September 8, 2005

On October 23, 2005, Chilean Jesuit priest, Alberto Hurtado, will be canonized.  In recognition of this joyous event, Jesuits in the Maryland Province will receive regular electronic bulletins featuring writings of Father Hurtado.  For more information on Father Hurtado, visit www.mdsj.org/hurtado.

THE REFORM  OF SOCIAL STRUCTURES

Abstract taken from a longer document

Structural disorder

Every certain number of years a crisis causes devastation in the world. We may recall the crisis that occurred in the 1930s and following years, which caused millions to lose their jobs in all large countries of the world.  In such cases, factories are shut down; business are forced into bankruptcy; unemployment is rampant.

We can multiply ourselves when we desire to do so. However, we cannot cope with so many works of charity to take care of all needs. We do not have enough bread to feed the poor or enough clothing for the unemployed or enough time for all that must be done. Our compassion is not enough, because this world is based on injustice. We gradually realize that our world needs to be rebuilt; that our materialistic society lacks the vigor to raise itself up; and that consciousness has been stripped of the sense of duty.

Companies are not founded for the common good. This world has been built upon the sign of money. Money holds every right. Those who own it are the powerful. Nothing can make large business companies restrain themselves; not the purchase of people’s consciousness or the sight of human pain.

The state plays a preponderant role. However, many of those who follow political careers are after their own good instead of the good of the nation. They merely seek to hoard power. Favors are for friends. The fair distribution of justice seems to have lost all sense.

Individual moral values are not enough.  Many do not want to hear any talk of morality.  Forming people with moral character is a tremendous task. However, if the structure of society is not moral in itself such a task is doomed to failure. 

A society that does not accommodate the family is immoral. We preach to married couples encouraging them to have children. Yet, they must be heroic to be able to do it. There is a problem of social morality that is even more serious than the problem of individual morality we preach about. Instead of preaching to the married couples, we must preach to policymakers and institutions so that they can make room for a family that is able to live according to the plan of God. Otherwise, all our efforts will prove futile, as we observe all the time. And I believe that neither the moralists nor we the clergy as a whole have insisted enough on this issue. We seek individual solutions to social problems just as we seek national solutions to international problems.

A society that fails to defend the weak from the strong, the worker from speculators, and that does not constantly make the necessary adjustments to distribute the earnings as well as the work among everyone and does not allow the ordinary man to lead a moral life is committing a mortal sin. It is not enough to call upon friends of goodwill to try to solve some problems. Social frameworks must change.

An Essential Revolution

With objective clarity it seems that if we want action to benefit others we must first attack the reform of the social structure itself in order to make it moral.

We cannot accept a society in which every effort of generosity, and self-sacrifice is directed to the rescue of humans living in misery.  If society were given a structure that is tailored to humankind in its real dimensions, the misery would be far less frequent. Pain will never cease to exist in the world. However, ridding the world of misery is not impossible and we should aspire to that and work on attaining it.

Since we have not thought of these reforms in time, others have thought for us, and in their plans fundamental values have been sacrificed.

Nowadays, people are enthusiastic about three forms: Marxism, nationalism, and the right of money to thrive and dominate. What are we going to do in this struggle? Fight all three groups? Or rather, present a positive system that incorporates the justice components found in all three of them?

The demands of our doctrine are more realistic, more reasonable. They respect more rights, and demand more from every single one of us. 

Don’t we think of the family as a social cell in which everything is in common, as a cell of life in common, a unit in which both joy and suffering are shared as well as clothing and food?

Couldn’t we think of a company built following the pattern of a community, a large family, just as there are very interesting experiments in which property is not in the hands of the individual or the state but is owned by the working community?

  From its own inception a company is the common property of those who participate in it. All individuals must sacrifice themselves for the good of everyone, they all must put at the disposal of everyone their own capabilities: intelligence, management, effort, money.  There may be social inequality with respect to people’s condition, as is natural for there to be, but then the good contained in each one of those social differences could then be placed at the service of the community for the good of everyone.

The Strength of a National Power

To those who want to restore the power of authority we may easily say that we know the value of authority and its absolute necessity in an orderly society. If there is no supreme authority in the world, which God willing we will soon have, then there should be an authority in each country that is strong enough to impose the common good.

In order to balance the world, each country must in itself be balanced first. If the government abandons utopias, it will manage to stabilize the exchanges among countries to be able to stabilize the situation in its own country. The attainment of international stability is easier when it is supported by countries with domestic stability.

The current money-driven process must be countered with a rational process guided by the intelligence and goodwill to consider the value of every person, one that considers one’s family life. Once leaders can guarantee public peace and family life for their citizens, and intermediate agencies between the state and individuals are fulfilling their social function, it will be possible to stabilize the exchanges among nations with justice and charity based on stabilized domestic balance, so that everyone is able to live.  

Capital is important, but in the last place. Above all it is important for people to live with their families. That is the principle of any human sociology. Money should be used to support and benefit this human life, to increase its security and joy, to offer freedom to workers, to allow them to have an education, a culture. Money has its place, but after work and after those who use their intelligence and hands to work. However it does not have the right to barge in freely and disrupt the activities of institutions.

Credit as is now beginning to be understood as a double-edged sword: it may be used to construct or to destroy, spoiling a normal life due to overproduction. The human needs and social security of workers should never be disregarded for the sake of money.  Money has no priority over people; the financial market is not above the business sector.

The corporate sector and its leaders must look out for the common good. These limitations are necessary so that capital may take its proper place, and credit may be used for good and not for evil purposes.  Economies have their rights, but for the benefit of the whole community and not for the sole profit of an individual.

Our action

Disoriented spirits are everywhere. This is our chance if we can make the best of it. If after having studied the fundamental problems in human and social life, we have the courage to speak up in timely fashion; if we know how to influence press and book options, if our constant interventions help humankind remember its balance in the respect for moral values, we can guide the world towards the road to justice.

The masses that surround us are slow in understanding, but after so many disappointments, wouldn’t they tomorrow be willing to follow us as they followed Christ? The spectacle of our charity, the value and certainty of our opinions must lead the people to believe in Christians once again.  In this chaos and corruption we must appear as the light, as loyalty, purity, as salt is to the earth.  The disciples of Christ who look at things through a love-filled faith acquire such stature that they are then the only ones able to bring together in truth humankind that is separated by profound differences.

No great things escape us. There is no mysticism that is more realistic, more idealistic and more humane than ours. And to find it one need only go to Christian doctrine, freed from clichés and reductionisms.  Such doctrine is offered to us in the pure and simple Christianity, which we must present to our contemporaries in all its starkness and richness, with all its demands and all its breadth.

The reasons so few manage to find it is that it must be sought in Christ, the crucified Christ. It is in the thoughts of Christ that we must seek the plan God devised for the universe and humankind, our nations, our professions and companies, our families and for us ourselves. Our mystic is contemplative as all wisdom is. Our role is to enter into the plan of God and carry it out according to our strength and to desire with great intensity whatever we are unable to carry out. Our actions must be the naught but the extension of our contemplation.

Our spiritual life would be a lie if our perspective were out of sync with that of Christ, if our contemplation did not generate emotional fraternity, if God whom we look upon for faith were not the Father of all our brethren in effort and suffering; if Christ, who transforms us every day into Himself, did not broaden our hearts enabling us to embrace humankind.

Hence, we are with Christ, in Him and for Him. And if we should only enjoy partial success, our success will still be of great importance. We give a sense to all, and we look at everything from the perspective of God, offering ourselves to our brethren as Christ did.