THE REVEALING SILENCES OF POPE BENEDICT XVI

By Leonardo Boff Reprint | | Print |

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RIO DE JANEIRO, May 15 2007 (IPS) - Pope Benedict XVI\’s statements during his visit to Brazil were mined with significant silences: only once did he refer to the grassroots ecclesiastical communities, to choices for the poor, and to liberation, and never to liberation theology and social ministry or to the grave problem of global warming, writes Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian writer and theologian. In this article Boff writes that instead the Pope went back in time 50 years with the traditional and ambiguous language of charity and helping the poor. These silences are a way to obscure and deny. Such lazy reason, particularly that of major institutions like the Catholic Church, is myopic and harmful, always returning to the old ways (more catechism, more celibacy, more obedience, more adhesion to Church teachings). If Brazilian and Latin American Catholicism is to rise to the challenges of this age, it needs the courage that the first Christians had to leave behind the terrain of Judeo Christianity and enter the land of pagan Hellenism. It was from this encounter that today\’s Christianity emerged. What we need is a Catholicism with an Indian-black-Latin American face that is not against but in communion with Roman Catholicism.

The figure of the Pope is a powerful symbol that evokes archetypes of the great father, the wise man, and the shepherd with supernatural powers. Archetypes of this magnitude reach deep into people and arouse powerful feelings.

But what is the model of Catholicism that this Pope promotes? It is well known that two types of Catholicism persist in Brazil: one characterised by ethical commitment, the other devotional. The latter is centred on the worship of saints, prayer, and pilgrimages, and today, a form of worship via the media.

The Catholicism of ethical commitment is inspired by Catholic action and social ministry. It culminates in liberation theology. This model requires mediation based on social analysis because it seeks social transformation, from a spiritual perspective.

Which of these approaches is more appropriate for a nation that must revise the anti-history it inherited from colonialism, the genocide of its indigenous populations, slavery, and the modern dependence on the giant metropolis?

The answer depends on the level of conscience attained by Catholics. I believe that devotional Catholicism does not have the potential to bring about social transformation because it is too self-absorbed, while the other model constantly pursues faith, justice, and evangelism with a commitment to liberation.

Seen from this perspective, the statements of the Pope did not become explicit until the meeting with the archbishops in Aparecida. At the beginning of his visit he managed to remain equidistant from the two models, but he ended up backing the devotional approach, since his overtures to the social model were hinted at and never followed through on.

There is a fundamentalist tone to Benedict XVI when he speaks of the centrality of Christ even with regard to social issues, which will surely make inter-religious dialogue more difficult. It is a theology without Spirit because everything is reduced to Christ alone. In theology this is called Christomonism –the ”dictatorship” of Christ in the Church– as if there were not also the Spirit which we see in history and the social processes that give rise to truth, justice, and love.

What the Pope said about the first evangelisation of Brazil as an encounter of cultures and not a process of ”imposition and alienation” is not borne out by history. Colonisation and evangelization were part of the same project, which amounted to one of the most massive acts of genocide in history. We should not forget the testimony of the sacred Mayan text, the Chilam Balam: ”Sadness was introduced to us, and Christianity, which was the beginning of our sadness and our slavery; they came to kill our flower and castrate our sun.”

To condemn as ”utopia and regression” the desire to rescue these religions and their ancestral wisdom is an insult to the indigenous peoples and will only discourage the efforts of the many missionaries that back these initiatives.

The argument that God is explicitly indispensable to the building of a just society is theologically tenuous. The Papal States themselves disprove it, as do Spain under Franco and Portugal under Salazar, which publicly praised God while practising torture and capital punishment. What is missing is an ethical consensus and an openness to transcendence that leaves open the definition of its content, as is the case in modern states. These theoretical flaws allow papal discourse to slide into moralism and spiritualism.

The arguments display ”lazy reason”, an analytical category created by the Portuguese thinker Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Lazy reason is that which does not engage the relevant challenges of the present and squanders the positive experiences of the past.

The Pope’s statements were mined with significant silences: only once did he refer to the grassroots ecclesiastical communities, once to choices for the poor, once to liberation, and never to liberation theology and social ministry, and never to the grave problem of global warming. Rather, he went back in time 50 years with the traditional and ambiguous language of charity and helping the poor. These silences are a way to obscure and deny.

Lazy reason, particularly that of major institutions like the Catholic Church, is a form of myopia, of harmful reasoning that does not seek new approaches but always returns to the old (more catechism, more celibacy, more obedience, more adhesion to Church teachings) or arrogant reasoning, like the assertion that the Church is the only truth, or anti-utopian reasoning because it fails to present a horizon of hope, believing that the future is merely the prolongation of the present.

The Pope does not address the central issue of our day, which is not the discussion of the mission of the Church in itself but rather the future of the earth and humanity and the examination of how the mission of Catholicism can help assure that future.

If Brazilian and Latin American Catholicism is to rise to the challenges of this age, it needs the courage that the first Christians had to leave behind the terrain of Judeo Christianity and enter the land of pagan Hellenism. It was from this encounter that today’s Christianity emerged as an expression of the New Testament, not the Old Testament. What we need now is a Catholicism with an Indian-black-Latin American face that is not against but in communion with Roman Catholicism. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)