absolute – eyebeleave

Capacity for otherness

1390 words, 7 min read

A couple of weeks ago I had an article recommended to me that I then read and greatly appreciated. Since the original is in Spanish, I would here like to offer a quick translation of the text to English, since I believe that it has a high degree of relevance and value beyond its original context. The article is entitled “A space yet to be discovered” and was written by the Catalan Jesuit, Xavier Melloni, in response to the current, tense political situation in Catalonia. Here Melloni offers his perspective on what it takes to truly dialogue with another person, which is something that is needed everywhere and at all times.

In view of the events of recent months in Catalonia, the assessments and interpretations we have made have grown out of our own positions. At first it can not be otherwise, because we do not see reality as it is, but as we are. There is no objective reality and subjective perception, instead at the moment of perceiving reality we are already configuring and co-creating it with our categories. Starting from this assessment, is essential to avoid falling into moral judgments about the opinions of others, because opinion is preceded by perception, at the same time as perception being conditioned by opinion, because every cognitive act is both affective and perceptive. Now, if we want to go beyond the increasingly polarized, tense and entrenched situation in which we find ourselves, we have to find a place that transcends us and makes us all grow. This place is not behind us, as if nothing had happened, but within each one of us and in front of us, in a space still to be discovered and created. A space that will only appear and will only be reached when we are capable of mutual recognition, which also involves the ability to recognize one’s own excesses or mistakes.

So much is the vehemence of our positions that we do not have nor leave space for the other. We are facing an important and delicate issue that corresponds to the third and fourth needs according to the scale of Abraham Maslow: the sense of belonging and the need for recognition, issues that revolve around identity. Leaving space for the other does not mean confusing ourselves with them or submitting to their point of view, instead it implies considering them seriously and tenaciously as part of the reality that we both (three, four, hundreds, thousands, millions of citizens) are parts of. We are all parts of everything and we are parts of an All. We must come to accept that the other’s point of view is as necessary and valid as our own and welcome it, just as we expect the other to do so with regard to ourselves. For this to be possible, the first step is to avoid judgment, to not dismiss the other. I can only maintain my own position with nobility if I consider that the position of the other is also noble and that they, as I do, look for their sense of belonging and for their need for recognition. Every time I think or say that the other is stupid or lies, we are annihilating them and committing mental or verbal violence against them, even if they do not hear us. We have to arrive at a vote of confidence in the other having some reasons in terms of which they perceive-interpret events in a way that is different and even opposed to mine, but that this does not mean that they lie, just as I hope that they do not consider me an idiot or a liar either, because I perceive-interpret things in a way opposite to theirs.

If we are able to have such openness and such respect, many things will follow, since an affective and cognitive space will appear where the other is present also. This nobility and generosity towards the other, this vote of firm and sustained confidence is put to the test when the other then does not give me space, when I do not feel that they recognize me. It is then easy to give in and respond with the same dismissal and judgment that I receive.

The principles of non-violence are very demanding and their fruits tend to be long-term. Only rarely are they immediate. But this is the test that a confrontation must go through if it wants to be noble. If the confrontation is noble, it will ennoble those who participate in it and they will turn it into fertile dialogue. If it is vile, confrontation will degrade them. It is difficult, very difficult, to persist in the non-dismissal of the other when their opinion, attitude or action are opposed to our own. But it is here that the extent to which we have integrated the values of the Gospel into our lives, which are the same as those of non-violence, manifests itself. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: ““You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.” (Mt 5:21-22).

What Jesus means is that when we insult someone, we are killing them. We kill them because we do not recognize them, because we eliminate them by condemning them to the categories we have assigned them. The other cannot be recognized in the image I have made of him. Then I cannot expect them to recognize me either. An abyss has been created between the two. We are both condemned by the other. This is the fire by which we are consumed. What is the way out of this hell? “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.” (Mt 5:38-41).

The bar is very high, as high are the flames of the fire that devours us and as tall are the walls that we must transcend to find the place where we still are not.

This is not naiveté or “do-goodery”, instead they are the conditions for the possibility of a new way of existing and co-existing that can be born in each moment if we apply ourselves to it. The challenge is to convert every act, every word and every thought into a spiritual exercise. I understand by “spiritual” the open and available space that exists between me and the other, beyond and deeper than our understandable, but visceral and totally insufficient, reactions. Political and civic life are urgently in need of this demanding exercise of the containment and transcendence of our positions that are still too primary and emotional. The emotions are intense, but ephemeral. What remains are acts and we still have time to reorient them towards the creation of a common space.

Space widens when we look, speak and act from a broader perspective that includes the other. Conversely, when we absolutize our point of view, we constrain our inner space and also the common space and we tear each other apart because there is no space for everyone. We cannot wait to open this space until the other is willing to do so. It begins to appear when one takes the first step and acts with courage and generosity, giving a vote of confidence to the other, as many times as necessary. “As many as seven times?” “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.” (Mt 18:21-22).

Each one of those times brings me closer to the other, who, feeling recognized, sooner or later will also recognize me and we will discover a space that is fruitful for all. Is not this the opportunity we have to grow together in greater capacity for otherness?

Comte-Sponville: non-dogmatic, faithful, atheist mysticism

Infinity

1189 words, 6 min read

Avvenire, the Italian daily affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, has published a very interesting piece yesterday by the French atheist philosopher André Comte-Sponville, entitled “The atheist believes … But does not know whether God exists.” As I started reading it, I was immediately reminded of an enriching exchange with some atheist friends of mine – especially SC – after I wrote a very negative review of Dawkins’ The God Delusion some three years’ ago. SC, at the time, presented a new type of atheism to me, which acknowledges its belief in there being no God, as opposed to the New Atheists’ argument for that position following directly from rationality. Reading Comte-Sponville’s words made me immediately recognize that same position, and I would like to share an English translation of it with you here:

““Religion” and “spirituality” are not synonyms, nor should they be put on the same level. These two concepts function instead like species and genus: religions are a certain species, or several species, of the genus spirituality, but from among the many possible, some of which do very well without any personal God, indeed without any form of transcendence. [… S]pirituality is [simply] the life of the spirit.

Etymology speaks clearly: the two words, “spirit” and “spirituality”, derive from the Latin spiritus, which refers first of all to vital breath and, in second place, to inspiration, genius, wit, esprit. Now, atheists, as far as I know them, have no less spirit than others. Why should they have less spirituality? Why should they care less about spiritual life? As for me, I have always been interested in it. That’s how it was at the time of my youth, when I was a practicing Christian; but since I stopped believing in God, spirituality interests me even more, which might seem paradoxical and leads us to the heart of our subject. Those who have a religion, also have the spirituality that characterizes it. But how about those who do not belong to a religion? They seems devoid of spiritual resources, especially in the West. Even more reason to think about it. I summarize my position in one sentence: I am a non-dogmatic and faithful atheist. Why atheist? This is the simplest question: I do not believe in any God. Let’s not dwell on the reasons for my not believing; doing so would take me far away from the theme of my argument here, which is not metaphysics, but spirituality. Why a non-dogmatic atheist?

Because I obviously recognize that my atheism is not knowledge. How could it be? No one knows, in the true and strong sense of the verb “to know” whether God exists or not. It depends very much on the question that is addressed to me. If I am asked: “Do you believe in God?”, The answer is very simple: “No, I do not believe.” But if someone asks me, “Does God exist?”, the answer is necessarily more complicated, because, for intellectual honesty, I must begin by saying that I know nothing about it. Nobody knows. I say in my book, if anyone says, “I know for certain that God does not exist,” you are not dealing with an atheist, but a fool. The truth is that I do not know. Likewise, if you meet someone who tells you: “I know that God exists,” he is a fool who has faith, and who, foolishly, confuses faith with knowledge. But in the confusion between faith and knowledge I see a double error: a theological error, because in any respectable theology (at least in Christian theology) faith is a grace, while knowledge can not be; and a philosophical error, because it confuses two different concepts, that of belief and that of knowing. In short, I do not know if God exists or not; I believe that he does not.

A non-dogmatic atheism is an atheism that admits its own status as a belief, in this specific case a negative beliefs. Being non-dogmatic atheists is to believe (rather than to know) that God does not exist. But why a non-dogmatic and faithful atheist? A faithful atheist because, as an atheist, I remain bound with every fiber of my being to a number of values – moral, cultural, spiritual – many of which were born in the great religions and, in the case of Europe, the Judeo-Christian one (unless one wants to deny their history). […] Being an atheist doesn’t mean that I have to turn my back on 2000 years of Christian civilization or 3000 years of Judeo-Christian civilization.

Because I no longer believe in God doesn’t mean that I refuse to recognize the greatness, at least human, of the Gospel message. A spirituality without God is a spirituality of loyalty rather than of faith and of love in action rather than of hope. I could stop here, but I would be left with a feeling of not having touched the essentials. I said earlier that spirituality is the life of the spirit. Fine. But if the word is taken in such a broad sense, every human phenomenon ends up falling under the umbrella of spirituality: morality and ethics, of course, but also science and myths, the arts and politics, feelings or dreams. All this belongs to the spiritual life in a broad sense (in its cognitive, mental or emotional dimensions), to the life that, for clarity, you could define as psychological or mental (from the Greek psyche and the Latin mens, two words that can also be translated by the word “spirit”, but in semantic terms very different from those derived from the Latin spiritus). Now, it is not at all these areas that you think of when it comes to spiritual life.

It is better to take the word “spirituality” in a narrower sense (although, paradoxically, a more open one), making it a sort of subset of our mental or psychological life. The definition I propose is the following: spirituality is the life of the spirit, but especially in its relationship with the infinite, eternal, the absolute. This meaning seems to me to conform to its use and tradition. Our spiritual life is our finite relationship with the infinite, our temporal relationship with eternity, our relative relationship with the absolute. Thus defined, spirituality, at its must extreme, culminates in what is usually called mysticism.”

In an earlier interview, Comte-Sponville expands on what he means by “the absolute” as follows:

“This absolute, for them, isn’t a person, but the being or the becoming, the whole or nature, let’s say the immanent totality which contains them and surpasses them. They can ponder it, think about it, it’s what we call metaphysical, but also try it out, live it, and it’s this we call spirituality. We are open in the grand Open, as Rilke says. This opening, it’s the same spirit. Should I, because I am atheist, renounce all experience of eternity, the infinite, and the absolute? Certainly not. Many philosophers – for example Epicurus and Spinoza – have challenged the existence of a transcendental spirit, without renouncing the enjoyment of what Epicurus called ‘immortal rights’. It’s this I call a spirituality of immanence.”

Romero: disobey false absolutes

Romero

After a tumultuous process following his martyrdom, Oscar Romero is finally due to be beatified on 23rd May in San Salvador, where he served as archbishop and where he was assassinated by a member of a death squad on 24th March 1980. Instead of writing about his life,¹ I would like to share some of his own words with you, from his pastoral letters, homilies and diaries.

Starting from his pastoral letters, there is a strong sense of the social dimension of Christianity, which grows from and is interconnected with individual choices:

“Throughout the centuries the Church has, quite rightly, denounced sin. Certainly she has denounced personal sins, and she has also denounced the sin that perverts relationships between persons, especially at the family level. But she has begun to recall now something that, at the Church’s beginning, was fundamental: social sin – the crystalization, in other words, of individuals’ sins into permanent structures that keep sin in being, and make its force to be felt by the majority of the people.” (2nd pastoral letter, 1977)

In the same pastoral letter, Romero’s response to the “crystalization” of personal sin into “structures of sin” is a call to an authentic, present-day, up-to-date Christianity that understands tradition like Vatican II does – as being alive:

“To remain anchored in a non-evolving traditionalism, whether out of ignorance or selfishness, is to close one’s eyes to what is meant by authentic Christian tradition. For the tradition that Christ entrusted to his Church is not a museum of souvenirs to be protected. It is true that tradition comes out of the past, and that it ought to be loved and faithfully preserved. But it has always a view to the future. It is a tradition that makes the Church new, up to date, effective in every historical epoch. It is a tradition that nourishes the Church’s hope and faith so that she may go on preaching, so that she may invite all men and women to the new heaven and new earth that God has promised (Revelation 21:1; Isaiah 65:17).”

Next, Romero moves on to emphasizing the non-legal, non-rule-based nature of faith and instead presents a model of participation in the person of Christ, as St. Paul did:

“The Church’s foundation is not to be thought of in a legal or juridical sense, as if Christ gathered some persons together, entrusted them with a teaching, gave them a kind of constitution, but then himself remained apart from them. It is not like that. The Church’s origin is something much more profound. Christ founded the Church so that he himself could go on being present in the history of humanity precisely through the group of Christians who make up his Church. The Church is the flesh in which Christ makes present down the ages his own life and his personal mission.”

This is an idea that he returned to in a meditation later that year, which also foreshadows Pope Benedict XVI’s introduction to the 2012-13 Year of Faith:

“How I would like to engrave this great idea
on each one’s heart:
Christianity is not a collection of truths to be believed,
of laws to be obeyed,
of prohibitions.
 That makes it very distasteful.
Christianity is a person,
one who loved us so much,
one who calls for our love.
Christianity is Christ.” (November 6, 1977)

Romero continues in his second pastoral letter with making the link between the Church’s authenticity and her being the Body of Christ:

“That is how changes in the Church are to be understood. They are needed if the Church is to be faithful to her divine mission of being the Body of Christ in history. The Church can be Church only so long as she goes on being the Body of Christ. Her mission will be authentic only so long as it is the mission of Jesus in the new situations, the new circumstances, of history. The criterion that will guide the Church will be neither the approval of, nor the fear of, men and women, no matter how powerful or threatening they may be. It is the Church’s duty in history to lend her voice to Christ so that he may speak, her feet so that he may walk today’s world, her hands to build the kingdom, and to enable all its members to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ (Colossians 1:24).”

And again it is a theme he picks up in a mediation around a year later, which is also an examination of conscience:

“Christ became a man of his people and of his time:
He lived as a Jew,
he worked as a laborer of Nazareth,
and since then he continues to become incarnate in everyone.
 If many have distanced themselves from the church,
it is precisely because the church
has somewhat estranged itself from humanity.
But a church that can feel as its own all that is human
and wants to incarnate
the pain,
 the hope,
 the affliction
of all who suffer and feel joy,
such a church will be Christ loved and awaited,
Christ present.
And that depends on us.” (December 3, 1978)

What does a Church that has not become estranged from humanity and that lends “her feet so that he may walk today’s world” look like? Romero here points to the Matthean questions and updates them to his own time and place:

“There is one rule
by which to judge if God is near us
or is far away –
the rule that God’s word is giving us today:
everyone concerned for the hungry,
the naked,
the poor,
for those who have vanished in police custody,
for the tortured,
for prisoners,
for all flesh that suffers,
has God close at hand.” (February 5, 1978)

Returning to his second pastoral letter, Romero also underlines the non-negotiability of Jesus’ command – even in the face of aggression directed against the Church – to love one another has He has loved us and for that “another” to include our enemies:

“The Church has never incited to hatred or revenge, not even at those saddest of moments when priests have been murdered and faithful Christians have been killed or have disappeared. The Church has continued to preach Jesus’ command love one another (John 15:12). This is a command that the Church cannot renounce, nor has she renounced it, not even in recent months. On the contrary, she has recalled that other command, pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44).”

Such conduct is anything but plain sailing though and is both a thorn in the side of those who seek wealth and power for themselves and a pretext for accusations being leveled against the Church (still from Romero’s second pastoral letter):

“The Church is not dedicated to any particular ideology as such. She must be prepared to speak out against turning any ideology into an absolute. As several of the Latin American hierarchies have said time and again in recent years, worldly interests try to make the Church’s position seem Marxist when it is in fact insisting on fundamental human rights and when it is placing the whole weight of its institutional and prophetic authority at the service of the dispossessed and weak.”

What struck me in the above was also Romero’s denunciation of the absolutization of ideologies, where it is not hard to see examples of this happening also today, and I was glad to see him return to this point and expand on it in his fourth (and final) pastoral letter as the Archbishop of San Salvador. There, his point of departure is an acclamation of transcendence, which he – interestingly – links to critical thinking and which he puts in opposition against the absolutization of human (limited) values:

“As well as offending God, every absolutization disorients, and ultimately destroys, human beings. It is the vocation of human beings to raise themselves to the dignity of the children of God and to participate in God’s divine life. This transcendence of human beings is not an escape from problems here on earth, still less is it an opium that distracts them from their obligations in history. On the contrary, by virtue of this transcendent destiny people have the capacity to always remain critical vis-a-vis the events of history. It gives them a powerful inspiration to reach out to ever higher goals. Social forces should hearken to the saving voice of Christ and of true Christians, cease their questioning, and open themselves to the values of the one and only Absolute. When a human value is turned into an absolute and endowed, whether in theory or in practice, with a divine character, human beings are deprived of their highest calling and inspiration. The spirit of the people is pushed in the direction of a real idolatry, which will only deform and repress it.”

Next, he applies the analysis of absolutization to two contexts, the first of which is wealth:

“The absolutization of wealth holds out to persons the ideal of having more and to that extent reduces interest in being more, whereas the latter should be the ideal for true progress, both for the people as such and for every individual. The absolute desire of having more encourages the selfishness that destroys communal bonds among the children of God. It does so because the idolatry of riches prevents the majority from sharing the goods that the Creator has made for all, and in the all-possessing minority it produces an exaggerated pleasure in these goods.”

Second, he looks at national security with the same optics – a topic of acute relevance also in today’s world:

“By virtue of [the absolutization of national security], the individual is placed at the total service of the state. His or her political participation is suppressed, and this leads to an unequal participation in the results of development. Peoples are put into the hands of military elites, and are subjected to policies that oppress and repress all who oppose them, in the name of what is alleged to be total war. The armed forces are put in charge of social and economic structures under the pretext of the interests of national security. Everyone not at one with the state is declared a national enemy, and the requirements of national security are used to justify assassinations, disappearances, arbitrary imprisonment, acts of terrorism, kidnappings, acts of torture … [all] indicate a complete lack of respect for the dignity of the human person (Puebla #1262).”

It is not hard to see from all of the above why Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the postulator of Oscar Romero’s cause for beatification, characterized him by saying: “Romero is truly a martyr of the Church of Vatican II, a Church, as Pope John used to say, who is mother of all, but in particular of the poor.” Everything I have read by him was steeped in the Gospel and in its reading today through the eyes of Vatican II. It is also for this reason that Paglia referred to Romero as the “proto-martyr” of contemporary martyrs.

No account of a martyr’s thought would be complete without including the words pertaining to his own martyrdom, which is a culmination of a life of imitating Christ. Here, Romero was acutely aware of the risk to his own life, which can be readily seen from an interview he gave just days before being shot at long range while celebrating mass:

“You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.”

In spite of the severe threats to his life, even on the day before his death, Romero spoke out against the “structures of sin” that he had been fighting for many years, addressing a group of soldiers:

“Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination … In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression!”

¹ For a brief biography of Archbishop Romero, see the one provided by the UN on the website about the “International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims,” dedicated to him and held on the anniversary of his martyrdom, the 24th March.

Pope Francis’ letter to non-believers

That Pope Francis cares deeply for non-believers¹ is nothing new, with his previous declaration that Jesus has redeemed atheists too having lead both to very positive responses and to a great media muddle. In today’s issue of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Francis continues in this dialogue with non-believers by responding to questions sent to him by the atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari regarding Francis’ encyclical Lumen Fidei, and I would like to share my favorite parts of his letter with you here.²

Francis starts out by arguing that dialogue between the followers of Jesus and non-believers is “necessary and valuable” today for two reasons: First, the paradox that “Christian faith, whose novelty and impact on human life have since the beginning been expressed through the symbol of light, has become branded as the darkness of superstition that is opposed to the light of reason,” resulting in an absence of communication between Christian and Enlightenment-based contemporary culture. Second, for those who seek “to follow Jesus in the light of faith, […] this dialogue is not a secondary accessory[, but …] an intimate and indispensable expression of faith instead.” This, Francis argues, is expressed by §34 of Lumen Fidei, from which he proceeds to quote:

“Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent, but grows in respectful coexistence with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, since believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth which embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.”

After a beautiful exposition of how Francis himself came to believe in God and how the Christian faith has Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection at its heart, through which all of humanity is shown God’s love and connectedness to each other – to every single human being,³ he proceeds to answering the three questions Scalfari put to him.

The first of Scalfari’s questions regards whether “the God of Christians forgives those who don’t believe and don’t seek faith.” Here Francis’s response, which I particularly like, is the following:

“Given that – and this is the fundamental point – the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to Him with a sincere and contrite heart, the question for those who don’t believe in God is about obeying one’s own conscience. Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, occurs when one goes against conscience. Listening and obeying to it means, in fact, taking decisions in the face of what becomes understood as good or as bad. And it is on the basis of this decision that the goodness or evil of our actions plays out.”

Wow! While this is in some sense nothing more than what the Catechism has been saying explicitly since Vatican II, having it presented in the above universal way is great. I have often argued in exactly these terms and have faced quizzical looks from other Catholics, who wouldn’t quite believe it. It also confirms me in the answer I have given to several of my best, atheist or agnostic friends when they have asked me whether they should want to believe in God, which was “no,” with the caveat of seeking to be honest in front of their consciences.

Scalfari’s second question asks whether “thinking that there is no absolute and therefore no absolute truth either, but only a series of relative and subjective truths, is a mistake or a sin.” Great question! 🙂 To this Francis responds by saying:

“To begin with, I wouldn’t talk, not even to those who believe, about “absolute” truth, in the sense that the absolute is that which is disconnected, which is devoid of any relation. Now, the truth, according to Christian faith, is the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the truth is a relationship! It is also true that each one of us takes it, the truth, and expresses it by departing from oneself: from one’s history and culture, the circumstances in which one lives, etc. This does not mean though that the truth is variable and subjective. Instead, it means that it gives itself to us always and only as a journey and a life. Didn’t maybe Jesus say the same: “I am the way and the truth and the life.”?⁴ In other words, truth, being ultimately all one with love, requires humility and openness when sought, accepted and expressed. Therefore, it is necessary to understand each other’s terminology better, and, maybe, to avoid the constraints of an opposition that is … absolute, deepen the framing of the question. I believe that this is absolutely necessary today, so that a serene and constructive dialogue can take place.”

Another fantastic answer! Anyone who has tried to pigeonhole Francis as a populist, as opposed to the thinker that Benedict XVI undoubtedly is, can proceed to eat their own words …

The third, and final of Scalfari’s questions asks whether “the disappearance of humans from Earth would also mean a disappearance of thought that is capable of thinking God.” Here, Francis’ answer, which I won’t translate in full, revolves around arguing that, in his experience and those of many others, God is not an idea, but a “reality with a capital ‘R’.” Instead of going into more detail here, I’d instead like to translate Francis’ closing thoughts, before which he expresses his hope that his reflections would be “received as a tentative and provisional response, but one that is sincere and faithful to the invitation of walking along a stretch of road together.”:

“The Church, believe me, in spite of all the slowness, the unfaithfulness, the mistakes and sins that it may have committed and may yet commit in those who compose it, has no other meaning and end than that of living and giving testimony to Jesus: Him who has been sent by the Father “to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19).”

I have to say I am delighted by these words of Pope Francis – both the emphasis on conscience that I have held dear for a long time and the insights about truth as relationship and love – and I would be keen to hear from my atheist, agnostic, humanist (and even Christian 🙂 friends what they made of them.

UPDATE (12 Sept. 2013): This morning Vatican Radio broadcast a short interview with Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi on the topic of Pope Francis’ letter discussed above (which is now available in an official English translation here). Ravasi, who leads the Pontifical Council for Culture and in its context the “Courtyard of the Gentiles” initiative, whose aim is dialogue with non-believers, naturally welcomed Francis’ letter with great positivity, including it among the initiatives foundational documents. He then also proceeds to elaborate on the, to my mind key, point Francis made about the truth being a relationship:

“Already Plato affirmed [that the truth is a relationship] when he said that the chariot of the soul runs along the plane of truth, which means that the truth is not a cold reality like a precious stone that you can put in your pocket. Instead, it is an immense plane, a horizon – or, to use another image by a writer from the last century⁵ – we can say that the truth is a sea that one enters and navigates. So, in this light, I believe that the concept of truth not as absolute, but personal, interpersonal, will be very fruitful for dialogue, without losing the dimension of objectivity, of identity in itself, typical of the truth.”

¹ Picking what term to use to refer to those who do not believe in God is tricky and I am going with the term Francis is using himself, not necessarily because I believe it is the most appropriate one, but because my aim here is to share his message with you today. I am mindful though of Prof. Cox’s point about the undesirability of negative labels, but since the positive alternatives (e.g., humanist) may not be self-applied by all whom the Pope intends to address here, I am sticking with his terminology. If you belong to his target audience (and to some extent everyone does – including me, a Catholic) and have a suggestion for what term to use, please, let me know.
² Since I haven’t found an English translation of this article yet, the following quotes are my own crude translations, for which I apologize in advance.
³ I’d like to return to this great synthesis of Christianity in a future post and, if you understand Italian, I’d wholeheartedly recommend reading the full letter to you straight-away.
⁴ John 14:6.
⁵ Ravasi refers to this quote in an earlier talk, where he attributes it to Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, although I couldn’t find it there.