Category: Editorial

In the Holy Land and throughout the Middle East, Christians are enduring great hardships and the “little flock” they comprise is shrinking steadily. Squeezed between two extremisms – Jewish (Israel) and Islamic (Muslim countries) – and subject to religious and social discrimination, many Christians prefer to flee from their harsh reality of conflict and instability. Their woeful plight calls for our sympathy, spiritual support and solidarity. They belong to the countries of the Bible. The Holy land, in particular, is the cradle of Christianity. Jesus was born, lived and died there. His disciples were first called Christians at Antioch (Acts 11:26) in Syria. Persecution scattered them. On the way, they announced the Gospel to the non-Jews, hence starting the Church’s universal mission. Now, they are fleeing again to find peace and tranquility. While pilgrims from all over the world flock there to find their faith’s roots, native Christians move out because they feel they are foreigners in their homeland.  Their mass exodus will be one of the main issues of the special assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops that will gather in Rome from 10 to 24 October. Related issues to be discussed, according to the Instrumentem Laboris (the working document), are: widespread Islamization, lack of political and religious freedom, political instability, the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the need of peace founded on justice.  Invited to the synodal assembly are the Latin Church in the Middle East and the various Churches in communion with Rome, born from the divisions of the 5th century and the Great Schism at the beginning of the 11th century. They are different according to rite, geographic location or national allegiance. The Synod is an opportunity to foster their renewal and witness, overcome suspicions and misunderstandings, deepen their bonds of communion and affirm their specificities when compared to other faiths and societies among which they live.  The Middle East, being “a predominantly Muslim society, be it Arab, Turkish, Iranian or a Jewish society in the State of Israel,” interreligious dialogue is an unavoidable issue. It requires great friendship but, at the same time, great clarity. In Muslim countries, Christians are considered second-class citizens. There’s a growing demand for the application of the principle of reciprocity and to emphasize the urgency of implementing the freedom of religion and conscience, with the right to proclaim the gospel in Muslim countries in the same way that Muslims have the right to preach Islam. The Synod has relevance also for Christian immigrants, especially from the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Sudan. They often have to endure gross human rights violations. Across the region, there are more than one million domestic workers, many of them Catholics, who are treated like slaves. In South Arabia alone, there are more than one million migrant Christians who are denied the right to their religion. It is simply unacceptable that a state known for exporting fundamentalist Islam and for paying for the construction of mosques everywhere behaves in

In the month of October, the Church focuses on mission – especially mission beyond the borders of one’s people and culture, called in Latin, Ad Gentes. The missionary impulse is a sign of the Church’s vitality. The Church exists as a result of God’s mission and for mission. The Church  learns and grows in mission, reaching out to others. A community closed to the perspective of mission is closed to God, to life and to the future.  What is the purpose of mission? Simply put, it is to make Jesus present – everywhere, among all peoples and cultures of the world. In his message for World Mission Sunday to be celebrated on the penultimate Sunday of the month, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that what people ask believers is “not only to ‘speak’ of Jesus, but to ‘make Jesus seen,’ to make the face of the Redeemer shine out in every corner of the earth before the generations of the new millennium…” The Gospel of Jesus we were entrusted with is Good News. The world needs it and expects it from us. People have the right to listen to it and to see it incarnated in our lives – in the love we live and irradiate. Our mission, like the mission of Jesus, is to do good and to liberate those afflicted by evil (cf. Acts 10:38). The Gospel is a leaven of freedom and progress. Hence, mission cannot but be a force of personal, social and cultural transformation for a better world – of peace and communion, solidarity and justice. The whole Church is the protagonist of mission. But not all the members of a community are called to leave their places and be sent wherever they are needed. Missionaries – priests, religious or lay people – are the ones the community sends out to “the ends of the world.” Fulfilling their vocation, they become bridges between Churches and peoples, religious traditions and cultural views. In their diversity, they are gifts to the communities and peoples they serve. They, themselves, as well as their peoples and communities of origin, are enriched in the encounter. Their presence is a sign of the Church’s concern and communion, of its unity and diversity. Theirs is not a personal enterprise because they do not come on personal behalf. They shouldn’t feel like strangers, even though, sometimes, they perceive that the local Churches would feel more comfortable without their presence challenging them to a further commitment to the proclamation of Jesus Christ. The missionaries’ presence is a reminder that we must acknowledge and go beyond our prejudices, fears and indifference, care for the world and become universal people. Pope Benedict XVI says it acutely in his message: “In a multiethnic society that is experiencing increasingly disturbing forms of loneliness and indifference, Christians must learn to offer signs of hope and to become universal brethren, cultivating the great ideals that transform history and, without false illusions or useless fears, must strive to make the planet a

Peoples and religions have different ways of venerating their dead and dealing with death’s imposing mystery. Candles, flowers and prayers are preferred by western cultures. A tombstone helps to preserve the memory of the deceased in the cemetery. Eastern and native American peoples prefer to honor their departed with food – the best foodstuffs the deceased enjoyed while alive are prepared for them on All Souls’ Day or on other occasions (like the Chinese Lunar Year in Korea). In Africa, prayers and sacrifices are usually offered to the ancestors during some important celebrations or when the family is experiencing troubles. In the West, funerals are done as quickly as possible and rather silently, without fanfare. In other cultures, the deceased are kept and venerated for longer periods of time. Wakes, in general, take several days, especially to give eventual scattered family members time to gather. Food is provided for all the mourners and funerals are quite festive. In many African cultures, a meal concludes the burial rites. An animal – if possible a cow – has to be killed so that its blood could convey the death message to ancestors. In some of these cultures, people have a more prolonged contact with the dead, also because, due to the lack of conditions, more people die and death seems almost omnipresent. In spite of that, are they less afraid of the last stage of life? American indigenous are said to accept it naturally as the end of the earthly journey. In Africa, fatalism causes people resignation, but they seem to be still afraid of it. Some of the ancestors worship is intended precisely to please or to placate them. Veneration of the dead is based on the belief that the deceased, generally relatives, have a continued existence and possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living. But, while in some cultures and religions, ancestors can get upset with their descendants and their influence can be negative, in Catholicism the saints can only be helpful to the living as intercessors to God. Besides, they are not limited to one’s kin and they are innumerable – “a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues” (Revelation 7:9).  Therefore, the Christian message – cleansed from its eventual western cultural wrappings – is really good news of liberation and hope for all, even for those people who believe in some form of afterlife. First, it can eradicate the fear stemming from the belief that the spirits of those who have passed away recently still linger around and even harass their living relatives. Then, it speaks of life in plenitude with God the Father. Through His paschal mystery, Jesus Christ has opened to us the way to the house of the Father, the Kingdom of life and peace. He who follows Jesus in this life is received where He has preceded us. And, now, we can already experience the so-called “communion of saints,” the fellowship

The consumerist culture has been expanding inexorably across the world even to the remotest places. The result is that most of our purchases are aimed at satisfying induced wants, not real needs. It is puzzling, for instance, to see people, who seem to be striving for survival and struggling to make ends meet, holding a sophisticated cellular phone – and sometimes having more than one – only to come to know later that they had to pawn them to get some cash for basic needs.  In less than half a century, there has been a sixfold rise in consumption under the influence of cultural conventions that affect people’s behavior. Government officials and economists proclaim that consumption is necessary to stimulate economic growth. The thriving advertising industry lures citizens non-stop through the media and street billboards to make them believe that they will be happier if they have access to more services and goods of civilization.  Do we need to purchase so many “commodities of modernity”? Tom Hodgkinson wrote in the Guardian recently: “We did actually manage quite well for many millennia without computers or mobile phones. Shakespeare had no Blackberry; Aristotle managed without an i-Phone. Christianity spread around the globe without blogs. Christ preached His sermon on the mount without the need of a PA system and Powerpoint presentation. All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life.” This thought-provoking approach may help us to focus on what is essential in life and how we want our world to be. Compulsion to acquire and flaunt the most modern “status symbols” – luxury automobiles, the latest cellphone models, designer clothing, expensive jewelry – might be a sign of low self-esteem. They mean that we wish others to admire us for the brands we wear, the things we possess and the lifestyle we display, not by who we really are. The Earth we pollute pays a heavy toll for our materialism and superficiality. Spiraling consumerism is a major cause of environmental degradation (besides inducing people to put moral values at the back seat for the sake of acquiring what they desire and live up-scale lifestyles; since greed is insatiable, “the ends justify the means”). Many Earth’s ecosystems are on the verge of breaking down or even get extinct. We live in a finite world, with limited resources; we cannot continue to overexploit them, lest we gravely endanger ourselves and the survival of future generations.  Science doesn’t have a formula to save the planet from our destructive ways. The only efficacious solution is to live in a more sustainable way, that is, a simple and modest life. And stop cooperating with a wasteful culture that requires things to be consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate. The Earth is limited in its capacity to assimilate and synthesize the waste we produce.  The challenge is to moderate our wants, reduce our carbon footprint, fight superficiality and mediocrity and welcome a spirituality that upholds the most genuine human