“ No one must be excluded. God’s plan is essentially inclusive and gives priority to those living on the existential peripheries. Among them are many migrants and refugees, displaced persons, and victims of trafficking. The Kingdom of God is to be built with them, for without them it would not be the Kingdom that God wants. The inclusion of those most vulnerable is the necessary condition for full citizenship in God’s Kingdom.” Pope Francis, Migrant Sunday Homily 2022
Extract of a talk given by Fr Stephen Cummins O.P.
In a world of mass migration, we are confronted by the reality of encountering the Other, the one who is different to us. Do we see the Other as a gift, a challenge, an invitation, or a threat? In our lifetime we have seen the fall of the Iron Curtain. It has become a concrete moment in the history to encounter the Other. It is no surprise therefore, that one of the greatest thinkers on studying the impact of the Other, should emerge from an Eastern European country. Here was a voice which gave another way, other than extermination of the Other. He wrote offering hope. He offers us a way to shift from mass society to a humane global society.
Emmanuel Lévinas: (1906-1995)
“He was 33 years old at the outbreak of World War 2. Mass society was forming in Europe, and fascism and totalitarianism were emerging. The person living in a mass society was typified by anonymity , indifference towards the Other, losing their cultural identity , defencelessness, and susceptibility to evil: with all its tragic results; the most inhuman symbol of this phenomenon would be the Holocaust.
Stop, he seems to be saying to the person hurrying along in the rushing crowd. There beside you is another person, meet him or her. Look at the Other’s face as she or he offers it to you. Through this face she or he shows you ‘yourself’: more than that – she or he brings you closer to God. Lévinas goes further. He says you must not only meet the Other, accept and converse with him/her, but you must also take responsibility for him/her. Lévinas’ philosophy distinguishes the individual and singles it out. He indicates that apart from myself there is also someone Other, but -if I fail to make the effort to notice or to show a desire to meet – we shall pass each other by indifferently ,coldly, and without feeling, blandly and heartlessly. Meanwhile, says Lévinas, the Other has a face, and it is a sacred book in which good is recorded…Yet at the same time this difference does not erase my identification with the Other: ‘ I am someone Other.’ … Lévinas took us further still , proclaiming praise for the Other, and our duty to take responsibility for him/her. Lévinas even went so far as to say the Other is our master and that s/he is closer to God than I am, and that our relationship with the Other should be a movement towards Good.” The Other Pp 34-36
The Other is s/he who is different from me. Every person carries a dual identity: s/he is a person like us: with joys and sorrows, good and bad days. The other identity is a person with specific racial and cultural features. So, every encounter with the Other is an enigma, even a mystery. The wonder of this encounter with the Other, is that, to know ourselves, we have to know Others. Western philosophy was very influenced by Descartes’s ‘cogito ergo sum’ I think, therefore I am. This rather limited self-definition can be transformed into ‘I know that I am, because I know what another is.’ Xenophobia has been described as a sickness of people who are scared, terrified of having to see themselves in the mirror of the Other. Instead of being scared, one can see every encounter, even a conflict or a collision, as a contact with the Other.
Let us look at a specific overview, that of the relation between Europeans and Others ( non-European). We can present this overview in seven points:
- The era of merchants, envoys, trade missions. Lasted until the 15t h century.
- The era of great geographical discoveries, a period of conquest, slaughter and plunder, the real dark ages between Europeans and Others. It lasted several hundreds of years.
- The era of Enlightenment and humanism, openness to Others, the first attempts at understanding them, making human contacts, and developing the exchange of goods, cultural and spiritual values.
- The Enlightenment gave rise to a new era that continues to this day, marked by three turning points.
- The turning point of anthropologists.
- The turning point of Levinas.
- The turning point of multiculturalism.
The move from merchants and envoys to current multiculturalism shows a gradual recognition of the Other as distinct from me. The interim history was marked by bloodshed and oppression of the Other. Anthropology offers us a key to the Other: to live with and encounter the other, not to dominate or remain aloof from the Other.
Who will this new Other be? What will our encounter be like? What shall we say to each other? And in what language? Will we be able to listen to each other? To understand each other? Will we jointly wish to refer to – as Conrad puts it – ‘ speak to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts : to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds people to each other, which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn’. Joseph Conrad.
René Girard on Scapegoating: (1923-2015)
I wish to present this final section as a very brief introduction to René Girard’s reflections on scapegoating. I invite you to keep in mind the biblical texts from Part 1 which allowed the exclusion of the Other as a way of strengthening the identity of the specific Israelite community. We referred to rituals of exclusion around food and admission to other rites of belonging. We also mentioned how Jesus both identified with and befriended the excluded.
René Girard spoke of what he called the Mimetic Theory. Put simply, we all learn by imitation. The child imitates his/her parent or another sibling. Built into this imitation is a desire to have or be what the Other is or possesses. I can desire my best friend’s partner: I want what s/he has. I can set up situations to try to take his/her partner away from him/her. If needs be, I may even resort to ways that involve hurting my friend. So, what was his/her desire now becomes my desire. If we transfer this to a community or a nation, we can see how wars start. Most wars are about what my enemy has, and I do not have, so I will take it from him/her violently.
Scapegoating focusses in on a specific person or group. In ancient times, the evil present in a community was symbolised by a goat. The same goat was banished by the community. In this banishment, the community believed it cleansed itself of all impurities; it could then resume its daily life without the presence of the evil in its midst. You will find this echoed in the Passion narrative of Jesus. The High Priest announced: “You don’t see that it is better for you that one man dies for the people rather than the whole nation be destroyed”. Jn11:50 Whenever an individual or group are singled out as the cause for a particular malaise in the wider society, we can see scapegoating in action. Currently in Ireland, one sees the new Nationalist Party calling for restrictions on both immigration policies and the benefits given to those in the asylum process. We have witnessed the burning of two hotels designated as centres to house asylum-seekers. We have heard in pubs and at school gates the comments that “They (immigrants) are taking our jobs”. Language around scapegoating does not have to be as sensational as the statements of the Nationalist Party; equally vile are the statements in the pub, at home or at the school gate when people scapegoat immigrants.
Conclusion:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa was once criticised for his involvement in politics. To his critics he responded: ‘ What Bible do they read?”. The fact that God as Trinity, chose the way of the Incarnation in a poor child, soon to be a refugee and spend his adult life as an outsider to the religion of his day, is this not enough for us to realise the wisdom of Tutu’s response above? ‘Is this it?” you may ask. Yes, this is it…we have this life , this place, this day to welcome the stranger and to be the men and women to live ‘the faith that does justice’ ( Pedro Aruppe, S.J.)
