Half the world’s population is predicted to be in cities by 2025. Even if the prediction has not been fully realized, the trend is clearly in that direction. Pope Francis noticed that new cultures were developing with productive social interactions and practical working norms in this newly emerging world.
However, with the change in demographic patterns, city society is being churned up, and new identities are constantly coming into existence. These in turn are continuously threatened by a bewildering variety of social aberrations that take full advantage of every form of human weakness. Poorer people and weaker communities are the prime victims in such contexts. The Pope feels attending to the needs of this distress situation is the challenge of New Evangelization (Evangelii Gaudium, 73).
Give a thought, for example, to the bewilderingly diverse problems like human trafficking, narcotic trade, abuse of minors, neglect of the elderly and the sick, increasingly differing forms of corruption, growing isolation and mutual distrust even among the more prosperous individuals in that society (EG, 75). Think further of clandestine warehouses, rings of prostitution, children used for begging, undocumented labor, and the harassment they suffer, growing diversity, and networks of crime.
Such a situation gives rise to new ideologies, new programmes of action, a new sense of alarm, new grievances, and new expressions of anger. People, away from their original rural homes and missing the family codes and social norms that regulated their relationships with others, become capable of conducting themselves in the most erratic manner. Leaders who know how to handle crowd-psychology stir mob violence to suit their political interests as and when they think it serves their purpose. ‘Silent complicity’ makes every citizen a partaker in these evils in some manner (EG, 211). This thought alone should arouse a sense of responsibility in every sensitive person, every Christian believer.
CONCERN FOR OTHERS
In cities there are multicultural identities, with citizens, “non-citizens,” “half-citizens,” illegal migrants, “urban remnants” (EG, 74). There are uprooted people from the neighborhood or from distant regions, as well as refugees. “Invisible cities” keep rising up, segregated subcultures multiplying, creating contexts for competition, rivalry, and violence. Concern for these anxieties provides the initial skills needed to make life meaningful in this cultural context. It opens the door to dialogue, relationship, solidarity, and mutual assistance.
With all humility, we must admit we are still learning to use the right idiom to communicate, search for the right motivations to bring people together, and develop the right strategy to move into action in a way that cannot fail in such perplexing situations. But we learn by doing.
The advance of science and technology, knowledge and information, has “led to new and often anonymous kinds of power.” Ordinary people develop a sense of helplessness when they come under the pressure of an “economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills,” the Pope says (EG, 52-53).
MARKETS MUST BE TAMED
Schools of Economy admit that even an economic world order cannot be built on economic foundations alone (Arnold Toynbee). While it is true that the market is productive and raises living standards, it tends to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, pass on environmental costs to society, and abuse workers and consumers. “Markets must be tamed and tempered” (Joseph Stiglitz). Big corporations and bankers should not be allowed to have recourse to fraudulent and unethical ways nor take advantage of the weaker sections of people, creating a culture of oppression. “A deified market” becomes the only rule they live by (EG, 56).
Scientific studies have shown that a cold passion for wealth accumulation reduces compassion. So, for business corporations, even unemployment serves a useful purpose since it will create a climate that favors the lowering of wages. Today, there are countries where democratic structures are in place but where democratic values are missing, where structures of accountability are manipulated, and where structures of participation are ineffective.
What really matters is that self-questioning habits and motivating reasons are planted in the heart of a society and that it keeps challenging its unbalanced structures and reworking them at every stage. This is where Christian thinking can shape culture, exploring how best to bring the core content of the Gospel message to different cultural contexts and groups (EG, 133). Alert intellectuals keep studying issues in a holistic manner, proposing correctives, and offering cooperative support. Merely criticizing the Government is inadequate (EG, 207).
Joining hands with other committed citizens and perceptive thinkers, Christian intellectuals can exert influence at the nerve centers of culture, where it is being shaped and reshaped and where it makes decisive turns. Seeking to influence cultures through critical thinking is precisely what is described as evangelizing cultures (EG, 69). May doors open to such an effort.
