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By Jim Hug, SJ,
President of the Center of
Concern
[Excellent & very relevant views &
critique of Leo's Rerum Novarum]
Co-sponsored by the
Asian
Center for
the Progress of Peoples, the Asian Seminar on the
Future of Catholic Social Thought [CST] was probing, thoughtful and
stimulating. It was the fourth of the Center's
series of dialogues on CST carried on by peoples who traditionally have had
no voice in its formation: Latin Americans,
Africans, Asians, and women. Twenty-nine
Asian Christians engaged in social praxis and theological reflection gathered from
Hong
Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri
Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and
the U.S. to
participate in the seminar.
The Seminar opened with the question: Was CST simply
irrelevant to Asia from the moment Leo XIII issued Rerum
Novarum - or
did it represent collusion in the sins of the West?
Vatican's CST is not Asian
The question of collusion was part of an extended discussion of the
differences between the European reality and culture reflected in CST and
the Asian reality and culture. When Leo XIII addressed the
problems of industrial workers in 1891, he failed even to mention the major
social sin disrupting Asian life: European colonial domination. Was the
church too close to the colonial, imperial mentality to criticize it? Or
too far from Asia and
its concerns to be aware of them?
[The encl was issued at a time when the
European empire building was reaching its height and capitalism was in the
ascendant, especially in the US - with millionaires like Rockefeller,
Carnegie, JP Morgan. As staunch believers in private property, Leo and his
predecessor knew they had to seek accommodation with capitalism.]
100 years later, in 1991, Pope John Paul II's Centesimus Annus
still focuses attention on Europe - on the collapse of communist
governments in Eastern Europe in
1989. There is just one sentence alluding to the "fall of certain
oppressive and dictatorial regimes in some countries of Latin
America and also of Africa
and Asia." But there is no
reference to other events of 1989 such as the highly symbolic massacre in Tiananmen
Square. [Is he a universal
pope or only concerned with Europe?]
Nor is there any hint that the collapse of
Eastern European socialism does not mark the disappearance of socialist
aspirations or of other types of socialist experiment. In parts of Asia,
there is a persistent desire to explore models of socialist development as
an alternative to the devastating effects of unbridled capitalism. Centesimus Annus
gives no attention to the drama working
itself out in Hong Kong and
southern China where
Chinese socialism and Chinese entrepreneurial capitalism are moving toward
new forms of accommodation and integration. Nor is there any recognition in
Vatican CST, as Aloysius Pieris, SJ, noted in his paper for the seminar,
that struggles like these unfolding in the Third
World might open up a
Third Way - a viable alternative to
capitalism and socialism - - for the world community.
Finally, the participants noted that modern Vatican CST is culturally foreign to Asia and
thus creates a politically sensitive problem. Culturally, it unfolds
through the conceptual logic characteristic
of the West rather than through the logic of symbols that is
characteristically Eastern. It is more abstract and rational
than the Eastern religious sense, which is more cosmic and creation-centered.
In addition, the
two approaches to human rights and the common good are strikingly different.
Western teaching begins with the
dignity of the individual human person as a child of God. That
dignity grounds a person's human rights. Those rights have their full
realization and goal in the common good. The starting point in Asia is a sense of responsibility to the community.
Community obligations ground human dignity and human rights.
Both
approaches have their dangerous tendencies: Western individualism and
fragmentation, Eastern collectivism and suppression of individual rights. They
are complementary paradigms whose integration would enrich
CST.
Because of these cultural differences, the
promotion of CST is politically sensitive for the Asian church. The church
is accused of bringing foreign [read "colonial"] influences into
play. That suspicion is enhanced and the church's credibility is further
undermined because the so-called
Catholic nations of the West do not live the teaching.
Toward an Inductive Method
The seminar participants strongly affirmed the need for an inductive methodology for
CST in Asia. It should begin with a confessional moment, acknowledging the destructive effects CST - - and
the teachings of other religions as well - - have had in Eastern societies.
It should begin with the experience of the peoples of Asia at the
grassroots, drawing upon base Christian communities, women's groups,
organizations of the poor and marginalized, etc. There was clear agreement
among the seminar participants, however, that while beginning from the
small, local world of everyday experience, a new revitalized Asian CST must
also be attentive to the economic, political, cultural and social realities
at the macro level. They too shape the daily world of every peasant and
factory worker.
It was suggested that this
inductive approach best begins with prophetic response to injustice in
daily life. While this is always difficult for a community
that represents a tiny percentage of the population the way
Catholicism in Asia does, it can be done in inter-religious
collaboration. For many years now, the Asian bishops have been
calling the local churches to this type of inter-religious
"Dialogue of Life." It embraces social analysis of the structural
causes of injustice as part of effective response.
Michael Amaladoss,
SJ, urged that this prophetic social collaboration also embrace
inter-religious dialogue on the issues. It is only when common foundational
symbols can be found and probed that the true and full sense of the
human person and the good human society will be discovered. Only through
those common foundational symbols as well will the depth of religious
motivation and commitment of vast masses of people to be touched and become
available for social transformation in service of God's Reign.
Asian Experience
When the seminar participants began to speak of the experience at
the grassroots in their various regions, it became immediately clear what a
vastly diverse and complex set of realities
the term "Asia" masks.
One of the most challenging and interesting
tensions of the seminar arose in the discussions of the relationship of East
Asia to the rest of Asia - -
Southeast, South and West Asia. It
was accepted generally that East Asian nations such as Japan and
the four Dragons or Tigers [South
Korea,
Hong
Kong, Taiwan and Singapore] are
closer to the U.S. and
the industrial West than to the poverty and struggles of the rest of Asia.
It also emerged clearly that many South Asians
now experience East Asians as oppressors, even economic colonialists. That
perception was not well received by participants from the Dragons.
They spoke of the years of dedications and gruelling work by their people,
the protracted labor struggles, the hard-won progress. They had no desire to renounce
those successes and return to the poverty from which they had emerged.
They felt that the claims that they were now exploiting the resources and labor of poorer Asian nations were
unsubstantiated.
They insisted their model of development was
different because it had been shaped by their Asian values. It began from
the experience of humiliation at the hands of the West in World War
II. Proud Asian nations vowed to learn and use the science and technology
of the West [while retaining their own cultural values and identity] to
reclaim a place of global respect.
There is now reason to question, however, how far
it is possible to take up the tools and strategies of Western modernity
without being taken up into its culture. When the East Asians spoke
of the problems present in their reality, for example, those problems had a
familiar ring. They highlighted corporate flight, land speculation, tourism
and prostitution - - and AIDS, the exploitation of labor, militarization, environmental degradation,
uncertainty about the future and rapid economic restructuring that is
increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. They complained of the
rapid rise of consumerist values and a
crisis of family life as traditional values are eroded. There is a growing
sense of a crisis of identity in their cultures. Traditional values are
either being suppressed or coopted into the service of capitalist development.
Elements of this cultural crisis are being felt
in other parts of Asia as
well. The rapid pace of modernization is undermining traditional agrarian
cultures and leaving people with few cultural supports capable of
dealing effectively with the fast and far-reaching global changes. The
particular industrial-capitalist model of this modernization is generating
oppressive conditions for workers and
destructive patterns of relating to the ecology as well.
Production For Life
Seminar discussion turned then to Gabriele Dietrich's proposal for a
fundamental paradigm shift from capitalism's "Production for
Profits" to "Production for
Life." Arising from the feminist and ecological movements in India, the
concept of "Production For Life" embraces non-violence, a return
from mega-cities to smaller communities, local
grassroots control of natural resources, regeneration of degraded
resources, a priority emphasis on production for subsistence using
appropriate technologies, local production and marketing alternatives, and
attention to building national and international peoples' movements.
It is the vision of a movement that does not simply seek equality for
women, but is attempting to redefine the human - - and the good human life
- - by drawing upon the wisdom of women's
experience. It aims at fundamental social transformation.
The paradigm shift focusing on participatory and
ecologically sustainable development received broad affirmation. The
agrarian character of many of the specific elements of the
model proposed, however, were difficult to translate into the urban
cultures of places like Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Nor was there
great hope for the possibility of reversing the trend
of urbanization so prominent in the Third
World.
Signs of Hope
Still, there were many signs of hope identified by the participants
as sources of energy and direction for Christian Social Living and the new CST
that should emerge from it in the next century. They pointed
to:
- the
awakening of erstwhile victims of colonization and injustice, the new
thrust of established religions toward liberation,
- the appreciation of the
reservoir of human values and harmonious worldview found among indigenous
people,
- the growing awareness of the
need to dismantle the culture and structure of patriarchy due largely to
the contribution of the feminist movement,
- the urgent and responsible
advocacy for the care and recreation of the earth, the growing realization
that evangelization is not so much a "sowing" as a reaping of the
fruits of the seeds of the Word sown already by God at the moment of
Creation and of the incarnation-redemption,
- the emerging solidarity,
especially at the grassroots, among believers and people of good will in
basic human communities who commit themselves to struggle together to
build up a new humanity and a new world.
- Building
on these hopeful signs, the participants committed themselves to
"a new orientation through a shift of emphasis from TEACHING to
DOING." This new orientation will show itself in:
1. Formation and training which are socially and ecologically
conscious and which employ the methods of the pastoral spiral [exposure
and immersion, social analysis from the perspective of the poor
(especially women), theological reflection, holistic spirituality,
plan of action and evaluation];
2. Research and Documentation shaped by the issues and agenda of
grassroots peoples; and
3. Networking to promote communication and collaboration at the local,
national, inter-regional and trans-continental levels.
- The
seminar ended with an invitation to the church worldwide to enter the
second century of CST by drawing upon its varied experiences of
Christian Social Living, sharing its spiritualities, and using
its institutional power and global networks humbly and courageously -
- as one among the world's great religions - - to serve the human
community
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