Quote of the Week: Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger
There are countries threatened by death because children are not born anymore; there are developed countries where youth give way to despair, where self-indulgence is constantly being provoked by advertisements in the interests of consumption and production. In other developed countries human freedom and culture are curtailed because they are subjected to powerful egalitiarian ideologies. In some developed countries all the resources of science and wealth are employed for the production of death-dealing weapons. Who are we so afraid of, that we stockpile our resources in weapons of death instead of spending them in generous giving and sharing of all this wealth?
Those among you who are Christians will have recognized the words of Jesus Christ himself: ‘What will it profit if a man gain the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?” (Matt 16:26).
Time is running short. But perhaps it is not too late and our historical culture can still be saved from the deadly disease which is eating our heart away.
–Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, Dare to Live. trans. M.N.L. Couve de Murville (New York: Crossroad, 1988),82.
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Insightful but depressing Henry.
The ending words are important. While this is the situation we see around us, don’t go into despair. Hope. Work for a change.
Henry,
What is the deadly disease that lies at the heart of his examples? Unless I’m misreading, it doesn’t appear to be laid out here.
Gerald:
Here are a few snippets near the quote I selected, which should help put it in context, and what he sees is needed:
“We, the rich countries, have drawn to ourselves for our profit the life of the whole world. That is why we are perhaps already dead, because we are in the process of losing our soul.
At this very moment the majority of people on our earth are condemned to die of famine, poverty or disease. Their fragile cultures are collapsing because we dominate them and put them under such pressure to prove for our progress.”
“Any economic system which leaves millions of people dying in appalling conditions is a system of death, whatever intentions it may have for promoting greater justice.”
“If we want to survive, each and every one in our society must be prepared to show greater generosity; only thus will our dignity be restored, because it is only if we are prepared to share with these men and women, our brothers and sisters, that we shall really become their brothers and sisters. We hall then receive what constitutes the fundamental dignity of human beings and their vocation.”
The point is that in the “rich” countries, greed has led us to individualistic extremes, seeking for ourselves, taking up and using the goods of the earth — and the people of the earth– to pay for our luxuries; but we then find they don’t satisfy, and search for more and more, while destroying more and more, and thus, causing no concern for others, no dignity of the other. It’s lack of compassion, lack of love, lack of selfless giving which is the root cause of many evils, from taking of life in the womb, to the mistreatment of our neighbor, and all must be tied together. We seek to protect ourselves at the expense of others.
Henry,
Thanks posting these quotes and your comment.
At some point Americans have to ask fundamental questions about the future.
Too much of today’s political language is coarse and self-defeating. As such, it is shallow. No one ever convinced me of anything by shouting in my face. They never will.
In Buddhist psychology this type of consumption is referree to as the “Realm of the Hungry Ghost” This particular state of psychological influence represents past unmet needs of the child at critical stages in its development-thus the ghost-like appearance. This ghost has a long neck which represents a difficulty in taking in present nourishment. The stomach is bloated which indicates that whatever nourishment is swallowed it is not digested nor absorbed.
Consequently, there is always a sense of being malnourished and the desire is to attempt to get more and more of whatever it is that will give some sense of nourishment–PLEASURE.
The creation of consumerism and capitalism are built on this foundation of human emptiness.