What a Christmas gift to all of us from
that amazing Pope Francis, his first Message for the World Day of Peace, Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to
Peace. A tightly reasoned statement in
ten sections; here is an effort to summarize some key points:
An irrepressible wish for fraternity
enables us to see others not as enemies or rivals, but as brothers and
sisters. However, reference to a common
Father is needed; otherwise it becomes “a mere do ut des /I give so that you
give/ which is both pragmatic and selfish”.
The story of Cain and Abel /the first
brothers, sons of the first couple, Adam and Eve/ “teaches that we have an inherent
calling to fraternity, but also the tragic capacity to betray that calling”:
Cain killed Abel out of jealousy because God preferred Abel.
Human fraternity is regenerated in and
by Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection–the Cross is the definitive
foundational focus of that fraternity-/no/ separation between the people of the
Covenant and the Gentiles–not party to the pact of the Promise.
Fraternity is the foundation and
pathway–peace is work, an opus solidaritatis, a duty of solidarity, of social
justice, of universal charity, of a more human and sustainable development.
Fraternity is indispensable to fight
poverty, poor relationships, increasingly pathological dependencies–but it has
to be in the heart of families and communities, through the sharing of joys and
sorrows– /to inspire/ policies that lighten an excessive inequality.
Rediscovery of fraternity in the economy
should overcome the greedy pursuit of material goods and impoverishment of
interpersonal and community relations, /lead to/ a rethinking of our models of
economic development and to change of lifestyles in favor of prudence,
temperance, justice and strength–in favor of human dignity.
Fraternity extinguishes war by hearing
the cry of suffering of the defenseless victims, and instead of seeing the
other as an enemy to be beaten, discovers your brother and sister and goes out
to meet the other in dialogue, pardon and reconciliation, /making/ peace a
fundamental human right and a prerequisite for every other right.
Corruption and organized crime threaten
fraternity–people should compete with one another in mutual esteem remembering
that we are brothers and sisters, overcoming corruption and criminal
organization, money trafficking and financial speculation, prostitution and
rape.
Fraternity preserves and cultivates
nature as a common gift from the Creator
by acknowledging the “grammar” inscribed in nature and exercise a
responsible stewardship over it, like in the agricultural sector to avoid the
continuing disgrace of hunger in the world.
Fraternity must be discovered, loved,
experienced, proclaimed, witnessed through love, not technical know-how bereft
of ideals and unconcerned with the transcendent dimension through service, the
soul of a fraternity that brings peace to each person on our beloved earth.
So much beauty and wisdom, also based on
many predecessors. A humanity struggling for peace can be grateful to a pope
reminding us of direct peace through solidarity, of structural peace through
development, and of the spiritual quality of peace, cultural peace. Take the
spiritual dedication to something beyond ourselves away from human beings and
we get human machines with technical know-how and exchange dominated by
pragmatism and selfishness. So far so good.
The problem comes with the
fraternity–later broadened to brothers and sisters–brought about by having the
same Father, the Christian God, confirmed through the faith in the Son, the
Christ, as the savior. The Pope bases fraternity on the Christian narrative and
the family model. But there is a broader
concept: the we-culture of exactly sharing joys and sorrows, as opposed to an
I-culture based on individual ethical budgets that become pragmatic and
selfish. Like a marriage without the
love of the we-ness.
Thus, for peace among Nordic countries,
among EU countries, in the whole world, there must be some feeling, not only an
idea-value of being Nordic, European, a part of humanity. There are faultlines
in our soul to be overcome to expand the circles of we-ness against all the
efforts by media and power-hungry “leaders” to deepen them as reasons for
killing.
Actually, the Pope explores fraternity
only for believers in the Father and the Son, bridging only the gap between
Jews and Christians. But no Christianity
is needed to see the other as a possible dialogue partner and not an automatic
enemy. This is already spiritual in its
we-ness. The Pope’s Christian pathway
may work for the believers but fortunately there are many others, some of them
more global.
The ever expanding human rights from
individualism to collective rights is one; and the Pope sees peace as
prerequisite for the other rights ([7] above). So does the Universal
Declaration in Article 28:
Everyone is entitled to a social and
international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this
Declaration can be fully realized.
We find in this path-breaking text
cooperation for mutual and (less un)equal benefit, harmony as sharing joys and
sorrows, pardon and reconciliation, but not Francis d’Assisi conflict
resolution, the key to negative peace as reduction of violence. We find a Father who prefers one brother to
the other, engendering jealousy; who admonishes Abraham to sacrifice his son
Isaac but in the last second stays his hand; yet sacrifices his own son Jesus
who cries for mercy rather than the mystery of John 3:16 [For God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life].
We find Jesus and his opus solidaritatis gone, the stern Father and the
Roman Empire surviving.
Imagine an alternative Christian
narrative. The two women, Mary and
Magdalena, mediate in the hexagon conflict with Father and Son, the Jews and
the Pharisees, Pontius Pilate and the Roman Empire. The Father liberates the
Son from the Cross for many years of samaritan work inspired by compassion and
conscience (and fulfilment of love with Magdalena), the Pharisees are assured
that the kingdom of which Jesus spoke is within and beyond, not as INRI (Iesus
Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum), the king of Jews, who then pardon both him and
Barrabas. Pontius Pilate argues with Rome in favor of an empire more as a
community of nations, one of them Jewish, possibly with him as the first
governor, presaging the Muslim Ottoman Empire–the extension not that
different–1500 years later. The Son,
jointly with his wife, focuses on ministry; the Father on love and
fraternity-sorority by deed and faith, not by fear of punishment like the
horror of the Machiavellian Italian prince–De Principatibus was written 500
years ago–so obviously modelled on the stern Father (and for that reason given
model character in the West).
It may be objected that this is not the
Christianity of the church of Pope Francis.
True, but the Roman Empire collapsed, and the world is moving, with the
role of women and democracy-autonomy-human rights at least as ideals, not
authoritarianism-empire-sacrifice.
Pope Francis is a Jesuit. Maybe more Son, less Father?
Johan Galtung. Fundador de los Estudios científicos sobre la
Paz. Director de Transcend: A Peace and Development Network y Rector de la
Transcend Peace University. Fundador del International Peace Research Institute
de Noruega. Profesor Investigador sobre Conflicto y Paz en la Universidad de Oslo
de 1969 a 1977. Mediador en conflictos internacionales (Sri Lanka, Afganistán,
Ecuador, etc.). Ganador del Premio Nobel Alternativo de la Paz en 1987 y el
Premio Gandhi en 1993. Autor de más de 50 libros y más de 1,000 artículos
publicados.