Voices October 08, 2020
Encyclical is a prescription for our fragmentation
By Paul Schratz - Life In The Schratz Lane
Watching the funeral of former Prime Minister John Turner on TV a few days ago, I learned many things about the man, including the fact he was a wonderful friend who kept track of his friends’ birthdays and called them up on their special day. (Those were the days before Facebook notified you of birthdays of people you’ve never met.)
That explained a letter I once received from Turner and which I’d stumbled across just a few days earlier.
Going through old correspondence destined for the shredder, I came across the long-forgotten letter on cream-coloured House of Commons stationery from the Rt. Hon. J. Turner, M.P., Vancouver—Quadra.
Dated Oct. 22, 1992, the short typewritten note read:
Dear Mr. Schratz,
I thought you did an excellent job on the Vander Zalm/Turner head to head.
Regards,
It was signed by Turner, although probably typed by an Ottawa staffer since I don’t think the former prime minister would have addressed a letter to Vancouver, Ontario.
The “head-to-head” article he referred to was an editorial feature I had written about efforts to bring Quebec into the Canadian Constitution and was based on interviews with Turner, who was campaigning for the unity accord, and former B.C. Premier Bill Vander Zalm, who opposed it.
The feature pitted the two men against each other in strong debate as they each offered their strongest arguments and responded to their opponent’s positions.
It was genuine political wrangling of the sort you don’t see anymore . . . anywhere, without rancor or predictable talking points. As each made his case and rebutted the other’s arguments, I tried to represent each man’s side as fairly as possible, regardless of my own position on the issue.
That genuine debate came to mind this week while reading Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis’ new encyclical about fraternity and social friendship, or more precisely the lack of it, in today’s world.
His letter to the world calls us to the “fraternal openness” of his namesake St. Francis of Assisi, saying it allows us to “acknowledge, appreciate, and love each person, regardless of physical proximity.”
In the encyclical, the Pope deplores recent trends that hinder universal fraternity, from weakened “historical conscience” to the “false securities” exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For all our hyper-connectivity,” writes Francis, we are witnessing “a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all.”
Underlying our lack of fraternity is that we have insulated ourselves from one another, especially on technological platforms that favour “encounter between persons who think alike, shielding them from debate.”
We may be “hyperconnected, giving us an illusion of debate,” says the Pope, but we resort to hyperbole, polarization, and ridicule,” or “information without wisdom.”
Political life, as anyone who watched the U.S. presidential debates observed, no longer has much to do with “healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good,” but instead has been reduced to a “craven exchange of charges and counter-charges,” amid a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation, the Pope says.
There is much more that he explores in Fratelli Tutti, which includes a lengthy section on the Good Samaritan and the need for encounters with others, regardless of origin, nationality, colour, or religion.
The encyclical is rich in inspiring terminology that resonates, observing that “to attain fulfilment in life we need others,” while calling for “universal love that promotes persons.” It urges us toward “political charity,” “authentic social dialogue,” a new culture based on “the joy of acknowledging others,” and striving for truth and consensus through negotiation and debate so we can “bypass the war of words that passes for communication today.
We need to find ways to recover kindness, the Pope says, by cultivating kindness.
I’m reminded of a quote from the Second Vatican Council, which said, “Communication is more than the expression of ideas and the indication of emotion. At its most profound level it is the giving of self in love.” (Gaudium et Spes)
I pray that Fratelli Tutti helps us realize it’s time we started giving ourselves in love if we really want to communicate with others.