quarta-feira, 28 de setembro de 2005

Irmão Alois de Taizé

De um artigo de Henri Tincq, hoje publicado no jornal Le Monde:

"(...) Frère Alois est l'un de ces enfants de Taizé, comme on dit au cirque qu'il y a des enfants de la balle. A 16 ans, il y vient pour la première fois et apprend le français dans les psaumes. "J'ai découvert à Taizé, dit-il, la simplicité d'une prière chantée". A 20 ans, il prend l'habit, à 24, fait ses voeux définitifs : "La présence de Dieu ici est une réalité qui se voit partout. Je sentais qu'il me prenait tout".
La même année 1978, Alois Löser est en voyage avec Roger Schutz à Nairobi (Kenya), où ils partagent la vie d'un bidonville, puis à Johannesburg (Afrique du Sud), où le prieur de Taizé a été appelé par Desmond Tutu à témoigner contre l'apartheid. C'est là que Roger désigne Alois comme son successeur. Pendant vingt ans, le secret sera gardé. Ce n'est qu'en janvier 1998, lors du conseil annuel, qu'il demande à ses cent frères d'ouvrir une lettre cachetée qui n'aurait dû être lue qu'après sa mort, dévoilant le nom d'Alois.
Que Frère Roger ait jeté son dévolu, si tôt, sur ce jeune homme de 24 ans ­ qui avait alors pour seul mérite de venir d'une famille émigrée de Sudètes dans la Tchécoslovaquie d'avant-guerre ­ et qu'il n'ait jamais varié, personne ne l'explique, mettant ce choix au compte du don de prescience de tous les mystiques. On pense au récit biblique où Dieu va chercher le plus humble des douze fils de Jessé pour succéder au roi Saül et en faire le grand David.
Agaçant Taizé. Cette façon, depuis la fondation, en 1940, de ne jamais rien faire comme les autres. De réussir une succession sans drame, à l'heure du plus grand drame. Cette certitude intérieure des frères qui leur met toujours le sourire aux lèvres, mais qui ne ressemble jamais à de l'arrogance. Cette façon de cacher même leur identité confessionnelle, de sembler ignorer les jeux du pouvoir et de l'ambition et de se laisser conduire par le seul lexique des mots de "confiance", "bonté" , "simplicité" , "fidélité" . Cette façon, enfin, d'exprimer leur foi qui a passé toutes les modes et les générations depuis soixante ans et attire encore des jeunes du monde entier, venus chercher un sens ou une consolation, un secours et un peu d'amour.
C'est peut-être cela qui a suscité l'appel, précoce et mystérieux, d'Alois Löser. Cet homme est un roc, symbolique de la force tranquille de Taizé, de cette assurance que sa propre aventure le dépasse, qu'il est conduit par un autre que lui-même : "Laisser faire Dieu. Croire qu'il est là dans l'histoire du monde, comme dans celle de notre communauté."(...)

segunda-feira, 26 de setembro de 2005

A global church in a globalized world
John L. Allen ,
Newsletter The Word From Rome, 23.09.2005
National Catholic Reporter

(...)
Let me offer a few rather random facts and figures about global Catholicism, and try to tease out a few implications. This is by no means a comprehensive survey, merely some basic data and observations that I hope will be useful for further conversation.

1) American Catholics
The 67 million Catholics in the United States represent 6 percent of the global Catholic population of 1.1 billion. We are the fourth largest Catholic country in the world, after Brazil (144 million), Mexico (126 million), and the Philippines (70 million).
Despite impressions of a rocky relationship with the Vatican, much of the rest of the Catholic world believes the American church already gets too many strokes from Rome. For example, we have 6 percent of the population, but 12 percent of the bishops in the Catholic church and 14 percent of the priests. In fact, the United States has more priests by itself than the top three Catholic countries combined (41,000 in the U.S. to 37,000 in Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines).
As another index, we have 13 cardinals (11 of whom are "electors," meaning under 80 and hence eligible to vote for the pope), as opposed to Brazil, with 8 cardinals (4 electors), Mexico, with 5 cardinals (4 electors), and the Philippines, with 2 cardinals (1 elector). In the last conclave, American votes counted for more than Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines combined, 11 to 9. (Those three countries represent a block of 340 million Catholics, more than 30 percent of the global total). American votes also outnumbered all of Africa (10 electors).

This context is important to keep in mind when American Catholics wonder why Rome seems to be slow to respond to our crises and needs. From the point of view of many in the Catholic church, America has been at the top of the heap for too long.

2) The Global South
Africa: Africa in the 20th century went from a Catholic population of 1.9 million in 1900 to 130 million in 2000, a growth rate of 6,708 percent, the most rapid expansion of Catholicism in a single continent in 2,000 years of church history. Thirty-seven percent of all baptisms in Africa today are of adults, considered a reliable measure of evangelization success since it indicates a change in religious affiliation. The worldwide average, by way of contrast, is 13.2. Islam in Africa grew equally dramatically in the same period; today there are 414 million Muslims in Africa. These numbers will continue rising, since Africa has one of the world's most dramatic rates of population growth. Along with the rapid expansion in Catholic population has come an explosion in African bishops, priests, brothers, sisters, and deacons. There are today more than 600 African bishops and almost 30,000 priests, and Africa and Asia each number approximately 30,000 seminarians. In 2004, roughly 20 priests were ordained for all of England and Wales, while Nigeria alone ordained more than 200.
Asia: Asia went from 11 million Catholics to 107 million, a growth rate of 861 percent. Much of this growth, however, is accounted for by demographics rather than conversions, above all in the Philippines. There are only about 37 million Catholics in all of Asia outside the Philippines. (A reported 13 million are in China). Pope John Paul II defined Asia as the great missionary horizon of the church in the 21st century, and that ambition certainly has something to do with the importance attached by the Holy See to diplomatic relations with China. Given the obvious stirrings of spiritual interest in China, and the reality that there is no dominant religious institution in the country, some China-watchers believe an opening on religious liberty could be followed by a rapid burst of Christian expansion. If there are 13 million Chinese Catholics today, there could be 100 million within a couple of generations. Further, just as Latin America set the theological tone for the church in the 1980s with the Liberation Theology movement, today Asian theologies of religious pluralism, reflecting on how Christianity should understand the role of religious diversity in God's providence, set the agenda. We'll come back to this later.

Latin America: Latin America is home to roughly half the world's Catholics, at 520 million. Four of the ten largest Catholic countries in the world are in Latin America: Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. Despite its youth and dynamism, the church in Latin America is in some ways under siege, facing pressure from the so-called "sects.," aggressively missionary neo-Protestant movements, often charismatic and Pentecostal. Guatemala, for example, was 95 percent Catholic a generation ago; today it is 60 percent. Peru was 97 percent Catholic at the time of a 1992 national census; in 2002, the figure was 75 percent. Similar figures could be repeated in many other nations. While some observers argue that many of these conversions are either transient or incomplete, pointing to the phenomenon of the "Guadalupe Protestant" (i.e., a evangelical who still takes part in Guadalupe festivals, prays the rosary, and so on), the evidence seems to be that most Latin Americans who became evangelical at least a decade ago have remained in an evangelical church rather than returning to Catholicism.

There's a strong sense among many Latin American Catholics that their time is coming to offer leadership to the universal church. In effect, the runner-up in the conclave of 2005 was a Latin American, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, and many cardinals believe the Latin Americans will be strong runners the next time around.

Summary: Philip Jenkins estimated in The Next Christendom that by 2050, only one-fifth of the world's Christians will be non-Hispanic Caucasians. Increasingly, power and influence in global Christianity will shift with population. Manila and Nairobi and Abuja will be, in a sense, what Leuven and Paris and Milan were for much of church history, i.e., the leading centers of intellectual and pastoral energy in the church. Leadership will come from these regions, and the issues of concern to the South will increasingly become the priorities of the global church.

3) The Middle East
This is a small, but politically and theologically important, constituency. There are roughly 2.1 million Catholics in union with Rome in the Middle East, with the largest groupings in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and the Holy Land. These populations are in decline, as the pressures of the Intifadah, economic stagnation, and the rise of Islamic radicalism are driving them away. Today there are more Palestinian Christians in Australia, for example, than in Palestine. In the town of Bethlehem, the proportion of the population which is Christian has dropped from 80 percent before 1948 to less than 33 percent today. There is considerable alarm that the out-migration of Chaldean Christians from Iraq will accelerate due to fears about weak religious freedom provisions in the country's new constitution. It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of these trends for understanding the foreign policy of the Holy See. At the symbolic level, the idea that the land of Christ might be empty of Christians, that the holy sites might become museums (like Hagia Sophia in Istanbul) is a subject of deep psychological alarm. Practically, the Holy See worries that if Christianity disappears from the Arab world, then a value bridge between the West and Islam will be lost. Hence while their numbers may be small, the fate of Arab Christians looms large in the imagination of Vatican policy-makers.

1) Europe
Europe claims 283 million Catholics, but in many places the practice of the faith is relatively inert; in countries such as Belgium, France and Holland, for example, rates of weekly Mass attendance dip as low as five percent. This is true for all the traditional Christian denominations. There are now more Muslims who go to Mosque on Friday in Great Britain, for example, than Anglicans who go to church on Sunday. Europe's fertility rates are also dropping; the lowest rates in human history, roughly 1.2 percent, have been recorded in Italy and Spain, traditionally Catholic nations. As one small but significant window into the historic shift underway, it's worth pointing out that today there is only one actual Roman among the 181 members of the College of Cardinals, retired 88-year-old Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini. In the conclave of April, not a single Roman cast a vote, despite the fact that historically the College of Cardinals is supposed to represent the clergy of Rome. That point alone symbolizes the gradual de-centering of Italy, and of Europe, underway in the Catholic church.

In Eastern Europe, by way of contrast, rates of Mass attendance and vocations are generally higher, outside the Czech Republic and former Eastern Germany, where Soviet-era atheism made its greatest inroads. In some places in Eastern Europe, such as Ukraine, Catholic communities are experiencing a Renaissance, related to the sensation of having survived the Soviet period with new confidence and a sense of mission.

Themes from the South
Given this overview, one point seems clear: in the Catholicism of the 21st century, the global south, perhaps especially Africa and the Philippines, will play increasingly important roles in setting the global agenda. As this shift unfolds, as the voice of the south is heard, what themes are likely to emerge? Without any pretense of being comprehensive, here are five:

Inculturation: Catholicism is one faith, but it has to be expressed through many cultures. Striking the right balance between unity and diversity will be a defining challenge in the church of the future, especially as a faith incubated in Europe and the West continues to expand and come of age in cultures with very different attitudes, instincts and modes of expression. Generally speaking, theologians and prelates from the developing world will push for greater freedom to adapt Eurocentric models of worship and doctrinal expression of the Western church to their own circumstances. Further, as immigration and cultural mobility increasingly bring the South to the doorstep of the West, the patterns of thought, life and worship of the South will more and more be part of the warp and woof of the church everywhere. Liturgy is one arena in which this tension will work itself out. These trends may push the envelope in terms of Western sensibilities. In general, southern Christianity tends to be more spontaneous, with a much more lively sense of the supernatural - healings, visions, prophecies, possessions and exorcisms, and so on. African worship in particular tends to be heavily charismatic. As Roman Catholicism in the future speaks with an African and Hispanic accent, it will also speak in tongues.

Poverty/Globalization: During the daily General Congregation meetings that led up to the conclave in April, several African cardinals gave moving interventions pleading with the next pope, whoever it would be, to put the struggle against poverty and chronic under-development at the top of the church's agenda. For many African Christians, the defining issues for the church are not the usual topics in the West -- birth control, women in the church, theological dissent, and so on. African Catholics will of course have different views on these questions, but by and large the overwhelming majority of Southerners regard them secondary. The truly urgent matters, they tend to believe, are poverty, war, the arms trade, HIV/AIDS, and structural reform of the international economic system. Hence as the South comes of age in the church, its focus will to some extent be increasingly ad extra rather than ad intra.

Religious Pluralism: There's a sense in which Asian Catholicism is to the Catholic church today what Latin America was in the 1970s and 1980s, that is, the frontline of the most important theological question of the day. In Latin America, the debate was over liberation theology, and more broadly, the proper relationship between Christianity and politics. Today, it's over what theological sense to make of religious diversity, meaning whether or not we can say that God wills religious diversity, and if God does will it, what does that do to Christianity's missionary imperative? In Asia, the social reality of Christianity as a tiny minority surrounded by millennia-old religious traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism makes this an urgent, and inescapable, theological challenge. Virtually all the major cases and documents that have come through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the last decade and a half, from Tissa Balasuriya to Jacques Dupuis to Dominus Iesus to Roger Haight, have pivoted on these fundamental questions. In the years to come, we can expect the question of Christian teaching about other religions to increasingly occupy the center of the research agenda in Catholic theology.

Traditional Sexual Morality: Catholics in the developing world tend to hold traditional views on matters of the family and sexual morality -- homosexuality, gender, and so on. As the South comes of age, the Catholic church will be proportionately less likely to tolerate liberal positions on these questions. For a point of comparison, consider the debate within the Anglican Communion after the consecration of an openly gay bishop in the United States. Anglicans worldwide number 76 million, but that includes 26 million in the Church of England, only 1.2 million of whom are regular communicants. Meanwhile, there are 17.5 million Anglicans in Nigeria and 8 million in Uganda, and in both places the vast majority is active. More than half the global membership of the Anglican Communion is today non-Western. Episcopalians in the States are only 2.4 million. The African bishops have declared that they are not in "full communion" with the Episcopalians, and some predict a formal schism.

Consider this comment, made just two weeks at a Sant'Egidio conference in Lyon, France, by Bishop Sunday Mbang, chairperson of the World Methodist Council: "I and many African Christians are always at a loss to comprehend the whole issue of human sexuality. What really informed the idea of same-sex marriage among Christians? What is the authority for this rather depraved new way of life? Then there is the issue of this same people, who have voluntarily excluded themselves from procreation, a gift given to all men and women by God, adopting other people's children. What moral right have they to do so? Why should people who do not desire to have children go after other people's children?"

Some suggest that as Africa develops economically, more relativized secular attitudes on sexual morality will take hold there as they have in much of the West. Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria, told me some time ago that he finds this a patronizing Western conceit, as if to say, "Once the Africans get out of their huts and get some education, they'll think like us." He predicts that if anything, as Africa's self-confidence and development levels grow, it will become bolder about asserting its moral vision on the global stage.

Islam: Western Catholics, with a few well known exceptions, tend to emphasize dialogue and welcome with respect to Islam. Many Catholic bishops in the South, especially Africa, take a harder line, insisting that the church must stand up for itself in situations of conflict, especially in states where Islam is in the majority and seeks the application of Islamic law. This is likely to press the Catholic church towards a more cautious stance with respect to Islam, especially around issues of reciprocity -- that is, the obligation of Islamic states and regions to reciprocate the religious freedom and the protection of law offered to Islamic minorities in the West. Phenomena such as the $65 million Mosque in Rome, the largest in Europe, while the one million Christians in Saudi Arabia cannot legally import Bibles, will be less likely to pass under silence within church circles. We saw movement in that direction during Pope Benedict XVI's meeting with Muslims in Cologne, Germany, during World Youth Day, where he stated bluntly that a country that does not respect religious freedom is not worthy of the name "civilization," effectively suggesting that Muslim nations under shariah are not fully civilized. The rise of the South will increasingly push this sort of reflection about the relationship with Islam to the top of the church's agenda.

Summary
These realities already are at work shaping the contours of Roman Catholicism. In many ways, they promise exciting times, as fresh voices are heard in Catholic debate and new energy pushes the church forward in theological exploration, in social engagement, and in spiritual expression. It's analogous in some ways to the early Christians encountering the Greco-Roman world, or the Christianity of the late Roman Empire adjusting itself to the rise of the Barbarian tribes, or the impact on Christian consciousness of the discovery of the so-called "New World" in the 15th and 16th centuries. We are living through another of those geological transitions in church history where the plates are realigned, giving rise to new ecclesial topography.


At the same time, there's one dimension to this transition which needs to be faced honestly. Westerners, and perhaps Americans most of all, will have to face the simple fact that in this globalized church, their issues and concerns will, more and more, not set the agenda.

One kind of American Catholic, for example, might propose a different set of priorities for the church of the future, especially in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis: greater accountability for bishops, empowerment of laity, democratic and transparent procedures of administration, and a review of some questions of sexual morality. This should not be read to suggest that only Americans are concerned with these matters, or that all Americans are, but rather that Americans are proportionately more likely to rate these as top priorities than Catholics in some other parts of the world.

Without drawing conclusions on the merits, the plain truth is that most of these points are unlikely to be driving issues for the global church of the 21st century. In my experience, they do not come up much when you ask Africa, Asian and Latin America leaders about the key challenges facing the church. This does not mean Catholics from the South always oppose these things; in fact, Asian bishops, to take one example, are known for their relatively democratic and transparent style, and often think Rome could do with a little more of it. In general, however, they don't spend a great deal of time thinking in these terms.

Understanding how the rest of the Catholic world sees things is critical to effective communication. To give a concrete example, I recall vividly in April 2002, when John Paul II summoned the American cardinals to Rome, how astonished American reporters who followed them were to discover that from the point of view of many in the Vatican, the big religion story that spring was not the American sex abuse crisis, but the Israeli/Palestinian standoff at the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. (It was a discovery all by itself that the sex abuse story was not on the front pages of Italian papers). There was a sort of crash-course that went on over those 48 hours; Vatican officials finally grasped the pressure-cooker media environment the American bishops had been dealing with, and at least some reporters got a window into what the American bishops were up against.

The bottom line is that in a globalized church, America's sense of what's important, which issues need immediate engagement and which can wait, what the pope ought to be thinking about when he gets out of bed in the morning, will increasingly yield pride of place.

This reality will pose a challenge to the "catholicity" of some American Catholics. How willing are we to see ourselves as part of a worldwide family of faith, even if things don't go the way we believe they should? To what extent can we accept that Roman Catholicism is a maddeningly complex welter of different, and at times competing, cultures, theological schools, political agenda and private instincts, the interplay among which always involves compromise, disappointment, and frustration? Can we bring ourselves to accept that the church before our eyes will probably never be the church of our dreams, and perhaps that's for the best, since our own dreams are always more limited than those of the entire communion spread across space and through time?

These are complicated, difficult questions, and thank God I'm not paid to have answers to them. I look forward to discussing them with you."

domingo, 11 de setembro de 2005

Diálogo das religiões

Depois de Fr. Bento Domingues ter defendido hoje, no congresso "Deus no séc. XXI - o futuro do cristianismo", em Valadares (V. N. Gaia) um concílio das religiões, a realizar no horizonte de dez anos, o teólogo espanhol Juan Jose Tamayo sugere hoje, no diário El País, que o Diálogo de Civilizações, uma ideia apresentada no ano passado à Assembleia Geral das Nações Unidas pelo chefe do Governo espanhol, não pode esquecer o Diálogo das Religiões. Eis a justificação avançada:

"1. Las religiones constituyen el núcleo duro de las culturas y de las civilizaciones, y con frecuencia son las más resistentes al diálogo. Dentro de ellas han nacido y se han desarrollado los distintos fundamentalismos, que se declaran en guerra contra la modernidad, la secularización, la laicidad y el pluralismo religioso y cultural, al tiempo que se convierten en una grave amenaza para la convivencia cívica. La historia demuestra que las religiones en su mayoría se han sentido más cómodas en regímenes dictatoriales, a los que han legitimado de distintas formas, que en Estados laicos, cuyo derrocamiento han apoyado no pocas veces. La organización interna de las religiones no se caracteriza por los hábitos democráticos ni por el reconocimiento de los derechos humanos. Todo lo contrario: casi todas se estructuran de manera jerárquico-piramidal y se configuran como verdaderas "patriarquías".
Se ha acusado a las religiones, y creo que con razón, de fomentar actitudes violentas entre sus seguidores, convertidos con frecuencia en "cruzados", e incluso de haber sido fuentes de violencia. Para ello no hay más que acudir a sus textos sagrados. La Biblia hebrea, afirma Norbert Lohfink, es uno de los libros más llenos de sangre de la literatura mundial. Hasta mil son los textos que se refieren a la ira de Yahvé que se enciende y castiga con la muerte. En la Biblia cristiana, observa el mismo autor, el acontecimiento central es la monstruosa acción sangrienta del asesinato de Jesús de Nazaret, donde aparece también la imagen de un Dios sanguinario, al menos de manera indirecta, en la interpretación que algunos textos ofrecen de la muerte de Cristo. Muchas imágenes del Corán sobre Allah no son menos violentas que las de la Biblia judía y la cristiana. El Allah de Muhammad, como el Yahvé de los profetas, se muestra implacable con los que no creen en él. Las religiones se han manifestado también contra la libertad religiosa, hasta imponer la pena de muerte a los apóstatas, en clara contradicción con el Dios de la vida en quien dicen creer, y a favor de la discriminación de los seres humanos en función de sus creencias.
Las tradiciones religiosas que incitan a la violencia o la justifican, y las que discriminan a las mujeres y a los no creyentes no pueden imponerse como normativas a sus seguidores, sino que deben ser excluidas de las prácticas de las religiones, así como del imaginario colectivo de la humanidad. Ello exige llevar a cabo una interpretación de los textos sagrados desde la perspectiva de los derechos humanos.

2. Pero las religiones tienen su polo positivo. Son uno de los caudales culturales más preciados de la humanidad y una fuente inagotable de sabiduría. En ellas se encuentran algunas de las grandes preguntas antropológicas y cósmicas que el ser humano se ha planteado desde los orígenes de la humanidad, preguntas sobre el sentido o sinsentido de la vida, sobre el origen y el futuro del universo, y otros tantos intentos de respuesta, que han contribuido al desarrollo del pensamiento en sus diferentes modalidades: mítico, filosófico, científico, simbólico, etcétera. El espíritu religioso, decía Ernst Bloch, es algo más que ideología y alienación; es la manifestación más intensa y radical de la esperanza: "Donde hay esperanza, hay religión". Lo que define a las religiones es la relación directa, personal y gratuita con la divinidad o con las divinidades y la solidaridad con el prójimo. Ellas cuentan con importantes tradiciones pacificadoras y con personalidades comprometidas en la lucha no violenta por la paz y los derechos humanos: Buda, Confucio, Jesús de Nazaret, Francisco de Asís, Gandhi, Luther King, Dalai Lama, Shirim Ebadí, Ellacuría, etcétera.

3. El choque de civilizaciones y la guerra de religiones no pueden convertirse en leyes de la historia. Son, más bien, una construcción ideológica del Imperio para mantener el poder sobre la humanidad y, si nos descuidamos, sobre las conciencias de todos los ciudadanos. El Imperio considera al Dios judeo-cristiano como aliado suyo y al cristianismo como su religión, mientras que califica al islam como la civilización menos tolerante de las religiones monoteístas. La alternativa no puede ser otra que el diálogo entre religiones, pues "sin diálogo, el ser humano se asfixia y las religiones se anquilosan" (Raimon Panikkar). Y ello por varias razones. La primera procede de la historia de las religiones, que muestra la pluralidad de manifestaciones de lo sagrado, de lo divino y del misterio. La segunda emana de la filosofía, que muestra el carácter dialógico del conocimiento y de la razón: ésta es comunicativa, no autista. La tercera tiene su base en el enfoque intercultural: ninguna cultura ni religión poseen la verdad plena y en exclusiva; hay que buscarla juntamente. El diálogo interreligioso, en cuarto lugar, constituye un imperativo ético para la supervivencia de la humanidad, la paz en el mundo y la lucha contra la pobreza. En torno a 5.000 millones de seres humanos están vinculados a alguna tradición religiosa y espiritual; si se ponen en pie de guerra, el mundo se convertiría en un coloso en llamas, pero si se comprometen con la paz y la justicia, la humanidad será más justa y pacífica. Por eso, la Alianza de Civilizaciones, el Diálogo Interreligioso y la Alianza contra la Pobreza son propuestas complementarias".
Ser Pessoa

"Ser pessoa é ter curiosidade, é reagir às coisas, é ter uma posição perante as situações, é precisamente não renunciar".

Lúcia Sigalho, actriz e encenadora
Entrevista a Maria Inês de Almeida, in Pública, 11.9.2005

terça-feira, 6 de setembro de 2005

Uma lição de humildade
José Vítor Malheiros
Público, 6.9.2005

Não é preciso ser um religioso fundamentalista nem sequer ver no furacão Katrina a mão de Deus para constatar que ele constituiu para os Estados Unidos uma lição de humildade.
Uma lição de humildade perante a força dos elementos, que tornam evidente que mesmo para a nação mais poderosa da Terra não é sensato prescindir da ajuda internacional, mas também uma lição de humildade perante as violentas lacunas da organização social americana e perante a miséria preexistente que o desastre tornou dolorosamente visível.
Nos últimos dias, o mito nacionalista americano e o seu culto da competição, da força e da violência sofreu um banho de realidade e ouvimos multiplicar-se os apelos à entreajuda, à dádiva e à cooperação. Será sol de pouca dura, mas pode ser que as necessidades pungentes que o Katrina revelou ou originou deixem ficar algo destes apelos nos corações e nas mentes dos americanos.
2. Se as imagens que as televisões nos mostram lembram as de um país do terceiro mundo afectado por uma catástrofe natural é porque nos Estados Unidos existe um enorme país do terceiro mundo acocorado em torno das suas ilhas de sucesso.
Os EUA gostam de medir o vigor da sua sociedade pelos seus sucessos - incontestavelmente imensos. Mas se o critério incorporar alguma noção de justiça, a qualidade de uma sociedade tem de se medir pela extensão da sua pobreza e da sua violência tanto ou mais do que pelos êxitos científicos ou pela sofisticação das suas classes abastadas.
(...)

sábado, 3 de setembro de 2005

Por outras palavras
Manuel António Pina
Jornal de Notícias, 1 de Set. 2005

Provavelmente, está tudo dito. Mesmo o sentimento da ociosidade e da inutilidade das palavras é uma sensação infinitamente cansada. E, no entanto, temos que dizer tudo de novo todos os dias, de juntar os pedaços dispersos do mundo e, com eles, descobrir para nós um lugar do nosso tamanho ou, ao menos, uma forma de sentido para aquilo a que chamamos a nossa vida. E, para isso, tudo o que temos são palavras. O que sabemos palavras; o que sonhamos: palavras; o que sentimos: palavras; e a nossa própria boca que fala é, também ela, só uma frágil e insegura palavra. O cronista é filho de Cronos, o tempo que passa, e a crónica vive o mesmo redundante destino do jornal que, como os velhos tipógrafos diziam, no dia seguinte serve apenas para embrulhar peixe (e que outro destino tem tudo senão o esquecimento?). Está então o cronista diante do mundo e de si próprio. E só pode repetir (na melhor das hipóteses por outras palavras, donde o título genérico destas crónicas) aquilo que cada homem imemorialmente repete: o amor e a morte, o medo e a esperança, a alegria e a decepção. Acontece assim nos sonhos. Temos medo e sonhamos com a esfinge. A verdade, porém, não é a esfinge, a verdade é o medo; a esfinge é só a imprecisa forma do nosso medo. Também a crónica aqui falará, a partir de hoje, de gente, de factos, de acontecimentos, mas o que dirá é outra coisa. E essa coisa é que é a verdadeira.