INTRODUCTION
“Not easy…”
THE PROJECT
There are individual destinies that intersect with history. This is true of Pope Francis who, coming from Latin America, brings a different identity to the Catholic Church. His personality, his journey, his deeds all question an era dominated by the economy but also by a search for meaning, authenticity and often spiritual values. It is this encounter between one man and history that lies at the heart of our discussions, between a man of the cloth and a French intellectual, a layman, a specialist in communication, who has worked for many years on issues of globalization, cultural diversity and otherness.
Why a dialogue? Because it allows us to open ourselves up to one another, to an argument, and to the presence of the reader. Dialogue gives meaning to human communication beyond questions of performance and limits of technology.
The angle I have chosen for this book has a bearing on one of the recurrent questions in the history of the Church: what is the nature of its social and political engagement? How does its approach differ from that of a politician? Questions constantly posed when each reading of the Gospel, each rereading of the Church Fathers and the Pope’s encyclicals encourages a critical engagement and an action intended for the poor, the downtrodden, the excluded … Those who have stood up for centuries to denounce injustice and inequality have often established a direct connection between the political message and spirituality. The conflicted debate concerning liberation theology is one of the last great examples of this. How to conceive and distinguish the spiritual dimension of the political action of the Church? How far can we go, and where should we not go? The idea is to encourage a reflection on what unites and what separates spirituality and political action. This reflection becomes particularly important at a time when we can clearly observe a return of the spiritual question and a time when, simultaneously and through the globalization of information, inequality is more visible, increasing the urgency of commitment to action, but sometimes also simplifying arguments and often increasing the desire to reduce everything to a political approach. How can we avoid, in the name of “modernity,” reducing the critical engagement of the Church to that of a global politician, a close cousin of the UN? The Jesuits, through their history, and Latin America for the history of the Pope, are shining examples of this debate, of the need to preserve a distinction between these two logics, and the difficulty of doing so.
THE ENCOUNTER
You don’t master an encounter, it assumes a shape of its own. Here it was free, non-conformist, trusting, full of humor. There was a mutual sympathy. The Pope was very much present, he was listening, modest, inhabited by history, with no illusions about humanity. I meet him outside of any institutional context, at his home, but that doesn’t fully account for his ability to listen, his freedom and his availability. There was very, very little double-talk.
Sometimes I get dizzy when I think of the crushing responsibilities that weigh on his shoulders. How can he choose, think, amidst so many obligations and requests? How can he listen and act, not only on behalf of the Church, but also many global affairs? How does he do it? Yes, he is perhaps in real terms the first Pope of globalization, between Latin America and Europe. At once human, modest and at the same time so determined, with both feet planted firmly in history, his role has nothing to do with that of the world’s great political leaders, and yet he is always confronted with politics.
Perhaps the most intense phrase that he said quite naturally, in the middle of our exchanges, was: “Nothing scares me.” And at the same time there was that other phrase that he uttered gently in the doorway, as he left me one evening, and which I will never forget, so symbolic is it of his humanity, his apostolate: “Not easy, not easy…” What can one say beyond such modesty, solitude, lucidity and intelligence?
The difficulty was to find the best possible level for this dialogue, when there are so many differences between us and at the same time a desire to try to understand one another, to “knock down walls” and admit failures of communication. If someone already expresses himself very well and with great simplicity, it’s “not easy” to persuade him to speak, particularly since religious discourse already has an answer to everything, and everything has already been said … “Not easy” to avoid repetition of things already familiar from summaries of his speeches, to part company with religious and official vocabulary, seek the truth, assume inevitable failures of communication when they arise. We stayed more on the level of history, of politics, of human beings, than on spiritual matters.
This dialogue between the religious man and the layman might continue indefinitely, as rich in its convergences as in its differences. I was neither a stooge nor a critic, just a scientist, a man of good faith trying to engage in dialogue with one of the most exceptional intellectual and religious personalities in the world. This freedom, which I felt throughout the discussions, is profoundly his. It is neither conventional nor conformist. Besides, one need only see how he lived, spoke and acted in Argentina and Latin America to realize that. A radical difference from Europe.
Empirically, and without always being aware of it, I used the same method as I did for my dialogue with Raymond Aron (1981), Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger (1987) and the President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors (1994). Philosophy, religion, politics. Three areas which all crop up here as well. Without a doubt this position is best illustrated by the attitude of the researcher, a kind of spokesperson for the universal citizen, invisible, but indispensable when it comes to reflecting on global history. Speaking, engaging in dialogue, in order to shrink unbridgeable distances and allow a little mutual understanding. Paradoxically enough, we bonded most often over a shared philosophy of communication. Privileging humanity over technology. Accepting the lack of communication, encouraging dialogue, removing the technical aspect of communication to rediscover humanist values. Accepting that communication is at least as much a matter of negotiation and compromise as it is an act of sharing. Communication as a political act of diplomacy.
THE BIG SUBJECTS
Our conversations were conducted over twelve meetings between February 2016 and 2017, a considerable amount by Vatican standards. Particularly since nothing had been decided beforehand, in many cases, our discussions went beyond the strict framework of the book, and not everything appears directly in the text but to a large extent that explains the tone, the atmosphere and the freedom of our exchanges. The Pope has obviously read the manuscript, and we easily reached agreement.
The themes addressed combine the political, cultural and religious questions that run through the world, and its violence: peace and war; the Church in globalization and its response to cultural diversity; religions and politics; fundamentalism of different kinds and secularism; the relationship between culture and communication; Europe as a territory of cultural cohabitation; the relationship between tradition and modernity; interreligious dialogue; the status of the individual, of the family, of morals and society; universalist perspectives; the role of Christians in a secular world marked by the return of religions; failure of communication and the uniqueness of religious discourse.
These themes are arranged in eight chapters. For each one, I complemented our discussions with extracts from sixteen big speeches delivered by Pope Francis since his election on March 13, 2013. These speeches, delivered all over the world, illustrate our dialogues. They are grouped so two appear in each chapter.
On the other hand, quite deliberately, there will be no references to political and institutional conflicts within the Church. Apart from the fact that others are more competent than I am on this matter, and that the information is widely available, it had little to do with what I was interested in, namely the place of the Church in the world, and in politics, on the basis of the experience and analysis of the first Jesuit and non-European Pope of the Catholic Church.
One hypothesis concerning the Pope? Socially, he is a bit of a Franciscan; intellectually, a bit of a Dominican; politically, a bit of a Jesuit … In any case he is very human. We would probably have to factor in many other things to understand his personality.
SMALL FAILURES OF COMMUNICATION …
With the Holy Father, everything proceeds from religion and faith, including his approach to clearly political questions. Mercy plays an essential part, as does the depth of a history and an eschatology, or view of our final destiny, the roots of which go back more than four thousand years. My references are more anthropological, even if it is clearly impossible to eliminate spiritual dimensions from the deeds of humanity. Our visions of the world are often the same, even if we approach it from different angles. Different kinds of rationality and logic do not always tally. The greatest aspect of communication lies in trying to understand one another and accept differences. There is, for example, the problem of the contemporary, visible and interactive world, in which performance and the speed of information create more misunderstandings and failures of communication than ever before. Here’s a challenge: think of otherness in this open world, avoiding the monopoly of a single religious or political discourse, encouraging mutual understanding.
“Welcome, accompany, discern, integrate”: the four key concepts of the Pope’s Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love, March 2016) do, after all, have a certain general import. Particularly when it comes to rethinking questions that are essential in the modern world: work, education, the relationship between science, technology and society, globalization, otherness and cultural diversity, the media and public opinion, political communication, the urban environment. So many themes in which the work of the Church, and indeed its encyclicals, could help us to develop our ideas.
Conducting these discussions wasn’t easy either. The Pope doesn’t always answer the questions he is asked, or at least not in the sense to which modern rationality has made us accustomed. We are very quickly diverted into references from several centuries ago, or metaphors, or the Gospels. Classical concatenations of ideas do not always apply. We inhabit different symbolic spaces. There were a lot of what I call “little failures of communication,” which are the most interesting aspect of this encounter. Particularly since there is a third partner, the reader, and one never knows how he or she will receive these words. In short, it is a dialogue that does not have the “classic rationality” that goes hand in hand with habitual intellectual and political exchanges. All the better, even if it leads to the occasional surprise. This is a philosophy of communication that respects otherness.
The interesting thing about the Church is that it is hardly ever modern, it is not completely in the present, even if it is committed to the present in many of its struggles, and that attitude is clearly what is interesting about this vision of the world, even if it is sometimes alarming or puzzling. Being unconcerned about modernity means obeying values and timescales that do not coincide with our own times, which are dominated by speed, urgency and globalization. In the past, there was often an overlap between religion and politics, the spiritual and the temporal; the results were often dubious. Today, the spiritual no longer overlaps with the temporal, at least not in Christianity, and that distance from modernity in all its forms is in fact an opportunity, with the constant problem of knowing what distance to maintain between the two. Modernity, which vanquished tradition over a period of four centuries, has become an ideology. Placing a new value on tradition is probably a way of redressing the balance. The Catholic Church, along with all other resources—religious, artistic and scientific—can help with this. At any rate, all of these aspects necessarily encourage dialogue, tolerance and mutual understanding. In the present day, tradition, which modernity has rightly resisted for centuries, can be fueled by rationales other than its own. Anything but the continuing threat of one-dimensionality, and the reification of the world, as the Frankfurt School predicted in the 1920s.1
The work on this book took two and a half years overall. It provoked an emotional response within me, and led to a deep respect and real humility with regard to this man and all his huge responsibilities.
At the same time, this encounter, with its atmosphere of genuine freedom, meant that many things could be said. A moment suspended in time. Always with the constant reality of globalization which collides with every area of life, with all values, and which we need to think about if we are to avoid new wars. Also, with the growing importance of communication and the lack of communication. In short, “to inform is not to communicate” and to “communicate is to negotiate, in the best instance to live together,” concepts which lie at the heart of my attempts to bring about a reconciliation between visions of the world that are often different and often antagonistic to one another. Besides, a certain optimism is possible when we see some common points between secular and religious discourses around the challenges of globalization. We must do everything in our power to avoid the hatred of the Other. The concern of the Christian religion, in terms of its universalist vision, is to preserve dialogue, with the essential words of “respect,” “dignity,” “acknowledgment” and “trust,” which are also at the heart of the democratic model.
—Dominique Wolton, Paris, July 2017
Copyright © 2018 by Éditions de l’Observatoire/Humensis and Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Translation copyright © 2018 by Shaun Whiteside
