What is goog for our species
It is not going well to our species of life. The situation in it has become worrying and it is not known whether it and life on Earth will survive. That’s what everyone knows about.
However, there is some good news. The participating in Catholic mass celebrations through HRT reveals a great novelty. As much as Sunday’s attendance at mass offers the possibility of meeting other fellow parishioners, participating in mass celebrations via television provides the opportunity to observe and listen to the sermons of many celebrants throughout Croatia (and Bosnia and Herzegovina).
It is obvious that a new generation of preachers has emerged, seeking a new meaning of Catholicism, appropriate to today’s circumstances and to the state of our species. I would like to point out the sermon of the auxiliary bishop of Đakovo-Osijek Ivan Ćurić at the shrine of Udbina on the occasion of the anniversary of the Croatian way of the Cross, May 1945-May 2022. The current confusion in the world requires a thorough explanation of and a coherent proposal to improve the state of the species.
I emphasized Catholicism, because I consider apostate the faiths, which were thought out after the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth (JoN). They were created by abandoning the care of the common, Catholic good and by taking care of special interests. Islam has taken care of the interests of Arab tribes (and later of “developing” tribes, who after the collapse of colonialism began to suddenly turn into nations). The Orthodox Christianity was concerned with the care for the Byzantine Empire. Evangelism was originally created as the faith of the Northern Germans, and Anglicanism as a new faith of the English. Even before Jesus, Judaism was the faith of a nation or a race.
Catholicism is the faith of deliberate immersion in all that exists, including the divine. It is one thing to adhere only to the people, tribe or race, to a certain living space, to a particular worldview and to a certain political party, and quite another matter to belong to our species, to life as the only value in the “dead” matter and to the Earth. In the first case, it is an ideology that binds people to power, and in the second it is about the general human, living and collectivist faith.
This is particularly true of recent ideologies: liberalism, nationalism, communism and national socialism. Liberalism is the ideology of capital, the market impregnation of interpersonal relationships and of self-centeredness. Nationalism is an aggressive ideology of individual nations. Communism is the ideology of waged labor. National socialism is the vengeful ideology of state capitalism. These ideologies have deeply divided the species. During the Second World War, they had fatally divided the Croatian people, who will never recover from all the sustained suffering. „A kingdom that is divided within itself will perish.” (JoN)
New Croatian Catholic preachers regularly mention and denounce ideology as a means of division among people. They do not yet emphasize, that ideologies in particular try to replace Catholicism. (Other, apostate faiths are ideologies in themselves, as they adhere to the special interests not the common good.) It is worth of emphasizing that the ideologies seek to displace Catholicism, and that Catholicism should consider ideologies as harmful and make them redundant. The natural association of people into nations by common language and history has a justification, and it can be ennobled by Catholicism to the extent that prevents it from turning into nationalism.
The capitalism that has been ravaging our species for six or seven centuries has made all people and nations needy and unfortunate. Globalization has made this fact obvious, as the species is affected by enormous troubles: severe climate change, the indecision of politicians to introduce green energy and economy, the coronavirus pandemic, the loss of human habitats, the disruption of supply networks, the absence in our species of the upbringing for the species and consequently the outspread of mental illnesses.
The troubles of the species began not in capitalism, but in the early civilizations six or seven millennia ago. In them, strong individuals have taken over the power of the original communities and have treated them as their property. Power rested on private property, into which the earlier collective wealth was transformed. Human connectivity or collectivity has disappeared, and people have been transformed into subjects. In civilization, ideology as an additional means of governing has replaced faith, which until then strengthened the cohesion of communities. Mature capitalism is a civilization, in which the accumulated capital rules the entire species.
Liberalism as an ideology of capital, capitalism and markets declared self-centeredness a virtue, although the original communities had tried to eradicate it, because they considered it a vice. Nowadays, the severe threat for the species – as it was in its beginnings – self- centeredness really proves to be the most severe vice of capitalism.
When one wonders what is good for our species it is worth knowing what kind of the species of life it is. Homo sapiens is an exceptional species of life. He has a conceptual, abstract or symbolic thinking, an awareness of the world and of himself, and the ability to judge his own attitude and his own actions. Man is not programmable. Man is a worker, creator and inventor. He was not begotten to be a subject and he can take personal and group responsibility for his own actions in God’s world or on the Earth. Other species can not carry responsibility, and the capital does not want to hear about it.
The instructions for the action of Homo sapiens as a whole were first and only given by Jesus of Nazareth. „Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them … and teach them to hold all I have commanded you to do!” (JoN) The founders of other belief systems have taken into account particular interests rather than the benefits of the species. Jesus’ good news is the real and only novelty in civilization. Jesus went after replacing self-centeredness with solidarity and mutuality. He went after the restoration of the original collectivity in our species, which is the heritage of evolution.
The underlying controversy that shakes the species involves care for the common, collective good on one side and, on the other side, an effort to accumulate private wealth. The struggle between self-centeredness and mutuality has so far been fought in the realm of material goods. Nevertheless, even if mutuality won such a fight, the species would have only satisfaction, but not contentment. The possible new, fairer distribution of material goods is not enough for humans, who have an awareness of themselves and of the world. Many people waste their lives on accumulating material goods without ever tasting life satisfaction and experiencing humanity, which is the most a man can have. „I have come that all might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (JoN) The species must help its members to implant in themselves life satisfaction and to experience humanity, which can only be achieved through human togetherness. „Whenever you sit down to eat together, remember me.” (JoN to his disciples)
Somebody must bear the burden of the expected new wave of spreading Jesus’ good tidings. It can be undertaken only by Jesus’ Catholic Church, whatever it is now. It is about a new mission for Catholicism and for the Church, as the authorized bearer of Jesus’ idea of togetherness among all people and among all life communities. It is not about ecumenism or about a compromise of Catholicism with promoters of special and most frequently opposing interests. It is a about removal from our species of carriers of such interests, because they are against any kind od collectivism. There is no substitute for Catholicism or the fellowship within the species. The spreading of Catholicism is a necessary condition to save Homo sapiens, the existing biodiversity, the life that evolution has brought and the Earth itself. The new common mission of Catholicism and the Church can bring salvation to the two of them too. That’s exactly why the new preachers are looking for the new meaning of Catholicism.
