We can change the world

By Bishop Kevin Dowling

We need nothing less than the transformation of our world, our global community. It will demand the interface between deeply held and lived values, a critical and searching mind, and a spirit that does not count the cost in overcoming that which diminishes or destroys hope.

In 2005, the United Nation’s former envoy on HIV/Aids, Stephen Lewis, said of the disease: “[T]he pandemic engulfs us; in combination with eviscerating poverty, it puts the survival of entire countries at risk. Nothing in this pandemic works in a vacuum…everything is inextricably linked to everything else. […] We can subdue this pandemic, but it will take the collective and uncompromising voices of principle and outrage to make it happen.”

Principle and outrage. Yes! Many, many times I have looked into the haunting eyes of children, like the dying little boy in the hospice in-patient unit next to my house, emaciated, who never said a word, but every time I came to him he just stretched out his arms — just wanting to be hugged and held, which we did with great love until he died. Or a 17 year-old girl telling me of the terrible ordeal of being raped by her HIV-positive father, becoming infected and pregnant, her baby being born HIV-positive, and then as she slipped deeper into her illness, being thrown out of the house to end up in a shack where we minister. Or a 13-year-old girl with empty and so sad eyes watching her mother die of Aids-defining diseases, knowing that all her relatives had died of the same disease and there was no one left to care for her three siblings except herself.

Principle and outrage! Yes! Until people, and communities everywhere enter into the very personal reality of the HIV tragedy and other forms of misery, they will not feel outrage that someone — anyone — should have to suffer like this. Nor will they feel outrage at the collective and structural socio-economic systems which condemn so many of these “little ones” to a degrading life, and a lonely and hopeless death.

I believe it requires that feeling of being outraged to move people to a response which should reflect a vision for humankind everywhere, a vision based on values which are deeply held in one’s informed conscience, but a vision which is then guided by principles — for example the principles of Catholic Social Teaching. This includes commitment to the common good as fundamental to every political and economic policy; to the preferential option for the poor which must be at the heart of all policy making; to a solidarity which begins the transformation of the lot of the poor and vulnerable of our world; to the integrity of creation and the universal destiny of goods which must inspire policies and efforts to save the planet for future generations; and people-centredness

All of this must inform our belief that our society can be termed “civilised” only to the extent that we really care for and open the way to a life of dignity for the most vulnerable in our communities. The simple fact is that where there is endemic poverty, marginalisation, and exploitation of the vulnerable in societies, there you will find the conditions which enable HIV — and indeed the potential for suffering, conflict and violence — to rapidly advance.

HIV is undeniably a disease of the poor in particular, and the truly vulnerable in that category are girl-children and single women, and single mothers who are so often marginalised socially, economically and culturally.

The churches, including the Catholic Church, in terms of their theological vision and pastoral outreach in this pandemic must be seen to make a clear link between unjust economic and social systems and structures which dominate our world, and the very particular personal circumstances of the millions of poor people forced, for example, into migration in search of a way out of their poverty.

No one is exempt from the effects of these crises, whether it be the global recession, the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons, the threat of extremism, living in fear, the frightening escalation of disease and infection. No one is exempt.

As people of good will, we must move from what threatens and find common ground, so that together we commit to finding how we can bring to the vast millions of disadvantaged fellow citizens a realistic hope that life can be different — not just for the privileged few, but ever more truly for all who have a right to a life of dignity.

No one person can achieve this. It has never been more true to say that at this moment in the history of humankind everything depends on achieving respect, understanding and cooperation among the peoples of our world. If there is to be a future for any one individual, it means committing to a shared future for all.

We must try to reach out to others in a respect which presumes that they are in good faith, even if their position or opinion on any issue differs from mine. It means that I am willing to open my informed conscience, and even more my heart, to others who may not think like me or believe in the way I do. It means that I search with others for that “point of meeting” based on values which we can agree are crucial to the future.

Jesus  said: “I have come that you may have life, and life in abundance” (Jn 10:10). That was his vision of what is worthy of every human being. That is our quest — for ourselves, and for every other person who is a child of God. That quest will not be easy to fulfil, but it is a quest that is worth giving everything in us to achieve.

Just before he was killed by an assassin’s bullet as he celebrated Eucharist 29 years ago, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador said: “The great need today is for Christians [for people] who are active and critical, who don’t accept situations without analysing them inwardly and deeply… We know that every effort to better society, especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us!”

This is an edited version of an address Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg delivered at the commencement ceremony at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco on May 22.