Maravi

Passage from less human to more human

Passage from less human to more human
By Editor
Tuesday April 15, 2008 [04:00]

READING Bishop George Lungu’s statement on the need for the government to force development in the country, we are reminded of Pope Paul VI’s writings or statements on this issue. Bishop Lungu says people do not need to wait for another election for them to see development and maintains that the church will not stop crying to government over the need to foster development in the country because our development has not reached an advanced stage; and is moving at a very slow pace.

Pope Paul VI said that what the Church can appropriately contribute is a global vision of the human being and of humanity, a vision that situates the progress of development within the human vocation.

Throughout the course of the centuries, human beings have laboured to better the circumstances of their lives through a monumental amount of individual and collective effort. To believers, this point is settled: such human activity is in accord with God’s will – all that we do is a response to the will of God.

But Pope Paul VI goes much further. He adds clarity and profundity to this: “In the design of God, all human beings are called upon to develop and fulfil themselves, for every life is a vocation.” Human beings are called upon to develop themselves. In this perspective, we understand development as liberation, with all that implies, even in the economic sphere.

Human emancipation is included within this vocation. The vocation, as we know, is to communion with God, to being a child of God – it is to this that we have been called (Eph. 1:5). To have a vocation means to have been created and chosen to be children of God.

But Pope Paul VI was careful to say that it was not a question of an individual vocation or of individual salvation. Rather, all human beings are called to this full development, which in the strong biblical sense we call convocation. Human beings are convoked and the process of development lies within that convocation – all are called to this fullness of development.

If this is true, if full, integral, and authentic development liberates human beings, then it is included within the human vocation. Development, therefore, is not a stage previous to evangelisation, which we refer to with the incorrect word, “pre-evangelisation”. Rather development is situated within one’s vocation and thus of one’s communion with God. It is not a previous step, but forms part of the process of salvation, because it is a vocation. Salvation, therefore, affects the whole human being.

The call of God includes all of reality and provides us with a radical change of outlook, a new way of evaluating the things of this world. This world is not a trampoline to leap upward to God, nor is it a stage on which to play a role – that is, a reality that does not interest us but allows us to be spiritual beings and to choose within it to be good or evil. No. If development is human fulfilment, it is part of our vocation, and all things have value.

There are no static obligations of charity that are somehow independent of the content of our actions of love. The world is not a “test”, nor is it a stage. The work of constructing the world, the work itself which is brought to realisation, has a salvific value.

If development exists within our vocation, it has the value of salvation. Not only what is done for the love of God, but everything which contributes to growth in humanity, everything which makes a person more human and contributes to human liberation, contains the value of salvation and communion with the Lord. In other words, integral development is salvation.

Pope Paul VI began his definition of development like this: it is to pass from less human conditions to more human conditions.

“Less human conditions: the lack of material necessities for those who are without the minimum essential for life, the moral duties of those who are mutilated by selfishness.

” That is less human. “Less human” also means “oppressive social structures, whether due to the abuses of ownership or to the abuses of power, to the exploitation of workers or to unjust transactions.” Thus “less human” are oppressive structures, something Christians are generally unaware of. The structure itself is oppressive, although naturally human beings are responsible for it. But let us not say too quickly that we can only change the structures by changing human beings.

Faced with contemporary humanism, which desires a change of structures, we are sometimes content to the recall that human beings are inclined to sin. Certainly everything is connected, and it is right for a global vision to show the connections between these different aspects.

But that global vision should not say that first we must change human beings in order afterward to change the structures. After Karl Marx – that greatest economic and political thinker of all time, it is no longer possible to say first change the human being and then the structures.

Our global vision must be able to see everything in a systematic way. Human behaviour is conditioned by the structures that human beings have created. It is a question, then, of simultaneous action on human beings and structures.

As regards the passage from less human to more human, Pope Paul VI moves step by step: “More human: the passage from misery toward the possession of necessities, victory over social scourges,” in this case scourges not of a personal kind but of structures.

Also more human is “the growth of knowledge, the acquisition of culture”. More human is “increased esteem for the dignity of others, turning towards the spirit of poverty”. We think we have to understand this spirit of poverty correctly. “Poor in spirit” is an ambiguous expression.

More human is “cooperation for the common good, the will and desire for peace”. More human, too, is the acknowledgement by human beings of absolute values and of God. Finally and especially, more human is “faith, a gift of God accepted by the good will of human beings and unity in the charity of Christ, who calls us all to share as sons in the life of the giving God, the father of all”.

More human is grace, more human is faith, more human is to be a child of God. Consequently, we can say that integral development, authentic emancipation, and human liberation are, for Pope Paul VI, salvation. Actually, Pope Paul VI is sketching the whole process of development, which proceeds from material and moral misery toward the grace of God.

This is development, which is also a task and a call to action.
We emphasise that the work of building the earth is not a preceding stage, not a stepping-stone, but already the work of salvation.

The creation of a just and fraternal society is the salvation of human beings, if by salvation we mean the passage from the less human to the more human. Salvation, therefore, is not purely “religious”.

In all this, Pope Paul VI and Bishop Lungu are only retrieving the most ancient tradition of the Catholic Church. There is a relationship between creation and salvation. This is a general thing that is not secondary but in a certain sense dominant throughout the Bible.
Our country is a gift from God and we must develop it for the good and welfare of its people. And economic development depends in the very first place on social progress.

Therefore, the efforts of the Church on this score deserves the support of all. And from all this, it is not difficult for one to understand why we have always supported the Catholic Church’s social teachings and we would recommend them to be the minimum programme of any progressive political party.

Labels: DEVELOPMENT, GEORGE LUNGU

posted by MrK @ 5:30 AM