Dialogue For Diversity

Jesus stood up in the synagogue one day and announced: “He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives”. We are invited to join him on this mission in the world today.   If we were to ask him - ‘when did we see you poor or sick or naked?’ - he would say ‘as often as you did it to one of these you did it to me’. In the social apostolate we look to find God among the poor and the work of the Spirit in the shadows of society. 

The Experience of the Poor 

Isn’t this what we always referred to as the work of ‘charity’? In a way, yes, but to call it ‘charity’ is like saying to somebody ‘all you need is love’. Love is a highly structured achievement and needs to be spelt out in more detail if it is to apply to the many circumstances of life.  An over-simple approach to ‘charity’ has led to its being put down as the activity of ‘do gooders’. In the social apostolate we want to recover its richer meaning by pointing out that there is no charity without justice.   

 

But that brings up the problem of whose ‘justice’?   I used to think that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ until I read that “the roots of poverty and deprivation are in the structures and failures of our society, in our attitudes as individuals and in the institutions we have created that reflect them…a far-reaching transformation of the social structure has to take place” (Haselmere Declaration 1968).  Free trade continues to restructure the world unfairly without the just and social transformation that is needed. To see this you have to look at it from the viewpoint of those who are losing out and the way to tackle it is to reduce inequalities from the bottom up. Jesus had a preference for being with the poor; and his Spirit is to be found among those who live on the margins. There happiness will follow you.

 

Some Jesuits in India went to live with the ‘untouchables’ of their society. But then they began to wonder if they were not becoming like ‘the frog in the well’ who lives at the bottom and cannot get out of his situation. They decided then that they would continue to live with the people at the bottom and learn from them but that they would also keep up with the best international thinking on the situation and find ways of changing the situation. 

We used to talk about the ‘deserving’ poor as though the others were morally blameworthy for their situation.  Some benefactors contributed from their own hard earned wealth without recognising that their much exploited servants had earned it for them. The dogma of the free market claimed that the system was fair if individuals were free to do business and strike bargains without interference. The elect prospered and the losers had only themselves to blame. A fuller view of the world recognises that patterns of interaction emerge from myriads of individual exchanges and among them are included some vicious cycles of poverty and human misery. So instead of just relieving the poverty of individuals by handouts it would make sense to get to the causes of patterns of poverty and change them. For instance, if unsafe working practices make people unfit for work and therefore prey to poverty then change the safety regulations and prevent occupational diseases. The successful movement of solidarity that learned how to deal with problems like this is trade unionism. We now have in civil society similar movements of solidarity that tackle many diverse areas of deprivation. By accompanying people who suffer from homelessness, migration, precarious living, imprisonment and many forms of economic and social deprivation Jesuits have developed centres of social analysis backed up by communities of solidarity. And that is where their social apostolate is today. 

 

Analysis of the structures of wealth and poverty has been with us since Adam Smith and Karl Marx to mention only two of the great names. Smith’s writings led people to great wealth, but also to great poverty and often into market failures that generated huge social misery. Marx similarly contributed significant analysis that led people in other directions but they too ended up in system failure.  Even with social analysis there is still the question of what is to be done?  It is the church’s role to interpret true values and guide deliberation by reflection on the word of God. Since the nineteenth century it has been communicating the results of its reflections in the social letters of the Popes so that now we have a large body of social teaching to guide us in the social apostolate. Centres for social analysis such as the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice in Dublin (and in many other countries) reflect on this body of work and writes and advocates on the questions of imprisonment, health care and homeless youth.  

 

Analysis and reflection are fine but  St. James says:  ‘if one of the brothers or sisters is in need of clothes, and has not enough food to live on, and one of you says to him ‘I wish you well; keep yourself warm and eat plenty’ without giving them the bare necessities of life, then what good is that?”  Well chosen social action must follow on analysis and reflection.  Activities such as awareness-raising, writing and formation are all ways of empowering people to act and find their own solutions. There is a growing network of organisations in the voluntary and community sector where people act at the local level and advocate for their own rights and interests. This is a field of action that the social apostolate can engage in as another way of being church. 

 

Advocacy on a World Scale 

Problems such as poverty, hunger, war and under-development are worldwide and need global organisation to deal with them. Pedro Arrupe, that prophetic leader of Jesuits, saw the plight of refugees and founded the Jesuit Refugee Service which now operates in 80 countries across the world.  Following this example attempts are now being made to develop global networks of concern for issues such as environmental change, peace-building, and education for development. The good news is that God is working in the world, and Jesus’ mission is to ‘lose nothing’ of what belongs to him.