Freedom to believe
Phalan, Timothy
Noriega was a drug trafficker, and they knew that the U.S. government knew. They concluded, therefore, that Noriega and his policies reflected the priorities of the U.S. government. There is no...
...To that end, since I left the presidency of the Republic of Costa Rica, I have been promoting the demilitarization of Central America...
...PHALAN: May we move on now to the theme of belief and unbelief in the modem world and in the English-speaking world in particular...
...People speak of being driven to murder, and no doubt that is what it feels like, an uncontrollable passion, a possession by something alien...
...That was what gave the stimulus to rediscovering my faith...
...As the citizen of a nation that has found that the best response to underdevelopment is the absence of weapons, I believe that it is time to recognize these men and women who have the vision and courage to disarm their countries in order to struggle for development in democracy and freedom...
...What can take a person to such a moment...
...When after due deliberation a new course is set, then it becomes the task of the administration to ensure that logical changes that flow from the new policy are put into effect...
...At this writing, President Alfredo Cristiani is powerless to enforce the laws of his country, to arrest those who torture and murder, in good part because the U.S...
...PHALAN: Tell me a little about yourself, your background...
...GALLAGHER: An imaginative apologetics is crucial...
...A series of choices and surrenders makes that moment possible...
...A few reference books, including A Working Woman's Cookbook, rested on shelves in the corner...
...PHALAN: Yes, in the most inhospitable environment...
...I completely disagree...
...I nearly got married at one stage, in France...
...Both roots are versions of rigidity...
...GALLAGHER: Come back to me in a year or so ! It will be part of my job to acquaint myself with the various movements that are helping----or indeed hindering--faith in the English-speaking world...
...It means that I cling to my egoist needs at the expense of anybody else...
...But those who go [to Mass], go with a terrific sense of conamunity and a terrific sense of Christian commitment...
...So you lose out on a sense of community and you lose out on a sense of commitment...
...ambassador to El Salvador during the Carter administration, is president of the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C...
...GALLAGHER: This new job in the Vatican is going to ask me to specialize, in particular with the English-speaking world, and to focus on North America...
...I'm much more impressed by the fruits of faith...
...The three pillars of faith are very ancient and very new...
...In our modem societies, especially in our wealthy societies, community has been killed...
...Chesterton said somewhere that every decision is a self-limitation...
...The question was there in school...
...I'm glad because it gave me a chance to do a certain amount of growing up...
...stands...
...GALLAGHER: I fear there is a price to be paid...
...I'll be living in a large community of over a hundred in the center of Rome and the marginalized are literally on the margins--far out from the center...
...Passive in that you don't expect to make any difference to the world, and private (the two things go together) in that faith is something you keep in your heart or your soul and your relationship to God is something very hidden...
...I went to a Jesuit school, Clongowes Wood College, famous 17May 1991:311 for people like James Joyce...
...In 1987, I spent a year in Latin America...
...Unless we adopt this position, the Salvadoran people's hopes for peace will prove illusory and the war will continue to drag on...
...should move resolutely to support the UN negotiating team by making clear our support for lasting peace based on a progressive and complete demilitarization with abolition of armies as the final goal...
...GALLAGHER GOES TO ROME ichael Paul Gatlagher, S.J., an Irish Jesuit, was appointed to the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with Non-Believers in Rome last year...
...In the New Testament text there are, of course, only twenty-eight chapters in the Acts of the Apostles...
...A church that is perhaps still using the language that helped a pre-sixties generation...
...PHALAN: They wouldn't feel the tension...
...Great nations do not change course lightly...
...TIMOTHY PHALAN Timothy Phalan, a free-lance writer, lives in Enniskerry, Ireland...
...The various forms of militant or systematic atheism that were strongly present in the fifties and sixties are much quieter, even in the English-speaking world...
...Idolatry means that I want a god who doesn't challenge me and a god I can manage--like a golden calf...
...So the decision to accept this request by the Vatican means for the moment letting go of things that are dear to me...
...It ~vould seem unrealistic to expect the Salvadoran military to place themselves under the law when we have taught them that the rewards of a U.S...
...I~wis...
...to democracy through demilitarization can overcome Salvadoran military intransigence...
...PHALAN: As you set off for the marble corridors of the Vatican do you have any fears about losing touch with "the other side of history...
...This creates a strangely split world consciousness: Catholic, Latin, Celtic vs...
...That's the title of a book I wrote--Free to Believe...
...I'm not always impressed by full churches...
...I would say the biggest danger to religion in the Englishspeaking wealthy countries is that the gospel becomes both passive and private...
...Dialogue also happens...
...This article is based on testimony given before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month...
...It's a question involving the whole society or a whole culture...
...post-colonial and influenced by the efficiency-culture of England...
...A few weeks ago the former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, wrote that the leaders of the region want to bury the pain and the bitterness of war in order to begin constructing a new Central America characterized by the democracy, freedom, and prosperity deserved by their people...
...Only a clear commitment by the U.S...
...In fact does not the Latin root of the word decide mean cutting off...
...Practice can be fairly nominal...
...PHALAN: You had some time in the United States...
...The ancient roots are idolatry and greed...
...London: Darton, Longman and Todd...
...It had the biggest impact on my faith since being a student...
...Greed is another ancient root...
...It's out of that that I would look at the limitations of northern society and the way in which it cramps the language of faith by its very assumptions and way of life...
...There are ancient roots and there are more modem roots...
...I need them more than they might need me...
...PHALAN: Is a sudden collapse still a possibility...
...PH'ALAN: Would some of us in the North be Herodians...
...Then in my lifetime Ireland has had major changes: predominantly rural to predominantly urban...
...A large photo of PeterHans Kolvenbach, the general of the Society of Jesus, hung on the wall...
...I've found in my own work with students that if you can go in any of those doors it will lead you to the other two in time, at its own pace...
...The culture is a kind of Herod, as in the story of the Wise Men...
...As soon as I read the newspaper account of the murder/suicide I wondered about that murderous husband...
...We're there as a pastoral research office, to listen and to communicate what is happening...
...I don't want to be disturbed...
...The U.S...
...Many people would have such a private view of faith that they wouldn't have much of a social conscience at all about where their money is coming from or...
...So I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore with the rather grand title of "fellow by courtesy...
...It is our freedom that makes murder and suicide possible...
...PHALAN: Can we turn the question a bit, then and ask, "What militates against community, against prayer, against service...
...One of the things I came across in Latin America was the phenomenon of North American volunteers with the Maryknolls and others who would come south...
...I did a degree in literature in Dublin and another one in France before joining the Jesuits at twenty-two...
...I know this prosperity will not come about if we do not stop spending our scarce resources on weapons and soldiers' salaries...
...You will find groups who are hostile to all religion but they are a tiny minority...
...That's idolatry--the most profound temptation against true faith...
...He has made a special study, arising out of his pastoral work with college students, of atheism and belief in the modern world...
...There is a sense of humanity here...
...Indeed, it hadn't changed much between his time and mine...
...This would be the late fifties, before the council...
...they may be a vocal minority, but they're tiny...
...Their bodies were found in the plane's wreckage...
...His sitting room floor was covered in gray linoleum seamed with brown tape...
...In total I have been there over twenty years listening to what's happening in the culture, to what's happening to the students, keeping my fingers on the pulse of faith--or lack of it...
...congressional concerns about human rights violations seriously and has never tried or convicted any officer for any such crime, you might well query some Salvadoran captains and majors about the relationship which exists between the CIA and certain senior military officers whose reputation for cruelty and barbarism sets the worst possible example...
...GALLAGHER: It strikes me that Ireland is probably the only country in the English-speaking world whose population is majority Catholic...
...It needn't create crippling guilt.., but a good guilt--"I'm here for something else than what I have been living...
...Many people think that difficulties in faith will be solved by a good intellectual answer...
...Where I live in Dublin, in a poor area, in spite of all its brokenness, community is natural...
...I'm much more inclined to stress that we have a problem of faith in Ireland...
...GALLAGHER: But there is community here...
...They have to be communicated differently, starting from the experience of questioning and searching...
...I'm not saying that what you mean by "traditional" has no place...
...We are all here for something else than what our societies are living...
...Killing done for political or business reasons we can understand, much as we might loathe it--but what passion could make us do this...
...We live isolated lives...
...The whole adventure of the church is one long ~eries of experiments in imagination, of trying to express the Good News of Jesus Christ in different languages, translating it, translating it, translating it...
...I need them to keep my heart in Christian focus...
...He is responsible for the section dealing with the English-speaking world...
...What a place...
...GALLAGHER: Perhaps without even knowing it...
...GALLAGHER: Yes...
...GALLAGHER: Some will, some won't...
...They'd come south often as couples, even with children~ They'd live in poor areas and they would help out for perhaps two or three years as catechists or agricultural experts or whatever...
...The gospel is best heard when people are listening and vulnerable to the other side of history...
...In my experience, people are not free to believe...
...When I visited I reached his apartment via a squalid, graffiti-scrawled, urine-smelling stairwell...
...That isn't to say that a person at that moment feels free, is in fact not enslaved, driven, controlled...
...PHALAN: Was your vocation a long time in gestation...
...What we need for ourselves, for Central America, and particularly for E1 Salvador is a diplomacy that emphasizes the rule of law...
...Many people have strange gods who cannot reveal and challenge their lives...
...OF SEVERAL MINDS John Garvey GOING TO HELL BY INCHES OBSERVE YOUR PASSIONS ' ~ ot long ago an insurance executive and his wife got into their private airplane, took off, and while they ~K were in the air he shot her in the head, and then killed himself by downing a quart of scotch in fifteen minutes...
...Gallagher's most recent book, Struggles of Faith (Dublin: Columba Press, 1990) is a collection of essays...
...It has changed much more since...
...We often use our wealth to build walls or to create distance...
...GALLAGHER: I think I was a "church atheist" as a student, meaning that my difficulties with faith in fact were with the church as I was running into it in Ireland...
...protected to open...
...It will be a time of information-gathering and of being something of a resource person for the bishops, especially...
...Before taking up his duties, Father Gallagher taught English literature at University College, Dublin (UCD...
...At least initially I don't imagine I will be able to have anything of the same contact with the poor...
...There is no exact parallel to Manuel Noriega in the Salvadoran armed forces...
...Who knows all this...
...THE CULTURE OF ATHEISM FREEDOM TO B~'~r.~.VE FR...
...But it is really the result of choices made beforehand...
...GALLAGHER: Very simple really...
...No priests in parishes in Dublin will say to you they are unworried about the future of the faith...
...And I think it is important to understand that the murderer is not unlike you or me...
...GALLAGHER: I had a traveling studentship and I used two years of it in Oxford and that left me with one year free...
...This is the result, how17May 1991:313...
...There were neat piles of newspapers and magazines...
...This is particularly difficult to accomplish because a new policy is seldom defined with the necessary precision and at the necessary level to overcome competing bureaucratic interests...
...After ordination I went back to UCD...
...Yet if you seek a reason why the Salvadoran military has seldom taken U.S...
...After all, he pretended to be interested in religion whereas, in fact, he wanted to kill...
...What would it be like to go from here to there...
...The real energy was toward the future, what they call "the reverse ministry...
...To have your world so fill up with a single passion that it crowds everything else out of your life except stopping another person's whole world this is, among other things, intriguing...
...they are: prayer, community, and service---especially of the wounded of the world...
...Then there are more modem accumulations, as it were, on top of these ancient temptations...
...My own hope is that we may be able to shift the agenda away from doctrine to life...
...But it is not yet clear to the Salvadoran negotiators where the U.S...
...I expected a more drastic collapse...
...I think that's part of the modem thing--that the heart can't be touched if I am a fully paid-up member of the wealthy club.., too well insulated...
...People have said, "Let's write Acts, chapter 29...
...The emphasis there is that it's not a question of pure truth...
...There's that appearance of friendliness towards religion in our northern, Englishspeaking world, but in reality, the culture is deeply relativistic...
...ROBERT E. WHITE Robert E. White, U.S...
...Therefore, where faith is flourishing, as opposed to where it is declining, is where you find "the three pillars of faith...
...More recently, we have supported a similar policy in Panama...
...PHALAN: What, therefore, can the church in North America and Europe do...
...I have a feeling that behind the large figures of church attendance lurks a certain practical atheism-in other words that people's hearts are not really challenged by the gospel...
...Strange to say, Catholic faith hasn't suffered as much as it might have been expected to...
...I know 312: Commonweal many people who have been helped by the writings of C.S...
...continues to support a military establishment that insists that the law has no power over it...
...We have, since 1948, given firm, unequivocal support to a demilitarized Costa Rica...
...Most importantly, means which reflect old objectives but that are in conflict with new objectives must be rooted out...
...When he lived in Dublin, Gallagher chose to reside in Ballymun, a poor area north of the city's center, far removed from his university campus...
...I liked some of the Jesuits and thought of joining, but my father wasn't too keen on it and I dropped the idea...
...The president of E1 Salvador, like the president of the United States, has an obligation to see that the laws of his country are faithfully executed...
...connection are for those who hold the law in total contempt...
...What about the need expressed as "tides quaerens intellectum...
...PHALAN: What about other parts of the world...
...Later, I discovered a much more vibrant community of young Christians at Caen University in France, in a much more pagan society of course...
...We have to create community, it isn't there naturally...
...That question may be the reason that there are more good murder mysteries than there are books about war, or about hit-men...
...In Ballymun, practice is down to about 10 percent...
...But the older rationalist proofs don't "wash" any more for most people...
...Even more common forms of anger can feel like this...
...A book of pastoral reflections on his university ministry is due out soon: Where Is Your God...
...The more common form of unbelief is a cultural one, what I was calling practical atheism--meaning that the very culture undermines the gospel...
...He completed a doctorate in the area in the early eighties and has published widely on the subject...
...But in time I hope to find some way of staying in touch with the wounded and victimized...
...This occurs on a planet where at exactly the same time Kurds are watching their children starving, the sound of television quiz shows fills the rooms of old people, a woman gives birth to her first child, someone is moved to tears by the glory of Bach, sharks feed, frogs snap at flies, a couple driving on a remote country road wonder about what it would be like to live the lives of the people in the farmhouses they pass, parents abuse small children, a walrus dies with something like wonder on its mind, a young wife on the telephone to her mother forgets that the roast has been too long in the oven, beekeepers in South Texas fret over the advent of killer bees, and monks send up praise to God...
...Part of the obstacle to faith in most of the English-speaking world comes from a church that is complacent and under-challenging and under-nourishing...
...GALLAGHER: Yes and no...
...What emotion would take us there...
...This is because they go back to a place like the United States as families, having had a glimpse of something else that will make them forever alert and suspicious of Herod in the forms in which he may show himself...
...PHALAN: IS there no place for a traditional apologetics...
...Yet, a more sinister collapse has actually happened...
Vol. 118 • May 1991 • No. 10
