n. 12
dicembre 2012

 

Altri articoli disponibili

Italiano

Starting from the fraternity
Caritas in Veritate
 

  by ALESSANDRA SMERILLI
 

trasp.gif (814 byte)

trasp.gif (814 byte)

trasp.gif (814 byte)

trasp.gif (814 byte)

The fraternity is a category that crosses the whole encyclical Caritas in Veritate.The fraternity is seen as the key to true development, the integral one: for all men and for all dimensions of the person.

The wounds of modernity, in fact, are mainly related to the relationship, inability to meet in the reciprocity; in the postmodernity this "spiritual and relational" wound shows increasing its dramatic quality: the paradox of happiness in opulent societies, where today we experience a growing boredom and loneliness, does not say maybe this poverty in relationship?

What are the questions that today, our time, puts the economy and society? There are more immediate questions, in the media, in politics: they speak to us of the financial crisis, unemployment, increase in consumption out of it, poverty and wealth, impoverished by war and wrong liberalism, but also of the impoverished by a consumerism that increases aspirations and then more and more impoverishes. In fact, I am convinced that there are now other deeper questioning, less expressed, but extremely urgent.


Ethical and moral crisis


The crisis we are experiencing for several decades (and not a few years ago) is an ethical and moral crisis, which has to do with the category of the fraternity: the market economy has achieved extraordinary results in terms of rights and freedoms (equality), but lost out to the fraternity.
The biggest challenge today comes from the economy and the global society is a question of fraternity, relational goods, new social connections, true meeting, intrinsic motivation. And this is the fraternity of which the encyclical speaks. It is always placed in relation to gratuity. "This fraternity, men can never achieve it alone? As society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbors but does not make us brothers. The reason, by itself, is capable of grasping the equality between men and of giving stability to a civic coexistence between them, but it can not establish fraternity. This originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, Who loved us first, teaching us through the Son what is fraternal charity" (CV 19). Hence, free and unpaid love, which Christ brought to earth, can give us the keys to genuine fraternity.

To understand how true it is that reason can grasp equality, but not fraternity, just think of what he wrote Adam Smith, widely considered the founding father of modern economics: "The gratuitousness is less essential than justice to the existence of society. The society can exist without gratuity." And again: "Civil society can exist between different people [...] based on the consideration of the individual utility, without any form of love or mutual affection."
The effects of this way of understanding the social life are daily before our eyes. And that's why the encyclical presents the challenge: "The biggest challenge we have in front of us [...] is to show, in terms of both thought that behavior, not only that traditional principles of social ethics, like transparency, honesty and responsibility can not be ignored or attenuated, but also that in commercial relationships the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift as an expression of fraternity can and must find their place within normal economic activity [...]. It is a demand both of charity and of truth "(CV 36).

The encyclical so sees the gratuitousness as an expression of fraternity as the only prospect of recovery from the crisis and then a new humanism.


What message to the consecrated life?


As religious we feel challenged by this call to fraternity that shoutes Caritas in Veritate: our fraternal life should be, in fact, an expression of that fraternal charity mentioned by the encyclical. And at a time when the request/demand of fraternity is pressing, our communities can and should be the place of peace and refreshment, where you can enjoy how beautiful it is to live together and take care of each other, and especially the most needy. As a sign of the urgency of appropriate responses to the question of fraternity, considering that multiply the answers offered by the market to this need for relationships and reciprocity. In some countries, for example, there are many who pay for an hour of listening. They are also a lot of people using a site, which is depopulated in the United States, but now it is spreading all over the world (www.rentafriend.com).

The offered service is very simple: you need a person to accompany you to a party? Do you want to go for a walk and you have not whom to go with? Rent a friend! On the site you will find a list of people divided by country and city that become available to be 'rented' for a few hours. We understand that the term "friend" is loud and out of place in this case. We also understand that if such a phenomenon is spreading, the need for relationships is really great. And the answers to this emergency can not be pseudo-solutions in the market, simply because the primary relational goods does not pass through the market and the selflessness at the base of each fraternal relationship simply can not buy. You can only grow.

There is not good life, in private as in public sphere, without gratuity. And there is no gratuitousness without free gifts, charisms. This is the reason why the poverty of a society such as ours is especially poverty of gratuity, shortage of a human touch that is an end in itself, a scarcity of people who meet us and brings us closer because are interested about us as people.

And it is enough. They are interesed in us even when we are not "stakeholders", or customers, or suppliers, neither wholesome nor unborn, perhaps terminally ill; even if we are not worthy. People, animated by charisms, which are interested because we are human beings, and that's it. A "just" that the society of pursuit of profit, efficiency and merit, no longer knows.

The invitation of Caritas in Veritate then is addressed also to us: because the fraternity becomes a civil category, you have to go to school about gratuitousness. Our work must be therefore first of all, and before that in terms of works, the testimony that the fraternity, expression of gratuitousness, it is possible in human cohabitation.


And the faith?


At this point one might ask, what does faith in this discourse. After the first encyclical of Benedict XVI on charity, and the second on hope, we all expected a third encyclical on faith. And in the end so it was, because the Caritas in Veritate, in proposing the concept of fraternity asks to broaden the horizons of our faith.

In fact, only a vision of man, an anthropology, that believes that the person made in the image of God communion, embossed with the Triune God in his being, can pick up the call to gratuitousness in this world, in this society, in this economy. On this anthropological bet resides the hope that the announced fraternity will not be an utopia (not a place), but a eutopia (a good place), the place of the human.

The encyclical invites us to mobilize in this direction: "The urgency is inscribed not only in things, it is not derived solely from the rapid succession of events and problems, but from the same is at stake,  offerring something as a prize: the establishment of authentic fraternity". He continues: "The importance of this goal is such as to demand our openness to understand it in depth and to mobilize ourselves at the" heart ", to evolve the current economic and social processes towards fully human outcomes" (CV 20).

Therefore mobilize in concrete and by heart because the fraternity does not remain in the background, but, thanks to the life of our communities, may become the key to a new development, a new humanism.

 

Alessandra Smerilli fma
Professor of Political Economy at the Auxilium
Piazza S. Maria Ausiliatrice, 60
00181 Roma

Condividi su:

 

 Torna indietro