Confronting Evil Today

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Confronting Evil Today

• A Response to Evil
• St. Jeromes Lectures in Catholic Experience
• January 30, 2009
• David Seljak, St. Jeromes University

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Confronting Evil Today

• This lecture is dedicated to Carol Persindear
  friend and work partner for seven years.
• You are the salt of the earth. Matthew 530

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Understanding Evil

• The Sociological Imagination
• The Social Construction of Reality
• Social Sin
• Evil in the Modern World
• The Revolutionary Society
• The Role of Ideology

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Dimensions of Sin

• Traditional concepts of sin
• Individual sin
• Cosmological e.g. Satan, demons, etc.
• Communitarian e.g. Israel, the nations, etc.
• The social dimension of sin
• Linked to sociological imagination

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The Social Dimension of Evil

• The social construction of reality.
• We live in a world.
• We act according to our conception of the world,
  not as it actually is.

World
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SOCIAL SIN

• i) subject is collectivity
• ii) no sense of guilt
• iii) false consciousness
• iv) institutions that dehumanize

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BAUM FOUR LEVELS OF SOCIAL SIN

• Injustices and dehumanizing trends built into
  various institutions
• Cultural and religious symbols which legitimate
  unjust institutions
• False consciousness created by these institutions
  and ideologies
• Collective decisions generated by the false
  consciousness
• From Gregory Baums chapter Critical Theology
  in Religion and Alienation, 2nd ed. Ottawa
  Novalis 2006.

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The Social Dimension of Evil

3. World
4. Decisions
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What is evil?

• Each individual and each society has a different
  conceptualization of evil based on different
  patterns of socialization.
• Cultural relativism?
• Relativism and Absolutism

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Against relativism social sin and the eclipse
of the Other

• From Enrique Dussel, Ethics and Community,
  Maryknoll, NY Orbis Books, 1988.

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Enrique Dussel Social Sin and the Eclipse of the
Other

• Evil occurs when we define someone as other,
  that is, not fully human.
• We then feel that it is legitimate to dominate,
  exploit or even kill them.
• The dominant culture (including religion) assures
  us that this is natural, good, and/or necessary.

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The Reign of God

• Why did God create us?
• Image and likeness of God (Imago dei)
• Community and the individual
• Love and freedom
• Martin Buber the I-Thou relationship
• I and Thou (New York Scribner, 1923 1958
  Second edition)

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Evil and Death

God

• Destruction of community negation of the dignity
  of the human person of the "other"

Self
Neighbour
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Evil and Death

• Domination and despoilation
• domination enslavement and control
• despoilation taking what the other needs in
  order to live and reproduce life

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Evil and Death

• Instrumentalization of the other
• The other becomes a tool, an instrument, a
  means for our ends
• Martin Buber I-Thou relationship becomes an I-It
  relationship

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Evil and Death

• Idolatry totalization of the self and its needs
• In our actions, our needs become absolute, i.e.
  more important than the divine command to love.
• The I-Thou relationship is shattered.

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Evil and Death

• Social sin institutionalization of evil
• This relationship is reproduced in social forms
  outside the control of any one individual.
• They become part of our very social structures
  and institutions.
• They appear natural, that is, as common
  sense.

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Evil is an order

• The systemic rejection of the "other" slavery,
  racism, sexism, exploitation, etc.
• It is an order that serves death.
• It harms both master and slave, that is
  dominant and victim groups.

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Goodness and Life

• Goodness comes through the restoration of the
  I-Thou relationship
• Goodness serves justice
• Goodness serves life

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Goodness and Life

• i) the other as the breach in the system
• Interaction of culture and structures form a
  world
• Recognition of the other as human shatters that
  world.

• Culture World Structures

Other
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Liberation theology

• The preferential option for the poor"
• theory see the world from the position of the
  poor not our friends and associates
• praxis solidarity with the poor and struggle for
  justice poor are to be agents of their own
  liberation Church must support them.

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Jesus and the poor

• Luke 4
•  17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed
  to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it
  is written  18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on
  me,       because he has anointed me       to
  preach good news to the poor.    He has sent me
  to proclaim freedom for the prisoners       and
  recovery of sight for the blind,    to release
  the oppressed,     19 to proclaim the year of
  the Lord's favor."
•  20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to
  the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone
  in the synagogue were fastened on him, 21 and he
  began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is
  fulfilled in your hearing."

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John Paul II and Globalization of solidarity

• Our Jubilee, 2,000 years after Christ's birth,
  must also bear this sign of universal
  brotherhood. It represents a message that is
  addressed not only to believers, but to all
  people of good will, so that they will be
  resolved, in their economic decisions, to abandon
  the logic of sheer advantage and combine
  legitimate "profit" with the value and practice
  of solidarity. As I have said on other occasions,
  we need a globalization of solidarity, which in
  turn presupposes a "culture of solidarity" that
  must flourish in every heart.
• Pope John Paul II, Earth is Entrusted to Man's
  Use, Not Abuse,
• 11 November 2000

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POPE JOHN PAUL II, WORLD DAY OF PEACE, 1 JANUARY
1999

• The history of our time has shown in a tragic way
  the danger which results from forgetting the
  truth about the human person. Before our eyes we
  have the results of ideologies such as Marxism,
  Nazism and Fascism, and also of myths like racial
  superiority, nationalism and ethnic exclusivism.

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POPE JOHN PAUL II, WORLD DAY OF PEACE, 1 JANUARY
1999

• No less pernicious, though not always as obvious,
  are the effects of materialistic consumerism, in
  which the exaltation of the individual and the
  selfish satisfaction of personal aspirations
  become the ultimate goal of life.

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POPE JOHN PAUL II, WORLD DAY OF PEACE, 1 JANUARY
1999

• In this outlook, the negative effects on others
  are considered completely irrelevant. Instead it
  must be said again that no affront to human
  dignity can be ignored, whatever its source,
  whatever actual form it takes and wherever it
  occurs.

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IDOLATRY, DEATH AND EVIL

• Idolatry cognitive dimension
• traditional definition worship of false gods
• Gutièrrez acceptance of something finite as
  absoluteGustavo Gutiérrez, The God of Life,
  (Maryknoll, N.Y. Orbis, 1989)

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IDOLATRY, DEATH AND EVIL

• Idolatry practical dimension
• i) trust and submission
• ii) work of our hands
• iii) demand for human victims

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Evil and absolutization

• Evil comes from the absolutization of something
  that is finite, conditional, and partial (the
  self, state, party, revolution, nation, church,
  etc.).

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Evil and absolutization

• All institutions and systems are distorted by
  self-interest and partial knowledge. They are
  products of ideologies.

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Evil and absolutization

• All ideologies are
• partial (rooted in one particular groups
  experience)
• distorted by self-interest and
• potentially dangerous (if applied universally and
  uncritically).

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The God of Life

• Deuteronomy 3019- 20 This day I call heaven
  and earth as witnesses against you that I have
  set before you life and death, blessings and
  curses. Now choose life, so that you and your
  children may live and that you may love the LORD
  your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to
  him.

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Confronting evil

• Therefore, we have to remain vigilant.
• What evil do I participate in without knowing
  it?
• Who is suffering?
• Who are the victims of OUR system?

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There are things you can do

• www.kairoscanada.org
• www.inebnetwork.org/web/
• www.tikkun.org
• www.nrpe.org
• http//www.cfore.ca/

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Thanks so much!

• dseljak_at_uwaterloo.ca
• David Seljak
• St. Jeromes University
• 290 Westmount Road N.
• Waterloo ON N2L 3G3
• 519-884-8111, ext. 28232