The human aspect of man

"La law of the bludgeon is more topical than the Gospel of the Beatitudes", said Zygmunt Bauman, invited to take part in the 4th Congress on Christian culture, held in Lublin, Poland, September 27-30. For the sociologist and philosopher of Jewish origin, human dignity is currently running very high risks. Post-modern society is marked by the depreciation of human dignity and by the absolute faith "in the resolvability of any problem", in the belief that "progress brings happiness, making life more comfortable and free from pain and suffering". Without pain there would not have been a cultural or civil development, Bauman pointed out. Cultural progress, for Bauman, doesn’t have a linear trait. Worsening levels of de-civilization and deresponsibilization (previously denounced by Hannah Arendt), "are due to the dissemination of capital and to the anonymity of power". While airplanes without pilots, capable of identifying the target, are an example of technological development and of its immense potential, at the same time, as they are hard to manage by man, they lead to the de-personalization of responsibility. This phenomenon, present on a large scale, Bauman continued, "poses a major threat for the whole of humanity". It could trigger uncontrolled processes that could even lead to mass destruction.A culture of brotherhood. "The act signalling the inception of the Apocalypse will be no different from other acts. It will be performed just like other similar acts, in the framework of routine gestures, marked by boredom. If we were to take a symbol of the malignant feature of our situation it would be the naif aspect of that gesture", the philosopher remarked. At the end of his speech Bauman launched a heartfelt appeal to dialogue, with the hope that it may lead to "the creation of a just society, sensitive to injustice; a society capable of undertaking actions in order to bring about counteraction". Participants in the Congress on Christian culture – including personalities of the Catholic world such as the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the apostolic nuncio in Poland Msgr. Celestino Migliore, the dean of the faculty of Theology in Innsbruck Jozef Niewiadomski, the scholars from the Catholic University in Lublin, professor Rocco Buttiglione, the biographer of John Paul II George Weigel – in the final message on the Christian roots of hope underline: "The courage to be Christians today is not linked to nostalgia nor to past models of faith in the cultural realm, and nor to the adaptation to the spirit of the times leading to renounced Christian vocation represented by the ideals of the beatitudes". The authors of the message highlighted the timeliness of the Congress: on the eve of the Year of the Faith, proclaimed by Benedict XVI on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. They underline that the cultural challenges of contemporary societies involve the human community as a whole. "Owing to the crisis in secularist progress and emancipation ideologies", the message continues, and owing also to the experience of injustice and tragic conflicts, that culminated in a genocide", a new evangelization is needed that will help "recreate a culture of fraternity for all of mankind". A common language. The key theme of the Congress, "searching the human in the human person" indicates the need for an inner journey coupled by the sharing of experience, so as to create a "common language capable of narrating the mystery of man". Drawing inspiration from the personalism of Karol Wojtyla, which guarded against narrow-minded approaches in the common quest for the truth, participants in the Congress remarked, "Examples of radical approaches in Christian environments as well as examples of aggressive secularism, passed down by enlightenment and rationalism, abound". The past decades have been marked by surging scepticism and relativism, along with the need for an open dialogue between lay and Christian intellectuals, regarding the sources of rationality of the European axiological patrimony". Participants agreed that hope is exemplified in the words of Juergen Habermas, regarding the need for mutual understanding, in the wake of the "Court of Gentiles", which the Pontifical Council for Culture presents as an area of dialogue between believers and non-believers. "Christians cannot conceal the light which is the gift of a synthesis of reason and faith", states the final Message of the Congress, highlighting the value of "Christian witness rooted in the Gospels, so that contemporary culture may become more worthy of human person".