Baum - Compassion and Solidarity: the Church for Others

ALSO BY GREGORY BAUM

Amazing Church: A Catholic Theologian Remembers a Half-Century of Change

Nationalism, Religion, and Ethics

The Reconciliation of Peoples: Challenge to the Churches (edited with Harold Wells)

Religion and Alienation: A Theological Reading of Sociology

Signs of the Times: Religious Pluralism and Economic Injustice

The Twentieth Century: A Theological Overview (editor)

THE CHURCH FOR OTHERS

GREGORY BAUM

Copyright 1987, Gregory Baum

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Baum, Gregory, 1923
Compassion and solidarity; the church for others

(CBC Massey lectures series; 1987)

eISBN 978-0-88784-851-3

1. Liberation theology. 2. Social justice. 3. Church and
social problems. 4. Solidarity Religious aspects
Christianity, 1. Title, II. Series

BT83.57B37 1992 261.8 C92-094791-3

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2006927546

Cover design and photography: Bill Douglas

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

I N 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.