WelCom December 2024/January 2025
Columnist Ian Munro draws on Pope Francis’ third encyclical (papal letter, 3 October 2020) Fratelli Tutti ‘on fraternity and social friendship’, to discuss some of the current issues demonising people’s differences.
Over the years I’ve observed that when a nation’s politics move away from the centre towards right or left extremities, it usually reflects a growing polarisation within its society. Leaders who arise during these periods tend to exploit and encourage this polarisation, first for political gain and then to maintain power.
Inclusivity and social, cultural and religious diversity begin to fade, and certain sections of society become more and more demonised to varying degrees – be it gangs, immigrants, Māori, Jews, Christians, Muslims, beneficiaries, journalists, political opponents, public servants, teachers, farmers, cyclists or climate scientists and others with expertise.
They are often singled out as the cause of society’s ills when, in many cases, their situation actually results from the social ills caused by social and political policy inadequacies. This demonisation serves as a political distraction from those inadequacies and it doesn’t just happen in countries we might regard as oppressive; it also happens in more benign democracies, including our own.
The most insidious intolerance is usually reserved for racial and religious differences.
Fratelli Tutti 1
Pope Francis discussed these issues in Fratelli Tutti. He described how spreading despair and discouragement using extremist and exaggerated statements, often under the guise of defending particular values, is used to dominate and gain control over people.
‘Employing a strategy of ridicule, suspicion and relentless criticism, in a variety of ways one denies the right of others to exist or to have an opinion. Their share of the truth and their values are rejected and, as a result, the life of society is impoverished and subjected to the hubris of the powerful. Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and counter charges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation.’ [Fratelli Tutti, 15]
I wasn’t all that surprised, then, when ACT Party leader David Seymour recently attempted to belittle more than 400 church leaders who had criticised his Treaty Principles Bill, telling them to stop playing politics and get back to focusing on their core business. Rather than discussing the issue with them he suggested their involvement in politics (one could alternatively say ‘involvement in social justice’) might just be the reason church attendance was declining.
It seems that citizens and their opinions soon come to be seen as having no intrinsic value and therefore are not to be listened to and respected.
‘This way of discarding others can take a variety of forms, such as an obsession with reducing labour costs with no concern for its grave consequences, since the unemployment that it directly generates leads to the expansion of poverty. In addition, a readiness to discard others finds expression in vicious attitudes that we thought long past, such as racism, which retreats underground only to keep re-emerging. Instances of racism continue to shame us, for they show that our supposed social progress is not as real or definitive as we think.’ [20]
This political environment sees governments introduce punitive policies to bury social issues rather than policies that actually address them. They usually involve financial penalties that tend to impact on those in society already struggling.
While I wasn’t surprised by David Seymour’s comments, I was surprised by our Prime Minister’s Marie Antionette moment when Christopher Luxon recently stated in a Newstalk ZB interview, ‘Let’s be clear, I’m wealthy and I’m sorted.’2
‘While one part of humanity lives in opulence, another part sees its own dignity denied, scorned or trampled upon, and its fundamental rights discarded or violated.’ [22]
Migrants are frequently exploited for political purposes and New Zealand politicians haven’t been averse to using fear of immigrants to gain votes, even though every one of us is a product of immigration over the last 800 years. New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters, has campaigned against immigration levels and ‘non-traditional’ immigrants in the past, and Labour MP Phil Twyford appeared to blame people with ‘Chinese-sounding’ names for Auckland’s housing problems.3
When this sort of thing happens, immigrants become less able to participate in the life of society.
‘No one will ever openly deny that they are human beings, yet in practice, by our decisions and the way we treat them, we can show that we consider them less worthy, less important, less human. For Christians, this way of thinking and acting is unacceptable, since it sets certain political preferences above deep convictions of our faith: the inalienable dignity of each human person regardless of origin, race or religion, and the supreme law of fraternal love.’ [39]
Francis points out that every brother or sister in need, when abandoned or ignored by society, becomes an existential foreigner. They may be citizens yet are treated like foreigners in their own country. In particular, ‘racism is a virus that quickly mutates and, instead of disappearing, goes into hiding, and lurks in waiting’. [97]
Our society also has members he describes as ‘hidden exiles’. Many people with disabilities feel that they exist without belonging and without being able to participate.
Individualism
At its introduction, social media was portrayed as a vehicle to bring the peoples of the world together in harmony, but instead it’s become a vehicle for exactly the opposite. Online campaigns of misinformation, hatred and destruction are creating groupings united against individuals or other groups perceived as the common enemy.
Online relationships aren’t building community; ‘instead, they tend to disguise and expand the very individualism that finds expression in xenophobia and in contempt for the vulnerable. Digital connectivity is not enough to build bridges. It is not capable of uniting humanity’. [43] Instead we just ‘delete’ people or situations we find unpleasant and thus we create what Francis calls a virtual circle that isolates us from the real world in which we’re living.
There’s a populist political movement, strong in the USA, and, I’ve observed, also sitting on our own political fringes, that aims to eliminate differences and traditions in a quest for what is seen as unity. However, such a levelling out, or what I would call homogenisation, destroys each person’s rich gifts and uniqueness and what they have to offer society. It deprives the world of ‘its various colours, its beauty and, ultimately, its humanity. For the future is not monochrome’. [100]
This cult of individualism is supposed to make each of us free, more equal, more fraternal and in control of our own destinies. However, that isn’t the case. Francis calls this radical individualism a virus that is extremely difficult to eliminate. Like a virus, he says, it is clever, making us believe that by giving free rein to our own ambitions and by pursuing ever greater ambitions we’re somehow serving the common good.
‘Differences of colour, religion, talent, place of birth or residence, and so many others, cannot be used to justify the privileges of some over the rights of all. As a community, we have an obligation to ensure that every person lives with dignity and has sufficient opportunities for his or her integral development.’ [118]
Life is to be lived in differences 4
As we all come together in our differences to celebrate the birth of Jesus later this month, it seems to me, a great time to also remember His clear statement of both the greatest commandment and the second:
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’5
1 Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti: Encyclical Letter on Fraternity and Social Friendship, Vatican, 3 October 2020
2 Stuff, 1 October 2024, https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350435767/pm-christopher-luxon-brushes-scrutiny-over-capital-gains-wellington-property
3 Stuff, 17 July 2015, https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/70155168/labours-half-baked-property-data-turns-chinese-buyers-into-scapegoats
4 Pope Francis, in meeting with young people of Scholas Occurrentes, Jakarta, 4 September 2024
5 Matthew 22:37-39
Ian Munro is a Wellington writer and columnist and a member of Our Lady of Hope Parish, Tawa-Titahi Bay.