Hope and prophecy

 Can there be legitimate prophecy about history? This is the question that opens the last chapter/lecture in Josef Pieper's short book Hope and History.

Christianity answers this with a clear yes. For example, among its sacred texts is the prophetic book of Revelation (the Apocalypse), and in it, (although not in it alone) there are assertions about the ultimate future of historical man - not so much, then, about how history will continue but rather about how it will end.

Josef Pieper points out that the acceptance of such a revealed prophecy presupposes that human existence takes place within a framework that reaches beyond what we can immediately sense in this world, and which, in that sense remains beyond an empirical grasp; and in the same sense the beginning and end of human history and individual human biography remain beyond empirical grasp. He also reprises what he has already referred to in previous chapters/lectures that attempts to develop and understanding of the future of human history in terms only of this world fall down in the face of the reality of the death of men.

Josef Pieper gives the following account of the image of history conveyed by the Apocalypse:

Since this conception takes account of human freedom to choose evil and also of "the" evil as a dark and demonic historical force - for that reason alone, dissension, breakdown, irreconcilable conflict, and even catastrophe cannot, in principle, be alien to the nature of  human history, including its everyday course of events.

And yet this is not the last word of apocalyptic prophecy. Its last word and its decisive report, all else notwithstanding, is the following: a blessed end, infinitely surpassing all expectations; triumph over evil; the conquest of death; drinking from the fountain of life; resurrection; drying of all tears; the dwelling of God among men; a New Heaven and a New Earth. What all this would appear to imply about hope, however, is that it has an invulnerability sufficient to place it beyond any possibility of being affected, or even crippled, by preparedness for an intra-historically catastrophic end - whether that end be called dying, defeat of the good, martyrdom, or world domination by evil.

 At one point, Josef Pieper draws attention to the "implicit faith" that St Thomas Aquinas attributes to those who, though not being explicit Christian believers, have some conviction that God will set men free (S Th II, ii, 2, 7 ad 3). Josef Pieper writes:

In precise correspondence to this, one should also, it seems to me, speak of an "implicit hope". Whoever, for instance, invests the power of his hope in the image of a perfect future human society, in which men are no longer wolves to each other and the good things of life are justly distributed - such a one participates, precisely thereby, in the hope of Christianity.

In a not dissimilar way, Josef Pieper also suggests that any efforts towards human fraternity have a link to the hope of Christianity. He refers first to Plato's thought with regard to the dwelling together of gods and men, and their shared banquet:

But Plato would never have been able to dream of the communal banquet in which Christianity recognizes and celebrates the real beginning and pledge of that blessed life at God's table. Since earliest times it has been called synaxis, or communio....

A more profound grounding for human solidarity cannot, it seems to me, be conceived. But the reverse also holds true: wherever true human communion is realized, or even just longed for, this universal table community is, whether one knows and likes it or not, quietly being prepared ...No matter where and by whom the realization of fraternity among men is understood and pursued as the thing that is truly to be hoped for, there exists, eo ipso, a subterranean link to the elementary hope of Christianity.

It is perhaps worth recalling, during this Jubilee Year dedicated to the theme of hope, the significance of the prayer that occurs in the Eucharistic Liturgy immediately after the Lord's Prayer. We can read it against the background of the view of apocalyptic prophecy described above by Josef Pieper: 

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

 

Jubilee of the World of Communications (3)

 The Decree of the Second Vatican Council on the Means of Social Communication, Inter Mirifica, acts as a kind of introduction to the much more detailed Pastoral Instruction, Communio et Progressio, that was prepared at the request of the Council Fathers. (In passing, it is worth looking at n.21 of the latter and recognising how pertinent are the questions that it raises, though the Instruction was written in days well before the widespread use of the internet.)

Inter Mirifica n.5 includes the following paragraph (I have slightly adapted the translation from the Vatican website against my reading of the Latin original, and added the bold):

The first question has to do with "information," as it is called, or the search for and reporting of the news. Now clearly this has become most useful and very often necessary for the progress of contemporary society and for achieving closer links among men. The prompt publication of affairs and events provides every individual with a fuller, continuing acquaintance with them, and thus all can contribute more effectively to the common good and more readily promote and advance the welfare of the entire civil society. Therefore, in society men have a right to information, in accord with the circumstances in each case, about matters concerning individuals or the community. The proper exercise of this right demands, however, that the news itself that is communicated should always be true and complete, within the bounds of justice and charity. In addition, the manner in which the news is communicated should be honest. This means that in both the search for news and in reporting it, there must be full respect for the laws of morality and for the legitimate rights and dignity of the individual. For not all knowledge is helpful, but "it is charity that edifies".

The keynote event of the main programme for the Jubilee of the World of Communications is a session "In Dialogue with Maria Ressi and Colum McCann", which is also followed up by a session "Communication and Hope" that afternoon.

Maria Ressa was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for "efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."  A notable aspect of her journalism has been her criticism of the rule of President Duterte in her native Philippines. A full account of her life and activity in the field of journalism can be found at Wikipedia: Maria Ressa.

Colum McCann is an Irish writer of fiction and non-fiction. His most notable non-fiction work is American Mother, published in 2024. It tells the story of Diane Foley, the mother of the journalist Jim Foley, who was held captive and then executed by ISIS. Colum has also co-founded an initiative Narrative 4 which uses shared story telling to build empathy within communities. An account of Colum McCann's life in journalism and as a novelist can be found at Wikepedia: Colum McCann.

In their contributions to the Jubilee of the World of Communications, Maria Ressa and Colum McCann are able to offer a considerable witness to the work of journalists in relation to the reporting of world events.

UPDATE: The text of Colum McCann's keynote address can be found here: Jubilee of the World of Communications: Colum McCann. That of Maria Ressa is here: Jubilee of the World of Communications: Maria Ressa.

Jubilee of the World of Communications (2)

Federation des Medias Catholiques is a member organisation, based in France, of the World Catholic Association for Communications SIGNIS. Towards the end of January each year it organises an Encounter for media professionals Les Journees de St Francois de Sales, named for the patron saint of journalists whose feast day is 24th January. This year the Encounter is being held in Rome and coincides with the Jubilee of the World of Communications.

The overarching theme of the 28th Encounter is "Catholic Media: What identity for what mission?" The titles of the three main plenary sessions of the Encounter address this theme as follows, with the speakers at each session drawn mainly, but not exclusively, from French language Catholic media organisations: 

Plenary 1: Information, formation or evangelisation: what is the mission of Catholic media?

What is the raison d'etre of our Catholic media? Have we as an object to take part in the missionary mandate for evangelising the public: Or do we exist to take part in the formation of Christian readers, to help them grow in the faith?  Or do our media take part in general information, bringing a Christian reading of events, particularly in these times when crises succeed crises? Or are our media all of these at once?

Plenary 2: Does Catholic media have a future?

In a world that appears always more de-Christianised, in the West at least, is there still a place for Catholic media? Do the public still have an interest for our titles, be that for a Christian vision or even to live a daily life of Christian prayer? If we are celebrating now the Jubilee 2025, will we still be here for the Jubilee 2050?

Plenary 3: Is the Catholic media an intermediary for the magisterium like other media?

Our media have an altogether particular positioning, between an editorial line and journalistic demand on the one part, and following the Catholic faith on the other part. How can and must our media situate themselves vis a vis developments of the magisterium? Are we there to relay them, to accompany them or to question them?

The Encounter is also animating an event within the main programme for the Jubilee of the World of Communications, with a session entitled "How can Catholic media be peace makers?". The sister of Pere Hamel (see below) will take part in this session.

On the occasion of the Jubilee, the Holy Father encourages us to be "pilgrims of hope".  What does that mean for us, professionals in Catholic media? Have our media a particular responsibility to communicate this hope, in being voices for peace in a world where conflicts, "the Third World War being fought piecemeal", appears sadly to spread and never to end?

 A final noteworthy feature of the Encounter will be the presentation of the Prix Pere Jacques Hamel. Pere Hamel was killed whilst celebrating Mass in his church in July 2016, and afterwards the Federation des Medias Catholiques, along with the family of Pere Hamel and the Archbishop of Rouen, established this prize. It is awarded for a media contribution that favours the promotion of peace and of  inter-religious dialogue. The prize will be presented during the Encounter by the French ambassador to the Holy See.

[The full programme for the Jubilee of the World of Communications is here, and notably opens with the celebration of Mass for the feast of St Francis de Sales.]

Jubilee of the World of Communications (1)

 The period 24-26 January has been identified as a particular celebration of the Jubilee 2025 for the World of Communications.

One organisation in the field of communication that I have followed is the World Catholic Association for Communication: SIGNIS, taking particular notice of their work in the field of cinema. Their mission is described on their own website and is indicated in the Directory of Associations on the website of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. It is a world wide association made up of member associations in the different nations and regions of the world. The two predecessor organisations that merged in 2001 to form SIGNIS had their origins as far back as 1928, one being an organisation dedicated to cinema and the other an organsation dedicated to radio.

Bringing together Catholics already working as professionals in the media was the objective that kept together those organisations. The interest of Catholics in the new media was understandable. They saw the opportunities offered by them to present their views and opinions on life and the world and so they naturally became involved in promoting education and values.

The aspect of the work of SIGNIS that I find most interesting is their organising of SIGNIS, Ecumenical and inter-faith juries at film festivals. This includes juries at well known film festivals such as that held in Cannes each year, as well as juries at more specialised festivals. This participation at the major events of the world of cinema by Catholic film professionals strikes me as being a particularly good expression of a specifically lay engagement. It involves an encounter between religious faith and a professional context which can only really be achieved by the action of those who are themselves professionals in the relevant context. In return, it also indicates a respect given by the wider world of cinema to those of religious faith who are able to engage with them in way that is professionally competent.

At the most recent Cannes film festival, the Ecumenical Jury gave its award to the film The Seed of the Sacred Fig. The film, and the background to its production, are described at a Wikipedia page here. If you read down the page you will find an explanation of the film's title and of the two photographs that the director displayed on the red carpet and at other photo calls during the Cannes festival. 

Following a special prize to Wim Wenders on the 50th anniversary of the Ecumenical Jury, the 6 international members of this year’s jury gave their prize to the Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, with this motivation : “When religion is associated with political power and patriarchy, it can destroy the most intimate relationships and the dignity of individuals, as this Iranian family drama embodies. The jury was impressed by the film’s rich symbolism, its generous and hopeful ending, its touches of humour and its heartbreaking tension. The subtlety and sobriety of its writing, both dramatic and filmic, makes it a metaphor for any authoritarian theocracy”.

Hope: in this world alone?

 In what is the fourth chapter of the book Hope and History, Josef Pieper examines in some detail the thought of Ernst Bloch, particularly his work on hope. Josef Pieper suggests three questions that challenge a Marxist view that sees the object of hope as being the final manifestation of a truly socialist transformation of society, or any other idealist or materialist view that likewise sees the object of hope as some this-worldly achievement.

Josef Pieper firstly suggests that these views covertly distort the original sense of the concept of hope.

Is not the aim of describing and elucidating what is to be hoped for supplanted by a program of practical action, of changing and producing things? Not the least objection can be made, of course, to such a program "in itself", which can be something entirely sensible and necessary. And yet it is possible that, through it, precisely that which is intimated to us by the indwelling wisdom of language itself becomes drowned out: namely, that it is obviously characteristic of men by nature, as those who truly hope, to be directed toward a fulfilment of just the kind that they cannot bring about themselves.

Josef Pieper observes, secondly, that these entirely "intra-historical" or "this worldly" perspectives rarely, if ever, address the question of death. In placing their hope in some kind of collective future they leave out something that is part of the experience of each individual person.

What I insist on, however, is this: no conception of a future state of affairs that just ignores the fact of death, that thus simply fails to take into consideration not only the man who lives toward death, who is destined for death, but also those who have already died, the dead - no such image of the future can seriously be put forward as being in any sense an object of human hope! How can one speak of hope when what is hoped for is conceived in such a way that it could not at all be granted to the very being that is solely capable of hoping, namely, the individual, the particular person?

Josef Pieper has earlier observed that only what is really possible can be hoped for, and that there are no limits as to what one might wish for.  He finally suggests that, as far as wishing goes, it is sufficient to ask the question, "What do you wish for?", without giving attention to the grounds for that wishing. He indicates that there is not cogent reasoning to support the expectation that human longing will be satisfied through intra-historical activity of one kind or another. As far as hoping is concerned, the situation is different. The question is not just one of "What do you hope for?" but also "What are the grounds for that hope?" It is in his next and final chapter that Josef Pieper will look at Christian faith in relation to hope.

A paragraph (n.3) from Pope Francis' Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee 2025 describes the grounds for Christian hope:

By his perennial presence in the life of the pilgrim Church, the Holy Spirit illumines all believers with the light of hope. He keeps that light burning, like an ever-burning lamp, to sustain and invigorate our lives. Christian hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or the sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:35.37-39). Here we see the reason why this hope perseveres in the midst of trials: founded on faith and nurtured by charity, it enables us to press forward in life. As Saint Augustine observes: “Whatever our state of life, we cannot live without these three dispositions of the soul, namely, to believe, to hope and to love”.

Hope: evolutionary or historical?

 In what was the second of his lectures since published in the short book Hope and History, Josef Pieper moves from attempting to characterise the nature of hope to attempting to characterise the meaning of the word "history". Josef Pieper draws a firm distinction between evolutionary thought, with its suggestion of universal laws to progress and ascent, and what he terms more strictly "history" that comes from the freedom of human actions. He particularly enters into a dialogue with the thought of Teilhard de Chardin on this point (pp.33 ff in my Ignatius Press edition).

Part of the essence of history is that it rests upon freedom and decision - and that it can therefore be marked by the presence of evil, whereas any use of that concept in relation to evolution would naturally be pointless.

Josef Pieper summarises his position as follows:

... in the midst of the evolution of the cosmos, which also shapes the nature of man's being; in the midst of "natural history", which includes that of mankind; alongside and outside of the many other sorts of "development" (more or less pre-determinable as regards direction and pace) of intellectual life, in the sciences as in the arts, in the technological mastery of natural forces - apart from all that and in the midst of it .... there is also a fully different, irreducible, incomparable, and in the strict sense "historical" kind of event that issues from the free decisions of men, comes about through them, and itself participates in the mode of being proper to human acts of the will; which means, for instance, that it cannot be predicted or calculated on the basis of evolutionary or historical laws and above all that it possesses, beyond any mere factuality, the quality of having to be "answered for" and of being "good" or "evil". 

 Josef Pieper's thought has relevance to how we might understand the meaning of the hope that is the subject of the Jubilee Year 2025. If we see that hope as being a naturally occurring part of evolutionary and determinative historical processes, we will experience the Jubilee Year as something that happens to us, not feeling that we need to do anything about it. In appealing to individuals and nations, in his Christmas Urbi et Orbi address, to enter through the Holy Door opened at the initiation of the Jubilee Year, Pope Francis on the other hand suggests that we need to take an active step in the celebration of hope:

Often we halt at the threshold of that Door; we lack the courage to cross it, because it challenges us to examine our lives. Entering through that Door calls for the sacrifice involved in taking a step forward, a small sacrifice. Taking a step towards something so great calls us to leave behind our disputes and divisions, and surrendering ourselves to the outstretched arms of the Child who is the Prince of Peace. This Christmas, at the beginning of the Jubilee Year, I invite every individual, and all peoples and nations, to find the courage needed to walk through that Door, to become pilgrims of hope, to silence the sound of arms and overcome divisions!

Epiphany: The Announcement of Easter and the Moveable Feasts

The Roman Missal for the Solemnity of the Epiphany allows for an announcement of the "movable feasts" of the Liturgical Year (ie those feasts whose celebration can occur on a different date each year) to be made after the Gospel at Mass.

Know, dear brethren, that, as we have rejoiced at the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, so by leave of God's mercy we announce to you also the joy of his Resurrection, who is our Saviour.

As Pope Francis recognised in the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee 2025, the coming year sees the 1700th anniversary of the Council if Nicea. It is also a year in which the celebration of Easter in the West and East falls on the same day, giving the year a particular ecumenical significance.

The Council of Nicaea also discussed the date of Easter. To this day, different approaches to this question prevent celebrating the fundamental event of our faith on the same day. Providentially, a common celebration will take place in the year 2025. May this serve as an appeal to all Christians, East and West, to take a decisive step forward towards unity around a common date for Easter. We do well to remind ourselves that many people, unaware of the controversies of the past, fail to understand how divisions in this regard can continue to exist.

 This aspect of the Jubilee 2025 has a particular resonance for the Focolare Movement, inspired by a "spirituality of unity" in which ecumenical dialogue forms one of a number of different dialogues in which the Movement engages. These can be explored at this page from the international website - In Dialogue - where they are summarised as follows:

The Focolare spirituality has spread throughout the world and has given rise to various forms of dialogue.

The Movement is engaged in dialogue among movements and new communities within the Catholic Church and is also in dialogue other Christian Churches and ecclesial communities. Relationships with the faithful of the world’s religions have paved the way to a broader dialogue among the major world religions. 

Collaboration between believers and those who profess no specific religious faith has given rise to a fruitful dialogue and concrete projects for peace and justice in the world. A dialogue (with the) world of culture opens its eyes to new insights.

Called to Hope is the title of an ecumenical conference that the Movement is organising to mark the Jubilee 2025. 

This dimension of the Jubilee 2025 strikes something of a chord, as the timing of a holiday in Kefalonia last year meant that we arrived on the island as they celebrated Easter Sunday, roughly a month later than we had celebrated it here in the UK.