An apologia for Tradition

Populorum progressio refers back explicitly to the traditional teaching of the Church on the universal use of property, that has its basis on the first page of the Bible, and extends its principle, mentioned, among others, by Saint Thomas and Saint Ambrose, to the political communities. Those are the passages in which analysis of the problems seems to become more lucid. An interview with Cardinal Aloísio Lorscheider

Interview with Cardinal Aloísio Lorscheider by Stefania Falasca

An aerial photo of the Paraisopolis favela, near São Paulo of Brazil

«It appears to us that it is the moment to offer the world our humble and cordial word of hope, not only religious, but also social, not only spiritual, but also earthly, not only for believers in Christ, but equally for all, and dictated always by the light that comes to us from the faith. We shall make public in these coming days an encyclical letter of ours, having as its theme the progress of peoples, their development and the obligations resulting from a program, today no longer renouncable, of economic subsistence, of moral dignity, of universal collaboration for all nations». With these awesome words, on Easter Sunday forty years ago, Paul VI heralded to the world the encyclical Populorum progressio.
«The people of hunger appeal today in dramatic fashion to the people of wealth. The Church is roused by this cry of anguish», the Pope had testified. He had testified that the real division was the one dividing «the people of wealth» from the «people of hunger». A statement as dramatic as it was simple but which in the stagnant atmosphere of the Cold War broke without even meaning to an old cliché dear to the many custodians of the balance of power of the time: that of the Pope in the ranks of the West. And so the Populorum progressio was also nailed with the accusation of high treason to Western Christian civilization. For those guardians of order that would have liked the Church to renege on the political neutrality clearly and courageously affirmed by Pius XII in his Christmas radio broadcast of 1951, simply to speak of capitalism as «source of so much sufferings», as Paul VI did in the encyclical, was equivalent to swapping trenches and entering into cahoots with the Red enemy.
Brazilian Cardinal Aloísio Lorscheider, now archbishop emeritus of Aparecida, was then one of the many bishops from the part of the world that belonged neither to East nor West. At the time of the publication of the Populorum progressio he was president of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference; shortly afterwards he was to rise to the chairmanship of the Latin-American Episcopal Council and after being created cardinal by Paul VI in 1976, he chaired the third General Conference of CELAM in 1979, in Puebla. Dom Aloísio speaks again of that encyclical conceived by Paul VI...

Your Eminence, what do you remember of the publication of the encyclical Populorum progressio?
ALOÍSIO LORSCHEIDER: I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was 26 March 1967. The feast of Easter. On the solemn feast of the Resurrection of our Lord, Paul VI decided to announce to the world in his Easter broadcast the imminent publication of his encyclical letter. Vatican Council II – during which the problems of economic, social and political life, among which the armaments race, war, the building of an international communion had also been dealt with – had just closed, and Paul VI was already coming out with an encyclical on the mutual development of peoples the underlying thinking of which was the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes.
Pope Montini’s encyclical wasn’t so unexpected then?
LORSCHEIDER: It was a surprise, instead. In the Cold War atmosphere we were breathing then, with his encyclical the Pope aimed to declare that the real Iron Curtain was not that between East and West, but that dividing the North and South of the world, «the people of wealth» from the «people of hunger».
At the time you were bishop of Santo Ângelo in the State of Rio Grande do Sul…
LORSCHEIDER: Yes. I remember I wrote a pastoral letter in which I took up some salient points from the encyclical. I also had occasion to speak of it to a select group of the military. In Brazil it was the difficult period of the military regime.

Paul VI announcing the encyclical Populorum progressio to the world, 26 March 1967, Easter Sunday

And what repercussions did the Pope’s document have in the political context of your country?
LORSCHEIDER: The reception of the encyclical was very good. It had vast resonance. It was a significant fact that the whole of the Brazilian press presented the Populorum progressio with large front-page headlines. Particular emphasis was given to the encyclical’s stress on the harm done by colonialism and unbridled capitalism in the Third World. The Brazilian president then in office, a general, sent a special telegram to Paul VI also expressing the hope that the teachings of the Holy Father would be used for the improvement of mankind and affirming that Brazil’s foreign policy would be aligned with the view set out by the encyclical.
No criticism was made…
LORSCHEIDER: Along with agreement, of course, there was also some criticism. For some people Montini’s encyclical was the demonstration of how, once again, the Church tended to get mixed up in politics rather than worrying about the spiritual problems that are its concern. Others judged the encyclical full of equivocation, since the Church, according to them, isn’t capable of analysing and diagnosing economic phenomena. Others again said it was “warmed-up Marxism”. Those were isolated voices.
Overall, then, from the right-wing military government and on the part of the episcopate the reception was positive…
LORSCHEIDER: I still remember the words of gratitude in which Dom Hélder Câmara telegraphed Paul VI the day following publication of the encyclical: «Thank you, Holy Father, on behalf of the Third World». The Brazilian bishops hailed the Populorum progressio as a new testimony to the presence of the Church in the modern world and studied the text at the gathering of the Bishops’ Conference that met from the 6 to 8 May in Aparecida. They underlined the fact that in the Populorum progressio the social doctrine present in the Rerum novarum, in the Mater et magistra, in the Pacem in terris, in the pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes and in the speech that Paul VI himself had made in 1965 at the UN, was reiterated and updated. The CELAM assembly, held from 11 to 16 October 1967 in Mar de la Plata, in Argentina, put Paul VI’s encyclical on the agenda.
Paul VI put reference to the great social encyclicals of his predecessors as introduction to the Populorum progressio. But what original contribution did the document make to the social doctrine of the Church?
LORSCHEIDER: Paul VI clearly defined the problems faced by his encyclical: «Today, the fact of greatest importance, of which everyone must become aware, is that the social question has taken on global scale. […] The people of hunger appeal today in dramatic fashion to the people of wealth. The Church is roused by this cry of anguish and calls everyone to respond with love to his own brother […]. Hence it is to everyone that we today address this solemn appeal for concerted action for the integral development of mankind and the mutual development of humanity».
The need for concerted action for the integral development of mankind and the mutual development of humanity is the fundamental thought and the most felt aspect of the whole encyclical. The dominant thought is that development cannot be reduced to simple economic growth. Of course, the word development could have been criticized, it’s a capitalist word. But Paul VI clarified it: to be genuine development must be integral, that is aimed at the uplifting of every man and of all mankind.
That then is the encyclical’s original contribution to the social doctrine of the Church…
LORSCHEIDER: Paul VI for the first time expanded the social teaching of the Church to world scale and proposed, as a serious and urgent duty, the establishment of social justice. As Leo XIII, in 1891, had taken up the cause of the weak and poor, of the working-class condition in the face of the injustices of liberal capitalism, so Paul VI, in 1967, took sides with the losers of mankind, with all the weak and marginalized populations. He was asking for a concerted effort so that each person get his/her own place, own rights and own duties, full responsibility in increasing universal collaboration among the nations, international social justice (Iustitia est fundamentum regnorum) as fundamental base for authentic development.

Today it’s easy to recognize the prophetic accent of the 1967 encyclical. It’s enough to read the numbers of the hungry, the chronicles of war, the sufferings that the developing countries have paid or are paying, in the epoch of globalization, of the planetary triumph of the free market, free above all for the arms and drugs trade

Today, forty years later, there is certainly no difficulty in recognizing the imbalances between the North and the South of the world and the effects that they have produced…
LORSCHEIDER: Today it’s easy to recognize the prophetic accent of the 1967 encyclical. It’s enough to read the numbers of the hungry, the chronicles of war, the sufferings that the developing countries have paid or are paying, in the epoch of globalization, of the planetary triumph of the free market, free above all for the arms and drugs trade. Nor is it difficult to recognize that the teachings contained in it have kept all the force of their appeal. Today it’s impossible to speak about the Populorum progressio without also referring to the Sollicitudo rei socialis encyclical with which John Paul II recalled the first two decades of the Populorum progressio in 1987 in quite solemn fashion. John Paul II stressed the enduring novelty of Paul VI’s encyclical, offering us a panorama of the contemporary world and of genuine development to then make a theological interpretation of the problems in which the conclusion that the work of solidarity is peace stood out: Opus solidarietatis pax. Peace is the new name of development.
You highlighted another consideration in regard to the Sollicitudo rei socialis: that the social teaching of the Church is not static but dynamic…
LORSCHEIDER: The social teaching of the Church is not static but dynamic in that it draws on the solid root of Tradition. In preparing the text of his encyclical Pope Montini poured into it all his modern cultural sensibility. There is a French cultural imprint in his analysis, and that of what are known as the “humanist” economists, to which he united the contents and teachings of the Tradition of the Church, applying them to the new situation. The Populorum progressio refers explicitly to the traditional teaching of the Church on the universal use of property, that has its basis in the first page of the Bible, and extends its principle, mentioned, among others, by Saint Thomas and Saint Ambrose, to the political communities. Those are the paragraphs in which analysis of the problems seems to become more lucid.
For example?
LORSCHEIDER: In indicating the structural factors in Third World poverty Paul VI quoted Saint Ambrose’s De Nabuthae: «It is known with what firmness the Fathers of the Church have made clear what the attitude must be of those who have towards those who are in need: “It is not of your having”, Saint Ambrose affirms “that you give to the poor; you do no more than render to him what belongs to him. What was given in common for the use of all, that is what you take to yourself. The earth was given to all and not only to the rich”. It is like saying that private ownership does not constitute an unconditional and absolute right for anybody». With Saint Ambrose he overturned the concept of inviolable private ownership and deduces from him the legitimacy of determined operational choices. And, always drawing on the wealth of Tradition, Paul VI also took up the most direct formula of the encyclical Quadragesimo anno to condemn the «unbridled liberalism» that leads «to the dictatorship rightly denounced by Pius XI as generative of the international imperialism of money». And it was yet again in the language of Tradition that Paul faced with realism the historical possibility that injustice and exploitation can provoke the violent insurrection of oppressed peoples: «Situations certainly occur the injustice of which cries out to heaven. When whole populations, without the necessary, live in a state of such dependence as to prevent them having any initiative and responsibility, great is the temptation to reject with violence similar offence to human dignity». Nothing new. The same eventuality had already been recognized and justified by Saint Thomas in the Summa theologica. The Populorum progressio is also to be read then as an apologia for Tradition.
But doesn’t the defense of Tradition coincide with a determined cultural and political vision?
LORSCHEIDER:These schematisms are categories of a cultural thinking widespread in modern times extraneous to Paul VI and to the Populorum progressio.

Paul VI with the Colombian campesinos in Bogotá, 23 August 1968

The whole social commitment of the Church was somewhat branded as Marxism, however. Even today in Latin America, when the phrase “preferential option for the poor” is heard, immediately a certain Marxist tendency in the Church is thought of…
LORSCHEIDER: The preferential choice for the poor has nothing to do with socio-political categories, it is not the outcome of sociologisms. The partiality for the poor is a choice of God, inscribed in the mystery of His predilection. It has to do with the very heart of the Tradition of the Church that has always considered as its treasure the faith handed down from the apostles and the poor, who are foremost called to enjoy it. That constitutes the deepest reasoning of the Populorum progressio. The publication of the encyclical was preceded by two significant moments that illuminate this reason.
What were they?
LORSCHEIDER: A month before making the Populorum progressio known to the world, on 22 February, feast of the See of Saint Peter, with the apostolic exhortation Petrum et Paulum apostolos Paul VI showed his intention of instituting the Year of the Faith, that was to conclude on 30 June 1968 with the proclamation of the Creed of the people of God. The speeches of those months were a non-stop reminder of the «stupendous legacy of the apostles», of the «gift that they have given us with the word and with blood, the witness to Christ, which gives birth to the faith in us». The visit to Istanbul and Turkey also, at the end of July, was aimed «to honor at the dawn of the Year of the Faith, among the various cities illustrious with history of those Eastern regions, the memories of the important Ecumenical Councils celebrated there, and also (in Ephesus) the pious remembrance of Our Most Holy Lady there venerated». In the seething world of that time, Paul VI decided to set his gaze on the treasures of the Church. That is why the Populorum progressio encyclical and the Creed of the people of God should be read together. I was always struck by the concern and the extreme realism of Paul VI. A realism in his judgment of the world and of the Church suffered deep down that marked his pontificate as early as the years immediately following Vatican Council II.
Do you remember any personal meeting with Paul VI after the publication of the encyclical?
LORSCHEIDER: I have fixed in my memory the last time I saw him. It was towards the end of his pontificate, during a visit to the Vatican of the presidents of some Episcopal Conferences. I remember on that occasion that Paul VI approached and embraced me, then he said: «You Brazilian bishops are the ones today who wash the feet of the poor». He said it in that particular tone of voice he had. A husky, vibrant voice. And then he added softly: «How much I would like to wash the feet of the poor…». I shall never forget Paul VI’s voice as he said those words, I shall never forget that moment and that look, the gesture of his arms as they prolonged the forward inclination of his body. It is the image I keep of the Pope of the Populorum progressio.

A life for Latin America

Cardinal Aloísio Lorscheider

Cardinal Aloísio Lorscheider, a Franciscan, Archbishop Emeritus of Aparecida, is one of the historic figures of the Latin-American episcopate. Born of parents of German origin, in Estrela, archdiocese of Alegre Harbor, on 8 October 1924, he was ordained priest in 1948. He graduated in Dogmatic Theology at the Antonianum in Rome in 1952, and taught that subject in the seminary of Divinopolis in the state of Minas Gerais, up to 1958. His substantial scholarly production led the superiors of his Order to recall him in Rome as professor at the Pontifical Antonianum Athenaeum. On 3 February 1962 he was nominated bishop of Santo Ângelo and spent more than eleven years in the Brazilian diocese, giving proof of organizational abilities and pastoral commitment: he gave impetus to the seminary and to the mission, established a lively relationship with priests and the faithful, took on constant visits to parishes in which he personally administered the sacraments, including Confession. He was nominated archbishop of Fortaleza in 1973, spent almost nine years there, and then, from 1995 to 2004, was archbishop of Aparecida. He was a member of the Theological Commission of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference, of which he was later elected president, a post in which he was reconfirmed several times (1971-1978). Former vice-president of the Latin-American Episcopal Council, he became its president in the period 1976-1979, succeeding Archbishop Pironio. And he was president of the third General Conference of CELAM that was held in Puebla, in Mexico in 1979.