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Building
a More Evangelical World
Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Franciscan
Family:
Rooted in the Incarnation, Franciscans have
always embraced the joys and hopes, anxieties and sorrows of the
human family as the context for our evangelizing mission. From the
beginning, they have striven to create a more fraternal, evangelical
world.
At the dawn of the third millennium, we see
good news on some fronts and troubling news on others. Some parts
of the world have found the path to greater stability, peace and
economic health. Sadly, other areas have fallen in even greater
numbers into de-humanizing poverty, violence, and ethnic conflicts.
The unchecked spread of AIDS threatens whole regions and, indeed,
entire countries with extinction.
Tragically, abortion, assisted
suicide and euthanasia have been accepted as solutions to various
human challenges. We know that sin disfigures our original innocence.
Sin hides best when it appears normal, in structures and human conventions
that are alienated from God's gracious mercy. In the light of these
developments, we have come together to build our fraternity and
renew ourselves in our Franciscan heritage.
We, the North American Capuchin, Conventual,
and OFM animators of justice, peace and the integrity of creation
gathered to reflect on the Franciscan intellectual tradition with
two Franciscan scholars, Joseph Chinnici, OFM and Michael Cusato,
OFM. We sought to know how that tradition might support and challenge
our efforts to wrestle with the pressing social problems we face
and how we might build a more evangelical world.
We appreciated their insights on the historical
foundations of the tradition. They welcomed our input on social
trends today. We were both enriched by the dialogue.
A Holistic Vision
of Human Dignity
We learned from our conversations that, from
the very beginning of our movement, Franciscan brothers and sisters
have been intimately engaged with issues of social justice. Our
work has changed over the centuries but it has always been animated
by a holistic vision of the dignity of the human person as created
in the image of God. Franciscans have offered a model of holiness
that involves us in and sometimes sets us against the world of commerce,
politics and economics, and have presented a new ethic of creation
that recognizes all creation as brother and sister. Inspired by
this example, we seek ways for all creation to better reflect God's
plan for a more peaceful, just and fraternal world.
We recognize the breadth and range of activities
that Franciscans perform each and every day to build this more fraternal
world. Among them are their example and sacrifices, their prayers
and preaching about virtues and the works of mercy. Other activities
include work in health care and parishes, soup kitchens, prisons
and refugee camps, attention to issues of housing, discrimination,
racism, access to the legal system and efforts to reduce poverty
and world debt. Other members of the family are making contributions
by promoting life at all its stages, protecting the environment,
teaching and writing about the efforts to build a more peaceful
and fraternal world.
We are grateful for all Franciscans who work
outside our countries. Wherever they serve, they have built the
foundations for justice. We thank them for the ways they have educated
us about our world's mutual interdependence.
From the very beginning, the Franciscan movement
resonated with people of various nations and reached out to men
and women across traditional religious and cultural divides. Within
a few years of our founding, friars were preaching, Poor Clares
were witnessing and Secular Franciscans were influencing all levels
of society through their various professions, each witnessing and
announcing the good news that God loves all peoples, welcomes conversion,
and sustains our efforts to build a more peaceful and just world.
One of the newest developments in this international outreach is
Franciscans International through its work at the United Nations
in New York, Geneva and in other parts of the world. In every age,
Franciscans have been bridge builders and peacemakers in polarized
societies.
Even with our extraordinary history in the practice
of peace, justice and the care of creation, we know how easy it
is to be discouraged by the complexity of the task, the size of
the problems, and the legitimate differences over which strategies
best help us promote the common good. But, we are encouraged by
our Franciscan intellectual tradition and the resources now available
to us from our Franciscan sources. We know that this rich tradition
can be easily used for the purposes of partisan politics. It should
not be thus. Rather, our vision ought to challenge any and all political
programs and positions which promulgate and promote injustices.
For our Franciscan tradition challenges all our assumptions and
thus opens us to a more creative set of solutions across a broad
spectrum of problems.
Help From Our Tradition
We appreciate the work of the Commission on
the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition (CFIT), with whom we are in
dialogue. We recommend the Franciscan Heritage Series, the first
volumes being Kenan Osborne's overview of the Franciscan intellectual
tradition and Ilia Delio's volume on Franciscans and creation. Our
work here has made a contribution toward CFIT's projected volume
on Franciscans and economics.
We would like to share with you some of the
excitement we experienced in our dialogue on the ways that the Franciscan
intellectual tradition can assist our work. The Franciscan tradition
has emphasized our God-given freedom and our ability to choose to
create an economic world that recognizes God's dominion and the
fundamental right of all men and women to be in communion with God,
one another, and all creation. We know that our globalized world
is in danger of being dominated by a vision of individuals and groups
that does not reflect the gospel.
We have an alternative economic vision that
is a more solid foundation for security and peace. Rather than the
dominant picture of inevitable competition, ambition and greed,
Alexander of Hales, for example, saw economics as the activity by
which mutual needs are recognized and supplied. By the end of the
13th century, friars were promoting a just wage, a just profit and
a fair interest on loans. Franciscans also struggled with issues
of need, necessity, indigence, abundance, prosperity and what to
do about surplus. They knew firsthand society's need to recognize
the "law of necessity": the right of each person to be
materially sustained in his or her basic human dignity by one's
neighbors. In Franciscan terms, we do not exist as competitors under
a stingy Lord but rather are bound in the communion of a good and
generous God, so that the exchange of goods and services builds
up the human family under God.
In reading and reflecting together on the story
of the Wolf of Gubbio (Fioretti, 21), we learned lessons about economics,
about the origins of violence and the possibility of achieving new
forms of social reconciliation. Social injustice fuels violence.
This story and others like it in the sources can be overly sentimentalized
but they are, in fact, part of our Franciscan tradition's social
challenge to a culture's assumptions about the ways that justice
and peace are attained.
Francis' vision of human dignity was so broad
that, shortly before going to Egypt in 1219, he rejected his society's
readiness to categorize the Sultan as "enemy" and its
willingness to take up arms against the Muslim world. Risking potential
injury or even death, Francis went to Egypt to preach against the
aims and methods of the Christian crusaders at Damietta and to share
his vision of the inviolable nature of the human fraternity with
the Sultan, Malik al-Kamil. So profound was this latter encounter
that for the rest of his life Francis regarded the Sultan as both
brother and friend.
In addressing the problem of violence in Gubbio
and in meeting the Sultan, Francis did not shrink from facing conflict.
His practice of humility in situations of extreme conflict enabled
him to promote social reconciliation and lead men and women to God.
Francis and those who first created our Franciscan
tradition posed significant social and religious questions to the
men and women of their time. They continue to do so today. Inspired
by the example of Francis, we'd like to invite you to reflect on
and address these questions at local chapters, fraternal gatherings
or assemblies.
Questions
" At Gubbio and in his meeting with the
Sultan, Francis took considerable risks to promote reconciliation
between people based on the Gospel vision of human dignity. What
kind of risks are you taking regarding social injustices?
" Which assumptions of the dominant culture are you now challenging
or do you feel called to challenge, based on the Franciscan vision
of human dignity?
" What concrete steps can you take with other Franciscans to
act on this challenge? What action can you take with others who
are not Franciscan to address this challenge?
" Francis warned the brothers against arrogance. Given that
minority is so important for Francis, how would you use minority
in the practice of social reconciliation?
" Are you committed to justice within the Franciscan family
and with your co-workers?
" Are you sharing with fellow Franciscans what you have found
to be effective ways to promote social justice?
" Conflict is an inevitable dimension of the promotion of justice,
peace and the integrity of creation. What resources in the Franciscan
tradition might help you promote reconciliation and lead men and
women to God?
God's justice will prevail. In time, by God's
grace all threats to human dignity will disappear. God will then
be "all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). Because of God's mercy,
we can now work to build a human society that shares in the gracious
love and communion of the God who is all good, supremely good, all
the time and to everyone.
May God make us instruments of peace.
The North American OFM, Conventual, and Capuchin
Animators
of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation.
November 11, 2004
Contact persons
Additional Resources
CFIT materials may be found on the web page
WWW.CFIT-ESC-OFM.ORG.
The first two volumes may be obtained from the Franciscan Institute,
St. Bonaventure University, New York: Kenan B. Osborne, OFM, The
Franciscan Intellectual Tradition: Tracing Its Origins and Identifying
Its Central Components (2003); Ilia Delio, OSF, A Franciscan View
of Creation: Learning to Live in A Sacramental World (2003).
Fundamental for understanding the viewpoint
of Francis of Assisi in this area is Jacques LeGoff, Saint Francis
of Assisi (New York: Routledge, 2004), especially chapter 3, where
Le Goff treats of "models related to the evolution of the economy."
This perspective on Francis can be supplemented
by the analysis of the academic sources in Odd Langholm, Economics
in the Medieval Schools, Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury
according to the Paris Theological Tradition 1200-1350 (New York:
Brill, 1992), which has several chapters on the Franciscan tradition.
His summary of the mendicant ideas on "need," "exchange"
and "power" may be found in "The Economics of the
Mendicant Orders: A Paradigm and a Legacy," in Società
Internazionale di Studi Francescani Centro Interuniversitario di
Studi Francescani, Ethica e Politica: le Teorie dei Frati Mendicanti
nel Due e Trecento (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull'Alto
Medioevo, 1999), 155-172. Scotus' fundamental ideas on law, power,
consent, freedom, and economic exchange may be analyzed from the
original texts, in English, from Allan B. Wolter, OFM, ed., John
Duns Scotus, Political and Economic Philosophy (St.Bonaventure,
NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2001).
A great deal of accessible material with contemporary
application to justice, peace, and the integrity of creation may
be found in the excellent collection of fundamental articles in
Dawn Nothwehr, OSF, ed., Franciscan Theology of the Environment,
An Introductory Reader (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 2002); and
the more programmatic essays in Ken Himes, OFM, Roberta A. McKelvie,
OSF, eds., Franciscans in Urban Ministry (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan
Institute Publications, 2002). The soon-to-be published CFIT booklet
(2005) by Dawn Nothwehr, which treats of the dignity of the person
in Francis, Clare, Bonaventure, and Scotus, will provide good material
for JPIC reflection.
Another part of the CFIT project that we recommend
is the annual symposium at Washington Theological Union (WTU). These
have addressed an overview of the tradition, Franciscanism and postmodernism,
plus Franciscanism and the environment. Future symposia will address
Scripture (2005) and ecclesiology (2006). Papers from these symposia
are available through the Franciscan Institute (St. Bonaventure
University, St. Bonaventure, NY 14778) and will be useful as resources
for those interested in animating for justice, peace and the integrity
of creation.
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