|
INTENTION : |
That, rejecting the culture of indifference, we may care for our neighbors who suffer, especially the sick and the poor.
|
In July 2013 Pope Francis made a dramatic visit to Lampedusa. This Italian island, situated quite close to the North African coast, has become a byword for the desperation of refugees and migrants who risk everything to get there in their search for a more secure and prosperous life in the West. During his visit the Pope lamented the 'globalisation of indifference', the turning of our collective blind eyes to the massive social problems of our times. 'We have become used to the suffering of others. It doesn't affect us. It doesn't interest us. It's not our business' he said.
Popes have been saying things like this ever since there have been Popes. But what characterises Francis' focus on the social dimension of the Gospel is his talent for summing up the issues in brief but powerful phrases. The words 'globalization of indifference' draw our attention to our desire to avoid looking at the suffering in the world; and also to how globalization has resulted in a moral failure on a global scale, despite its great potential for progress and solidarity.
Precisely because global problems seem overwhelming, we despair of solving them. Or we argue that such vast issues can only be tackled by governments, international agencies, the UN; anyone but ourselves. Indifference to suffering, therefore, has become a culture, something commonly accepted and left unquestioned. By naming it in this dramatic way and by his symbolic acts, such as his pilgrimage to Lampedusa, Francis dares to challenge this.
The good news is that his challenge is being accepted by others, even concerned economists. Economic advisor to Ban Ki-Moon and author of The End of Poverty (2005), Jeffrey Sachs takes up the theme of the 'globalization of indifference' and suggests that one cause is an unregulated scramble for wealth which itself has become a 'culture'. He quotes Evangelii Gaudium where Francis writes:
Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people's pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all of this were someone else's responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
Sachs continues, in almost penitential vein, confessing the sins of academic economists who have abandoned the moral dimension of economics and become focussed on the 'bottom line'.
But if we read Sachs and then conveniently lay the blame solely at the door of economists and investment bankers, we are missing Francis' point. This moral 'stupor' as Sachs describes it, has infected us all because this is the ideological air we breathe. 'We know not what we do', Sachs writes, quoting the Lord at his crucifixion. In other words, the loss of compassion and the sense of the common good result in the crucifixion of untold numbers of the very people that we pray for in this intention - the sick, the suffering and the poor.
So in praying for this intention, we must also pray for conversion for ourselves.
Chris Chatteris, SJ
National Secretary Apostleship of Prayer
South Africa
|
|
