Compassion and Solidarity

The Church for Others

Gregory Baum

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Year: 1992
• ISBN:
  9780887848513
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In the forthright style that has earned him a reputation for controversy, theologian Gregory Baum presents the Faith and Justice movement in the churches -- especially the Roman Catholic Church -- together with the considerable opposition to it. He discusses why many Christians are becoming activists, turning their faith into deeds by working for the liberation of the poor, not only in South America and the Third World but in Canada, as well.

Baum argues for a new ecumenism, permitting a more representative opinion within the Church and, in a larger sense, for what he believes are the fundamentals of a "just society." He says that there is a new realization that God is on the side of the oppressed -- that Christians are here to help in the struggle for liberation.

1. The Solidarity Movement in the Church

IN THE RECENT DEBATES OVER THE CANADIAN refugee policy the Christian churches were vocal in their defense of compassion and common sense. We learned from the mass media that organizations representing churches, synagogues, labour, and human right groups had become the defenders of refugees and advocates of a more generous public policy. They tried to calm the near-hysterical reactions that swept certain sectors of the population. Have the churches always stood up for the poor? Have the churches always been in solidarity with the victims of society?

In these five lectures I wish to speak of a new movement in the Christian churches that creates a startling link between religious faith and concern for others. What has taken place in the Christian religion is an outburst of compassion. I wish to dedicate these lectures to the memory of Bishop Adolph Proulx of Hull-Gatineau, Quebec, the compassionate and courageous champion of social justice, whose sudden death in the summer of 1987 deprived the Catholic Church of one of its most ardent and most influential activists.

In the first lecture I shall describe this faith-and-justice movement in some detail. The movement began among the few, it involved a minority of Christians, and, surprisingly, it has since been endorsed by the church authorities. This is true of all the major churches, Anglican, Protestant, and Roman Catholic. Since I am a theologian in the Roman Catholic Church, it is from developments in this tradition that I shall illustrate the meaning and power of the new movement.

In the second lecture I shall analyze the resistance to the new movement within the churches. Certain conflicts in the Catholic Church deserve attention, not least because they have a certain impact on society. In the third lecture I shall describe what this movement looks like in Canada. In particular, I shall analyze the radical social teaching of the Canadian Catholic bishops. In the fourth lecture I shall try to express the spiritual content of the new movement. It would be quite wrong to think that the new commitment to social justice affects only the ethics and the practice of Christians. I wish to show that it also affects their prayer, their perception of God, their spiritual life. In the final lecture I shall show that the social conflict over material things is actually, at the deepest level, a struggle over values.

In this first lecture, then, I wish to tell the remarkable story of how the explosion of compassion and solidarity took place in the Roman Catholic Church. It occurred, as I mentioned above, in all the churches. It happened especially in 1948, when the World Council of Churches, which has its headquarters in Geneva, was established. Yet the development in the Roman Catholic Church is so remarkable because this Church is known to be doctrinally conservative, committed to the ancient creeds, and defensive in regard to its own historical tradition.

The Catholic story must be told in two phases. The first one began in the early sixties with the Second Vatican Council, the full assembly of Catholic bishops convoked by Pope John XXIII. It was held in Rome from 1962 to 1965. A general council of this kind is an extraordinary event in the Catholic Church. The last one, the First Vatican Council, took place over a hundred years ago. The purpose of Vatican II was to permit the Catholic Church to find a creative response to the challenge of the modern world. Pope John said that he wanted to open the windows of the Church to let light and air come in. He wanted the Church to engage in self-criticism. He wanted the bishops of the Council to listen to the reform movements in the Catholic Church. And he wanted them to learn from the renewal efforts of the other Christian churches. At the Vatican Council, the Catholic Church discovered a new sense of solidarity with other religious communities and in fact with the whole of the human family.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the past, the solidarity of Christians was confined to Christians. In her official liturgy, magnificent though it was, the Catholic Church prayed only for the Christian people, not for outsiders, not for humanity. The one exception was the liturgy of Good Friday, when the Church prayed for the conversion of all outsiders to the Catholic faith.

To illustrate the new sense of solidarity, let me mention first the positive approach taken by the Council to the ecumenical movement. This movement, created by Protestant and Anglican Christians earlier in the century, aimed at enhancing the unity of faith and action among the Christian churches. The Catholic Church had refused to participate in the ecumenical movement. At Vatican II, the Church modified its position. For the first time the Catholic Church recognized the other Christians as brothers and sisters in Christ, as co-heirs of the Gospel. The Council recognized other Christian churches as churches in the true theological sense, as believing communities used by the Holy Spirit as agents of grace and salvation. At the Council the Catholic Church committed itself to take part in the ecumenical movement.

I had the good fortune to be deeply involved in this effort of Vatican II. Pope John XXIII had appointed me as theological expert at the Secretariat for Christian Unity under the chairmanship of Cardinal Bea. One of the tasks of the Secretariat was to promote the spirit of ecumenism at the Council. We were allowed to invite Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox observers. We engaged in dialogue with them and communicated their recommendations to the Council. More than that, the Secretariat submitted a draft proposal for a decree on ecumenism. The bishops were at first very cautious in regard to the new approach to other Christians and their churches, but the conciliar debate touched them and they changed their mind. To witness this spiritual transformation taking place in the Catholic Church was one of the most moving and exciting experiences of my life.

It is easy to document the impact of Vatican II on the relations between Catholics and Protestants in Canada. Here the churches have learned to cooperate. While they differ in regard to certain points of doctrine, they stand for the same social values and adopt common positions on matters of social justice. Before John Paul II visited Canada in 1984, the Canadian churches published a joint letter addressed to all their members, in which they welcomed the Pope as a witness to the Gospel. I know of no other country where this happened.

In Canada, theological education has to a large extent become ecumenical. Catholics and Protestants read one another’s biblical studies and theological writings; they use one another’s textbooks. In some schools, for instance in the Toronto School of Theology, Protestant and Catholic seminaries and faculties cooperate in providing theological education for their students. Similar efforts at theological cooperation are found all over Canada and in the United States.

Of even greater importance is that on the social day-to-day level, Christians have overcome the estrangement of the past. They have learned to trust one another. Spiritual solidarity has come to transcend the confessional boundaries.

Of worldwide historical importance is the change in the Catholic Church’s attitude toward the Jewish people and Jewish religion. The Vatican Council was willing to listen to the theological position worked out by critical Catholics who took with utmost seriousness the Holocaust, the mass murder of the Jews during World War Two. After the war, critical Christians, including Catholics and Protestants, created a movement in the churches to review the attitude toward the Jews. These Christians believed that the anti-Jewish rhetoric contained in the Church’s teaching had created a paranoid, anti-Jewish public culture, a culture which made it possible for Hitler to make the Jews the scapegoat of Germany’s and the world’s ills.

What was this anti-Jewish rhetoric of the Church? Passages in the New Testament claim that by their refusal to accept Jesus, the Jewish people have excluded themselves from the divine covenant: Israel is no longer God’s people. The Church is now the new people of God. In subsequent centuries this teaching was further amplified. The Jews were presented as betrayers of Christ, as unfaithful, as devoid of spiritual gifts, as cursed and punished by God. Over the centuries this preaching created contempt for Jewish religion in the Christian nations. After the War, the critical Christians argued that this teaching of contempt, and the anti-Jewish cultural mood produced by it, explain why there was so little resistance to Hitler’s racist anti-Semitism, even though racism was at odds with Christian teaching. These critical Christians now called the Church to repentance.

Pope John XXIII called upon the Council to review the Church’s attitude to the Jews and Jewish religion. After much research and many theological debates, Vatican II promulgated a statement on the Church’s approach to the Jews that reversed the inherited position. Relying on St. Paul’s statement in the New Testament that God never repents of the gifts given, Vatican II recognized that the Jews remained God’s first-chosen people. The Church acknowledged its own Jewish roots. Jesus was a Jew; so was Mary, his mother; and so were the twelve apostles. It is wrong and inadmissible to blame the Jewish people as a whole for whatever the group of leaders did to Jesus during the time of his persecution. The conciliar declaration demanded that all formulations expressing contempt for Jews and their religion be removed from catechisms and books of religion. The Council recognized that Jews and Christians share a common spiritual patrimony. Christians acknowledge the spiritual substance of Jewish religion. What this means is that God continues to speak in the worship of the synagogue. The Council defined the relations of Catholics to their Jewish neighbours in terms of friendship, dialogue, and cooperation.

This conciliar teaching represented an extraordinary development. Many of us working at the Council at the time were grateful to God that we belonged to a Church that could change its mind.

Vatican II also honoured the religious pluralism of the global society. Again, this was new and startling. The Council clarified the Church’s relation to the other world religions, especially to Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For the first time the Catholic Church was willing to recognize something of God in these ancient religious traditions. All religious believers deserve respect. Catholics are called upon to engage in interreligious dialogue and find new forms of cooperation, especially in the fight against discrimination and the struggle for social justice.

A special conciliar document, entitled “The Church in the Modern World,” expressed in an unprecedented way the Church’s solidarity with the entire human family. Here is the opening sentence: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of men and women of this age, especially of those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.” In this document the Church defined itself as sent into society as friend and servant. It is the Church for others. Its task is to bear the burden with other people, to struggle with others for greater justice, and to strengthen the bonds that unite people, despite differences in religion, culture, and racial origin, and in doing so to become conformed to its Master who came to serve, not to be served.

It is no wonder that some conservative Catholics were unhappy with the new teaching of Vatican II. They feared that the Church had become excessively preoccupied with worldly issues and the relationship to outsiders. The true task of the Church, they said, is to proclaim God’s glory. They felt the Church’s concern had become too horizontal, that it should be more vertical.

The answer to these misgivings is that the Vatican Council did make important statements about God. Implicit in the call for universal solidarity is the affirmation that God is graciously present in the whole of humanity. Wherever people struggle with the important issues of truth and justice, they are not left to their own limited resources, but are assisted by a voice, not of their own making, that addresses and empowers them. The Vatican Council affirms that God’s grace is not confined to the Christian Church but extends to the whole of the human family. All people, wherever they may be, the Council proclaims, are touched by the Spirit and enabled, in a manner known only to God, to participate in the redemption made visible in Jesus Christ.

Many Christians find this teaching startling. Yet Catholic theology over the last twenty years has greatly emphasized the universality of God’s redemptive grace. This is not a new doctrine. It was taught by important theologians in the early centuries, especially in Alexandria; it was also taught by Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians. But it has moved to the center of attention only in our day. There are several reasons for this. One of them is undoubtedly the extended dialogue with Jews and members of other religions. Christians have become convinced that God spoke to their partners in dialogue. Cooperating with others in the struggle for justice has also convinced Christians that God is at work in people, be they religious or secular, who stand against oppression in solidarity with the poor and the powerless. Christians of our day have begun to realize the destructive historical consequences of the Church’s traditional exclusiveness. Because the Church saw itself as the only place on earth where God’s grace was available, it sanctioned the colonial exploits of European empires as a divinely given opportunity for its missionary work. Because of its narrow view of God’s grace, the Church was unable to extend its solidarity to outsiders.

In the light of these new insights, Christians reread the Scriptures and find in them many hints that wherever people loved and sought justice, God was at work in their hearts. In the presence of Noah, God made a covenant with the whole of humanity. In John’s Gospel we read that God’s Word addresses every human being who comes into this world. Christians have become convinced that their God offers light and grace to people everywhere, enabling them to practice the love of neighbour. They have been especially moved by many stories from prisons, concentration camps, and countries ruled by dictators or foreign powers. These stories tell that here some people experienced within themselves a richness and an urgency to extend their help to those who were endangered, even if it meant endangering their own survival. Important Christian theologians — Henri de Lubac in France, Karl Rahner in Germany — came to the conclusion that the God revealed in Jesus and proclaimed by the Church was graciously operative in the entire human family.

All of this was incorporated in the teaching of Vatican II. Revealed in Christ is God’s merciful presence to the whole of humanity. “Since Jesus died for all people and since all have the same divine vocation, we must hold that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every person the possibility of sharing in the event of redemption.”

This is a startling message. In the past, Catholic theologians tended to distinguish the realm of the Church as “the supernatural order,” defined by divine redemption, and the realm of the world as “the natural order,” defined by divine creation and human sin. At one time, the theological distinction between the supernatural and the natural justified the Church’s separation from the world. We then thought that the bond uniting Christians was “supernatural,” produced by sharing in redemption, while the bond between Christians and non-Christians was of a purely worldly kind: it was simply “natural.” Church-related activities of Christians were then regarded as belonging to the higher order, while their secular activities — for i...