Articles
Equality and Dignity of Citizenship
Opinion | Articles | Felix Machado | 16-Sep-2020
Introduction:
Certainly, we are all born equal and we all possess the God given dignity. Our right to equality and to our dignity have been given to us by God and we belong to God alone. The Second Vatican Council declared: “A sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man and woman. And the demand is increasingly made that men and women should act on their own judgement, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty. The demand is also made that constitutional limits should be set to the powers of government, in order that there may be no encroachment on the rightful freedom of the person and of associations…It regards in the first place, the free exercise of religion in society” (DH, 1).
The CCC nn. 2235 - 2246 guide us with regards to “duties of civil authorities”, the duties of citizens, relationship between political community and the Church”. The CCC in # 2235-2237 teach us that “those who exercise authority should do so as a service…the exercise of authority is meant to give outward expression to a just hierarchy of values in order to facilitate the exercise of freedom and responsibility by all. Those in authority should practice distributive justice wisely, taking into account of the needs and contribution of each, with a view to harmony and peace… Political authorities are obliged to respect the fundamental rights of the human person…The political rights attached to citizenship can and should be granted according to the requirements of the common good”.
The CCC # 2238-2243 teach us that all authority comes from God; citizens are obliged to give loyal collaboration which includes the right, and at times the duty, to voice their just criticisms of that which seems harmful to the dignity of persons and to the good of the community (understood in the wider sense)…The love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity (paying taxes, exercising the right to vote and to defend one’s country)…The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel…Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate (unless some conditions are observed, cf. CCC # 2243). (The duty of obedience requires all to give due honour to authority and to treat those who are charged to exercise it with full respect, and, insofar as it is deserved, with gratitude and good will. Pope St Clement of Rome provides the Church’s prayers for political authorities: ‘Grant to them, Lord, health, peace, concord, and stability, so that they may exercise without offense the sovereignty that you have given them. Master, heavenly King of the ages, you give glory, honour, and power over the things of earth to the sons of men/women. Direct, Lord, their counsel, following what is pleasing and acceptable in your sight, so that by exercising with devotion and in peace and gentleness the power that you have given to them, they may find favour with you’ (St Clement of Rome, Ad Cor, n. 61 and CCC, nn. 189701900).
The CCC #2244 – 2246 teach that “every institution is inspired, at least implicitly, by a vision of man (and woman) and her destiny, from which it derives the point of reference for its judgement, its hierarchy of values, its line of conduct…The Church, because of her commission and competence, is not to be confused in any way with the political community. She is both the sign and the safeguard of the transcendent character of the human person…It is a part of the Church’s mission to pass moral judgements even in matters related to politics, whenever the fundamental rights of man (woman) or the salvation of souls requires it.
Are we an introvert community?
Given the limits of time I will now ask a few questions, not necessarily seeking answers but making us reflect on our life as Christian citizens of our beloved Mother India.
Are we an introvert, closed upon ourselves community, wanting only our rights, our privileges and lamenting over only our problems, our state of victimhood? Perhaps, we might be made to feel like this conveniently by those who consider us their adversaries; are we going to play into their hands? The tendency to politicize our citizenship as being a Christian community can dangerously take us to become a ‘ghetto’ by reducing the Church to a series of infra-mondain activities. So, in what does really consist our being a Christian community? We can work on a deeper clarification regarding positive aspects and, also admitting our shortcomings. A question before us is: confronted by the conditions of life that lend to human dignity, could we commit ourselves to emphasize, as individuals and as a community, the message of the love of God and the transforming force of the Gospel? I am asking for a deeper and a broader understanding of the “conscience for the dignity of every person and all persons and respect towards all”.
Discerning the “Signs of the time”
The future does not come, it must be constructed. Pope St John XXIII spoke about the necessity of discerning the “signs of the time”. Based on three characteristics of our country today, I would identify three challenges to our faith: 1) The modern world (and, also that of the post-modern), 2) The world of the poor of the two third of the humanity, and 3) The world of religious plurality.
- The modern and post-modern world and Its characteristics: the affirmation of the human person as an ‘individual’ is today the point of departure of the economic activity, social conviviality (metropolitan character of society) and human knowledge; what is accepted by critical reason is only that which comes under its examination and under its judgement; right to freedom is affirmed in diverse dimensions of life. There is distrust towards all authority in the spirit of modernity, in social or religious sphere. E.g. the Christian faith is considered next to superstition and, authority is meant to disappear or at least pushed to a private sphere. Society, with accelerated speed is going under a process of secularization as result the Christian faith is losing its hold on social life and its influence on persons as it had before. The Second Vatican Council tried to respond to many of these interrogations without much success. We are far from resolving this problem; rather, the problem has increasingly become out of hands with free economy, craze for consumerism, utilitarian attitude towards human persons.
On the other hand, today’s epoch, defined as post-modern, is critique of modernity. There is a return to what have been ideologies of fascism, Nazism or Stalinism or populism in contradiction with fervent revendication of freedom. Another result is the distrust of all human knowledge, a skeptical position which relativizes the knowledge of all truth or each one is said to possess his/her own truth and in the end, all is treated on the same level. Equality among human persons is often identified from a subjective point of view or it is simply reduced to uniformity, eliminating all legitimate diversity.
- The world of the poor of the two third of humanity: the specificity of Asia, in particular of India, is that of people who are simultaneously ‘poor and believers’. We live our belief in poverty (in its many senses). The world of the poor is complex. We should be careful to reduce poverty only to its economic aspect. The poor is one who is ‘insignificant’, a non-person, without any rights, a person without any social standing and counts little in society and even in the Church. The poor is the ‘other’ (‘us’ against ‘them’) who is at the margin of society; the poor are an obstacle to society and they must take care of their own destiny. This thinking is proved totally wrong by this Covid-19 pandemic. The sooner we free ourselves of such prejudices and uncritical categorizations the better it will be in order to discover the richness of the ‘other’, the poor. Paul Ricouer said some years ago, “We are not with the poor if we are not against poverty”; in other words, if we do not better the social and economic conditions of the poor who form an important part of humanity, we will walk the path of destruction. We need to know the reasons of poverty on social, economic and cultural level. It is a concern the way ‘globalization’ is progressing; that lakhs of people are considered ‘useless objects’ because they are used and thrown away by the globalized economic system. The foreign debt, with manipulated taxes and interests of the creditors, should be cancelled, said Pope St John Paul II and Pope Francis.
- The world of religious plurality: humanity has lived religious conviviality for centuries. In the recent decades there are increasing interrogations of the presence of religions and Christianity has suffered the biggest brunt of it. The Church has clearly pronounced its desire to dialogue with people who belong to all religions and who belong to none. Crores of people find in their religions their own relation to God or to an Absolute or a profound sense of their existence and the Christian faith is challenged to ask questions on some of its essential points of doctrines in the light of a new situation on the same old faith in Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all. This is a delicate area and hasty conclusions will only worsen the situation.
In his address to the participants at the International Peace Conference at Al-Azhar (Cairo, Egypt) on April 28, 2017, Pope Francis reminded his listeners that dialogue on a global level may occur if three basic duties are observed: the duty to respect one’s own identity and that of others, the courage to accept differences, and the willingness to recognize the sincerity of the intentions of other people.
In Evangelii Gaudium (EG), his apostolic exhortation on “The Joy of the Gospel,” Pope Francis recalled that “true openness involves remaining steadfast in one’s deepest convictions, clear and joyful in one’s own identity, while at the same time being ‘open to understanding those of the other party’ and ‘knowing that dialogue can enrich each side’” (251). Being rooted in one’s own tradition and being open to the others are both constitutive features of Christian faith.
From the very beginning, the logos of Christian faith has been influenced by different cultural settings: Hellenization, Medieval Scholasticism, Reformation, Enlightenment, Modernism, Ressourcement and Pluralism. How can the logos of Christian faith remain faithful to its identity and at the same time be open to the cultural processes that are going on in our global and multi-faith setting?
Not remaining apart but becoming part of the larger community
Within the framework of our Constitution and rights and duties which flow from it, let us reflect on our obligations both to the Church and the country. The Church in India is visible community and each one of us is lawful citizen of our country. What is the role of the Church and that of each one of us believer (Catholic) vis-à-vis our country? We are Indians and at the same time Christians. The two are not opposed to each other; nor can the two be separated, nor can they be identified. We owe allegiance to both because our identity is to be ‘Indian Catholic’. As Indian citizens all Indians are equal to us in dignity before God; and as Catholics, all people in the world are equal to us in dignity. I would like to focus our attention to “what is our prophetic mission in our country? Why did God want me to be born here, at this time (our historical reality in the community of the Church)? How do we witness to the faith of the Church?”
Our country has always been classified among the “developing” nation. That is a soft description as you and I know. Inhuman misery and antievangelical poverty dehumanizes; it destroys human dignity. Promotion of human dignity is part of the evangelizing mission of the Church. We must overcome the mentality which connects the facts of misery of people exclusively to political problem. Has our faith nothing to say in this? The Bible always speaks of poverty together with the experience of solidarity. We are to own values of peace, justice, freedom, not just as means to our social commitment, but they must inspire methods to form a human society respectful of the rights of all. For example, Pope St John Paul II, in his Apostolic Exhortation, Mane Nobiscum Domine (2004) emphatically stated that “The Eucharist is not merely an expression of communion in the Church's life; it is also a project of solidarity for all of humanity. In the celebration of the Eucharist the Church constantly renews her awareness of being a “sign and instrument” not only of intimate union with God but also of the unity of the whole human race. Each Mass, even when celebrated in obscurity or in isolation, always has a universal character. The Christian who takes part in the Eucharist learns to become a promotor of communion, peace and solidarity in every situation. More than ever, our troubled world which began the new Millennium with the spectre of terrorism and the tragedy of war, demands that Christians learn to experience the Eucharist as a great school of peace, forming men and women who, at various levels of responsibility in social, cultural and political life, can become promotors of dialogue and communion (n. 27).
He further emphasizes one more point, challenging Christians to be “At the service of the least” (n.28), stating that the Mass “significantly affects the authenticity of our communal sharing in the Eucharist. It is the impulse which the Eucharist gives to the community for a practical commitment to building a more just and fraternal society. In the Eucharist our God has shown love in the extreme, overturning all those criteria of power which too often govern human relations and radically affirming the criterion of service: “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mc 9:35).
Becoming an enculturated community
Within the Church, let us ask how much of our Church is enculturated, because the new evangelization that the recent Popes have been speaking, is to be an enculturated community. A consumerist vision of human beings, encouraged by the mechanisms of today’s globalized economy, has a leveling effect on cultures, diminishing the immense variety which is the heritage of all humanity. This especially affects young people. The young live as if ‘rootless’ lives (Laudato si, 144). Learn to take care of our roots, for they are a ‘fixed point from which we can grow and meet new challenges’ (Christus Vivit, 186). Take charge of your roots, because from the roots comes the strength that will make you grow, flourish and bear fruit.
For the baptized the roots include the history of the people of Israel and the Church up to our own day. They bring hope capable of inspiring noble and courageous actions. A great number of our people in the Church are Tribal and Dalits (ST and SC). They want to hear the Gospel of liberation, the evangelical preferential option for the poor. Our identity as Catholics must never lose sight of the fact that we are, first and foremost, the followers of Jesus. In the greater part of the world in which the disease of materialism has infected humanity through unjust systems, the Church should fulfill its “preferential option for the poor” by committing herself to the promotion of human dignity and in building bridges of solidarity as foundations of social order. Let us emphasize once again, the culture of love, mercy and justice. The human person has priority above structures. Let us commit ourselves to education of civilization of work, of solidarity and access of all to their own culture. The Social Teaching of the Church today must be given utmost importance in our life of faith in order to feel equal citizens with a sense of God given dignity.
(The Author is the Archbishop of Vasai (India), and he could be reached at archbp.48@gmail.com. The Article is taken from the Keynote address the Author delivered to AGM of AICU on August 16, 2020)
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