Libby Rogerson is a Loreto Sister with a long involvement in Social Justice. Libby is presently the Acting Executive Officer of Mary Ward International, the Loreto Sisters’ overseas aid, development and volunteer organisation. Libby is also a longstanding and much appreciated member of the Board of Jesuit Social Services.
Libby’s question: Fr General, I am on the Board of Jesuit Social Services and we grapple with the obvious contrast between the affluence and rampant consumerism of much of Australian society and the poverty and alienation of our Indigenous Australians and other groups who cannot make their way in this system. What do you see is the role of the Jesuits and the Society's works in promoting a more just society?
So we had a difficult question at the beginning and a difficult one at the end. I have been - naturally, it is part of my job - reflecting about the mission of the Society of Jesus, and therefore the mission in which we are all involved and I have come to the conviction that the challenges we have are the same challenges that humanity has. These are the challenges of poverty, hunger, injustice, unemployment, migration, violence, war, suffering, alienation; and then also the need for things that seem very often lost - joy, hope and meaning.
I think the challenges are the same. If you look at the history of religion, all the great religions started from here. How can we reduce human suffering? Why does humanity have to suffer so much? Why do we have to endure so much injustice? Why do we have to be so violent? Why war? These things are totally without reason, but they make humanity suffer. The religions, all the religions, are borne out of the desire to make humanity a little more joyful, to reduce suffering. Buddhism for example - the whole question of Buddhism is how can we eliminate suffering.
The challenges that we have are not about increasing the number of people going to Mass on Sunday. This will be a factor, maybe, in our pastoral work, and we have to ask ourselves why people don't come. But the real problem is, do people find joy and meaning and hope in life? How can we contribute to that?
Now, the basic question, therefore, for us is what is our point of entry? We are not an NGO, we are not a political group, we are not an ambitious group that drives to perform for its own interest. We have to discern how we can help humanity. Ignatius knew it very well. It is about changing the human heart.
There was a meeting at which Father Robert Drinan was present, in the United States. He was sitting next to Robert McNamara who at the time was the president of the World Bank and in the course of the meal McNamara turned to Father Robert and said, ‘Father Robert, the world now has solutions for many basic problems. We can solve the problem of poverty. There are solutions to the problem of hunger in Africa and so forth. The problem is that we lack political will. We lack political will and a will of cooperation to make it happen. That is where you religious people of faith can help.’
So maybe this is our point of entry. The concerns are the same as all of humanity, but maybe our point of entry as spiritual people, as people with a vocation to proclaim the Gospel and to bring a new way of life to humanity, is to reach the heart of people so that there is an inner change. If we don't change the heart, society will still change, as we have seen with Communism. It moves to the right, then to the left, then to the right, then to the left, but we never reach the point of balance - where everybody has a chance to feel and to be human.
Therefore, the question is how can we enter and how can we cooperate? That's why a meeting like this gives me so much comfort because is a question of cooperation. The problems of the world are far beyond what any group can manage - hunger, poverty, unemployment, injustice, ecological destruction, all these things are far beyond what a group of Jesuits can do, but maybe together, networking with many others who have the same power, maybe Buddhists, maybe Hindus, maybe Moslems with the same heart, maybe we can cooperate to make our world a little more human, a little more like God wants the world to be.
We don't have programs that are definite solutions to the problems of the world, but we can make our education an education for values and for promoting contribution to our society, and we can make our pastoral work about creating a better society, and we can make our work with JRS about bringing dignity and hope to people, et cetera.
I think this is the time to dream, to think about the big mission, not reduce it to a particular project or a particular country or a particular area of work. But we are part of a big mission and in that mission maybe we can do something. Maybe it's a little thing, but that's something. Together with the something that is being done by others, like we have here, maybe it can be a sizeable contribution.
I think this is a challenge and it is an open-ended challenge, because the crimes of humanity are very serious and it's an ongoing quest. It demands a lot of us to give everything we have because these are the basic questions of humanity.
Fr General fielded questions from six people at his address on 25 January. In this edition of Province Express, we feature the second three questions. The other three questions were featured in the last edition.
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