHING.

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“public reason” that should constitute the basis for responsible citizenship. Certainly, in the concept of “public” we find an aspect that is linked with knowledge: “Everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everyone (…). For us, what appears to be – seen and heard by everybody else as much as by us – is reality” (H. Arendt). Public, in this sense, is whatever that is not reduced by private, inexplicable, and individual experience, and it can, in turn, serve as the basis for a common discourse. Only in this way can an individual’s interests and feelings converge in a wider design, capable of orienting life in community. This meaning of “public” is naturally extended towards the political aspect, where the term signals the sphere where individuals build a common good. If there no longer is a truth that can go beyond the subjective game of individual preference, the possibility for an ethic community vanishes. In other words, there cannot be a shared heritage of values capable of generating civil coexistence. Individuals retreat to a private world, where their conscience decides without any objective control, often on the basis of moods and emotional impulses. Contrasts are only linked with interests, not deep conviction. The effects of this involution in political and social life are visible daily. Society does not have shared goals to guide it anymore.

Schooling needs truth In sum, what is left is a “mush” of stimuli and suggestions, a sort of “primordial soup,” where all ideas and experiences drown and become devoid of their absolute value. This is the only explanation usually given, and it is not of a plural character, but imposed in a more totalitarian way the less aware the consumer is of himself. It is necessary to say that those that are more exposed to that “brainwashing” are young people. Paradoxically, however, this way of stating things, justifying them in the name of respect for freedom, annuls freedom itself. It is literally understood as the equivalence of everything. If in fact an idea and a behaviour can never be considered valid in themselves, but only on the basis of subjective and flawless preferences, why would one have

to believe or do one thing instead of another? In these conditions, how can we be amazed by the fact that so many young people are not able to believe in something or choose certain options? Very frequently, the school has ended up adopting this type of pluralism as a model, but this is a sort of suicide. While it is possible to instruct when staying at the level of the media, there is no education without establishing objectives, that is, without assuming goals deemed more valid than others. If the only end of education were tolerance as a resignation form truth and the value of anything that is not tolerance itself, there would only be nothing.

A sceptic school only produces conformists Fortunately, the school’s dynamic forces the violation of these boundaries. Having different disciplines already implies that there is an inescapable reality check, independent from subjective preferences. No teacher or student could expect their “truth” trump the laws of thermodynamics or the result of the battle of Waterloo. There is something else, anyway. If there was no difference between true and false, in what name could the school decide to help these young people to unmask the illusions of advertising, the lies of propaganda, the acceptance of fashions, the fanaticism of fundamentalisms, or the superstitions of magic? If there was no difference between what is real and what is not, between what is valuable and that which is less valid, on the basis of which criteria should critical sense be acquired and exercised? A purely sceptic school would be destined to produce conformists who are willing to absorb, with superficial passiveness, the conditioning of all trends and slogans in circulation. The school is not really public and open if it is reduced to an empty container, in which differences are drowned in the primordial soup of the equivalence between purely subjective positions. A public school should be capable of provoking and embracing diverse convictions in order to confront them. In a logic of autonomy, only in such a way is it possible to build shared horizons of meaning that are the ultimate end of the efforts of education.

NO TEACHER OR STUDENT COULD EXPECT THEIR “TRUTH” TRUMP THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS OR THE RESULT OF THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.

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Portrait of Matteo Ricci s.j. Anonimous, 1552-1610

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INTERVIEW TO WILLIAM CARROLL

the raising interest on saint thomas aquinas in china “Although it may seem strange to many people in the West, contemporary Chinese scholars find Thomas’s thought not simply fascinating, but of enduring relevance”. William Carroll, converses with humanitas review about his impressions of the positive reception of academics in some Chinese universities of the Thomistic philosophy.

homas Aquinas’s commitment to the importance of reason and its universal role in defining what it means to be human makes him an attractive thinker for contemporary Chinese scholars. Speaking of the ways in which Thomas’ understanding of the relationship between philosophy, theology, and the natural sciences, he discusses how these can be used to disentangle contemporary confusion about the philosophical and theological implications of evolutionary biology and cosmology. After your three trips to China (2013, 2014 and 2015) and one to Taiwan, what is it that has raised the interest of Chinese Scholars on St. Thomas’s philosophy? - So far I have spent over ten weeks in mainland China, plus two weeks in Taiwan, where I have invited by Chinese universities to speak at Thomas Aquinas’ Creation and Contemporary Science. At the school of philosophy at the University of Wuhan they have a Thomas Aquinas Study Centre, which has been in existence for about twelve years, and among other things they are doing translations of Thomas, from Latin into Chinese. Their first work was a very small philosophical treatise by Thomas called “On Being and Essence”, a metaphysical treatise. I was surprised to discover that a number of graduate students were concentrating on what they call Western Philosophy.

HUMANITAS Nº 9 pp. 20-30

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- How did St. Thomasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reach China? Are there any records to tell us how long his philosophy has been in the East? - In the 16th and 17th centuries, Jesuit missionaries trained in Thomistic philosophy and theology went to China. It was them, that introduced the thought of Thomas both implicitly and explicitly. They entered into some kind of dialogue with Chinese scholars, but not so much William E. Carroll is a Research Fellow at about philosophy, that was important initially, but about Blackfriars Hall, Oxford and science. They brought with them some western scientific member of the Faculty of advances, the telescope among them. Theology and Religion of the University of Oxford. The Chinese calendar was crucial for establishing all the rituals; political, economic, social, of the year in China, and it was important to get the calendar right, when eclipses would occur, and so forth. The Chinese Emperor was particularly upset with his own scholars not being able to get the calendar straight. The Jesuits brought with them a better way of understanding the calendar and used their astronomical knowledge to work on the reform of the Chinese calendar. They learnt Chinese and wrote an elaborate catechism for Chinese scholars, explaining Christian beliefs, and in this catechism he uses Thomistic theology and philosophy. However, there was much tension within the Chinese imperial court with these foreigners, so although initially they were reasonably accepted, then there was a backlash. In the 18th century, with the suppression of the Jesuits by the Pope throughout the world, their missions nearly ended. It was not until the late 19th century that you begin having Christian missionaries coming again. - If it was science that first introduced these scholars into their western culture, how was it that they moved on to Aquinas metaphysical thought? - Their interest was not so much in metaphysics, but on ethics. The Chinese intellectual traditions emphasize ethics more than any other area, so Thomas and Confucius share important notions of natural law. It was the Thomistic understanding of natural law in particular and ethics in general that raised the interest of these scholars. - Considering the much longer Eastern cultural and philosophical tradition what has attracted their interest in the Western philosophy, which is very recent and is nested in a Christian tradition? - Well, once again, it is the notion of superiority of ethics, that Chinese philosophical writers have been thinking, writing about ethics

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CHINA’S CHRISTIAN FUTURE. HOW CHRISTIANITY IS TRANSFORMING CHINESE SOCIETY.

t the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, when the Communist party defeated the Nationalists and founded the People’s Republic of China, Christians in China numbered half a million. Yet almost seventy years later, under the Chinese government’s harsh suppression, that population has reached more than sixty million, according to Fenggang Yang, a sociologist at Purdue University. The number grows by several millions each year, a phenomenon some have described as a gushing well or geyser. At this rate, by 2030, Christians in China will exceed 200 million, surpassing the United Sates, and making China the country with the largest Christian population in the world. Yu Jie. First Things, N. 265, August/September 2016.

in a sophisticated way longer than the West. But I think, philosophically, we have a lot to learn from the rich Chinese tradition in ethics. I think, similarly, they have a lot to learn about metaphysics, and my Chinese colleagues recognize that. For some time, there has been some kind of prejudice in China against Western thinkers who were religious but now there is more openness about Thomas Aquinas in many of these departments of philosophy and other departments in Chinese universities than is often the case in the West.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Jesuit missionaries trained in Thomistic philosophy and theology went to China. It was them, that introduced the thought of Thomas both implicitly and explicitly. They entered into some kind of dialogue with Chinese - To what extent is Western philosophy something they scholars, but not so much can relate to their philosophies? about philosophy, that - There are different views about it. But on both sides, there was important initially, is a belief that Western philosophy has its own principles but about science. and procedures, while the Chinese one has its own principles and traditions, and that therefore we really should not mix them. The philosophical reason why they cannot be mixed, and is that the philosophical systems or ways of thinking are embedded in long, cultural traditions. There is that general notion that you study Western philosophy as it were at a distance, and this is not so unusual for Western thinkers; we often have the same kind of view. Historically, the first interest in western philosophy was in German philosophy, German idealism, again, Marx, Engels, etc. And then, by studying Marx and Engels, discovering Immanuel Kant, and then after that coming forward

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Heidegger, and so forth. The first example of Western philosophical traditions in contemporary China comes from the German academic world, and any of these scholars, who are trained in the West, have gone to German universities to study German philosophy. But now, Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, for example, or Plato, are relatively new areas. New areas including primarily Anglo-American analytic philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of the mind. So that is another area of interest in China. - When we think of St. Thomas’ philosophy, we are talking about a metaphysical explanation of Man, of nature and of the universe. How does Aquinas’ metaphysics relate to the Chinese philosophies in these respects? - The notion of human nature in the Chinese and the Western Their interest was not so philosophical traditions can only be compared and contrasmuch in metaphysics, but ted if we have a good understanding of human nature. The on ethics. The Chinese example that I use when I am confronted with this question intellectual traditions in China is geometry; this science has its origins in the West emphasize ethics more with Euclid, but we do not have Western geometry and Chithan any other area, so nese geometry. We do not have western physics and Chinese Thomas and Confucius share important notions physics. Now, it might very well be the case that in the natural of natural law. It was the sciences and the natural mathematics you are abstracting Thomistic understanding yourself from a lot of different features of the world, but I of natural law in think that in principle, there should be no reason why we particular and ethics in cannot talk about metaphysics in an analogous way to be talgeneral that raised the king about physics or mathematics. In fact, that is what I am interest of these scholars. now working on with Chinese scholars. I am trying to find points of contact between Aquinas’ and their philosophies, which are not ethics. This is relatively easy since a fair amount of work has been done about it, but not in metaphysics. This is much harder since there is not a strong tradition in metaphysics within Chinese philosophy. What is crucial here is that I am working on the notion of creation. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between creation understood philosophically -in the discipline of metaphysics- and creation understood theologically. As he develops his philosophical account of creation, which he will use in his theology, but which has an autonomy on its own, he employs philosophical categories from Aristotle, the Greeks and the Platonic tradition. So, because there is for him a concept of creation which does not depend upon faith, Thomas is able to find in ancient Greek philosophy resources of considerable value.

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ÂŤThe Chinese intellectual traditions emphasize ethics more than any other area, so Thomas and Confucius share important notions of natural law. It was the Thomistic understanding of natural law in particular and ethics in general that raised the interest of these scholarsÂť.

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My argument is that if Thomas’ thought can cross centuries and cultures, it should also be able to cross into Chinese culture and Chinese philosophical traditions, and just as Thomas learns from Aristotle, so he could learn, from Taoism and Confucianism. Therefore contemporary Chinese scholars trained in their Chinese philosophical traditions could find in Thomas Aquinas a dialogue partner because he is not speaking, first of all, as a Christian. He is a theologian, but he is a philosopher too, and one can distinguish his philosophy from his theology. His philosophy can speak to Muslims and Jews, so it should also speak to Confucians and neo-Confucians, etc. That is what I am trying to do now in China; to find entrance points in Chinese philosophy, by means of questions about the ultimate origins. The notion of human Many people think that Chinese metaphysics only deals nature in the Chinese with big cosmological questions, and cosmology is not creaand the Western tion; cosmology deals with natural science, the questions of philosophical traditions can only be compared the physical origins. But creation deals with origins in a more and contrasted if we have ultimate sense and whether or not that more ultimate sense, a good understanding can make sense in the Chinese intellectual context is what of human nature. The I have been working with Chinese scholars to try to find. example that I use when - Can we say then, that their ancient traditions have a I am confronted with this question in China philosophy of nature and of creation? is geometry; this science - No. That is the point. The problem is that the word ‘creahas its origins in the tion’ is used in so many different ways. People think that West with Euclid, but the Big Bang is the creation; it is not creation. Because, for we do not have Western Thomas Aquinas, creation does not mean temporal begingeometry and Chinese ning, it means ontological dependence. So whether or not the geometry. universe is eternal or has a beginning concerns the kind of universe we have, not whether or not it is created. That sense of ultimate origin is simply not explicit anywhere that I can find, anywhere within Chinese philosophical traditions. And of course some people say you will not find it anywhere in ancient Greek philosophy either; that is a uniquely monotheistic notion, or at least it has its inspirations from the monotheistic religions. And Thomas approaches the question of ultimate origin philosophically, open to reason alone, that in principle should be able to be communicated in different cultures, in different times, in different places. The way we approach these questions does differ by culture, time and place and language, and you have to take all those conditions

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«For Thomas Aquinas, creation does not mean temporal beginning, it means ontological dependence. So whether or not the universe is eternal or has a beginning concerns the kind of universe we have, not whether or not it is created».

into consideration. But that does not mean that in principle we My argument is that if cannot get at the truth of things. Some Chinese and Western Thomas’ thought can scholars say that the Chinese language is unable to express cross centuries and the notion of Being and Existence, and this has to do with cultures, it should also how radically ‘othered’ Chinese language is. I mean, Greek be able to cross into and Latin and modern languages differ, but they do not differ Chinese culture and Chinese philosophical in such a radical way as, say, Chinese or Japanese differ from traditions, and just as Western languages. So, how can you capture in the Chinese Thomas learns from language something like the notion of cause of existence? Aristotle, so he could And then, even the notion of Nothing. Then, there is the learn, from Taoism and question: is there a kind of absolute nothing which creation Confucianism. talks about? One of my books on creation and science has been translated into Chinese, and it has been published, but there are still problems with words. We had an intense a debate among the four or five people, graduate students I got to work with, all well-versed in Western philosophy, about what Chinese words to use. Largely, because there is no tradition of talking about this and therefore no words that could be used. - Then you mean that, in addition to the conceptual approach to the issue of the ultimate cause, there is a linguistic barrier as well? - Well, there are already some words about Lord, about God, which are translated as creational, but I think a neologism would not really

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«The way we approach these questions does differ by culture, time and place and language, and you have to take all those conditions into consideration. But that does not mean that in principle we cannot get at the truth of things».

The problem is that the help. Matteo Ricci had the same problem, and he said “this word ‘creation’ is used in notion of Lord of heaven in ancient Confucian thought, this so many different ways. is what we mean by God”. So that gets fixed, at least for the People think that the Big Chinese in the Christian tradition. But there are fundamental Bang is the creation; it linguistic issues about how language captures these concepts. is not creation. Because, I mean, if you just take Hebrew, how two verb tenses in Hefor Thomas Aquinas, brew compare to 21 or so verb tenses in Greek, what does creation does not mean that tell us about Hebrew and Greek thinking? I do not know temporal beginning, it means ontological much about the problems of the Chinese language, but I do dependence. So whether know that there are such problems. And the very notion of or not the universe ‘cause’ is a problem. For example, I was talking with a professor from Peking is eternal or has a beginning concerns the University, which is probably the N°1 university in China, kind of universe we have, when trying to explain the cause of existence, the many dinot whether or not it is fferent senses of cause, I said “why is it that you people here created. in China do not have an adequate sense of cause?”, and he told me “why are you in the West so concerned about cause?”

- If their explanation for the universe is purely scientific, is there any room for a philosophical theory about creation, noncreation, finitude, beginning or end? Can they take up the notion of something that transcends the mere matter? - When you talk to Chinese well-versed scientists in contemporary cosmological speculations, they are intrigued by this. There is a sense of wonder whether the notion of an absolute beginning to the universe

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makes much sense in ancient Chinese traditions. And that is similar, of course, to contemporary cosmological theories. They are intrigued by the fact that, for Thomas Aquinas, whether the world has a beginning or not, does not change the fact that it is created. Thomas thinks an eternal universe is just as much a created universe as a universe which has a beginning; he distinguishes the question of beginning from the question of being created. Now, he believes that the universe has a beginning, because that is the traditional interpretation of the Genesis, but he knows that the universe could be eternal and created. In fact, he thinks the universe is not eternal. So, separating questions of temporality from what it means to be created makes it particularly attractive, I would think, to anyone who were to think that the universe does not have a beginning. All kinds of theories about cosmological beginnings or lack Some Chinese and of, for Thomas are not yet creation, that is like theories about Western scholars say that the Big Bang. Theories about the Big Bang have nothing to do the Chinese language with creation, because there might very well be something is unable to express the before the Big Bang. The Big Bang might be the beginning notion of Being and of the universe we experience, but we cannot know and we Existence, and this has could not assume that it is the absolute beginning, and that is to do with how radically Thomas’ point. I call this sometimes, when I give lectures, ‘the ‘othered’ Chinese language is. I mean, error of beginnings’. It is the beginning of all sorts of errors. Greek and Latin and Once you make creation and temporal finitude necessarily modern languages differ, connected to one another, you get into lots of problems, and but they do not differ in it is the genius of Thomas to distinguish between the two. such a radical way as, And again, I think we must go out against any kind of view of say, Chinese or Japanese Chinese philosophical traditions other than ‘traditions’ with differ from Western a wide variety of differences. If a Chinese scholar was to say languages. “but what does Western philosophy say about this subject?” Well, which Western philosophy? So, similarly, we are talking about a longer history of philosophy in China than philosophy in the West. - In this regard, can these Chinese philosophers, and scientists, see this difference St. Thomas makes? That a scientific approach is compatible with a philosophical one? - We live in a culture, both East and West, which is heavily scientific. So there is a view that the only access to reality is through the natural sciences, not through philosophy or theology, etc. And that is a view which is a long-standing power in the west and to some degree in China as well. I have met some Chinese scientists, but they function in their own world, not unlike scientists in the West.

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I gave a lecture on contemporary cosmology and the metaphysics of origin at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Then, they were much intrigued about my point that philosophy students should study the natural sciences. Because not to know the natural sciences is to cut yourself off from a kind of philosophy of the concrete reality. And analogously that natural scientists should study philosophy, because if they do not, they have a narrow view of their discipline. I was asked to go back to give a lecture to their mediThe Big Bang might be the cal students. I spoke to about 100 medical students about beginning of the universe philosophy of nature and the study of Medicine, and the we experience, but we extent to which, if they are committed to a mechanistic and cannot know and we could not assume that it is the materialist view of nature, they are not going to be good absolute beginning, and doctors. I said that I do not want my doctor to be a materiathat is Thomas’ point. list who thinks that I am nothing but a complex machine, I call this sometimes, and I said “I hope none of you think that either”. I found when I give lectures, ‘the that the medical students were not particularly different error of beginnings’. It in their attitude and their knowledge from students of the is the beginning of all sciences in Oxford or anywhere. sorts of errors. Once you make creation - T hese scholars seem to be open to T homistic and temporal finitude philosophy, but not so much as to take a step the necessarily connected to Western thought, specifically Christianity? one another, you get into - I think Thomas Aquinas is, in a way, off the radar. He is lots of problems, and it is a medieval Western thinker, so I think that for the people the genius of Thomas to distinguish between the who make the political decisions, who are different from two. those who make the academic decisions, this does not seem particularly challenging. It is also important to remember the distinction Thomas draws between philosophical and theological analyses. Although he is a theologian, he does grant an appropriate autonomy to exclusively philosophical thinking. It is Thomas’s philosophy, not his theology, that I discuss in China. When talking about Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysics of creation and contemporary biology I raise the rhetorical question “Why should we look to Thomas Aquinas on the questions of creation and science?” and say that the principal reason is that what Thomas Aquinas says is true, and that is a pretty good reason. Interviewed by Paula Jullian.

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human life and free time BY JOSEF PIEPER

owadays, the expression «free time» generates, in the individual, a defensive reaction against a rival seemingly determined to dominate him. The situation is compounded by the fact that this opposition does not spring from his neighbour, because it certainly is a purely internal conflict. And our difficulties do not end there. If we consider that the same individual will be unable to provide a relatively accurate answer if what s/he wants to defend is challenged. Thus, we are forced to confess our ignorance regarding what is implied by Aristotle’s often discussed statement: «We work so that we may have free time». And there lies, in my opinion, the crux of the problem.

What do we understand by free time?

Joseph Pieper. German philosopher, was born in 1904 and died on November 6, 1997, in Münster, Westfalia.

Thus, it is a good choice to start by asking ourselves what we understand by free time, establishing what meaning is ascribed to this concept by the great humanist tradition. In order to answer this question, I think it is useful to start by focusing on the opposite force, that is, the overestimation of work. It is only an approximate definition, because the term «work» has many interpretations --at least three: it can be used to refer simply to «activity in general» or «a difficult, agonizing task»; it is also frequently used to convey the notion of a «useful activity», especially a «socially useful activity». Which of these three meanings are we thinking of when we talk about the overestimation of work? All three of them, in my view, because we ascribe an excessive value both to activity in general and to every effort and difficulty, as well as to the functioning of man in the midst of society. This is, in fact, the three-headed dragon encountered by anyone who wants to defend free time.

Overestimation of activity in general I will define this tendency as the impossibility of allowing the event to take place freely, accepting it, and adopting a purely passive HUMANITAS Nº 9 pp. 31-37

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«His Nicomachean Ethics also includes the words already cited: «We work so that we may have free time. The philosopher declares that man would not be able to lead a life of leisure by himself; he can only do so because his soul contains a spark of the divine». Boy with a dog, oil painting by Edouard Manet.

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attitude towards it. It is a state of absolute activity that, if Goethe is to be believed, always leads to disaster in the long run. Hitler took this heresy to the extreme, when he stated that every activity, even if criminal, has a positive value, while passivity is always devoid of meaning. Certainly, this point of view is a sign of pure madness and utter absurdity, but I believe it remains, in «attenuated» form, a rather general characteristic of the modern world.

Overestimation of effort and difficulty Strange as it may sound, this is a common phenomenon. We can also say that, in general, the moral norms of our «respectable» contemporaries are derived to a large extent from excessive respect towards difficulty. It is essentially arduous to do good, and everything that requires no effort at all is devoid of moral value. Schiller mocked this attitude in these clever verses against Kant: «Gerne dient’ ich den Freunden, doch tu ‘ich es leider mit Neigung, Darum wurmt es mich oft, dass ich nicht tugendhaft bin» “How willingly I’d serve my friends, but alas, I do so with pleasure, and so I am often worried by the fact that I’m not virtuous.” The «Ancients» –and I am using the term to refer to the great Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle–, as well as the doctors of Western Christianity, did not regard good as something essentially and universally difficult. They knew for a fact that the loftiest manifestations of good never involve an effort, because they result from love. We cannot regard as a mental effort, either, the most elevated forms of knowledge, such as the spark radiating from genius or true contemplation, just because they entail no obstacles to be overcome and are essentially offered to us as a gift. It may be necessary to search for the key to the problem in the word «gift». When considering this strange preference for any difficulty, which has turned the good will of modern man towards suffering into a distinctive trait (which in my view is much more typical than man’s often criticized search for pleasure), it is worth asking whether this attitude springs from the decision to reject all gifts, regardless of their origin.

PAUSE ONLY EXISTS IN CONNECTION WITH WORK. FREE TIME IS WHOLLY DIFFERENT. IT DOES NOT SIMPLY MEAN THAT MAN IS STILL ABLE TO WORK UNINTERRUPTEDLY, BUT RATHER THAT, IN ADDITION TO FULFILLING HIS SOCIAL FUNCTION, HE REMAINS CAPABLE OF SEEING BEYOND THE LIMITED SPHERE THAT HE OCCUPIES DUE TO HIS SOCIAL FUNCTION AND OF CONTEMPLATING THE WORLD AS A WHOLE, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME HAVING «A HEART OF CELEBRATION» AND DEVOTING HIS TIME TO A «FREE» ACTIVITY THAT CONSTITUTES AN END IN ITSELF.

Overestimation of social usefulness It is not at all necessary to emphasize this evident trait of the modern world. In any case, within this context, we should not only think about the «five-year plans» of totalitarian regimes, whose worst aspect is not so much planning per se but the fact that they pretend to represent the only measure, not only of

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FREE TIME IS A PURELY RECEPTIVE ACTIVITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL WHO ALLOWS HIMSELF TO BE ABSORBED BY THE REALITY THAT SURROUNDS HIM; IT CONSTITUTES THE PENETRATION OF THE SOUL BY THE WORLD, A PENETRATION THAT ONLY BRINGS FORTH THOSE TRUE AND BENEFICIAL THOUGHTS THAT NO «MENTAL EFFORT» CAN PRODUCE.

industrial production, but also of the organization of the free time of individuals. The dictatorship of mere social usefulness can also be one of the most rigorous ones in a non-totalitarian world. In this regard, it is relevant to remember the old distinction between liberal arts and servile arts, that is, between free activities and servile activities. This distinction entails the view that certain human activities are an end in themselves, while the value of other activities, which have an objective that differs from their immediate aim, lies only in their usefulness. At first glance, this distinction may appear to be rather outdated and pedantic; however, it does in fact reflect a contemporary truth that is –in some aspects– also political. Translated into the jargon of the totalitarian world of labor, the question «Do free activities exist?» becomes «Are there any human activities other than those defined in five-year plans?». The ancients clearly answered yes to this question. The answer of the totalitarian world is equally categorical: «No. Man is a functional being. Every free activity with no social usefulness is reprehensible and must be suppressed». If we go back to the notion of «free time», now based on the triple overestimation of work, it is evident that this idea seems out of place in the working world. This concept not only is at odds with contemporary opinion, but is also morally suspect. Actually, the two attitudes are completely incompatible because the idea of «free time» is utterly opposed to the totalitarian concept of the «worker» in the three aspects noted.

Against respect towards activity as an absolute value The expression «free time» actually means «inactivity». Free time is a sort of silence. However, it is precisely this type of silence that allows us to listen. In fact, only the silent man is able to listen. Free time is a purely receptive activity of the individual who allows himself to be absorbed by the reality that surrounds him; it constitutes the penetration of the soul by the world, a penetration that only brings forth those true and beneficial thoughts that no «mental effort» can produce.

Against the overestimation of effort The expression «free time» entails a state of enjoyment, that is, the opposite of any form of effort. Whoever has an inner distrust of an absence of effort is as unable to generate free time for himself as he is to have a feast; however, in order to «celebrate», an additional element is required, as we will see below.

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«The ‘Ancients’ –and I am using the term to refer to the great Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle–, as well as the doctors of Western Christianity, did not regard good as something essentially and universally difficult. They knew for a fact that the loftiest manifestations of good never involve an effort, because they result from love».

Against the overestimation of the social function of man Free time entails a liberation of man from his social function. However, it should not be confused with pause, which means «recovery before tackling another task», regardless of whether it lasts one hour or three weeks. Thus, pause only exists in connection with work. Free time is wholly different. It does not simply mean that man is still able to work uninterruptedly, but rather that, in addition to fulfilling his social function, he remains capable of seeing beyond the limited sphere that he occupies due to his social function and of contemplating the world as a whole, while at the same time having «a heart of celebration» and devoting his time to a «free» activity that constitutes an end in itself.

THE EXPRESSION «FREE TIME» ACTUALLY MEANS «INACTIVITY». FREE TIME IS A SORT OF SILENCE. HOWEVER, IT IS PRECISELY THIS TYPE OF SILENCE THAT ALLOWS US TO LISTEN.

How to «create» free time for oneself? True culture presupposes the presence of free time, at least inasmuch as culture concerns that which is not at all part of the basic needs of human existence, but which is still indispensable if one wants to live a fully human life. This poses the problem of finding out what we can do to stop the destructive march of the dictatorship of work. If culture requires free time, what demands is this free time subject to? What must we do for people to be able to appreciate free time (for free time «to be created» as the Greeks used to say)? How can we keep people from becoming mere «workers» who are totally absorbed by their social function? I must confess that I am not able to provide a practical and concrete answer to this question. The basic problem emerges in such a way that it cannot be solved upon the basis of a single decision, even if it were tackled with an optimal attitude. In any case, we can at least say why this happens. We know that doctors have long stressed the importance of free time for staying healthy. Doctors are certainly right. However, it is

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TO CELEBRATE IS TO EXPRESS OUR HARMONY WITH THE WORLD. EVERY MAN WHO IS UNCONVINCED THAT REALITY IS ESSENTIALLY «GOOD» AND THAT THE WORLD AS A WHOLE IS WELL MADE IS AS UNABLE TO «CELEBRATE» AS HE IS UNABLE TO CREATE FREE TIME FOR HIMSELF.

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totally impossible to generate free time for oneself in order to stay healthy, recover one’s health, or save culture. Certain activities represent an end in themselves. It is impossible to pursue them «for» something or other to happen (for example, we would not be able to love a person «for...» or «considering that...»). There exists a certain irreversible order, and every attempt to modify it not only appears to be out of place, but also doomed to fail. The main aspect to identify is that free time simply stops existing as soon as we stop regarding it as an end in itself. Let us return to the idea of «feast», because it contains the three elements that constitute the idea of «free time»: first, inactivity and rest; second, well-being and a lack of effort; third, liberation from utilitarian tasks. We know all the difficulties generally experienced by modern man when attempting hold a feast. Man experiences the same difficulties when he wants to create free time for himself. His feasts «fail» for the same reasons that make his free time fail.

The true origin of free time It is time to examine an idea that, as I have often been able to observe, most people seem to disapprove of. In a nutshell: to celebrate is to express our harmony with the world in an exceptional manner. Every man who is unconvinced that reality is essentially «good» and that the world as a whole is well made is as unable to «celebrate» as he is unable to create free time for himself. This means that free time also depends on the harmony of man with himself and with the reality of the world. We thus reach a conclusion as provocative as it is inevitable. The noblest way to manifest our satisfaction with the universe is to praise God, to venerate the Creator through religious worship. By pointing this out, we have defined the true origin of free time. I think we must be willing to accept the fact that the world will do anything to avoid the consequences of this truth. For example, it will seek to establish artificial feasts, which, while shirking the question of true and deep satisfaction, will generate gatherings –thanks to an impressive spectacle, undoubtedly resulting from the sponsorship provided by political power– that create the impression of a real feast. Actually, «organized rest» within the framework of these pseudo-feasts simply involves a new effort. It would be a mistake to regard as a specifically Christian notion the theory that religious worship is the basis of free time and culture. Maybe what we call «secularism» is not so much

«This poses the problem of finding out what we can do to stop the destructive march of the dictatorship of work. If culture requires free time, what demands is this free time subject to? What must we do for people to be able to appreciate free time (for free time «to be created» as the Greeks used to say)? How can we keep people from becoming mere «workers» who are totally absorbed by their social function?» Artillery, oil painting by Roger de La Fresnaye.

a rejection of Christianity as it is a loss of certain fundamental beliefs that are part of the natural wisdom of man. It seems to me that the theory of the connection between free time and worship is part of this legacy. Before the Christian era, this was expressed through a magnificent mythological image devised by the Greek philosopher Plato. He wonders whether there exists a truce for man, who is undoubtedly destined to work. He answers by stating that such a truce certainly exists: «so the gods, in pity for the human race thus born to misery, have ordained the feasts of thanksgiving as periods of respite from their troubles; and they have granted them as companions in their feasts the Muses and Apollo the master of music, and Dionysus, that they may at least set right again their modes of discipline by associating in their feasts with gods»1. And Aristotle, that other illustrious Greek, more «critical» and less given to using mythological symbols, expressed the same thought in more sober terms. His Nicomachean Ethics also includes the words already cited: «We work so that we may have free time». The philosopher declares that man would not be able to lead a life of leisure by himself; he can only do so because his soul contains a spark of the divine.

THIS MEANS THAT FREE TIME ALSO DEPENDS ON THE HARMONY OF MAN WITH HIMSELF AND WITH THE REALITY OF THE WORLD. WE THUS REACH A CONCLUSION AS PROVOCATIVE AS IT IS INEVITABLE. THE NOBLEST WAY TO MANIFEST OUR SATISFACTION WITH THE UNIVERSE IS TO PRAISE GOD, TO VENERATE THE CREATOR THROUGH RELIGIOUS WORSHIP.

1 Bury, Laws journal, p 653a

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art and the sacred BY ANDREA DALL' ASTA S.J.

The concept of sacred is an essential point of reference for the understanding of Western civilization. Religion historians, ethnologists, anthropologists, psychologists and theologians have tried to tackle this concept many times, as it may be used in a wide range of inclinations and articulations. We consider sacred that which establishes a relationship between man and his own origin. However, what origin is that?

n Biblical terms, in the sense, the sacred is not so THE SACRED IS, THEN, beginning of human much bound to the violent THAT WHICH BRINGS MAN history we find Cain’s present in history, but it is, BACK TO THE ORIGINAL violence; but there is an rather, the way in which COVENANT IN WHICH GOD even earlier relationship man relates with himself AND MAN ARE THE ENDS OF of that primordial violence: and what is Absolute since A RELATIONSHIP MARKED the relationship between the origins of life. BY FAMILIARITY, HARMONY God and Man in the garden In what sense can we AND FRIENDSHIP. of Eden, as told by the Book spea k of t he sac red i n of Genesis. It is, therefore, terms of art then? By sacred a relationship of peace and art we do not immediately harmony, located in life’s origins, in the way understand its liturgical dimension, but the in which God communicated with man, capacity of artistically expressing the most walking with him in the familiarity of a profound and intimate of human existence light breeze. Thus, God manifests himself with the Absolute. Thus understood, the in sweetness, entrusted by Him to man as sacred does not evoke to, as it is generally a mission. thought, a transmissible content, a religious The sacred is, then, that which brings teaching (in the traditional sense at least) man back to the original covenant in which able to being communicated. This is so God and man are the ends of a relationship with art during the Catholic Reformation at marked by familiarit y, harmony a nd the end of the 16th Century, where artistic friendship. It is a relationship experienced expression is at the service of faith. If, in within a horizon where goodness and beauty fact, art becomes a way of learning Christian seem to be the expression of a simple Hebrew mysteries in the pleasure of aesthetic vision, word: tob. It is a word uttered by God Himself artistic expression runs the risk of being to express the amazement and wonder in conceived as a “function” for something the face of the beauty and goodness of the else. Moreover, it is not only a risk but a very cosmos created by Him. In this original particular chance. Certainly, for centuries

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HUMANITAS Nº 9 pp. 38-49

«The Rothko Chapel in Houston is a space of extraordinary spiritual intensity… as if it let us in the beyond, a world that man has always tried to know and cross.»

absolute masterpieces have been made precisely with the purpose of translating the Christian message in order to teach the faithful. A r ef le c t ion , t h e n , r ega rd i ng t h e meaning of the aesthetic experience, is necessary. Artistic creation surely has a strong relationship with that which it represents, according to Western perspective, fundamentally transmitted by Brunelleschi: art as imitation of nature and history. Or is there an intrinsically sacred character that comes through in the act of making art itself? Is art sacred because the object represented is linked to the Bible or a pre-existing religious icon? Or is there a principle that arises from art in the essence of the artist’s very gesture? In other words, what is the sense of vision? We see the risk of ambiguity here.

The experience of beauty Ever since Plato, aesthetic philosophy has referred to the topic of the experience of vision in relation to beauty. When can we recognize a “beautiful” object? How are we aware of its presence? Every time we see something we are immediately drawn to, it triggers feelings of joy, admiration, wonder in us, as if we were mysteriously captured, as if we could not help but watch. Time and space seem to stop for a moment. We get a sense of fullness, of integration with ourselves and the world around us. We live a passive experience. Beauty proposes questions. It is clearly difficult to speak of a subject like the experience of beauty, as Kant reminds us repeatedly in the Critique of Judgment. However, we experience intensity, pleasure, and joy itself. It is offered to us immediately, in a freedom that is devoid of

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«The principle of the sacred did not just come from what was represented, but from the way in which the very act of painting was seen. The prayer uttered before “making a painting” was necessary for the art’s gesture. Painting was, thus, a prayer in itself.»

all instrumental interest.1 to be the highest of human THE HEBREW WORD TOB We “feel” that this is an activities.2 IS UTTERED BY GOD important aspect of our Contemporary painting HIMSELF TO EXPRESS THE existence. We are flooded is bor n f u nda menta l ly AMAZEMENT AND WONDER by a profound fascination. f rom t h i s s ea rc h for a IN THE FACE OF THE BEAUTY In his Symposium, Plato sense of vision. It would AND GOODNESS OF THE h i m s el f desc r ibes t h i s su f f ice by con sider i ng COSMOS CREATED BY HIM. moment of encounter as Cézanne and his wish of IN THIS ORIGINAL SENSE, an extraordinary event, translating into painting THE SACRED IS … THE WAY an immersion in t he whatever is mysterious IN WHICH MAN RELATES wonderful sea of beauty. It and secret in the world, as WITH HIMSELF AND WHAT is free to observe, offering if it were something that IS ABSOLUTE SINCE THE itself only at the end of is tied together with the ORIGINS OF LIFE. a path of preparation for very roots of being, with seeing, as if the work of art the impalpable source of were inhabited by a feeling sensations.3 The dimension of presence or a divine light that is to be of the invisible, frequently linked with the recognized. The truth of things is revealed in fundamental aspects of 20 th Century art, their goodness and beauty through this light. cannot be forgotten in such a context of We need to learn “to see,” “to contemplate.” “sacred” art. Here, we remember Klee, who Certainly, it is no coincidence that Aristotle states that more than reproducing the visible, considered the theorein, contemplation understood as a synthetic view of everything,

1 See I. Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 2, 11-13.

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2 See P. Aubenque, Le problème de l’être chez Aristote, Paris, Quadrige, 1962. 3 Quoted by M. Merleau-Ponty, L’oeil et l’Esprit, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, 7.

«Limiting the sense of liturgical art to a pedagogical function would mean forgetting that the image’s value lies, above all, in the energy of the symbolic that it manages to trigger by being the trace of a “presence” that reveals itself and the sign of a “transcendence” that lives in the centre of experience.» Christ, the Man of Sorrow, by Nikolaos Tzafouris. Monastery of Zoodochos Pigi. 1480-1500.

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art makes the very roots of living observable, is an immaterial pictorial sensibility. There allowing them to go up to the surface, from is no representation of the real. There is the kingdom of the intangible, the abyss purification from all representation, with that lives under shapes.4 This possibility the risk of objectifying reality around of revelation cannot be separated from the us, of smothering its vital breath, and of artist’s experience. Art is knowledge, pure brutalizing the most intimate sense. There vision. It is an extraordinary principle, is total immateriality. The silence achieved rooted in the duties of Asian monks, for from using a single colour is conceived as whom icon painting was linked to a clear a transcendental and absolute experience, existential path of faith. The artist was as an immersion into a nothingness that is his work, his breath, the fruit of his life. the denial of all images that try to grab and The artist was the matter over which he manipulate the sense of things. Monochrome worked, which used to become “meaning.” becomes an evocation of the silence which The principle of the sacred arises from contemplation, did not just come from born, in turn, from the what was represented, but radical den ial of all BY SACRED ART WE DO NOT from the way in which the mimetic referentialism. IMMEDIATELY UNDERSTAND very act of painting was Through t his, man can ITS LITURGICAL DIMENSION, seen. The prayer uttered live an experience of pure BUT THE CAPACITY OF before “making a painting” sensitivity, an immersion ARTISTICALLY EXPRESSING was necessary for the art’s into the mystical void of THE MOST PROFOUND gesture. Painting was, thus, silence. AND INTIMATE OF HUMAN a prayer in itself. Certainly, We should also recall EXISTENCE WITH THE it was not by chance that here Rothko’s work, which, ABSOLUTE. the relationship between by bringing forward the chromatic value of colour, art and spirituality was born or manifested itself in Russian lands. creates a deeply spiritual universe. Some Kandinsky’s book Concerning the Spiritual coloured rectangles, perfectly frontal, of in Art has suggested this. The input of the blurred borders and subtly modulated, icon’s spiritual tradition was great and it was seem to sail freely in a suspended universe. translated in the artist’s work as a painting Changes in tone, almost imperceptible that seems to be made just by shapes and at times, give the illusion of uncertain, fluctuating spaces, shapes of different colours. In the second half of the 20th Century, Klein colours, shapes that do not seem to be lit by attempts to reflect on an aesthetic inquiry daylight, but radiating towards the extreme, based on colour. Klein comes to use a single as if the light came from inside them. colour in a process of dematerialization, Unstable and vague apparitions, as if on hold where, in the absence of a figure, he sees before they dissipate, attract the observer in the principle of a metaphysical silence a meditative space, which far from seeming that rejects all attempt for imitation of the real, are presented as being “revealed.” It world in order to justify representation. It is as if we had gates opening up in front of us leading to infinity, meditation veils, contemplation diaphragms, coloured tops 4 See P. Klee, Théorie de l’art moderne, édition et traduction par that only seem to allow to look at the divine. P.H. Gonthier, Paris, Denoël, 1985, 34.

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It is as if they were trying to protect the divine as if we were to wait for the opening of a reality that until now we can only intuit.5 And what about the Rothko Chapel in Houston? It is a space of extraordinary spiritual intensity… as if it let us in the beyond, a world that man has always tried to know and cross.

mere spectacle, celebrated in the rites of great media events and transformed in something superficial. No art made of flashing lights or conceived by the desire of provoking visual and emotional shocks manages to triumph over the insignificant and the ephemeral. Everything turns into advertising, seduction, and an attempt for capturing attention. It is a type of art that lacks a clear stance on the world where one lives. It is an easy The limits of contemporary art illusion of a universe in which the proliferation of We are in the presence of a images tends to deny their IS THERE AN INTRINSICALLY complex tension, especially symbolic value, moving SACRED CHARACTER THAT nowadays, in which art t o w a r d s m e d i o c r i t y. COMES THROUGH IN THE ACT gives in too frequently OF MAKING ART ITSELF? IS t o a n e a s y f or m a l i s m Franzini spoke of the ART SACRED BECAUSE THE or a mere intellectualist triumph of iconoclasm 6 , OBJECT REPRESENTED IS game. It becomes a big where t he value of t he LINKED TO THE BIBLE OR A Disneyland where images image is denied by means PRE-EXISTING RELIGIOUS are fragile and ephemeral, of its useless multiplication. ICON? OR IS THERE A betraying the symbolic Thu s, t h e i m ag e do e s PRINCIPLE THAT ARISES a nd spi r it ual u n iverse not exercise its symbolic FROM ART IN THE ESSENCE that has characterised art power of presence OF THE ARTIST’S VERY for centuries. Too many a nd t ra n scendence, a s GESTURE? IN OTHER WORDS, economic agendas create Baudrillard would say7, but WHAT IS THE SENSE OF confusion within a world purely of disappearance. VISION? WE SEE THE RISK OF where aesthetic criteria seem The piece of art becomes AMBIGUITY HERE. dictated by an arbitrary a mere object for subjectivity, which does not con su mpt ion, w it h no allow a serious debate about relation to man’s truth. It is an apology for the the meaning of art. Too many associations banal, as if general indifference were the only between the world of criticism and the one with the right to citizenship. Therefore, world of the art market influence the sincere the link between a sacred dimension and the reflexion based on real aesthetic values. artist’s existential path is absent. There is no The dimension that is linked to the link between the sacred and his action, his deepest sense of human existence becomes language evolution, or whatever it is deeply imperceptible. Art seems to have forgotten moves him. It is an aesthetic of performance, the symbols of tradition and the shapes that a simple and shallow search for a consensus used to communicate its own history and achieved by means of the immediacy of a civilization’s identity. Art, then, becomes

5 See D. Riout, La peinture monochrome. Histoire et archéologie d’un genre, Nîmes, Chambon, 1996.

6 See E. Franzini, Fenomenologia Dall'invisibile. Al di là Dall'immagine, Milano, Cortina, 2000. 7 See J. Baudrillard, La sparizione Dall'arte, Milano, Politi, 1988.

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emotional gratification. Is it finally the end been codified as belonging to religious of aesthetic experience, after the loss of aura, iconography. We should really ask ourselves as Benjamin already used to talk about? to what extent it arises from the artist’s Through it art was said to have lost the spiritual experience, how it reflects the meaning given by its materiality, allowing it search, the existential drama, and his desire to live a unique and irreplaceable experience. for conversion. Deep down, all art in the Certainly, images have become somewhat 20th Century is marked by this shift from “global,” especially due to digital media and figurative to non-figurative. the virtual character of the Internet and mass Ancient peoples tried to explain the media, causing a simultaneous crisis in all sacred character acknowledging a principle artistic techniques and possibilities. There in the essence of man’s creative gesture is no clear or significant line of aesthetic manifested through the poetic image of the inquiry in this space of globalization. In dance of stars.8 This cosmic principle rightly fac t, to o ma ny “i sm s” expressed the universality underscore the frailty of of the essence of man’s such propositions: chaos c reat ive ac t ion s. Plato WHY DOES IT SAY of sounds and colours, spoke of theia mania, the SOMETHING IMPORTANT FOR a civilization of rumour poet’s divine inspiration. ME? WHAT IS IT TALKING a nd a temptat ion for F o r C h r i s t i a n i t y, w e TO ME ABOUT? WHAT IS IT what is “full,” continuous could speak of a certain SUGGESTING ME? WHAT change, and a seduction perception of the divine MEANING SHOULD ONE from aesthetic experiences which commonly ASSIGN TO ITS WAY OF yet to be consummated. accompa n ies a r t ist ic TREATING LIGHT AND Contemporary man suffers creation. Currently, many COLOUR? t he r i sk of hav i ng h i s artists speak of otherness, experience dissolved in of the unknown that dwells what is fragmentary, in what is precarious, in the human heart, but also of a divine in the desire of making in order to destroy. spirit or a cosmic spirit. It is a mysterious Contemporary art is in danger of losing its and intangible presence, which tells us of connotation of search for a system of values the access to life in the world. It is an opaque towards the promotion of man, limiting itself, but luminous presence, which escapes instead, to reflecting and denouncing the all definition or univocal concept. Each present contradictions of man, the offspring artist has their own mode of expression, of a century that saw the perversion of their own way of interpreting personal scientific and technological principles by experience. But in spite of language, there is means of the instrumentalization of science a confession of a transcendental dimension. and technique. We find the artist’s experience inscribed in Among these various “isms,” we must pay aesthetic expression. The artist translates attention to the return of an easy figurative the presence, the vital breath, through his art, to some shallow neo-realisms, disciples inner eye. of aesthetic and existential inquiries that are usually overcome. Too often is it believed that a work of art is “sacred” because its content points to a scene that has already 8 See H.G. Gadamer, L’actualité du beau, Aix-en-Provence, Alinéa, 1992, 61.

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ÂŤThe universal is grasped in a cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s particularity, in the simplicity and intimacy of an apparently worthless moment, as the reading of a letter or pouring milk. Think of a painting by Vermeer, where a simple scene of daily life is elevated to an absolute moment. A moment in life is captured in its extraordinary beauty and intensity, in the highest peak of human and existential tension, by means of an ordinary gesture.Âť Woman with a water jug, oil painting by Johannes Vermeer.

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An experience of sense

survive without the other.10 They are strata of meaning made of coloured materials, Although contemporary art compromises in which the invisible, in all its semantic too frequently when it comes to making the complexity, becomes visible. It is a process image a spectacle, it is necessary, instead, that reconfigures the modes with which we to recover the symbolic and mystic features are used to seeing the world around us. By that have always characterised the work of cutting through to the deepest meaning of art as an expression of depth that cannot be man’s reality, the work of art can change resolved in the immediacy of a relationship it from within, finding in it unknown and about to be consummated. On the contrary, unexpected dimensions that are not easily what ought to be done is to live in the beauty understood at once. We must change the and kindness of all authentic aesthetic way we observe. experience. Sacred art indeed knows how The universal is grasped in a culture’s to communicate aesthetic emotion that particularity, in the simplicity and intimacy springs from that spiritual breath present of an apparently worthless moment, as in us without coming from the reading of a letter or us.9 In this search for the pouring milk. Think of IN ITS ABILITY TO original, of that primordial a painting by Vermeer, INTERROGATE US AND track, sign of that breath of where a simple scene of PROVOKE AN ANSWER IN US, life present in the origin of daily life is elevated to THE SENSIBLE BECOMES THE all experience that is full of an absolute moment. A MEETING POINT FOR THE meaning, we find the most moment in life is captured DEPTH OF THINGS AND OUR interesting and sincere in its extraordinary beauty INTERIORITY. artistic expression. For this a n d i n t e n s i t y, i n t h e reason, art speaks by means highest peak of human of shapes and colours, of and existential tension, by birth and death, of love and hatred, of means of an ordinary gesture. Instead of dreaming and suffering, of waiting, of being regarded as a banal anecdote, why forgiving. Art implies for it to be played. does this scene communicate with me? Why Art is a commitment with life. Thus, sacred does it say something important for me? What art will be the one opening up a search for is it talking to me about? What is it suggesting interiority able to question human existence, me? What meaning should one assign to its avoiding all easy or merely complacent way of treating light and colour? In its ability formalism, making reference to man’s to interrogate us and provoke an answer in emotional, symbolic and affective universe. us, the sensible becomes the meeting point In its ability of opening up a universe for the depth of things and our interiority. In where all pieces of man’s life are at play, its ability to go into the essence of reality, in the work of art is directly related to a the strength of its “cognitive” dimension, in multiplicity of meanings, as if it were a the original sense of “being born with,” art is polysemic kingdom, the intersection of “sacred.” It appears in our life experience in numerous levels of meaning, where none can 10 See P. Ricoeur, “L’expérience esthétique,” in La critique et la conviction, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1995, 257-278. 9 See. P. Sequeri, L’estro di Dio, Milano, Glossa, 2000, 3-34.

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order to make us “be born” with it, to make better yet, what we call “sacred art.” Certainly, us live an emotion which, once understood, ancient peoples did not randomly identify a becomes a think ing path towards the deep continuous relationship between the knowledge of man and the world in its recognition of beauty and of love. Could the relation to a horizon that is open to infinity, invisible be this secret “beauty” that dwells towards transcendence. Although, certainly, in the heart of the world? always a temporary understanding, as it is a never-ending fountain of meaning that is ever being discovered, it is fundamental for Liturgical art man’s self-knowledge in the world. We reach a point in our pondering where the Hence, a sac red aest het ic mode of topic could be touched on through liturgical expression will be t hat which is able art. Actually, what kind to i nterrogate itself of understanding of the rega rd i ng t he de ep e st world and human existence … ART IS “SACRED” WHEN motives of seeing. It is not is called to interpret the IT APPEARS IN OUR LIFE about a mere creation of a r t fou nd w it h i n a n EXPERIENCE IN ORDER TO images, but, rather, about inarguable context of faith? MAKE US “BE BORN” WITH a reflection of the reality What type of technique IT, TO MAKE US LIVE AN that surrounds us through should be prioritized if EMOTION WHICH, ONCE the means by which our the contemporary world UNDERSTOOD, BECOMES A eyes perceive, see a nd of art seems to be leaving THINKING PATH TOWARDS i nter pret it, proposi ng painting and sculpture THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN questions about infinite beh i nd i n favou r of AND THE WORLD IN ITS perspectives with which photography and modern RELATION TO A HORIZON ou r m i nd s relate w it h forms digital or virtual THAT IS OPEN TO INFINITY, t he world. What ot her com mu n icat ion? Then, TOWARDS TRANSCENDENCE. meaning can “observe” how should we consider a nd “ lo ok ” h ave t h a n the relationship between pierc i ng t h rough t he ecclesiastic expression and reception of surface of things and asking them to reveal the information regarding faith? On the their secret, the truth about their origins? other hand, if “religious” art in the past What is the object of our sense of vision has always been synonymous with a large but to recognise that perception is already heritage of images, an iconography that has elaboration, structuring of all possible inspired the collective imaginary of whole elements, so that what is in our world can generations. If for the most of the 20th Century access a symbolic dimension and become, we have incessantly heard that mimetic through art, a celebration of the world’s representations are not necessary, what value life? In this sense, aesthetic contemplation should we assign to liturgical images in the cannot be reduced merely to pleasure and light of our time’s cultural expressions? How entertainment. It is a spiritual path. should we embody them within the multitude To capture a sensory experience that is born of expressive manifestations of the era we fro the essence of human gestures by means live in – a period of a deep rupture between of the expression of art: this is, perhaps, the culture and religion? These questions are not deepest meaning of what we call “beauty,” or, easily met with a univocal answer.

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«Sacred art will be the one opening up a search for interiority able to question human existence, avoiding all easy or merely complacent formalism, making reference to man’s emotional, symbolic and affective universe.» Stained glass window and engraving by Matisse. Chapelle de Vence, France).

S u r e l y, a l s o i n t h e in the works by Angelico, subject of liturgical art Bernini or Rouault, where THERE IS AN ABSENCE OF the discussion is not so the search for spirituality INTENSITY WITH WHICH THE much (or solely) about the comes to one w it h t he ARTIST APPROPRIATES THE available, or the old and aesthetic dimension. Being CONTENT HE IS TO EXPRESS already resolved debate an artist and living the THROUGH THE PIECE. between being figurative intensity of the experience TALENT IS NOT ENOUGH IN or not, or the establishment of faith are two aspects ORDER TO “BUILD IMAGES” of disciplinary or practical that need to coincide. The THAT INSPIRE PRAYER AND guidelines about content. work of art will be, thus, FAVOUR THAT ENCOUNTER. The question bears more marked by man’s hands, by relation with the capacity of the signs left of his desire to artistic expression to renew its own language embrace and experience a revelation. It is the from within, so that the image can be the strength and power of the image. true expression of a faith dimension that is Fol low i ng t h i s p oi nt of v iew, t he embodied in a culture. Art will be liturgical work of Bernini or Caravaggio resists all when it is able to communicate the affective interpretation that considers these examples power that arises from the encounter with as a pedantic attempt to communicate or man’s breath of life, recognizing it in his own transmit faith. For Ignatius of Loyola, the life experience, as it is transmitted through affective component that comes with the the artist’s hands in his work. This is seen composition of the locations for Biblical

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mysteries, which the faithful only recreate many contemporary churches. Limiting the through imagination, allows the image sense of liturgical art to a pedagogical function to overcome all purely f u nct ional or would mean forgetting that the image’s instrumental character. For the founder value lies, above all, in the energy of the of the Society of Jesus, the image is a symbolic that it manages to trigger by being the trace of a “presence” that place for contemplation, reveals it self and the sign of for t he commun icat ion a “transcendence” that lives of affection, for an THE CONCERN OF THE in the centre of experience. intimate dialogue among LITURGICAL ART FOR It is about bringing forth an the depicted characters. “REPRESENTATION” OPENS unfathomable depth, always T h e f a i t h f u l ’s d e s i r e UP TO THE DESIRE OF there to be discovered and transforms the image into EMBODYING A SENSE FOR explored: a universality presence, into an intimate MAN, TO BECOME RELIGARE, that adopts the shapes and theophany, in which God A COHESION BETWEEN THE contents of a particular approaches our world in IMAGE AND THE DIMENSION culture and faith – the order to make us company OF FAITH, AS IF TRYING TO discrete and polymorphous a nd hold our ha nds. GO INTO THE VERY ROOTS presence of a revelation. Thus, representation is OF BEING, TOWARDS THE In the image’s expressive never j u st a s pac e for ORIGINS OF SENSE. IN THIS intensity, in its symbolic t eac h i ng a nd d idac t ic SENSE, SACRED ART AND density, in its affective instruction, but a space LITURGICAL ART COINCIDE and emotional dimension, for living relationships. IN THE SAME SEARCH FOR lies the strength of I f l it u rg ic a l a r t to day THE UNDERSTANDING OF “p r e s e nt at i o n” o f t h e is at a ny r isk of bei ng THE TRUTH OF LIFE. mystery hidden in man’s defeated in the challenge heart. Then, we shall not for “contemporaneity,” it could be because of the lack of true spiritual eliminate the “representative subject,” but (or human) experience, capable of giving rather translate it through the gesture of shape and life to the work of art. There is someone who tries to interpret the truth of an absence of intensity with which the artist life and its relation to God’s mystery. Thus, appropriates the content he is to express liturgical art will have a real meaning when through the piece. Talent is not enough in the concern for “representation” opens up to order to “build images” that inspire prayer the desire of embodying a sense for man, to become religare, a cohesion between the image and favour that encounter. To simply say that art is “at the service” and the dimension of faith, as if trying to of the faith would mean reducing the image go into the very roots of being, towards the to the content it is expressing – an apologetic origins of sense. In this sense, sacred art and calculation. By limiting art’s concerns to the liturgical art coincide in the same search for represented content, as if we were to consider the understanding of the truth of life. The work of art embodies a sense, the image as a series of narrative sequences in order to illustrate and explain a speech, we becoming itself a presence, a gift of meaning, would run the risk of assigning liturgical art a promise of a destiny. It becomes immanence the only purpose of instrumentalism. This of sense, a sensible manifestation of beauty, happens with numerous devotional pieces in the splendour of foundations.

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Psicology with soul

psychological aspects of hope BY GIOVANNI CUCCI S.J.

The encyclical "Spe salvi", issued by Benedict XVI1, addresses the virtue of hope, an essential aspect of human life which has received scarce attention in today’s cultural reflection. This lack of interest has also been highlighted by the lack of discussion about it, which stands in contrast with the discussion of other matters like political-social issues or sexual ethics. Yet, hope is decisive for living a sensible life, since the answer to the question of hope is present in all human events that concern the search for meaning.

uman beings cannot develop without an environment conducive to meaning, order, trust, and stability, as Berger warns: “Actually, child psychologists tell us that there can be no psychological maturation if there is no faith in order when the socialization process starts. Man’s leaning towards order is based on a sort of faith or trust that, deep down, reality is «in order», that «everything is fine», that it is «the way it should be» (...). To become a father or a mother means to take up the role of constructing and protecting the world (...). The role adopted by a father or a mother consists in representing not only the order of a certain given society but also order itself, the order that rules the universe and encourages us to trust reality”2. Likewise, all human knowledge and actions, inasmuch as they are geared towards understanding, require a meaning: the ability to insert what has been learned into an ordered and harmonious structure. The psychiatrist Yalom recognizes, when observing the widespread experience of the search for meaning, one common

THE ISSUE ADDRESSED BY THE SPE SALVI IS DECISIVE FOR LIVING A SENSIBLE LIFE, SINCE THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF HOPE IS PRESENT IN ALL HUMAN EVENTS THAT CONCERN THE SEARCH FOR MEANING.

1 Cf. Benedict XVI, Encyclical letter Spe salvi, 30 November 2007. 2 P. BERGER, Il brusio degli angeli, Bolonia, il Mulino, 1969, 92; 94.

HUMANITAS Nº 9 pp. 50-61

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LIKEWISE, ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AND ACTIONS, INASMUCH AS THEY ARE GEARED TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING, REQUIRE A MEANING: THE ABILITY TO INSERT WHAT HAS BEEN LEARNED INTO AN ORDERED AND HARMONIOUS STRUCTURE.

underlying element in the wide variety of people and situations that he has encountered in his long career as a therapist, one human trait that cannot be suppressed: “We are beings devoted to the search for meaning. Thus, from a biological point of view, our nervous system is structured in such a way that stimuli coming from outside the body are automatically organized into structures which are internally meaningful”3. And hope guarantees the presence of meaning in life, especially when we feel that it cannot be found immediately or that it lies beyond our possibilities. We have previously referred to the encyclical Spe salvi by presenting an outline of its contents. In contrast, the main objective of this article is to show the importance of hope from a psychological point of view, as a virtue associated with life, a response marked by trust, and at the same time as a search for meaning in a context of difficulties and challenges –ultimately, an answer to death. In this regard, hope always constitutes an opportunity for salvation: “In hope we were saved”, as the encyclical reminds us (n. 1), quoting Saint Paul (Rom 8, 24).

The classical reflection For the ancients, hope was a characteristic of the “irascible”4 power of the psyche, regarded as the ability to deal with obstacles. It is the “determination” that gives people the necessary strength and courage to bear difficulties and accomplish the endeavor undertaken5. Without the energy of the irascible, an athlete would never be able to win a competition; a student would not have the courage to take an exam, even if he knew all the material perfectly; a worker would not be able to complete any tasks; persistence and perseverance would be impossible in relationships.

3 I. YALOM, Guarire d’amore. I casi esemplari di un grande psicoterapeuta, Milan, Rizzoli, 1990, 18. 4 The issue of irascibility reappears, within the context of the more general discussion of the passions of the soul, in the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who revisits and systematizes Aristotle’s previous analyses. He sees irascibility as an aid to attain good (see Summa Theol., I-II, c. 23, a. 1). Throughout these passages, Saint Thomas specifies three groups of passions associated with irascibility: “hope and desperation, fear and boldness, and finally anger, which does not have an opposite passion” (see I-II, c. 23, a. 4). The issue of the passions of the soul was discussed by the ancient Church Fathers, especially Evagrius and Cassianus. 5 Cf. Summa Theol., I-II, c. 25, a. 3, ad 1um.

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Psicology with soul

This view has been widely confirmed by current studies in the field of neuropsychology, which have identified that the cognitive processes on which reasoning is based have major affective and especially unconscious components6. Saint Thomas, referring to the irascible power, revisits the interpretation of the ancients, adding a very deep psychological observation. He notes that, when dealing with an obstacle, this obstacle is overcome mainly because it has been regarded as something that can be tackled (thus, there is a prior evaluative-speculative moment) and also because, when this action is completed, the individual is convinced that things are going to improve and that the activities conducted will entail satisfaction. These two characteristics show how aggressiveness constitutes the natural (“passion-related”) basis of hope: Spes prima est inter passiones irascibilis7. Without hope, nothing would ever be done, and we would be paralyzed in a sort of vegetative state, because all possible activity would be regarded as utterly pointless. In fact, individuals with no aggressiveness also lack hope. People with chronic depression, who display suicidal tendencies, exemplify this reality. Aggressiveness, when denied, is ultimately unleashed against oneself. This evident dyad formed by aggressiveness-anger-hope and sadness-depression-desperation is fundamental in human life from a psychological, moral, and spiritual point of view. This range of emotions, sometimes wrongly labeled as useless or negative, has a notable influence on self-esteem: being certain that one has the ability to deal with one’s difficulties is certainly a strong motivation for vitality. The link between hope, aggressiveness and life can also apply to the motivational system in general. One decides to act mainly because one finds a meaning “worth” fulfilling, and that is why one concludes, albeit unconsciously, that “life is worth living”. In this context, an aphorism by Nietzsche revisited by V. Frankl8 is again apt today: “He who has a why in life can bear nearly every how”.

AND HOPE GUARANTEES THE PRESENCE OF MEANING IN LIFE, ESPECIALLY WHEN WE FEEL THAT IT CANNOT BE FOUND IMMEDIATELY OR THAT IT LIES BEYOND OUR POSSIBILITIES.

6 See the research on this subject conducted by L. Arcuri and B. Gawronski, “The Unseen Mind”, in Science, 22 August 2008, 1.046 s. Arcuri referred to his research results thus: “It is often considered that when individuals choose one of two alternatives, they do so upon the basis of arguments activated consciously in connection with the available choices. Our data, in this study and in previous studies, show that the mental associations activated automatically and unconsciously by undecided individuals can have a tendentious influence on their choices: said choices will ultimately reflect the decisions that had been expressed automatically beforehand” (M. Piatelli Palmarini, “La mente invisibile”, in Corriere della Sera, 22 August 2008, 39). 7 Summa Theol., I-II, c. 25, a. 3. Regarding the relationship between aggressiveness and hope, we recommend that readers consult our work La forza della debolezza. Aspetti psicologici della vita spirituale, Roma, AdP, 2007, 149-174. 8 Cf. Viktor Frankl, Uno psicologo nei lager, Milan, Ares, 1975, 129.

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JOSEPH RATZINGER – BENEDICT XVI

ON HOPE

o be a Christian is to be one who hopes; it is to situate oneself on the foundation of a sure hope. According to these texts [Eph. 2,12; 4, 13], hope is not just one virtue among others; it is the very definition of Christian existence. ***

The fear which transcends all fears is the fear of losing love altogether, fear of an existence in which the little daily disturbances fill everything, without anything large and reassuring coming along to keep the balance. *** If the fear that transcends all fears is in the last resort fear of losing love, then the hope which transcends all hopes is the assurance of being showered with the gift of a great love. *** The anthropological problem of hope therefore consists in the human need for something that goes beyond all human ability. In the New Testament as with the apostolic fathers, the concepts of hope and faith are, to a certain extent, interchangeable. *** Hope rests first of all on something missing at the heart of the human condition. We always expect more than any present moment will ever be able to give. The more we follow this inclination the more aware we become of the limitations of our experience. The impossible becomes a necessity. But hope means also “the assurance that this longing will find a response”. * Selected paragraphs of a conference by the then Cardinal Ratzinger within the context of the jubilee of the Franciscan College of Rome, the Antonianum. Originally published in Communio 12 (Spring 1985).

In fact, studies conducted in settings marked by great hostility and danger to life, such as reclusion in concentration camps, confirm the evident connection between hope and aggressiveness. During their reclusion, prisoners often suffered from deep depressive states and contemplated suicide, but when they became angry their thoughts about death disappeared: “Being angered by their companions was one way of avoiding imminent death among prisoners of war who were about to perish due to desperation, apathy, and depression. This not only suggests that hope contains a strongly affective element, but also that this affective element is by its very nature eminently combative (...). Hope results from an affective change”9.

9 Th. Healy, “Le dinamiche della speranza: aspetti interpersonali”, in L. Rulla (ed.), Antropologia della vocazione cristiana, vol. III: Aspetti interpersonali, Bolonia, Edb, 1997, 31 s.

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Psicology with soul

Believing is leaving the shadowy play of corruptible things to reach the firm ground of true reality, “hypostasis”—quite literally therefore, what stands and that on which one can stand. In other words, to believe is to have touched ground, to approach the substance of everything. With faith, hope has gotten a footing. The cry of waiting wrung from our being is not lost in the void. It finds a point of solid support to which we must for our part hold fast. Francis is the witness and guardian of hope because he has helped us “accept with joy” (Heb 10:34) the loss of rank, of position, of possessions, and has made visible, behind the false hopes, the true, the genuine hope—the one that no one can confiscate or destroy. *** The thematic of hope expands by internal necessity to the question of relation between man and creation. Human beings are so deeply tied to creation that there cannot be any salvation for them that would not be equally the salvation of creation. Paul has explained this connection in chapter 8 of the epistle to the Romans. The creature waits too. It is important to remember that the hope of creation does not extend, for example, to the capacity of shaking off the human yoke one day. It waits for man transfigured, man who has become the child of God. This man gives back to creation its freedom, its dignity, its beauty. Through him creation itself becomes divine. Heinrich Schlier makes this comment: every creature is oriented toward the expectation of this event. It is an infinite responsibility that is thus entrusted to humans—to be the accomplishment of every aspiration of earth and heaven.1 But the Our Father is more than a catalogue of subjects of hope; it is hope in action. To pray the Our Father is to deliver ourselves to the dynamism of what is asked for, to that of hope itself. One who prays is one who has hope, for such a person is not yet in the position of one who has everything. Otherwise we would have no need to ask. But we know that there is someone who has the goodness and the power to give us anything, and it is to him that we stretch out our hands. The one who prays, says Joseph Pieper, “keeps himself open to a gift which he does not know; and even if what he has specifically asked for is not given him, he remains certain, however, that his prayer has not been in vain” . This is why teachers of prayer would not be able to be merchants of false hopes in any case; they are on the contrary true teachers of hope.2

1 H. Schlier, Das Ende der Zeit (Freiburg, 1971), 254. 2 Pieper, Hoffnung und Geschichte, 136, no. 32.

The hope-aggressiveness polarity has led to interesting conclusions in the psychological field, such as the tendency to regard a lack of hope, and thus of aggressiveness, as the defining characteristic of mental disease10. This is believed to show, as has been noted elsewhere in connection with self-esteem11, the importance of the prior and seemingly abstract element of cognitive judgment, of perceiving the deep, symbolic value of events: such a view again guides the subject towards the global meaning that, either consciously or unconsciously, he/she ascribes to his/her own life. Also in the therapeutic sphere, an important

10 “If there is anything that characterizes all forms of mental disease, it is a lack of hope” (W. F. Lynch, Images of Hope: Imagination as Healer of the Hopeless, London, University of Notre Dame Press, 1974, 25). 11 C f. G. Cucci, La forza della debolezza, op. cit., 126-13, see note 7.

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step is the ability to perform a cognitive restructuring that allows other (already present) elements to enter –other “colors” capable of countering the destructive dominance of the negative12 . Nevertheless, in order to do this, it is essential to acknowledge the presence of hope as an inner resource that can convince us that we “will be able to overcome this”.

Hope, sorely overlooked by psychological research

WITHOUT HOPE, NOTHING WOULD EVER BE DONE, AND WE WOULD BE PARALYZED IN A SORT OF VEGETATIVE STATE, BECAUSE ALL POSSIBLE ACTIVITY WOULD BE REGARDED AS UTTERLY POINTLESS.

Just as it is hard for spirituality to provide an adequate space for aggressiveness, the human sciences show a great deal of discomfort when addressing an element that reflects aggressiveness, such as hope. Curiously, this trait does not appear to be of great interest to psychologists. Regardless of the reason for this phenomenon, we are shocked by the dark and pessimistic tone of the psychological and psychoanalytic approaches to life in general. The topic of hope has received scarce scholarly attention, and may well be one of the main elements to be missing from the research of academics in the mental health field. The first study on hope from a psychological point of view appeared only towards the end of the 1960s, with the publication of the book The Psychology of Hope, by E. Stotland13. In any case, the research described in this book is limited to a few topics, such as health, healing, and the ability to deal with certain problems quickly, while avoiding more general questions, even though they are often present in the therapeutic relationship when it is necessary to address a problematic and uncertainty-ridden situation. From this point of view, this appears to represent a step back with respect to the studies of the ancients and Saint Thomas14, maybe also due to the clearly pessimistic outlook of the founder of psychoanalysis, whose writings certainly leave little room for hope in life, and instead ask us to deal with suffering head-on and without too many illusions15. When dealing with a specific problem, psychology research is capable of performing satisfactorily and in line with the person’s

12 See A. T. Beck, Depression. Cause and Treatment, Philadelphia, University Press, 1970, 325 s. 13 See E. Stotland, The Psychology of Hope, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1969. 14 Thus, the recent Dizionario Enciclopedico di Psicologia, organized by Galimberti and which normally refers to each subject in detail, devotes only half a column [on one page] to hope (see “Speranza”, in U. Galimberti [ed.], Psicologia, Milan, Garzanti, 1999, 995 s.). 15 Freud clearly and honestly expressed his markedly pessimistic view of existence, especially in two works that analyze civilization and religion as “cultural products” that emerged as a way to alleviate the harshness of life. Cf. Sigmund Freud, L’avvenire di un’illusione (1927) and Il disagio della civiltà (1929).

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Psicology with soul

most common aspirations, managing to respond to his/her desire to live life to the fullest and addressing specific problems and difficulties that prevent him/her from enjoying life with him/ herself and others. However, when people’s questions involve more fundamental and general life issues, a dark fatalism can be observed which, if followed consistently, should lead to desperation. Actually, without certain concrete “points of support” that provide the basis for one’s actions, and without a broader horizon of meaning, the only possible conclusion is that human existence is utterly absurd. Despite the scarcity of research in this field, some psychologists in fact confirm this final conclusion. Let us consider, for instance, the psychoanalyst Bettelheim. He, faced with the experience of the lagers, fought to cling on to life with dignity, conducting his studies with admirable dedication and rigor, looking for ways out of his predicament even within his tragic situation. Presenting a collection of essays on this subject, he wrote: “My experience in the concentration camp, together with my work with psychotic individuals, has motivated my commitment to addressing two fundamental and closely linked problems: what to do, at the social level and at the individual level, in a more limited but also in a more urgent fashion, to avoid anomia and alienation, which are so destructive to individual autonomy and security, and how to avoid the disintegration of personality, isolation, and disrespect for oneself and others”16. Once this terrible experience was over, however, the question about the possible meaning of all that and about the meaning of life in general reemerged, inescapably. The meaning of what had happened, in fact, constitutes the problem par excellence for those who survived, a problem that nobody can avoid, as Frankl confesses in an interview17. Bettelheim could not identify a suitable answer, and he ended his days tragically by committing suicide in 1990, at 86 years of age: in the end, the lager triumphed, as did Freud’s death drives. At this point emerges the limit of the Freudian view of life, shared by Bettelheim, according to which human beings find a reason to live in their work, relationships, and sexuality, but when they lack force and when their loved ones are gone (Bettelheim’s wife had died some time before) it is logical to conclude that a lack of meaning can at most be concealed or delayed, but it eventually

THE MEANING OF WHAT HAD HAPPENED, IN FACT, CONSTITUTES THE PROBLEM PAR EXCELLENCE FOR THOSE WHO SURVIVED, A PROBLEM THAT NOBODY CAN AVOID, AS FRANKL CONFESSED.

16 B. Bettelheim, “Presentazione”, in Id., Sopravvivere e altri saggi, Milan, SE, 2005. 17 C f. H. Fries, Teologia fondamentale, Brescia, Queriniana, 1987, 40 s.

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WHEN FACED WITH ESPECIALLY CRITICAL SITUATIONS, WITHOUT AN ULTIMATE REASON TO BE HOPEFUL, WITHOUT A MEANING THAT MAKES IT WORTHWHILE TO COMMIT AND FIGHT, IT IS VERY HARD TO FIND REASONS TO CONTINUE LIVING.

prevails. Short-term hopes sooner or later yield to the desperation of nihilism: “It would seem that the challenge strategy, which used to be so effective for the younger Bettelheim in the concentration camps, had nothing new to offer given the inevitable limitations of later life: the world manifested itself as a big concentration camp. The hopes that had initially supported the energy of life had to finally acknowledge their defeat”18. A similar situation can be identified in the case of the psychologist Kohlberg. His studies on the existence of and the justification for moral sense were at some point dramatically engaged with the issue of hope, and the fact that the problem was not solved also led him to a tragic end. The question that guides all his research –“Why be moral?”– prompts others, which are equally important and are linked with hope: “Why live?” and especially “How to deal with death?”, our own death, but also that of our loved ones. Kohlberg failed to provide an answer to these fundamental questions, and acknowledged that they would have taken his reflections to a another sphere, a purely religious one that he did not wish to consider in his research19. Kohlberg regarded a stoic type of philosophy as his ideal, which brings him close to Freud’s views on this issue; however, he did not hide the fact that such a philosophy is born from the depths of desperation when faced with the finiteness of life, which can only be adequately addressed from a faith-based perspective that Kohlberg labels a “hypothetical stage 7”20 in his moral classification. Such a possibility remains present even in a context of uncertainty, providing an escape route through social commitment and scientific research.

18 Th. Healy, “Le dinamiche della speranza: aspetti interpersonali”, op. cit., 58. 19 «“Why be moral?”. Here, the answer includes that other question: “why live?” (and the parallel question: “How to deal with death?”). And thus, full moral maturity demands a mature solution to the meaning of the problem of life, which in itself does not constitute a moral problem, but an ontological or religious one instead. Apart from not being a moral problem, it cannot be solved in a purely logical and rational field, which is where, in contrast, moral problems were solved (...). It can be expressed in theistic terms, but not necessarily» (L. Kohlberg, “Continuities in childhood and adult moral development revisited”, in C. Bresciani – A. Manente, Psicologia e sviluppo morale della persona, Bolonia, Edb, 1992, 331. 20 “When, in light of a more infinite perspective, we become aware of the finiteness of our life, desperation emerges. The insignificance of our life when faced with death and the insignificance of the finite from the point of view of the infinite. Desperation is the first step towards adopting a more cosmic perspective, but it ends with its resolution, which is stage 7” (op. cit., 331).

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Psicology with soul Carving detail in the sanctuary of Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris.

Rekindling hope Hope, therefore, does not seem to characterize the psychological field, and its scarcity prompts the question whether the underlying message transmitted to the patient in the therapeutic sphere, rather than conveying serenity and joie de vivre, may instead produce more anguish and depression. Yalom notes how the large number of suicides among psychiatrists may constitute a tragic illustration of the dilemma of having to be a god to themselves, with everything depending on their own strength: such a situation, in their moments of greatest grief, is marked by the risk of falling into a bottomless pit of desperation due to being limited to their own forces and having no possible salvation21. When faced with especially critical situations, without an ultimate reason to be hopeful, without a meaning that makes it worthwhile to commit and fight, it is very hard to find reasons to continue living22. Hope is a reality that is essentially connected with faith, as the Epistle to

HOPE DOES NOT PARALYZE ONE’S ACTIONS; INSTEAD, IT LEADS TO THEIR COMPLETION. …IT IS THE ABILITY TO REACT TO DIFFICULTIES BY INTRODUCING OTHER COLORS INTO ONE’S LIFE… IN FACT, IT IS THE ONLY ELEMENT CAPABLE OF PROVIDING AN ULTIMATE JUSTIFICATION TO EACH OF OUR PROJECTS, BY GRANTING STRENGTH AND MOTIVATION DURING A CHALLENGE.

21 See I. D. Yalom, Teoria e pratica della psicoterapia di gruppo, Turin, Borighieri, 1997, 332. 22 This is what the Pope points out in the encyclical regarding the relationship between hope, suffering, and action: “Certainly, in our many different sufferings and trials we always need the lesser and greater hopes too—a kind visit, the healing of internal and external wounds, a favourable resolution of a crisis, and so on. In our lesser trials these kinds of hope may even be sufficient. But in truly great trials, where I must make a definitive decision to place the truth before my own welfare, career and possessions, I need the certitude of that true, great hope of which we have spoken here.” (Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe salvi, op. cit., n. 39).

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THUS, HOPE, AS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE DYNAMICS OF LIVING, SHOULD BE GRANTED A LARGER SPACE IN CULTURAL REFLECTION, AT ALL LEVELS, AVOIDING THE DANGER OF PROPOSALS BASED ON A SAD EFFORT IN CONNECTION WITH LIFE.

the Hebrews reminds us23. It can be based only on a transcendent perspective, to the extent that for Saint Paul hope in the face of death differentiates believers from nonbelievers: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others who have no hope” (1 Ts 4, 13; cf. also Eph 2, 12). Hope, which is intended to speak on behalf of meaning, is certainly not justifiable upon the basis of empirical experience; instead, as Wittgenstein pointed out, it is located beyond it24. In order to be “sensible”, the concrete hopes that motivate one’s everyday actions must reach the Hope to attain a fulfillment in life that overcomes the problems and difficulties that one has encountered. In this perspective, alluding to hope does not paralyze one’s actions; instead, it leads to their completion. As we observed above, hope is the ability to react to difficulties by introducing other colors into one’s life. Thus, “another element is not simply added to the existing list of what can be expected; rather, the meaning of everything on the list is altered”25. In fact, hope is the only element capable of providing an ultimate justification to each of our projects, by granting strength and motivation during a challenge. In contrast, a lack of hope results in a paralysis of action. In a nihilistic view, when faced with the vanity of it all, every possible initiative becomes a cruel prolongation of a useless ordeal, “an exercise that resembles giving medicines to a wounded soldier to send him back to a battle that he must eventually lose. In contrast, from the perspective of the Christian faith, the interpersonal relationship with the God who, through Christ, liberated man from death (...) means that our human activities, limited as they are, can also be a contribution for the construction of the kingdom of God, a contribution that will not be lost, but which will instead be purified and transfigured for the eternal and universal kingdom. Apart from attaining the hope of eternal life, this prospect confers

23 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for” (Heb 11, 1). 24 “The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world” (L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus e Quaderni 1914-1916, Turin, Einaudi, 1964, prop. 6.41, 79; italicized in the original. See also the observation included in the Quaderni: “Believing in a God means to understand the issue of the meaning of life. Believing in a God means to see that the events of the world are not everything. Believing in [a] God means to see that life has a meaning” (op. cit., 174). 25 Th. Healy, “Le dinamiche della speranza: aspetti interpersonali”, op. cit., 77.

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Psicology with soul

a new dimension to all our lesser hopes”26. For Saint Thomas, hope not only constitutes a strength for tackling and overcoming specific problems: it also provides one with the chance to enjoy one’s own life, because one of its tasks is to strengthen desire, especially in the face of difficulties. In turn, desire infuses life with an element of pleasure27: the Christian perspective is not contrary to pleasure; rather, it is able to furnish it with a basic justification. Thus, hope, as an essential part of the dynamics of living, should be granted a larger space in cultural reflection, at all levels, avoiding the danger of proposals based on a sad effort in connection with life, mainly in order to perform damage control. From here emerges the invitation, present in the encyclical, to consider the example of the martyrs, those great testimonies of hope. They, in the most terrible times of challenge, manifested that there indeed was a meaning, even when everything seemed to negate it: “It is important to know that I can always continue to hope, even if in my own life, or the historical period in which I am living, there seems to be nothing left to hope for. Only the great certitude of hope that my own life and history in general, despite all failures, are held firm by the indestructible power of Love, and that this gives them their meaning and importance, only this kind of hope can then give the courage to act and to persevere”28. This delicate association may constitute the most precious contribution that the human sciences can offer in connection with the importance of a life of faith, as an essentially human value that is able to instill strength and sensibility in situations that are objectively harrowing, as expressed in the aforementioned aphorism by Nietzsche.

FROM HERE EMERGES THE INVITATION, PRESENT IN THE ENCYCLICAL, TO CONSIDER THE EXAMPLE OF THE MARTYRS, THOSE GREAT TESTIMONIES OF HOPE. THEY, IN THE MOST TERRIBLE TIMES OF CHALLENGE, MANIFESTED THAT THERE INDEED WAS A MEANING, EVEN WHEN EVERYTHING SEEMED TO [HUMANLY] NEGATE IT.

26 Op. cit., 77. 27 “Hope can cause and increase love, either due to the pleasure accompanying it, or due to desire, because hope reinforces desire: in fact, that which is not hoped for is not desired so intensely” (Summa Theol., I-II, c. 27, a. 4, ad 3um). 28 Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe salvi, n. 35. See also n. 39, where the Pope, pondering the example of the saints, remembers the ancient custom of offering one’s own suffering in order to attain a greater good: “What does it mean to offer something up? Those who did so were convinced that they could insert these little annoyances into Christ’s great “com-passion” so that they somehow became part of the treasury of compassion so greatly needed by the human race. In this way, even the small inconveniences of daily life could acquire meaning and contribute to the economy of good and of human love. Maybe we should consider whether it might be judicious to revive this practice ourselves”.

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the formative power of music ALFONSO LÓPEZ-QUINTÁS

MUSIC TEACHES US TO GO BEYOND FIRST IMPRESSIONS, TO VIBRATE WITH THE WHOLE AND TO CAPTURE THE LINK BETWEEN WORD AND SILENCE. BECAUSE OF ITS RELATIONAL CHARACTER, IN MUSIC EVERYTHING VIBRATES WITH EVERYTHING: A THEME WITH ANOTHER, A PHRASE WITH ANOTHER, A TEMPO WITH ANOTHER. MOZART REVEALED TO HIS FATHER LEOPOLD THAT, WHENEVER HE FINISHED A NEW WORK, HE COULD SEE IT “ALL AT ONCE.” THIS SYNOPTIC VISION WAS A “FEAST” FOR HIM, ACCORDING TO HIS OWN WORDS.

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usic has an extraordinary formative capacity when seen in its deepest sense and practiced creatively. The interpreter and the listener have to actively receive the possibilities that every piece offers. That active reception of possibilities is the quintessence of creativity. In a special way, music promotes the creative capacity of those who cultivate it, since, just like dance and theatre –“temporal” arts– it has to be re-created time and time again in order to enjoy its real existence, and not just a virtual one. For this reason, it urges us to be taken in actively. Each value asks to be fulfilled. Music’s own value reinforces this request with special energy. Considering we are within a Western cultural context and because it is pedagogically advisable, we shall limit our analysis to tonal music. Touching on other forms of composition would be the topic for a different discussion. By way of guidance, I shall number some aspects regarding music that may play a relevant formative role, as they aid in delving into key topics that come up during the formative process. 1. Music accustoms us to think, feel, and act in a “relational” way. An isolated sound does not have musical value. It acquires that value when it is in relation with another one. On their own, do and sol are of no aesthetic interest. However, the do-sol interval is deeply interesting. Taken individually, the sounds that are part of the scale have a meaning: they entail a determined number of vibrations and have a determined height. But they do not present a musical meaning. This depends on their mutual relation. Linked with one another, they form an expressive home, full of possibilities. This home has two basic axes. In the family home, the axes that propel and organize the movement of those who compose it are the father and the mother. The father propels; the mother embraces, unites. In the musical home, the axes are given by the tonic and the dominant (do and sol, re and la, for example1). When a melody is weaved around them, it shows a

certain serenity, a confident spirit. If it moves away from that, it acquires a troubling character. We should think of the Gregorian Requiem and the Sanctus of the Mass in 4th tone* as models of calm in the midst of pain and exultation. The four basic elements of music – rhythm, melody, harmony, and timbre– possess a musical value at the expense of the mutual relationship of different expressive elements. Rhythm, for example, is born from a repetition of signs, but that repetition only has aesthetic value when it is not solely mechanic, but establishes an expressive field. The four notes of the masculine theme of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony combine their expressive power in order to create a world of appeal, a sort of beckoning or banging on the door. That character of field or world (or “fountain of possibilities”) allows these notes to join others and form musical phrases (exposition, development, etc.). Pieces are “composed” in this relational manner. It is magnificent to discover how an extensive work derives from a very brief musical cell. The Appassionata by Beethoven springs from the three initial notes (do, la, fa) and is constantly nurtured by them. When we feel music’s relational character and expressive power, caused by the interrelation of its elements, performing or simply listening to it has a greater formative value. Thus, it affirms within itself a decisive idea in human life: valuable forms of union envelop an unsuspected fertility. Let us remember the words of M. Buber: “He who says you to somebody else does not have anything, he does not possess anything, but it in a relationship.”2 The student who, through musical experience, has acquired a very positive idea of the relationship will immediately realize that being in a relationship, or rather building relationships, is much more valuable than having and possessing objective realities. Music is essentially relational and consists in intermingling expressive fields. This is why it has the capacity to promote

THE MENTAL FLEXIBILITY THAT WE BEGIN TO ACQUIRE ALLOWS US TO DISCOVER THAT WE CAN BE BOTH “AUTONOMOUS” AND “HETERONOMOUS,” FREE AND BOUND TO NORMS. A GOOD PERFORMER FOLLOWS THE SCORE, WHICH IS WHAT GUIDES HIS ARTISTIC ACTIVITY, AND, IN DOING SO, FEELS ABSOLUTELY FREE, WITH A KIND OF CREATIVE FREEDOM. HE CANNOT LEAVE THAT PATH. IT MUST LIMIT HIS “FREEDOM OF PLAY,” BUT IT IS THAT LIMITATION THAT MAKES HIS TRUE FREEDOM AS AN INTERPRETER POSSIBLE.

1 For the importance of the “fifth” or “dominant” and its relationship with musical feeling, understood in its greater scope, see the enlightening conference delivered in the “Geneva Peace Conference of Thought” by the great director and music aesthetician, E. Ansermet: “Musical experience and today’s world.” See Cassou et al. Coloquios sobre arte contemporáneo, Guadarrama, Madrid 1958, pp. 77-139 (Écrits sur la musique, A la Baconnière, Neuchâtel 1971, pp. 39-71). A wide and deep exhibit of his thought can be found in Les fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine, 2 vols., À la Baconnière, Neuchâtel 1981. The recent book by E. Schadel, professor at Bamberg University (Germany), Musik als Trinitätssymbol. Einführung in die harmonikale metaphysik (Peter Lang, Frankfurt 1995), offers a solid explanation of music’s relational character. It confirms, and even amplifies in different aspects, what I claim in these pages on the formative power of musical experience. 2 See Ich und Du, in Schriften über das dialogische Prinzip, L. Schneider, Heidelberg 1954, p. 8; Yo y tú, Caparrós, Madrid 21995, p. 8.

HUMANITAS Nº 9 pp. 62-71

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spiritual life in man, which is the life of creative interrelationship.3 Therefore, it is not surprising for musical practice to have been associated It is not illogical that music practice has been associated since our origins with all kinds of human celebration, among which religious rites stand out.4 2. Music teaches us to go beyond first impressions, to vibrate with the whole and to capture the link between word and silence. Because of its relational character, in music everything vibrates with everything: a theme with another, a phrase with another, a tempo with another. Mozart revealed to his father Leopold that, whenever he finished a new work, he could see it “all at once.” This synoptic vision was a “feast” for him, according to his own words.5 We need to get whoever is learning to be able to feel a whole piece resonate during the initial chord. Let us think of the one in the “Pathétique” sonata by Beethoven. That sombre chord in do minor reveals the whole piece, although not the complete piece. We enter into a relationship of presence with it, we meet each other from the first moment. However, we then need to capture the expressive value of each theme and relate them to each other. To do that, the student needs to acknowledge the main themes before hearing the piece, so that they can sharply follow each of their paths, transformations, and developments, their struggles with others, their intermingling… This “holistic” way of listening that joins parts with each other and with the whole and interprets every detail with the impulse that comes from the whole set is allowed by musical language itself. Because of its relational character, musical language carries in itself the power and need to create bonds. It is thus that we gather that musical character is of a silent nature. True silence is not merely the lack of sound, but the ability to simultaneously pay attention to various aspects of reality. Silence is a resonance field. When a word is uttered, different realities vibrate in it. They are linked to the reality

3 That is why it is radically linked to the word, as F. Ebner masterfully emphasised. See Mi obra El poder del diálogo y del encuentro, BAC, Madrid 1997, pp. 3-91. For the relationship between spiritual life, inner life, and religious life, see El encuentro y la plenitud de vida espiritual, Madrid 1990, pp. 245-266. 4 Some very expressive testimonies about the role of sacred music as motivator for spiritual life can be seen in Cuatro filósofos en busca de Dios, Rialp, Madrid, 1999, pp. 231-266. 5 See “Auszüge aus Mozartbriefen”, in Das Musikleben, Maguncia, I (1948). For the relational character of music, see El triángulo hermenéutico. Introducción a una teoría de los ámbitos, Madrid 1971, pp. 185-223.

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«Rhythm, for example, is born from a repetition of signs, but that repetition only has aesthetic value when it is not solely mechanic, but establishes an expressive field. The four notes of the masculine theme of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony combine their expressive power in order to create a world of appeal, a sort of beckoning or banging on the door.» Composition VIII by Kandinsky.

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POPE FRANCIS CALLS FOR RENEWAL OF SACRED MUSIC TRADITION

ope Francis, last March, received the participants in a major international conference on sacred music, a halfcentury after the promulgation of the Conciliar document, Musicam sacram on music in the sacred liturgy. Over 400 people taking part in the gathering organized by the Congregation for Catholic Education and the Pontifical Council for Culture around the theme: Music and the Church: cult and culture fifty years after Musicam sacram, met in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace to hear the Holy Father. “Certainly,” said Pope Francis, “the encounter with modernity and the introduction of [vernacular] tongues into the Liturgy stirred up many problems: of musical languages, forms and genres.” The Holy father went on to say, “Sometimes a certain mediocrity, superficiality and banality have prevailed, to the detriment of the beauty and intensity of liturgical celebrations.” The Pope encouraged the various actors in the field of liturgical music – from composers, conductors, musicians and choristers, to liturgical animators – to do their best to contribute to the renewal of sacred music and liturgical chant, especially as far as the quality of sacred music is concerned. “To facilitate this process,” Pope Francis said, “we need to promote proper musical education, especially for those who are preparing to become priests – in dialogue with the musical trends of our time, with the demands of the different cultural areas, and with an ecumenical attitude.”

directly referred to. It is true that music sounds arise from silence, when understood as the absence of sound. They ask for silence. They only stand out in a context of silence and retreat, seen as the truce of extroverted agitation. But silence involves an even greater educational value as it emphasises that musical sounds must be silent in themselves, which is the same that happens with genuine words. When you play a melody or chord, or listen to them, you must do it from a distance to feel them vibrate with other chords and melodies. Each detail of a work has true meaning when seen actively inserted in the whole.6 3. The mental flexibility that we begin to acquire allows us to discover that we can be both “autonomous” and “heteronomous,” free and bound to norms. A good performer follows the score, which is what guides his artistic activity, and, in doing so, feels absolutely free, with a kind of creative freedom. He cannot leave that path. It must limit his “freedom of play,” but it is that limitation that makes his true freedom as an interpreter possible.

6 For the different types of word and silence, and the complementary relationship between true word and true silence, see Estética de la creatividad, Rialp, Madrid 1998, pp. 321-384; Inteligencia creativa, pp. 193-207.

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The experience of learning a musical work is highly valuable in educational terms because it reveals to us how a creative process is articulated internally. The interpreter places the sheet music of a piece that he does not know over the piano stand. It is far away from him; what is near is only the sheet. He begins to re-create the music forms on the keyboard. He does so in an exploratory way, through impulses of the piece that he wishes to know. It is surprising and most fertile: he searches for something by virtue of the strength irradiated by that which he still does not fully know. There comes a time in which the work shows him that its expressive power is present in a luminous way. We could say that it dominates him. This is so because it allows itself to be dominated by him. Here we get our first big lesson: nobody dominates anyone at this level of creativity. The artist configures the work when it allows itself to be configured by him. When lived creatively, it is of no interest to dominate and possess, but to mutually enrich one another. It is a reversible experience of fulfilment. In it, the interpreter comes to the realization that he is not enough in himself, since to be creative one must receive the possibilities granted by the score and instruments. However, these also acquire their whole meaning when actively taken on by the interpreter. In this experience of mutual configuration, the work presents itself to the one who is configuring it. He looks at the sheet, but does not see it anymore. What is held before him is the completely configured piece. He plays the piano with his fingers, but he is no longer aware of himself. Piano and score become transparent when creativity reaches perfection. They continue to fulfil their duty, but they do not come between the work and the artist. They are the place where the work materialises before the interpreter. When taken by him as something of his own, it ceases to be distant, external, and strange in order to become intimate, though still different.7 A reality is intimate when it creates with us a common playing field, a relationship marked by togetherness. In this field the gap between inside and outside, exterior and interior, is overcome. That is why the interpreter, by obeying the score, does not give himself away to something unknown, he does not alienate himself; he gains complete creative freedom and total identity as an artist. He sticks to a path that has been marked from the outside, by someone different to him who was at first distant and foreign. But that path has become his inner voice. By abiding by it, he follows the impulse

THE EXPERIENCE OF LEARNING A MUSICAL WORK IS HIGHLY VALUABLE IN EDUCATIONAL TERMS BECAUSE IT REVEALS TO US HOW A CREATIVE PROCESS IS ARTICULATED INTERNALLY. THE INTERPRETER PLACES THE SHEET MUSIC OF A PIECE THAT HE DOES NOT KNOW OVER THE PIANO STAND. IT IS FAR AWAY FROM HIM; WHAT IS NEAR IS ONLY THE SHEET. HE BEGINS TO RECREATE THE MUSIC FORMS ON THE KEYBOARD.

7 A broad description of this experience of music performance can be found in Inteligencia creativa, pp. 105-111; La experiencia estĂŠtica y su poder formativo, Verbo Divino, Estella 1990, pp. 80-84.

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that is dictated by his own musicality. He is, therefore, autonomous (ruled by his own law), although he is still heteronomous (given that the criteria were suggested from the outside). Here, a key element becomes clear: I can act in terms of criteria that were suggested to me from the outside and not be “heteronomous,” as I can dedicate myself, for love, to taking care of those around me and not be “de-centred.” My true centre is my state of openness towards others. My true criterion for action is that which encourages me from within towards the making of something valuable. The origin of said impulse, norm, or path is not important. What is decisive is its capacity to move me towards modes of acting that are deeply effective and valuable.

HE DOES SO IN AN EXPLORATORY WAY, THROUGH IMPULSES OF THE PIECE THAT HE WISHES TO KNOW. IT IS SURPRISING AND MOST FERTILE: HE SEARCHES FOR SOMETHING BY VIRTUE OF THE STRENGTH IRRADIATED BY THAT WHICH HE STILL DOES NOT FULLY KNOW. THERE COMES A TIME IN WHICH THE WORK SHOWS HIM THAT ITS EXPRESSIVE POWER IS PRESENT IN A LUMINOUS WAY.

4. An entire ethical doctrine can be built in the light of the analysis of musical experience. The great contemporary philosophers Louis Lavelle and Gabriel Marcel show this brilliantly in some their works. In Cinco grandes tareas de la filosofía actual8, I show how musical experience allows us to understand the description made by Lavelle regarding the ethical and metaphysical experience. Ethical life reaches maturity when man is able to take full advantage of material realities and even embodied ones without fusing with them, making them “transparent” beforehand, joining together the utmost efficacy and the utmost discretion. The ethically mature person always chooses the ideal; he uses the means necessary to attain it, but does not turn them into goals; he makes the ideal materialise through them and appear in them as if visible against the light. In this case they perform a “mediating” function, not a “mediatizing” one. This clear distinction is manifested in the experience of music performance9. 5. The experience of music interpretation reveals us the possibility of being, at the same time, a) creative and dependent on other realities, b) independent and charitable. a) The interpreter knows very well that without him the piece would not really exist, that in the score it is only found in a virtual state and needs to be put into action. But nobody is more conscious than him that his creative activity depends on the piece. When a polyphonic piece is sung, the different voices go in and out of the sound building that they are themselves constructing. They do it with the freedom and pleasure that one feels when relating to one’s

8 Gredos, Madrid 1977, pp. 161-167. 9 We find a similar thought in G. Marcel. See Op. cit., pp. 168-180; La experiencia estética y su poder formativo, pp. 73-96.

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«A reality is intimate when it creates with us a common playing field, a relationship marked by togetherness. In this field the gap between inside and outside, exterior and interior, is overcome. That is why the interpreter, by obeying the score, does not give himself away to something unknown, he does not alienate himself; he gains complete creative freedom and total identity as an artist.» (Claudio Arrau and H. von Karajan)

own home. But what is interesting and enigmatic about this is that the performer is creating that home and, at the same time, he feels protected by it – encouraged, welcome, and nurtured musically. Something very appropriate happens in our relationship with institutions: family, school, a club, Church… They are all composed by their members, but they educate us to a great extent. Here we see how music makes clear the basic experience of man’s creative life: I put myself at the disposal of something that depends on me to exist, but at the same time it is presented to me as superior to that which I can offer myself. Marcel describes it very accurately: “Music, in its truth, has always come to me as an irresistible beckoning of that which in man surpasses man, but that also founds him.”10 Marcel knew how to express with unequalled strength that in music we participate in a source of energy that is given to us, but which needs us in order to assume a sensible body. In a quality musical experience, we feel something powerful, expressively powerful, which invites us to take part in its energy and fills us inside if we answer to that appeal. Ask Mozart if music exists. “Of course,”

10 See L'esthétique musicale de Gabriel Marcel, Aubier, Paris 1980, p. 112. See other texts in La experiencia estética y su poder formativo, p. 77.

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EVERY VOICE IN THE POLYPHONY AND EVERY INSTRUMENT GROUP IN THE ORCHESTRA ENJOY ABSOLUTE INDEPENDENCE FROM OTHERS. NOBODY CAN MEDDLE IN THEIR DUTY. BUT EACH ONE, VIBRATES WITH THE REST, MODERATES ITS VOLUME, ADJUSTS ITS RHYTHM. THE FRUIT OF THIS UNION OF ABSOLUTE CHARITY AND ABSOLUTE INDEPENDENCE IS A PERFECT HARMONY, A SOURCE OF BEAUTY AND KINDNESS.

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he will answer. “It is my life, my ideal, my motivation, my raison d’etre…” You might claim: “But music is created by you.” “Not at all,” he will correct you, “she creates me as musician. I configure works, but I do not create music. I have ‘musicality,’ a sense of music, but music is given to me. It is different to me, superior to me. I take part in it and my works are the fruit of that nurturing bond.” What Mozart claims here about “the music” is applied by Marcel in “being”: he generates his entire metaphysics from the horizon that was opened up by musical experience. b) Every voice in the polyphony and every instrument group in the orchestra enjoy absolute independence from others. Nobody can meddle in their duty. But each one, at the beginning of their duty of re-creating the piece with complete independence, vibrates with the rest, moderates its volume, adjusts its rhythm. The fruit of this union of absolute charity and absolute independence is a perfect harmony, a source of beauty and kindness. A quality musical performance is a perfect model of family and social cohabitation. As an individual, I have to focus on my luck, on my wellbeing and health, but I must also take care of the needs of others with the same intensity. Those others are many other centres of initiative, called upon to create with me a field of harmony, beauty, and vitality. We are all drawn to realization, but this only happens when creating something valuable in common, which depends on us to a great extent and, at the same time, enriches us and allows us to give it a concrete form of existence. The experience of music playing makes us see and feel with such clarity that, if our partner falters, it loses energy or quality – the joint effect is harmed. We are all on the same ship, committed to the duty of developing as people, and every person only grows in community, founding life in community. The other is never in the music of the enemy, the usurper of their own personality, the one who shortens our life span. On the contrary, it is the necessary pole for us to establish interaction, community life, playing fields, marked by authentic freedom and complete fulfilment. In music we feel the imperative need of others to become fulfilled as musicians, and we are grateful for their existence and for their willingness to collaborate with us. “There is no loneliness. There is light among us all. I am yours,” aptly wrote Jorge Guillén. And G. Poulet comments: “I am, but I am by the grace of air and light, by the revelation of a world whose admirable roundness is focused on me, as it rounds itself around me and my desire to embrace the sphere.

THE CHURCH NEEDS ART

he Church also needs musicians. How many sacred works have been composed through the centuries by people deeply imbued with the sense of the mystery! The faith of countless believers has been nourished by melodies flowing from the hearts of other believers, either introduced into the liturgy or used as an aid to dignified worship. In song, faith is experienced as vibrant joy, love, and confident expectation of the saving intervention of God (12). Letter of Pope Saint John Paul II to the artists (April 4th, 1999).

I discover myself as the median point of things. They end in me, as I dilate in them”11. This fertile bond between the I and its surroundings is lived with intensity in the musical experience. When we learn the art of living relationally, which is typically musical, and when we are aware of the cultivation of our own being as much as of the care that others need, we acquire a wonderful inner balance.

Conclusion A formative power similar to that of music can be discovered in the other arts and all disciplines that are the object of academic study. The multiple areas of knowledge, studied in the light that arises from true philosophical reflection, contribute from diverse sources to configure an image of man so nuanced that it arouses our admiration12. This reaction of surprise to what we are and what we are to become comes between us and the path to complete personal fulfilment. In normal circumstances, what usually happens is a correspondence between theory and practice that was highlighted by Schelling: “Man becomes greater as he learns about himself and his own strength. Give man the awareness of what he in fact is and he will immediately learn to be what he must; respect him theoretically and practical respect will immediately follow.”

11 See. Les métamorphoses du cercle, Plon, Paris 1961, p. 518. 12 A detailed exposition of this topic can be seen in my work Cómo lograr una formación integral, San Pablo, Madrid, 1997.

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ÂŤI tried to get to the essentials of each design. I would design some of my pieces many many times, up to 15 hours a day so as to get to the very essence of the drawing. The classics explain this by saying that something is beautiful when you cannot remove anything from it. This simplicity is the essential.Âť Redemptoris Mater Chapel, in the Vatican Apostolic Palace.

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a conversation with marko rupnik Recently, Marko Rupnik was invited by the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile to take part in a colloquium about art. In that occasion, he also attended a very friendly and informal get-together with a few academics and artists. humanitas review took part in this close and familiar question-and-answer gathering, which is now presented in this issue.

- Tell us about your artistic and spiritual itinerary to Love has nothing but an only origin, the Holy come to such a unique religious and personal style. - I was born in the Slovenian Alps and started painting since I Spirit (Romans, 5:5). If was a child, even before writing I was already painting, with you want to awaken the the problems that this brought at school. When I joined the creativity, the artistic soul Jesuits, I was sent to the Fine Arts Academy in Rome where I within, you have to be able to love. You cannot was soon judged as a revolutionary painter, there I went into foster creativity as a skill. painting through an abstract expressionism, in which artist Only when you cannot expresses his full personality in his work, something which sleep out of love, you may is in itself much subjective. Without looking for it, I soon truly start living. became famous, and received the award as the best painter of the European academies. By then I perceived that art is a dragon that may destroy the person. In those days, I had a spiritual Director, Father Tomáš Joseph Špidlík, s.j. (1919-2010) whom I followed for over thirty years, and who really came to be like my father. With him, I understood that art cannot only be an expression of oneself, but it is a service. The same as a mother who gives herself and does her best when cooking a meal for the family, will not sign up her dish, then why should an artist sign up his work. I realized that man’s worst enemy is oneself, so I went to Saint Paul’s Basilica and prayed for a whole day, offering all that had to do with my art; colours, brushes, spatulas but, above all, my talent, and I asked God to help me free Rupnik from Rupnik. I went back home

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and I painted black all over my paintings, to be truly free from myself. From that day, I did not touch a brush for the next 10 years, but when my superiors asked me to so do something, yet, in my heart I was always painting. One Ester, I saw clearly what Solovine used to say, that the true source of creativity is the Holy Spirit; not muses, external works or what we grasp from outside, but the spiritual inspiration. I understood what Romano Guardini said, that oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work of art is finished up by God, because we cannot close it up. The same as in the Liturgy; we bring the bread and wine, and ask the Holy Spirit to come down onto them. We cannot do more, it is Him who does the rest. The same here, we cannot create anything, it is God who creates the world and everything. Then, I clearly saw that this is what happens too Contemporary art is with oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s art. Then I went to the Catacombs and got studying seriously the totally subjective and its artists are isolated Romanic and Byzantine art. One learnt that the Liturgical work and secluded. I know of art is not finished by yourself; its perfection is bi-componencountless lonesome tial. It shows the weakness of Man and the greatness of God artists who aspire to be who works on it. This perfection of the artwork is also present famous, but to achieve in our Christian life where these two realities meet. The poor fame, you have to have sinner opened to God and God who works and saves Man. your own language, I tried to get to the essentials of each design. I would deyour own code, a sign some of my pieces countless times, up to 15 hours a day grammar of your own, and that is an entirely so as to get to the very essence of the drawing. The classics unique form. Therefore, explained that something was beautiful when nothing could nobody understands be removed from it. This simplicity is the essential. At one point my superior, the General Father, came to me them, it is impossible to communicate with them. and told me it was time to get back to painting. And so it was. A year later, Pope John Paul II called me and commissioned me the chapel of Redemptoris Mater in the Vatican. This was another learning experience; one thing is to do what you want, and another is to do what you are called to do. This changes everything. - You said you were an artist since you were very little, yet you decided to become a Jesuit priest a very young age. What took you along this path, apparently so incompatible with your artistic vocation? - I was born in a family as taken from a story book. We were very poor, and I was the youngest of four children. We were then under the rule of Italy and Mussolini had sent our Slovenian young men to war in Africa and my father was one of them. He got back home

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Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik S.J. (Slovenia, 1954). Director of the Centro Aletti in Rome. From 1999 to 2013 he was a consultant for the Pontifical Council for Culture and since 2012 he is a consultant for the Pontifical Council for New Evangelisation.

eleven years later, very sickly. He was a very holy and wise In the Caucasian world, man, like no other I have ever met. I never saw my parents and also in the big quarrel, not even an argument, they were intimately united. American civilizations such the Mayas in This communion between them stayed with me for ever. My father worked the land, and he would go very early in Mexico, and Incas the morning, even during cold days and would remove the in Peru, the mosaic technique was developed, snow and turn the stones over to cultivate the land and turn in which you create that barren field into a fertile one. I used to go with him since harmony out of diversity. I was about four, and I would see him bless the land before And so, the language starting to work. It was a majestic gesture. Then, as if it was of stones turns into a part of a liturgy, he would take his tools and instruments and common language. get down to work. My sisters would bring lunch for us, and again he would bless the food, very simple food, and he would eat with great pleasure and hunger! When I was preparing to receive my first holy communion, we had to pray the invocation to the Holy Spirit; “pour down your spirit and renew the face of the earth”, and I could understand that well, I could see this action, this sacrament in my dad’s life. I think it was in that moment that I saw my vocation to the priesthood being born –and also my art. Everything in his life had great unity, and this is something I learnt from him, to be a priest and an artist at the same time, both are one. I cannot think of myself as a priest without manual work as part of my vocation.

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Many young artists come to study liturgical art with me, I may get over 50 requests a year from all over the world, although I may receive one or two, and sometimes even none. If after a while, they do not set off, and they dictate their own route to the matter, I ask them a personal question; “have you ever gone sleepless for a week because someone you loved was suffering and there was nothing you could do for them? Have you ever felt imprisoned like that?” Well, this is what happens when you love, you cannot separate this from your life. If they do not understand this, they cannot be artists. Love What does not come has nothing but an only origin, the Holy Spirit (Romans, 5:5). into love stays in death, If you want to awaken the creativity, the artistic soul within, because it is matter you have to be able to love. You cannot foster creativity as a which invites me, it takes skill. Only when you cannot sleep out of love, you may truly me and it is granted to start living me as a gift. This brings us to the question of: - Contemporary art is known to break with traditions, what is the expression of this supreme love? but your work blends the XX century art and the V It is the body of a man, century together. You bring together the old and the new, his face, a unique and and this makes us feel part of a tradition. Is this tradition non-confusing, the something you want to convey in your work? same as love. Love is - My superiors suggested I did a doctorate and, although I always personal, but not did not want to, I did it out of obedience. My tutor told me to individual. Therefore, do it on a Russian theologian, Ivanovic Ivanov, the greatest for me, drawing a face theologian of history. His writings were in Russian only, and is making others see I did not know Russian, so the first day it took me one hour the communion in and fifty minutes to read the first page. But obedience works the diversity of those miracles, and I soon learnt Russian. My tutor had chosen Ivawho express their own nov for me because he thought he and I had similar minds. personal face to the He is the Father of Russian symbolism and his work made world. So only when the creation becomes me see that memory is the life of wisdom. Life is not lived on personal, it reaches its theories, but it follows wisdom, and wisdom follows memory. completion. From there I went into the First Fathers and learnt to live following them, and even came to be a good friend of Saint Basil’s. This unity is what happens in the Eucharist; it convenes the whole body of Christ in the church, here we find all our friends. And so I understood what the Vatican II meant when it told us that “we don’t have to argue with the world, we have to surprise it by taking inspirations form previous age.” However, it is important not to imitate them, make copies or quote them. It does not make any sense to copy the Romanic art today.

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«My superiors suggested I did a doctorate and, although I did not want to, I did it out of obedience. My tutor told me to do it on a Russian theologian, Ivanovic Ivanov, the greatest theologian of history.»

History does not go backwards. What we take from the past is inspiration, not the way of doing things. Young people tend to adopt ways which are not their own and live according to them, but this does not work. It is not possible to live someone else’s life, since each life expresses itself in a unique manner. They tell the story of an artist in the VIII century, who had to paint a fresco in a monastery. In order to do so, he was asked to go and live with the fathers in the monastery, or else he was told his work would be no more than ‘cosmetic’.

…you cannot detach the matter from what it represents, yet you cannot identify one with the other. They are relational but not identifiable. If I receive a ring from my dead father, this is not a mere jewel for me, it represents something. Along with the ring, there is a face, a voice, somebody.

- Your work is mainly centred on the imagery of biblical scenes with a Catholic iconography, so one may wonder whether with your art you may communicate with a community beyond the catholic one. - We have to distinguish different art levels. The first level is Art by itself, and this stirs awe, inspires wonder; then we have religious art, which awakens religious sentiments; a third level is the liturgical art, which brings us in communion with God and which, on its own right,

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THE CHURCH NEEDS ART

he Church has not ceased to nurture great appreciation for the value of art as such. Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience. In so far as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption (10). Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colours, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. It does so without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery. The Church has need especially of those who can do this on the literary and figurative level, using the endless possibilities of images and their symbolic force. Christ himself made extensive use of images in his preaching, fully in keeping with his willingness to become, in the Incarnation, the icon of the unseen God (12). Letter of Pope Saint John Paul II to the artists (April 4th, 1999).

leads us to the sign of the Cross. We often believe incorrectly that to be able to converse with non-believers we have to talk at the first level, when this is precisely a difficult meeting point, because contemporary art is totally subjective and its artists are isolated and secluded. I know countless lonesome artists who aspire to be famous, but to achieve fame, you have to have your own language, your own code, a grammar of your own, and that is an entirely unique form. Therefore, nobody understands them, it is impossible to communicate with them. In the Caucasian world, and also in the big American civilizations such the Mayas in Mexico, and Incas in Peru, the mosaic technique was developed, in which you create harmony out of diversity. And so, the language of stones turns into a common language. I studied thoroughly how the faces and the clothes are made, so as to give the matter some movement. I think that if I can open up and take a look into that matter, I will find the code with which it was created, and this code is the ‘logos’. And what is the ‘logos’ of the matter? It shows you the way it wants to go, it shows you its own direction. In a way, matter has got its own will, and which is this direction? To be a gift in the hands of Man, to be at the service of love, because only love remains, transcends. What does not come into love stays in death, because it is matter which invites me, it takes me and it is granted to me as a gift. This brings us to the

In Christ we find the unity of two worlds which have come after Him. This is what we live in the liturgy. Each symbol represents and brings along someone real. Otherwise, they are nothing but signs. A symbol is not universal, and ‘universal’ doesn’t mean that everyone understands it in the same way.

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question of: what is the expression of this supreme love? It is the body of a man, his face, a unique and non-confusing, the same as love. Love is always personal, but not individual. Therefore, for me, drawing a face is making others see the communion in the diversity of those who express their own personal face to the world. So only when the creation becomes personal, it reaches its completion. Christ is the foundation of every symbol. Why? What is a symbol? A symbol is the unity of two worlds. You come to discover one reality within another. A symbol has no meaning by itself. It represents a reality in the moment you say “this symbol ‘means’”, and we are no longer speaking of symbol, because symbols don’t have A kiss is a symbol, and meaning. Now, going back to the point, you cannot detach this is so much so, that the matter from what it represents, yet you cannot identify Judas did not use it as one with the other. They are relational but not identifiable. If a symbol but as a sign; I receive a ring from my dead father, this is not a mere jewel it did not represent, but for me, it represents something. Along with the ring, there indicate, he signalled is a face, a voice, somebody. I cannot identify these with the someone with an evil purpose. It was nothing ring, but I cannot separate them either. In Christ we find the unity of two worlds which have come but a gesture so they after Him. This is what we live in the liturgy. Each symbol could arrest him. But represents and brings along someone real. Otherwise, they Jesus left us real symbols are nothing but signs. A symbol is not universal, and ‘univer- which have remained for sal’ doesn’t mean that everyone understands it in the same centuries as a means of unity; the symbol is a way. That modern rationalism. Ivanov presents a beautiful world of unity. example: A kiss is a symbol, and this is so much so, that Judas did not use it as a symbol but as a sign; it did not represent, but indicate, he signalled someone with an evil purpose. It was nothing but a gesture so they could arrest him. But Jesus left us real symbols which have remained for centuries as a means of unity; the symbol is a world of unity. Evil doctrines though, have tried to create their symbols unsuccessfully. Take Communism, for example. It is not a symbol, because no evil can create a symbol. The devil cannot create symbols because he divides, breaks apart whereas symbols bring together. But one thing is for sure; the future will be symbolic times, an age of symbols. Unless we move forward in this direction, each one of us will end up secluded, talking to ourselves. There is a beautiful text that says there was a time when we moved from symbols to written doctrines, to treaties. And now we have come to a time, when once again, we have to move from treaties to life. To a life that has its own symbols and intelligence.

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the christian vocation of the business leader AN INTERVIEW TO MICHAEL NAUGHTON

Professor Michael Naughton, is one of the authors of the document “The Vocation of the Business Leader: A reflection”, created to summarize the teachings of Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical on the Christian’s place and thinking in economic life. In an exclusive Interview granted to humanitas review, Prof. Naughton talked about the anthropological dimension of business, the vocation of the Catholic leaders and their social responsibility to make the world a better place.

- You use the word ‘vocation’ for the activity of doing business, two realities that seem radically divorced. How can this activity that pursues money be seen as a vocation? - There are different ways of going at it. Business can be seen only as a job, as a career or as a vocation. There is a tendency to think that business is simply about money, and in fact it is about money, but reducing it to making money is a very small view of its real significance. Business is a vital social institution and it is growing increasingly more important each day, so this reduction does nothing but creating bigger problems and misconceptions about it. The question is how to view it in its most profound sense. The nature of business is precisely a vocation of service, if we limit it to making money only, we are making it too small, we are cheating. The human spirit wants something bigger, and this is how Christian anthropology gets at the question. It is a vocation because when you get into business, it is not just one small part of you that goes into it, but the fullness of you, as a person, as a married man, a father, a professional, etc. for the service of a higher good.

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- How about the document “The Vocation of the Business Leader”, how did it come about? who was the target audience you had in mind? - The document was produced by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. We know the Church is not indifferent to what happens in economy and politics and that is why it has its social teachings. When Pope Benedict XVI wrote his encyclical Caritas in Veritate many Catholic leaders wondered what it meant for them. A group of people involved in the world of business were invited to a seminar in the Vatican where the Pontifical Council suggested to produce a small docu- Professor Michael Naughton ment in which we could translate the big challenges of holds the Koch Endowed Chair in Studies at the University this encyclical into a document. The pontifical council Catholic of St. Thomas (Minnesota) and sponsored and a group of us requested to do it. is the director of the Center for The audience has three levels. In the first place are Catholic Studies, which is the and largest Catholic Studies the Catholics leaders who work in the world of business oldest program in the world. He is also since we are in special need of guidance in this respect. the board chair of Reell Precision Then are the leaders of any creed, who are open to recei- Manufacturing headquartered in ve some assistance in this area. The Church’s readiness St. Paul Minnesota. to help this group makes complete sense with its teachings since Catholicism is not a sect, its message does not stay within itself, but She wants to talk to all people of good will. Interestingly, many people outside the Catholic Church have read and reacted to the document and found it quite compelling. And the third audience group is anybody in the business world who exercises influence, that is from the CEOs or company board members, down to anybody who leads others; even if in a very small group. Because at the end of the day, leadership is about exercising influence –influence for the good. A janitor at my university exercises great influence on the students and faculty by the way he talks to us, by what he does for us. He creates an ambiance. He is in a way a leader. So anybody whose work has an influence on others is a potential target of the document. - What has been the reception of the document like? Has it had any immediate impact in the business world? - Yes. It has been translated into 15 languages and it has been very well received by both the left and right, so as to call them. People have found it so attractive because it enobles the work they are doing. Professionals on either side recognise that the document is critical of

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The nature of business is precisely a vocation of service, if we limit it to making money only, we are making it too small, we are cheating. The human spirit wants something bigger, and this is how Christian anthropology gets at the question. It is a vocation because when you get into business, it is (…) for the service of a higher good.

the way business is being done, and realise that the Church is beating them up to do better. But its reception has been very positive because it does not only tell us what business ought not to be like, but rather what it should be like. It points out that actually there is a lot of ‘distraction’ in this respect, and warns against them.

- What has been the reception of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato Si in the business world, considering it is very strong about the way things are being done now? - Pope Francis is trying to shake us up. Both, us who are in the business world and those who are in the government. Unfortunately, people misinterpret his words and read him as being anti-business. Our challenge is to show that this is not so. It is in Evangelium Gaudium that he talks about business as a noble vocation, which can do much good for others when practised with a Christian perspective. In fact, Francis has promoted the canonization of Ernesto Shaw, a very successful business man in Argentina, as a bishop then and now as a Pope. He believes that in business as in any other profession, you can live your faith in very profound ways. His real concern is the way wealth is distributed in the world and naturally, and business is both the economic engine which creates wealth and also its distributor. He is telling us we have to do a better

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job at that. He is calling us back using a different language, shaking us up to improve all such issues. So contrary to what some may say, these are not times for us to get out of business. He also talks quite clearly about subsidiarity, where the welfare state is only a temporary solution to hold people up until they can get back on their feet to be independent Citizens. As Pope, he is in charge of our souls and one day we will be judged about the resources we have been given. Whether we fed him when he was hungry, we visited him when he was in prison, supported him when he was lonely. He wants to arouse in us a deep sensitivity to the sufferings of those around us, because the world is going desensitised where each one is living in their little world. There is no other Church - How about the response to his invitation in the Laudato that has done so much for Si? Has it had any effect? Are there any concrete results the social teachings than the Catholic. Naturally, coming out yet? - The Pope has warned us about the serious damage industries the challenge is that we could and have do better are causing to the environment. Francis helped change the yet, we have to recognise debate on whether global warming was a natural or a manwhat has been done. The made phenomenon, and pressed us on the urgency to take expectations from the responsibility on the issue. The encyclical has brought about Church are very high, an increasing social awareness. This is going to be a blueprint much higher than from for future enterprises, but the teachings in social encyclicals any other institution, and take a long time to have impact and show themselves, these that is why the Church is sometimes accused of are not things you can change from one day to another. being hypocrite. - How does this relate to the Rerum Novarum teachings? Leo XIII was truly prophetic. He had sharp vision of the problems then and the direction things were going. It has been over 130 years now and still has not been absorbed, not even among some Catholics. Do you think we are going to react better to this one? - Well, think that the Gospel has been with us for 2000 years now! The reason for this resistance is what in Christian anthropology is called the Fall, with the result of a constant battle to overcome vice and enhance virtue. It is the struggle of the human condition. We are fallen, with a tendency to always accommodate ourselves to certain base desires, certain forms of egotism and certain fixations. And we lose sight of the larger whole. What the Gospels do, and somehow the popesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; encyclicals try to do, is to remind us of this larger whole. They do

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PASSAGES OF THE ENCYCLICAL CARITAS IN VERITATE, POPE BENEDICT XVI (2009) CONCERNING THE ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITY OF THE BUSINESS LEADERS TOWARDS THE COMMON GOOD AND HUMAN DIGNITY.

nother important consideration is the common good. To love someone is to desire that person’s good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of “all of us”, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society. It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or “city”. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. This is the institutional path —we might also call it the political path— of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters

the neighbour directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis. When animated by charity, commitment to the common good has greater worth than a merely secular and political stand would have. Like all commitment to justice, it has a place within the testimony of divine charity that paves the way for eternity through temporal action. Man’s earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of the history of the human family. In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations, in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it to some degree an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God. (7) Today’s international economic scene, marked by grave deviations and failures, requires a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise. Old models are disappearing, but promising new ones are taking shape on the horizon. Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for businesses is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby

not necessarily provide us blueprints because things change and every age has to work these things out. One of the things that Social encyclicals have generated has been fostering cooperative movements. There are large cooperative movements now, many of which had Christian inspiration, some even started by priests. Their purpose was to help people have a better life, to create more owners of capital as a form of distributing ownership, not through the state but through the cooperation of consumers and employees. It is little known today but most social institutions in the Western World have come out of the Christian tradition. Social insurances, for example, were started by the churches. They might have lost their original spirit, but they were created in the face of massive catastrophes, as a way to help people so they could have some form of sustenance to live through those catastrophes. Even some banks, like when back

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limiting their social value. Owing to their growth in scale and the need for more and more capital, it is becoming increasingly rare for business enterprises to be in the hands of a stable director who feels responsible in the long term, not just the short term, for the life and the results of his company, and it is becoming increasingly rare for businesses to depend on a single territory… Yet there is also increasing awareness of the need for greater social responsibility on the part of business. Even if the ethical considerations that currently inform debate on the social responsibility of the corporate world are not all acceptable from the perspective of the Church’s social doctrine, there is nevertheless a growing conviction that business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference... Paul VI invited people to give serious attention to the damage that can be caused to one’s home country by the transfer abroad of capital purely for personal advantage. John Paul II taught that investment always has moral, as well as economic significance. All this —it should be stressed— is still valid today, despite the fact that the capital market has been significantly liberalized, and modern technological thinking can suggest that investment is merely a technical act, not a human and ethical one. (40)

In the context of this discussion, it is helpful to observe that business enterprise involves a wide range of values, becoming wider all the time. The continuing hegemony of the binary model of market-plus-State has accustomed us to think only in terms of the private business leader of a capitalistic bent on the one hand, and the State director on the other. In reality, business has to be understood in an articulated way. There are a number of reasons, of a meta-economic kind, for saying this. Business activity has a human significance, prior to its professional one. It is present in all work, understood as a personal action, an “actus personae”, which is why every worker should have the chance to make his contribution knowing that in some way “he is working ‘for himself’”. With good reason, Paul VI taught that “everyone who works is a creator”. It is in response to the needs and the dignity of the worker, as well as the needs of society, that there exist various types of business enterprise, over and above the simple distinction between “private” and “public”. Each of them requires and expresses a specific business capacity. In order to construct an economy that will soon be in a position to serve the national and global common good, it is appropriate to take account of this broader significance of business activity. It favours cross-fertilization between different types of business activity, with shifting of competences from the “nonprofit” world to the “profit” world and vice versa, from the public world to that of civil society, from advanced economies to developing countries. (41)

in the 13th century the Franciscans, attempted to help people to use their little capital as a way to overcome the massive usury rates occurring at the time. The founder of accounting is a Franciscan monk. There are countless malpractices in the world and business people are also fallen men and women and the media profits from it. Vice sells, virtue does not sell. But there are lot of virtuous people doing good things, which do not make it to the headlines. - Social encyclicals propose deep long lasting solutions, but that is for tomorrow. So, what happens today? To what extent they solve the conditions of those working today? - Probably what the encyclicals have done is much more than we know. Their social teachings are now being implemented in many places, are being talked about in economics and business schools, in catholic

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WORDS OF CARDINAL PETER K.A. TURKSON, PRESIDENT OF THE PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE, AND THE BOOK “THE VOCATION OF THE BUSINESS LEADER: A REFLECTION”.

h e d o c u m e n t p r e s e n te d b y Cardinal Turkson is the result of a reflection of the social responsibilities of business leaders in light of the teachings Pope Benedict X VI’s social encyclical Caritas in Veritate. It addresses the role of the business leader in today’s global economy and the contribution of the Catholic social doctrine’s principles to the modern organization. In the foreword, Cardinal Turkson, explains that business leaders are called to engage in the contemporary economic and financial world in the light of the principles of human dignity and the common good. He asserts that when businesses and market economies function properly, and focus on serving the common welfare, they have a positive influence on the material and spiritual well-being of society. This refection offers a set of practical bases that will guide

them in their activity. Among these, is that of meeting the needs of the world without forgetting, in a spirit of solidarity, the needs of the poor and the vulnerable; the principle of organising work within enterprises in a manner which is respectful of human self-regard. The book responds to the conviction that people with important positions in the business world, who are guided by ethical social foundations and lived through virtues and illuminated by the Gospel, can succeed and contribute to the common good. Cardinal Turkson states that “the Church does not relinquish the hope that Christian business leaders will, despite the present darkness, restore trust, inspire hope, and keep burning the light of faith that fuels their daily pursuit of the good. Indeed, it is worth recalling that Christian faith is not only the light that burns in the heart of believers but also the propulsive force of human history”.

universities, in conventions etc. It is not the ‘Church’ itself who has to put its own social teachings into practice, it is us, those who are involved, but we are not always good practitioners. There is no other church that has done so much for the social teachings than the Catholic. Naturally, the challenge is that we could and have do better yet, we have to recognise what has been done. The expectations from the Church are very high, much higher than from any other institution, and that is why the Church is sometimes accused of being hypocrite, because we have very high standards and we often fail to meet them. We should all feel like hypocrites when we fail to fulfil the teachings of the Church. My mother used to say to me: when you see sin in another person, first think about yourself. Be careful to point your finger on someone, because you will get three pointing at you. But we have to be hopeful and hope is a theological virtue, because the other thing is despair. Hope is what overcomes despair. But in spite of it all, this world is still very good.

But we have to be hopeful and hope is a theological virtue, because the other thing is despair. Hope is what overcomes despair. But in spite of it all, this world is still very good.

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NOTES Gertrud von le Fort and a Literature that Stirs the Heart CLEMENS FRANKEN

According to German writer Gertrude von le Fort poets have an evangelizing mission. Although religious fervour has diminished among authors with time, the image of the poet as priest, prophet and decipherer of the secrets of the world and men still provokes contradictory reactions.

he German writer, a nd merc if ul love t hat THUS, LITERATURE essayist and poet, seeks to stir and change OVERCOMES TIME TO Gertrud von le Fort the reader/listener’s heart: THE EXTENT THAT IT IS (1876-1971), who is part of “[the poet] appears here as PART OF GOD’S ETERNITY. the renewal of European the speaker of a mute choir; AT THE SAME TIME, THE C at hol ic l it e rat u r e, i s he gathers the nostalgia of LITERATURE THAT IS ident i f ied as a poet of those without a voice, the ROOTED TO ETERNITY the loving mercy of God, cries of nature and human IS REVEALED AS THE who embraces and covers souls. Any voice can be ONLY ONE CAPABLE OF everything in a motherly entrusted to him, but in CONFRONTING TIME, GIVEN gest ure. Literat ure, that collection, he becomes THAT WHAT LASTS IN ART IS according to her conviction, complete and self-fulfilled. NOT THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL, “does not strive for a moral Literature is, then, if you BUT, ON THE CONTRARY, recognition, but a stirred will, a way of loving.” THAT WHICH IS TIMELESS. heart.” She states this in the Fo r G . vo n l e Fo r t , prologue to the collection literat ure is not an of Graham Greene’s essays, expression of the poet’s Vom Paradox des Christentums. For Le personality or times, as the Expressionists Fort, literature is a sort of understanding thought, or a proud construction of a * First published in Revista Diálogos de la Pastoral Académica de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile2013, N.5, pp. 36-39.

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of love. “Making poetry, for her, is to risk everything in their trust of the prior delivery of divine love” (Eugen Biser, in Die Geschichte der ewigen Liebe, 1976).

A divine mission The motivation of this delivery of love does not come, according to G. von le Fort, from the poet’s own inner being. It is not his will, but it depends on things, on time, and on the matters that attract the poet. “If it happens, I think this calling is never casual. The poet, above all unaware and unintentionally, depends on his time and his demands” (Woran ich glaube, by G. von le Fort). Therefore, she does new literary world, as it not believe it is possible to LITERATURE, ACCORDING is commonly thought of say “that [she] wanted this TO HER CONVICTION, “DOES today. It is “much more: or that, but [she] can only NOT STRIVE FOR A MORAL redemption of time, an later say that [she] had to RECOGNITION, BUT A attempt to restore paradise do this or that.” STIRRED HEART.” in the work of art” (Focke, In the deepest sense, Alfred. Gertrud von le Fort. the poet perceives that her Gesamtschau und Grundlagen literary creation is a divine ihrer Dichtung). According to her brief essay mission. Although in her Autobiographische Über den historischen Roman, literature Sk izzen II she was familiarized wit h takes the poet to a “space where he reigns literature and she wrote poems from a over time and not the other way around.” young age, her poetic vocation developed Thus, literature overcomes time to the slowly. Only when her Hymns to the Church extent that it is part of God’s eternity. At the were published and met the praise of French same time, the literature that is rooted to poet Paul Claudel did Le Fort see in her eternity is revealed as the only one capable literary work a mission and surrendered to of confronting time, given that what lasts it. The fact that this mission had a divine in art is not the circumstantial, but, on origin is clearly illustrated in her poem Lob the contrary, that which is timeless. This der Muse, where she describes the muse as redeeming literature, for Le Fort, is an act “high Sybilla’s sister,” who “announces the

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irruption of grace,” as “noble and humble Gertrud’s romanticism prophet” as well as “a redeemed” muse that runs to the encounter with “the truth” of Gertrud von le Fort’s literary work must “all creation” destined to “transfiguration.” be analysed in the light of the tradition of Several literary critics highlight the clear Romanticism in literature and the romantic. Lefortean awareness of including a prophetic According to Novalis’ classic definition, element in her creation. Lore Berger, for romanticizing is giving a high sense to instance, sees in her a true poet because the ordinary, dignity to the unknown and she considers her as being “capable of an appearance of infinity to the finite. In prophetic looks” and mentions, in this sense, order to better understand how Le Fort’s the unconventional vision of the Church work fits into romantic tradition, or as the in the Hymns. For Berger, a prophecy is German philosopher and writer Rüdiger “nothing more than to capture deeply, that Safranski would say, the romantic in the is, a captured being, as the muse usually twentieth century, we should understand surprises the poet, strongly frightening that Romanticism has “an underground relationship with religion. It belongs to those h i m .” Fo r M a t h i l d e search movements which, for Hoechstetter, Le Fort is two hundred persevering LE FORT IS A PROPHETIC a prophetic poet because years, wanted to show an POET BECAUSE SHE she “fathoms the present in opposition to a world that “FATHOMS THE PRESENT IN depth and finds, thus, what was disappointed with DEPTH AND FINDS, THUS, is valid for all times.” The secularization,” turning into WHAT IS VALID FOR ALL flames, the ashes and the “a continuation of religion TIMES.” smoke with which G. von with aesthetic media.” le Fort ends her narration, To b e t t e r h i g h l i g h t in 1937, of the Thirty-Year Le For t ’s place w it h i n War, are, according to Hoechstetter, a way the tradition of the romantic, it is worth of expressing artistically and in advance the comparing her image regarding the poet catastrophe of the Second World War. In this way, literature clearly acquires a with that of her admired colleague Joseph missionary character that G. von le Fort also von Eichendorff, with whom Gertrud not emphasizes in her essay The Eternal Woman: only shares a strong bond with nature, “Great Western art will never be separable but also a similar concept of history as “a from the great Christian-Catholic dogma mysterious hieroglyphic writing” (Arno and, in its timeless appearances is even her Schilson in Romantische Religiosität). vicarious priestess.” Art is understood here Both also have a great love for the city of as a disinterested and humble service to Heidelberg: Eichendorff considers himself the Catholic dogma – which by no means part of Heidelbergian romanticism and the excludes a free artistic creation -, that is, it scenery of best accomplished novel in Le assumes Mary’s attitude, that of feminine Fort’s work, The Wreath of Angels (1946), is delivery. In the attitude of the praying precisely this city. In addition to that, they virgin, Le Fort’s art finds it greatest symbolic share a strong Catholic faith which, among expression, as, according to her deepest other things, is expressed as much in its “deep nostalgia for the infinite, the elevated, conviction, “literature can also be prayer.”

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the objective, the eternal and the divine, God,” as in its “aspirations for synthesis (…) between the realm of reason and the world of feelings, between the conscious and the unconscious, nature and spirit, (…) the individual and community, (…) the finite and infinity, the world around us and the world beyond” (Kluckhohn, Paul. Das Ideengut der deutschen Romantik). Finally, they are united by a late romantic struggle for “the last two and mandatory goods of humanity: religion and nation,” as Le Fort states in her Autobiographische Skizzen.

Le Fort, according to Biser, makes the uttermost romantic concept of literature her own, just in the way Novalis expressed it in his Hymns to the Night when he argues that to make poetry is “to translate in the most essential sense of the word, so that anything that is touched by the lightning of the poetic word is transported, through secret and mysterious paths, from the realm of what is changeable and perishable to the realm if what is invariably valid and everlasting.” Now, the transfiguration process already clearly indicates that Le Fort’s literary work is not autonomous, but theonomous, which by no means excludes the freedom of Literature as God’s children, since with transfiguration Paul Claudel she accepts LE FORT SEEKS AN From what we read in Kienecker’s sentence for EXTRASENSORY, Protected Sources, prologue herself: “The freedom of TRANSCENDENTAL TRUTH, to the book Gertrude von le mortal beings is the bond AN INSIGHT TO THE WORLD’S Fort. Werk und Bedeutung, t o t h e g r e at e r k n ow n MYSTERIOUS DEPTH, l i t e r a t u r e “c a n h a v e value.” However, the poet’s MAKING HER LITERATURE nothing to do with copies free will to surrender to WONDERFUL, MYSTICAL AND of reality, as it is, in fact, its Christ’s law does not take SYMBOLIC. MAN AND THE transformation. In other away his creative freedom, WORLD ARE NOT SOLELY words, its literary figures given that literature “is RELATED TO GOD, BUT, MORE are not portraits, but types.” not propaganda in favour PRECISELY, TO CHRIST. Here, we can clearly see the of any sort of idea, not words of a spirit that rejects even those which the poet the mere reproduction of defends. This has its own reality, i.e. a reality that is only perceived law and it is not born from either reflection through critical reason that shows itself as nor w i l l, but f rom t he u ncon sc ious” blind in front of the mysterious depths of (Autobiographische Skizzen). For Le Fort, the world. In this context, theologian Eugen literature is not propaganda in favour of any Biser emphasizes the fact that “in opposition dogma or moral Catholic norms; however, to knowledge that is purely intellectual, in she wants to understand the earthly in a Gertrud von le Fort poetic knowledge was spiritual way, to discover Christianity in gradually imposed.” what is natural. In this sense, in her essay For Le Fort, only the poet is blessed by God Vom Wesen christlicher Dichtung, she thinks in order to penetrate the reality perceived in she perceives in poetry a “tender and romantic tradition as deep and mysterious. mysterious tendency towards Christianity,

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similar to that which theologians hold the human soul when they speak of anima christiana naturaliter,” as she states in Woran ich glaube. For Gertrud, poets are above all interested in failed and tragic figures, meaning that “from God’s perspective, utterly successful men and the world of mere justice and reward do not count, and that the saving mercy was elevated to the throne” (Woran ich glaube).

Love, redemption and annunciation Faithful to the romantic tradition, Le Fort seeks an extrasensory, transcendental truth, an insight to the world’s mysterious depth, making her literature wonderful, mystical and symbolic. Man and the world are not solely related to God, but, more precisely, to Christ. “Whatever the world is reaches man through Christ and must be delved into towards Christ,” German critic Hajo Jappe assures in Gertrud von le Fort. Das erzählende Werk. This relationship between man and the world with Christ is evidently present

in Le Fort’s work. We need only remember the characters of Starossow and Enzio who, in The Wreath of the Angels, do not really fear or hate God that much. For them, He is just an abstract concept. They fear, rather, the concrete figure of Christ, who demands practical things from them. Thus, G. von le Fort and Eichendorff share their belief on the transparency of the tangible world to one that is completely different: the one belonging to the spirit a nd t he super nat u ra l, wh ic h i s a l so comprehensible. Everything that is sensory and earthly can become, then, a sign of the extrasensory and the supernatural. The phenomenon of Christ means to Le Fort the elevation of God’s saving mercy to t he t hrone and wit h it “t he loving understanding of what attracts men to sin (…). The tender and severe law of the Saviour, “do not judge,” is also the commandment found in the origin of all true poetry. The muse does not condemn anyone; she only accompanies the guilty during the consequences of their actions. The core of every literary creation is not the moral sentence, but a spiritual stir.”

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The Pope in his Words

THE PONTIFICAL MAGISTERY AND THE GENDER IDEOLOGY During the last decade, the Pontiffs have insisted on the need to acknowledge the richness of the sexual difference as aa‘deconstruction’ of the notions of man and woman. This misconception put forward by the gender ideology has been denounced by Pope Francis and by Benedict XVI and dealt with, though in different terms, by Saint John Paul II.

Humanitas Review presents a selection of some of the most important papal pronouncements concerning this dimension of the person as an image of God; about the inherent unity of body and soul, and the man-woman complementarity as the foundation of an anthropology that acknowledges the immutable dignity of the human being.

HUMANITAS Nº 9 pp. 92-104

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POPE FRANCIS “The complementarity of man and woman, the pinnacle of divine creation, is being questioned by the so-called gender ideology, in the name of a more free and just society. The differences between man and woman are not for opposition or subordination, but for communion and generation, always in the “image and likeness” of God”. (Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Puerto Rico on their “Ad Limina” visit, 8 June 2015).

Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (2015)

155. Human ecology also implies another

profound reality: the relationship between human life and the moral law, which is inscribed in our nature and is necessary for the creation of a more dignified environment. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of an “ecology of

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man”, based on the fact that “man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will”1. It is enough to recognize that our body itself establishes us

1 Address to the Deutscher Bundestag, Berlin (22 September 2011): AAS 103 (2011), 668.

in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings. The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecolog y. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek “to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it”.2

Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (2016)

56. Yet another challenge is posed by the various forms of an ideology of gender that “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family. This ideology leads to educational programmes and legislative enactments that promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female. Consequently, human identity becomes the choice of the individual, one

2 Catechesis (15 April 2015): L’Osservatore Romano, p. 2.

which can also change over time”.3 It is a source of concern that some ideologies of this sort, which seek to respond to what are at times understandable aspirations, manage to assert themselves as absolute and unquestionable, even dictating how children should be raised. It needs to be emphasized that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated”.4 On the other hand, “the technological revolution in the field of human procreation has introduced the ability to manipulate the reproductive act, making it independent of the sexual relationship between a man and a woman. In this way, human life and parenthood have become modular and separable realities, subject mainly to the wishes of individuals or couples”. 5 It is one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life, and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality. Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.

Address of his holiness pope Francis to the bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Puerto Rico on their “Ad Limina” visit (2015) “…Allow me to draw your attention to the value and beauty of marriage. The complementarity of man and woman,

3 General Ordinary Assembly of the Bishops Synod, Final relation (24 October 2015) p. 8 4 Ibid., 58. 5 Ibid., 33.

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… there are genuine forms of ideological colonization taking place. And one of these - I will call it clearly by its name – is [the ideology of] “gender”. Today children – children! – are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this? Because the books are provided by the persons and institutions that give you money. These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries. And this is terrible! the pinnacle of divine creation, is being questioned by the so-called gender ideology, in the name of a more free and just society. The differences between man and woman are not for opposition or subordination, but for communion and generation, always in the “image and likeness” of God. Without mutual self-giving, neither one can understand the other in depth (cf. General Audience, 15 April 2015). The Sacrament of Marriage is a sign of God’s love for humanity and of Christ’s devotion to his Bride, the Church. Look after this treasure, one of the “most important of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples” (Aparecida Document, n. 433).”

Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Polish Bishops in the Cathedral of Kraków (27 July 2016)6 “The problem is worldwide! The exploitation of creation, and the exploitation of persons. We are experiencing a moment of the annihilation of man as the image of God. I would like to conclude with this aspect, since behind all this there are ideologies. In Europe, America, Latin America, Africa, and in some countries of Asia, there are genuine forms of ideological colonization taking place. And one of these - I will call it clearly by its name – is [the ideology of] “gender”. Today children – children! – are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this? Because the books are provided by the persons and institutions that give you money. These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries. And this is terrible! In a conversation with Pope Benedict, who is in good health and very perceptive, he said to me: “Holiness, this is the age of sin against God the Creator”. He is very perceptive. God created man and woman; God created the world in a certain way… and we are doing the exact opposite. God gave us things in a “raw” state, so that we could shape a culture; and then with this culture, we are shaping things that bring us back to the “raw” state! Pope Benedict’s observation should make us think. “This is the age of sin against God the Creator”. That will help us.

6 Apostolic journey of His Holiness pope Francis to Poland on the occasion of the XXXI World Youth Day (27-31 July 2016).

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POPE EMERITUS BENEDICT XVI “Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man’s great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will…” (Encyclical letter Deus caritas est of His Holiness Benedict XVI, 2005)

Encyclical letter Deus caritas est (2005) “5…This is due first and foremost to the fact that man is a being made up of body and soul. Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be truly overcome when this unification is achieved. Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone,

then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness. The epicure Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting: “O Soul!” And Descartes would reply: “O Flesh!” 7.

7 Cf. R. Descartes, Œuvres, ed. V. Cousin, vol. 12, Paris 1824, pp. 95ff.

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Yet it is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature. Only thus is love —eros—able to mature and attain its authentic grandeur. …Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man’s great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will…” “11…While the biblical narrative does not speak of punishment, the idea is certainly present that man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become “complete”. The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about Adam: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Two aspects of t h is are importa nt. First, eros is somehow rooted in man›s very nature; Adam is a seeker, who “abandons his mother and father” in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become “one flesh”. The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage…”

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Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the participants in the plenary meeting of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum” (2013) “…The Christian vision of man is, in fact, a great “yes” to the dignity of persons called to an intimate filial communion of humility and faithfulness. The human being is not a self-sufficient individual nor an anonymous element in the group. Rather he is a unique and unrepeatable person, intrinsically ordered to relationships and sociability. Thus the Church reaffirms her great “yes” to the dignity and beauty of marriage as an expression of the faithful and generous bond between man and woman, and her no to “gender” philosophies, because the reciprocity between male and female is an expression of the beauty of nature willed by the Creator…”

Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI on the occasion of Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia (2012) “The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper. While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question. He quotes the famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: “one is not born a woman, one becomes so” (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient). These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term “gender” as a new philosophy

The famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: “one is not born a woman, one becomes so” (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient)… lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term “gender” as a new philosophy of sexuality. of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned,

now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man”.

According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious.

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Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI in his visit to the Bundestag in Reichstag Building, Berlin (211) “…Yet I would like to underline a point that seems to me to be neglected, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he

cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled…”

ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II “…femininity finds itself, in a sense, in the presence of masculinity, while masculinity is confirmed through femininity. Precisely the function of sex, which is in a sense, “a constituent part of the person” (not just “an attribute of the person”), proves how deeply man, with all his spiritual solitude, with the never to be repeated uniqueness of his person, is constituted by the body as “he” or “she”. (General Audience , Wednesday 21 November 1979)

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Apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem, n.10 (1988) In our times the question of “women’s rights” has taken on new significance in the broad context of the rights of the human person. The biblical and evangelical message sheds light on this cause, which is the object of much attention today, by safeguarding the truth about the “unity” of the “two”, that is to say the truth about that dignity and vocation that result from the specific diversity and personal originality of man and woman. Consequently, even the rightful opposition of women to what is expressed in the biblical words “He shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16) must not under any condition lead to the “masculinization” of women. In the name of liberation from male “domination”, women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine “originality”. There is a well-founded fear that if they take this path, women will not “reach fulfilment”, but instead will deform and lose what constitutes their essential richness. It is indeed an enormous richness. In the biblical description, the words of the first man at the sight of the woman who had been created are words of admiration and enchantment, words which fill the whole history of man on earth.

Letter to Families from Pope John Paul II “6…M a n i s c r e at e d “f r o m t h e ve r y beginning” as male and female: the life of all humanity —whether of small communities or of society as a whole—is marked by this primordial duality. From it there derive the “masculinity” and the “femininity” of individuals, just as from it every community draws its own unique richness in the mutual

fulfilment of persons. This is what seems to be meant by the words of the Book of Genesis: “Male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). Here too we find the first statement of the equal dignity of man and woman: both, in equal measure, are persons. Their constitution, with the specific dignity which derives from it, defines “from the beginning” the qualities of the common good of humanity, in every dimension and circumstance of life. To this common good both man and woman make their specific contribution. Hence one can discover, at the very origins of human society, the qualities of communion and of complementarity”. “19… The separation of spirit and body in man has led to a growing tendency to consider the human body, not in accordance with the categories of its specific likeness to God, but rather on the basis of its similarity to all the other bodies present in the world of nature, bodies which man uses as raw material in his efforts to produce goods for consumption. But everyone can immediately

Within a similar anthropological perspective, the human family is facing the challenge of a new Manichaeanism, in which body and spirit are put in radical opposition; the body does not receive life from the spirit, and the spirit does not give life to the body. Man thus ceases to live as a person and a subject. Regardless of all intentions and declarations to the contrary, he becomes merely an object.

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realize what enormous dangers lurk behind the application of such criteria to man… Wit h i n a si m i l a r a nt h r op olog ic a l perspective, the human family is facing the challenge of a new Manichaeanism, in which body and spirit are put in radical opposition; the body does not receive life from the spirit, and the spirit does not give life to the body. Man thus ceases to live as a person and a subject. Regardless of all intentions and declarations to the contrary, he becomes merely an object. This neo-Manichaean culture has led, for example, to human sexuality being regarded more as a area for manipulation and exploitation than as the basis of that primordial wonder which led Adam on the morning of creation to exclaim before Eve: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). This same wonder is echoed in the words of the Song of Solomon: “You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes” (Song 4:9). How far removed are some modern ideas from the profound understanding of masculinity and femininity found in Divine Revelation! Revelation leads us to discover in human sexuality a treasure proper to the person, who finds true fulfilment in the family but who can likewise express his profound calling in virginity and in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God”.

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“He created them as Man and Woman: Theology of the body” “Masculinity and femininity express the dual aspect of man’s somatic constitution. “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Furthermore, through the same words of Genesis 2:23, they indicate the new consciousness of the sense of one’s own body. It can be said that this sense consists in a mutual enrichment” (n 5. General Audience, 14, XI, 1979). “…femininity finds itself, in a sense, in the presence of masculinity, while masculinity is confirmed through femininity. Precisely the function of sex, which is in a sense, “a constituent part of the person” (not just “an attribute of the person”), proves how deeply man, with all his spiritual solitude, with the never to be repeated uniqueness of his person, is constituted by the body as “he” or “she.” The presence of the feminine element, alongside the male element and together with it, signifies an enrichment for man in the whole perspective of his history, including the history of salvation” (n 1. General Audience, 21, XI, 1979). “The body which expresses femininity ‘for’ the masculinity and viceversa the masculinity ‘for’ the femininity, manifests the reciprocity and communion of persons” (n 4. General Audience, 9, I, 1980).

ECONOMY OF COMMUNION On February 4th, during his last meeting about the Economy of Communion organized by the Focolare Movement, Pope Francis addressed an audience of over 1.200 people, encouraging them to work towards a just economy that is more in line with the kingdom of God. Some passages of his speech are reproduced below.

conomy and communion. These are two words that contemporary culture keeps separate and often considers opposites. Two words that you have instead joined, accepting the invitation that Chiara Lubich offered you 25 years ago in Brazil, when, in the face of the scandal of inequality in the city of São Paulo, she asked entrepreneurs to become agents of communion. She invited you to be creative, skilful, but not only this. You see the entrepreneur as an agent of communion (…) In considering your task, I would like to say three things to you today. The first concerns money. It is very important that at the centre of the economy of communion there be the communion of your profits. The economy of communion is also the communion of profits, an expression of the communion of life. Many times I have spoken about money as an idol. The Bible tells us this in various ways. Not by chance, Jesus’ first public act, in the Gospel of John, is the expulsion of the merchants from the temple (cf. 2:13-21). We cannot understand the new Kingdom offered by Jesus if we do not free ourselves from idols, of which money is one of the most powerful. Therefore, how is it possible to be merchants that Jesus does not expel? (…) The best and most practical way to avoid making an idol of money is to share it, share it with others, above all with the poor, or

to enable young people to study and work, overcoming the idolatrous temptation with communion. When you share and donate your profits, you are performing an act of lofty spirituality, saying to money through deeds: ‘you are not God, you are not lord, you are not master!’. And do not forget that other philosophy and that other theology that led our grandmothers to say: “The devil enters through the pockets”. Do not forget this! The second thing I would like to say to you concerns poverty, a central theme of your movement (…) Capitalism continues

Therefore, we must work toward changing the rules of the game of the socioeconomic system. Imitating the Good Samaritan of the Gospel is not enough. Of course, when an entrepreneur or any person happens upon a victim, he or she is called to take care of the victim (…) But it is important to act above all before the man comes across the robbers, by battling the frameworks of sin that produce robbers and victims.

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Capitalism knows philanthropy, not communion. It is simple to give a part of the profits, without embracing and touching the people who receive those ‘crumbs’. Instead, even just five loaves and two fishes can feed the multitude if they are the sharing of all our life. In the logic of the Gospel, if one does not give all of himself, he never gives enough of himself. to produce discarded people whom it would then like to care for. The principal ethical dilemma of this capitalism is the creation of discarded people, then trying to hide them or make sure they are no longer seen. A serious form of poverty in a civilization is when it is no longer able to see its poor, who are first discarded and then hidden away. (…) The economy of communion, if it wants to be faithful to its charisma, must not only care for the victims, but build a system where there are ever fewer victims (…). Therefore, we must work toward changing the rules of the game of the socio-economic system. Imitating the Good Samaritan of the Gospel is not enough. Of course, when an entrepreneur or any person happens upon a victim, he or she is called to take care of the victim (…). But it is important to act above all before the man comes across the robbers, by battling the frameworks of

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sin that produce robbers and victims. An entrepreneur who is only a Good Samaritan does half of his duty: he takes care of today’s victims, but does not curtail those of tomorrow (…) Lastly, the third thing concerns the future (…) The economy of communion will have a future if you give it to everyone and it does not remain only inside your ‘house’. Give it to everyone, firstly to the poor and the young, who are those who need it most and know how to make the gift received bear fruit! To have life in abundance one must learn to give: not only the profits of businesses, but of yourselves. The first gift of the entrepreneur is of his or her own person: your money, although important, is too little. Money does not save if it is not accompanied by the gift of the person. Today’s economy, the poor, the young, need first of all your spirit, your respectful and humble fraternity, your will to live and, only then, your money. Capitalism knows philanthropy, not communion. It is simple to give a part of the profits, without embracing and touching the people who receive those ‘crumbs’. Instead, even just five loaves and two fishes can feed the multitude if they are the sharing of all our life. In the logic of the Gospel, if one does not give all of oneself, one never gives enough of oneself (…) I hope you continue to be the seed, salt and leaven of another economy: the economy of the Kingdom, where the rich know how to share their wealth, and the poor are called ‘blessed’. Castel Gandolfo (17-IV-2017).

BOOKS CATHOLICISM & EVOLUTION A HISTORY FROM DARWIN TO POPE FRANCIS

pivotal reference about the n my opinion, there are author of On the Origin of two types of essential Species highlights that this books. First, there are work was the first attempt those whose significant to explain, in a scientific c o n t r i b ut i o n t o m a n ’s and systematic way, the prevailing problems allows biological complexity that t hem to transcend time wa s p r o p o s e d o ut s id e and space – works that we of the idea of a creating usually call “classics”, even and intelligent God. The though this label is not free generic idea of evolution, of cont roversy. Second, understood as the t here a re t hos e wh ic h, transformation of living without offering a personal organisms into different perspect ive in terms of ones, was already present. argumentation or aesthetics, Some Greek philosophers are also destined to last and Michael Chaberek h ad a l r e ady p r o p o s e d be recommended because of Angelico Press, 2015 matter to be the the efficient their formative ability when 354 pages. cause of all reality. it comes to systematically The author’s motivation and historically treating a to write this book, as he explains himself topic of intellectual debate. I believe I am not mistaken when I state in the introduction (p.3), is that until the that the book that we are reviewing here middle of the 20 th century, the Catholic belongs to the second group. In an organized Church held a clear and coherent position way, it presents all relevant opinions and on this topic, supporting the creation of positions that have been advocated within the human individual as a direct process. the Catholic Church on the topic of evolution Chaberek’s intention is to demonstrate that in the last 150 years. Michael Chaberek, an the Church’s current teachings allow for American Dominican of Polish origin, expert multiple perspectives on the issue, accepting in Fundamental Theology, has accomplished ideas that contradict themselves. This calls a masterful summary of the controversy for an analysis of the problem. on evolution, from before Darwin (in spite The debate on evolution, holds Chaberek, of what the title states) to our days. The can be viewed in three planes: (a) the

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natural sciences, which focus the problem on t he question whet her t his t ype of process can be proved empirically or not; (b) a philosophical code, which points to the possibility that species (or essences) can mutate; and finally, (c) the theological question, which seems to find itself, in the author’s opinion, in a moment in which Catholic orthodoxy requires a dialogue with new scientific and technological advances. This, moreover, is not new in the Church. The universities born in the 12th century also caused the Church to clarify, organize and systematize the propositions that derived from the theological principles contained in the Revelation. Th is publ icat ion is d iv ided i n t he following way: the two first chapters offer basic definitions and, in rough terms, develop the debate between Evolutionism and Creationism in the natural sciences (pp. 7-71). The rest of the book’s purpose is to expand on the answers that have been given within the Catholic Church to the problem of evolution. This argumentative history, according to the author, can be divided into two stages, following the change of attitudes that theological circles and the magisterium’s documents have had. Thus, chapters three to five (pp. 72-167) cover the rejection of the theory of evolution at the moment in which Darwin’s work appeared and during the first decade of the 20th century. Finally, chapters six to nine (pp. 168-309) expand on the later moderate acceptance of the theory, covering up to the writings of Pope Francis.

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The underlying issue in the evolutionist project is, ultimately, the origin of the human soul. The problem is stated in the following terms: either man’s soul comes from matter, as Darwin’s theory and all materialistic explanations seem to hold, or it is caused by a higher principle, of a spiritual nature, which does not come from the successive changes suffered by the body it inhabits. As long as man is able to act independently of material determinations by formulating abstract thinking, we must conclude that he should be considered a spiritual being. The cause of this superior activity cannot lie in an inferior principle, such as matter. As the scholastics already advocated: nothing can produce something greater than itself nor anyone give what they do not have. Hence, evolution can be acceptable just as long as it is preached as the material cause of human beings, but not including its formal cause (the spiritual soul). The latter, from a metaphysical point of view, only extrinsically, in terms of its operation, depends on matter. Chaberek ’s book has t he v i r t ue of presenting these debates in a way that is organized and clear, providing a complete and current panorama of the discussion. In my opinion, this should be a compulsory reading for whoever wishes to approach the contemporary argument exchange between the evolutionist discourse and the Catholic position.

RAÚL MADRID

GOD OR NOTHING INTERVIEW WITH AFRICAN CARDINAL ROBERT SARAH, CARRIED OUT BY FRENCH JOURNALIST NICOLÁS DIAT 2015

“

The current problem of contemporary of dusty roads away from Conakry, the Western man is the following: he lives capital city. He was born in an animist as if God did not exist” This sentence family converted to Catholicism and was expresses a key reading of the book “God named bishop by Paul VI, the Pope who or Nothing”: “Going back to God”. This while visiting Uganda a few years ago said: could be the motto that sums up Robert “The new homeland of Christ is Africa.” Montini himself, close to Sarah’s perspective on the his death, wanted the young conundrums of the world priest of 33 to be named and the Church. For the archbishop of Conakry, the African cardinal, “Going capital of Guinea. John Paul back to God” represents II, while entertaining him the essential path so that a morning in the Vatican, the life of a man, a believer, said to the young bishop a priest, the whole Church, with a hint of affection: can find a unifying heart “For you are a kid-bishop.” within themselves. The the Paul VI had “imposed” him African bishop’s answers to despite the opposition by the questions of the French Sekou Touré, father of the journalist cover a broad nation and revolutionary spectrum of subjects which M a r x i s t, t h e m a n who allow the reader to learn “uprooted the cross and about the story of a man replaced it with the national who has met the last popes God or Nothing flag”, spreading terror and and who has been entrusted Robert Cardinal Sarah dozens of concentration with very important tasks Ignatius Press, 2015 camps across the country. in the life of the church in 288 pages. He threatened Robert Sarah the last few years, while h i m s el f w it h t he s a me getting to know his feelings concerning the fundamental matters of luck of his predecessor, Raymond-Marie life and his judgments in light of recent Tchidimbo, who was arrested, tortured, and subjects and challenges. Cardinal Robert imprisoned for nine years in the gulag of Sarah would hardly have imagined that he Camp Borio, “where servicemen practiced would pronounce the above words about unspeakable tortures”, before being sent off the agony of the Christian West, because as in 1979. Only after the death of Touré, in 1984, a kid he played football with his friends in a the ambassador of the Federal Republic of little village called Ourous, in the border of Germany, Bernard Zimmermann, informed Guinea and Senegal, five hundred kilometers Robert Sarah that in the desk of Sekou Touré

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himself he had found a list of the figures who would have been executed. In the book, Robert Sarah claims: “I was the first on this list. The dictator had planned my arrest and murder for the month of April. God has been quicker than Sekou Touré...” In November of 2014, Robert Sarah had been named Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments by Pope Francis. Called to Rome in 2001, he was secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (Propaganda Fide) and in turn President of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which is chaired by the charity of the Pope. During his period in office, he highlighted the centrality of evangelical poverty. Poor people should be helped to grow comprehensively while preserving their dignity, “Not just with a little food and water...” These words of Francis in the Lent of 2014 echo loudly: “No less a concern is moral destitution, which consists in slavery to vice and sin […] The Gospel is the real antidote to spiritual destitution”. From this “unorthodox “ point of view, Sarah makes a diagnosis of the situation of the Western world. The evil that is destroying the Western world is that of relativism, “The philosophical basis of Western democracies”, what ten years ago Joseph Ratzinger made to overlap with the fact that “letting yourself be blown out from here to there by any wind of doctrine.” In a relativist system, “All paths are possible as multiple fragments in the lane of progress. The greater good is believed to be the result of an ongoing dialogue with everyone, the encounter of different private opinions, a Tower of Babel in which everyone has a small part of truth.” Reading Robert Sarah’s interview is like going on an adventure filled with surprises.

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The memories of the evangelization work of the French missionaries stir passions; they allowed Christianity to reach the village in which little Robert’s family lived. To those men who gave their lives for Christ, the cardinal expresses his appreciation and gratitude. At the same time, in his words, the heart of the African Church vibrates with his great vocational and ecclesiastic vitality. Nonetheless, this belonging does not become a kind of pretext to look at the world and the Church in an ideological manner; instead, it leaves an open space to claims and accusations. Robert Sarah never stops expressing his love for the tradition of the Church, which allows him to insert the originality of his African roots in a universal horizon. He describes the ills of the Western world and does not hide “the problems of the African Church, which are due to the fact that it is a young Church.” According to the African cardinal, in the current historical and cultural situation, the Church is called upon to let itself be dragged by a fervent love for Christ and a passion for men’s destiny. It is called upon to give answers. “Faced with the wave of subjectivism, the men in the Church should not deny reality by letting themselves be intoxicated by appearances and a misleading glory.” The Church, “if it determines that its teachings cannot be comprehended, should not fear to try to regain its feetIt is not about shaping the demands of the gospel, or changing Jesus and the apostles’ doctrine to adapt it to current trends, but about radically challenging the way through which we ourselves live the gospel and present the dogma.”

MARTINO DE CARLI

NOT AS THE WORLD GIVES THE WAY OF CREATIVE JUSTICE

n short, this book results from a crucial loving dynamic of the Holly Trinity: man reality: we do not create ourselves, but are becomes complete with woman, just like created by someone else. Neither things woman becomes complete with man, and nor humans give themselves the capacity to from their mutual love comes the child. be; in that regard, everything is given to us (Like in a line by Alberto Tach: “We are a two that becomes three.”) by someone who loves us: Caldecott analyses the way God. Dante already sang in which individualism (let it: “the love that moves the us say that it does not have stars.” Stratford Caldecott “trinity”) makes barren the delves deeper into that love being who assumes that and captures and shares him/herself is enough and its mysterious Trinity, all decides his/her actions all that glowing of love that by him/herself, throwing loves itself and loves us in away s ig n i f ic a nc e a nd Three people unutterably solidarity; in other words, One. Caldecott claims that ignoring God and his/her our existence, given by the neighbor. The failure of such Trinity due to its love, can egocentric and narcissistic transform everything we claim (a variant of the desire do when we feel it, and to be a super man or God) we must give everything cries out for a reunion with back in the form of life and Not As the World Gives the Trinity. It could be said work. Chapter by chapter, The Way of Creative Justice that this whole book is an Stratford Caldecott deploys Stratford Caldecott expansion of one of Pope the praxis that is assumed Angelico Press 2014 292 pages. Francis’ teachings about the and based in the gift of commandment to be just existence to correctly love the supreme Love. Its essential effect is to with one’s neighbor, a consequence of the shift our love for our neighbor towards love veneration of God. A type of creative justice for the Trinity, which exploits the supportive that invents a whole culture composed of organization of our peers: justice with education, social progress, and support. mercy and mercy with justice, to establish The Pope wrote: “A man comprehensively the polis, not the Greek one or the modern religious is called upon to be a just man, Babylon, but the one he calls “The Radiant who carries justice to others. In that sense City” (which reminds me of “Harmonious the justice of religion, or religious justice, City” by Charles Péguy). Everything for creates culture.” There the creative justice Stratford is trinitarian and the resemblance of the title is explained, along with the way of the human being to God mirrors the of giving oneself and being given “to the

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divine” and not “to the mundane.” To give oneself to the divine, one must observe the beatitudes” transcending in the imitation of that set that for Caldecott is “a self-portrait of the Christ” who preaches them. (In other words, it is the same as saying to us “blessed if you are like me.”) The trinitarian group of beatitudes advises us to observe three attitudes: poverty, chastity, and obedience. Those three attitudes govern the priestly consecration and also marriage, whose reason of existing is to create those three votes in the world, and thus become Imago Trinitatis. The book contains a plethora

of knowledge and experiences. It must be read with no hurry, letting it fill us with its claims. But the usual reader does not have an infinite amount of time, and when the reader does have the time, he/she faces all kinds of distractions. This prevents the quick assimilation of this long essay, which would have been more effective if it had been written in a more concise manner. However, conciseness and value do not always go hand in hand; I must praise this book’s content... and invite others to read it carefully.

LUIS VARGAS SAAVEDRA

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: A PORTRAIT IN LETTERS

ather R. Strange, the editor of the book, is the former rector of Rome’s Pontifical Beda College in Rome (1998 y 2015) and was also once a chaplain at Oxford University. One may assume that these positions he held provided him with a unique proximity to the figure and work of Blessed John Henry Newman, which has been well captured in this careful compilation of selected letters, and which is presented in an enjoyable 23 page introduction. No doubt, Oxford University deserves credits for the initiative of such a significant publication devoted to one of his most renowned chaplains in St. Mary’s church. In this place he pronounced some of his most famous sermons and it was here too, where

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he suffered his interior process that would eventually lead him to leave the Church of England to join the Roman Catholic faith. Given his intellectual prominence in those days, his conversion caused a loud reaction among those in his closest circle and throughout England. As Strange recalls in his Introduction, “the crucial aspect (…) was apostolicity, the belief that the Church was to be recognized through its communion with the bishops, the successors of the apostles. Apostolicity was for him the driving force, essential in principle to the Christian Church. The Oxford Movement sought to revive awareness of its presence within Anglicanism. The challenge was great because in those days the English

In addition to the valuable Introduction, regarded their Church as Protestant. What was catholic was dismissed as papist. the volume edited by Oxford University Newman new he would be misunderstood”. Press comprises 12 chapters, each one Like his fellow Victorians, Newman was a preceded by a brief explanation of the context great letter writer, most of which have been in which those letters were written. The almost entirely preserved and systematically content of the chapters ranges from his ‘Early archived in t he Birmingham Oratory. years’ (1801-33) to his ‘Final years’ (1881-90), with the numerous letters Such letters, around 20.000, written in between, covering have been compiled into important moments of his 32 substantial volumes of life such as ‘The Oxford correspondence, of which Movement’, ‘Early Catholic Roderick has made a Years’, ‘Dark days’, ‘Vatican careful selection to present I and Answering Gladstone’, the best ones in this nearly among others. 600 page book. Apart from a thematic I a n K e r, a n O x f o r d and onomastic index, the professor and writer of collection brings along an Newman’s most complete interesting description of biography, used his letters his correspondents, which as a source of inspiration. facilitates identifying the Ker himself has pointed out relat ion t hey h ad w it h the pertinence and beauty Newman at the time when of Strange’s selection, the the letters were written. same as the arrangement John Henry NEWMAN: As noted in the very same of the epistolary, and has A portrait in letters index, their biographical valued the assembling of Edited by Roderick Strange details were developed these documents in order Oxford University Press, 2015 “with notes derived largely to make them accessible to 595 pp. f rom t he i n for mat ion a vast readership in their supplied in the published original form. T h e b o o k h a s a n u n q u e s t i o n a bl e volumes of Newman’s Letters and Diaries”. In short, a book that will make authentic ‘atmosphere’ which invites the reader into the depths of Newman’s world. In a letter written Newman followers rejoice for its vivid to his sister Jemina in 1863, he stated that “a atmosphere, as well as assisting the work man’s life lies in his letters”, a consideration of thousands of researchers of Newman’s that was also somehow reflected in his life works in the whole world. and his cardinal motto:”Cor ad cor loquitur” (The heart speaks to the heart).

JAIME ANTÚNEZ ALDUNATE

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About the Authors WILLIAM CARROLL. Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford and member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion of the University of Oxford. GIOVANNI CUCCI. S.J. Professor in the Faculty of philosophy, Pontifical Universita Gregoriana. Contributor of the Civilta Cattolica. This article was published in this journal, issue 3799. CLEMENS FRANKEN. PhD in Literature. Professor in the Faculty of Arts at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. PAULA JULLIAN. PhD, Birmingham, UK. Professor in the Faculty of Letters at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. ALFONSO LÓPEZ QUINTÁS. PhD. Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid. MICHAEL NAUGHTON. Koch Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Director of the Centre for Catholic Studies -the oldest and largest Catholic Studies program in the world. JOSEF PIEPER. German philosopher (1904-1997). ANDREA DALL’ ASTA. Director of the San Fedele Gallery in Milan. This article was published in this journal, issue 3641. MARCO RUPNIK S.J. Artist and director of the Aletti Centre in Rome. GIUSEPPE SAVAGNONE. Italian writer.

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Jaime Antúnez. Director of humanitas the Institute of Chile.

review .

PhD in Philosophy. Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences of

Francisco Claro. Professor of the Faculty of Physics of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. PhD in Physics (University of Oregon, USA). Fellow of the American Physical Society. Member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences. Hernán Corral. PhD in Law. Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences of the Institute of Chile. Carmen Domínguez. Professor of the Faculty of Law of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. PhD in Law (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Director of the UC Centre for the Family. Gabriel Guarda O.S.B. Abbot Emeritus of the Benedictine Monastery of St, Trinity of Las Condes. National Prize for History, 1984. Member of the History Academy of the Institute of Chile. Pedro Morandé. PhD in Sociology. Professor of the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences of the Institute of Chile. Rodrigo Polanco. Professor of the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. PhD in Sacred Theology (Gregorian University, Italy). Former rector of the Pontifical Seminary of Santiago. Ricardo Riesco. PhD in Geography. Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences of the Institute of Chile. Juan de Dios Vial Correa. Former Rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Former President of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Chile. Juan de Dios Vial Larraín. Philosopher. Former Rector of the University of Chile. Honoured with the National Award for Humanities and Social Sciences (1997). Member of the Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences of the Institute of Chile. Arturo Yrarrázaval. PhD in Law. Former Dean of the Faculty of Law of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

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HUMANITAS

Council of Consultants and Collaborators

year V

c h r i s t i a n a n t r hop ol o gic a l a n d c u lt u r a l r e v i e w / n º 9 / y e a r v

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HOPE Giovanni Cucci S.J. IS IT STILL POSSIBLE TO EDUCATE? José Savagnone

PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE CHILE

Interview to William Carroll THE RAISING INTEREST ON SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS IN CHINA THE BEAUTY OF ART A conversation with Marko Rupnik