Social Conscience & Pope Francis

The title of this Column should remind our readers of 2 previous reflections: Social Conscience Based on Shalom and When the Church Gets Sick.

In my reflection on Shalom I recalled that this Hebrew word means Wholeness, Integrity, Harmony and Proportion in the life of an individual person and the life of a community. They are characteristics or qualities of a person of Order from which results genuine Peace which St. Thomas Aquinas defined as Tranquility of Order (“Tranquilitas Ordinis”).

And to St. Paul this Shalom is personified by Jesus Christ ( Eph. 2:14). In Christ’s person as human  there is complete order in all its forms and total absence of disorder in all its varied manifestations. This is why we call Him the Prince of Peace because peace is a result of order. It is the same with His Mother Mary whom we call the Queen of Peace. And all their followers should be people of peace as  individuals and as communities.

From the above I concluded by saying that any form of Disorder – personal, social, economic. political and cultural ( all of which have moral dimension) militate against Jesus Christ and His teachings who is God-in-human form and against His Mystical Body the Church, and consequently against all the laity, clergy, and bishops who constitute the community of the Church as well as against all peace-loving people of good-will regardless of culture and religion.

The diverse consequences of the many forms of disorder are Fragmentation as opposed to Wholeness, Disintegration vs. Integrity, Disharmony vs. Harmony and Disproportion vs. Proportion. The varied forms or manifestations of all these are found mostly in the peripheries, the fringes of the world and of human society. These are poverty, sickness, malnutrition, hunger, HIV-aids, slum dwellings, inhuman prisons, prostitution, scanvenged garbages, and the so-called dregs of society, etc. To them and even to atheists, unbelievers and anti-church groups Pope Francis is calling us all to go. He stressed very strongly that the Church gets sick if she is too preoccupied with herself  remaining in the process within her so-called comfort zone.