Indifference is new martyrdom in post-religious era, says ecumenical patriarch

ROME — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople urged Christians to beware indifference and to address the “crisis of solidarity.”

“Even in so-called ‘Christian’ societies there is a new martyrdom, the result of a lack of amazement, which is the martyrdom of the indifference of a post-religious society, of spiritual aridity,” he said in his reflection during a prayer service he led at the Basilica of the Twelve Holy Apostles in Rome May 23.

He asked those gathered: “Are we still able to be amazed by the call of the Lord for each one of us, by the things of God, by the fragility of man, by the uniqueness and importance of every human being?”

“Most of the Apostles suffered a bloody martyrdom,” he said, and Christians in many areas in the world are still victims of martyrdom due to “fundamentalist arrogance” and “a lack of relationship, communion and... love.”

During the service, he venerated the relics of the Apostles Philip and James the Lesser, which are reserved in the basilica. He said relics of St. Philip were once housed in a basilica in Constantinople, second in size to Hagia Sophia, but it was destroyed in the seventh century. 

Turning his argument to ecumenism, he said “our churches yearn for full communion, in the time that God wills.”

“Relationship and communion allow us to walk together ... to tell the world today, afflicted by terrible injustices, religious, economic and social fundamentalism, and senseless exploitation of natural resources in favor of a few and at the expense of many, that there is hope.”

In an effort to follow the Apostles in their witness “we have come from the Eastern Church to be amazed by the Western Church,” he said. 

“If we meet, our relationship takes on a fullness. We can speak, we can dialogue without turning inward with attitudes that are defensive or, worse, closed and suspicious, but also without taking anything away from our awareness of and fidelity to our church,” he said.

The patriarch was in Rome for an international conference of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation, which promotes the teaching of St. John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical on social justice.

Prior to the conference, he met with Pope Francis May 26. The two leaders called on Christians to collaborate to build a culture of solidarity amid growing economic inequality and lack of respect for the human dignity of the poor and of migrants.

“The current difficulties and crises within the global economic system have an undeniable ethical dimension,” the pope told the 500 business leaders and theologians at the conference.

The crises “are related to a mentality of egoism and exclusion that has effectively created a culture of waste, blind to the human dignity of the most vulnerable,” the pope said.

A “growing ‘globalization of indifference’” is seen in the uneven pace of development, “not only in materially poorer countries but increasingly amid the opulence of the developed world,” he said.

In his address to the conference, Patriarch Bartholomew insisted that Christianity is “essentially social. Faith is not limited only to the ‘soul’ without any interest for the social dimension, but rather, it also plays a pivotal role at the level of society.”

The Orthodox and Catholic churches, he said, promote spiritual values and charitable activity, but they also teach “the principles of the respect of the person, solidarity, subsidiarity and the common good.”

However, the world today, as seen in the global economic system and the continued destruction of the environment, is experiencing a “crisis of solidarity” that threatens humanity’s existence. He condemned the “‘fundamentalism of the market,’ the deification of profit, the association of dignity with property, the reduction of the human being to ‘homo oeconomicus’ and the subordination of the human person to the tyranny of needs.”

“We worship technology and its highest symbol — the computer — as our god,” thinking that it will solve all of people’s problems, he added. But the world’s deepest problems, such as “social injustice, divorces, violence, crimes, loneliness, fanaticism and the clash of civilizations,” cannot be fixed with technology alone, he said.

“Never before have we possessed so much scientific knowledge and acted so violently and destructively against nature and our fellow human beings,” he continued.

Christians cannot ignore the “crisis of solidarity” because the problems directly impact human dignity, and “nobody can face these problems alone.”

“The contribution of our churches remains crucial,” he said, because “they have preserved high values, precious spiritual and moral heritage and deep anthropological knowledge.”

“For Pope Francis and us, the identity and value of a culture or a society cannot be judged by the level of its economic growth, its technological development or its organization,” he said. “A civilization is judged by whether or not its final point of reference is the human person, in relation to his true divine destiny and the protection of his world.”
 
Caption: Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople venerates the relics of the Apostles Philip and James at the Basilica of the Twelve Holy Apostles May 23. (Photo: Laura Ieraci)
 
As published in Horizons, June 17, 2018.
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