After Pestilence

Mario I. Aguilar

Description

Theology, according to liberation theologians is only a second step. The first is praxis. A liberating praxis puts the poor and the marginalised at the centre. It is found in the collective response of global religious communities responding to crises – and a global pandemic offers an important case in point, reminding religions of our shared humanity, and the need for interreligious cooperation and understanding to effect a positive response.
In the context of seismic socio-economic and political change, religion provides a communal response for feeding the poor, fighting for their rights, and challenging the post-colonial financial model that is now beginning to lose its ground.
This book blends an examination of emerging research on the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in marginalised communities, with the author’s own research on social and poverty isolation in India, and his own experience as told in diaries written whilst in lockdown in a poor district of Santiago, Chile. It challenges majority world churches and religions in a post-pandemic world to learn from each other and from Jesus’ own identification with the outcast, and urges them to take on a way of life and prophetic learning from the world of the poor.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 26 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334060376
• Langue: English

Extrait

After Pestilence
An Interreligious Theology of the Poor
Mario I. Aguilar






© Mario I. Aguilar 2021
Published in 2021 by SCM Press
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978-0-33406-035-2
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Contents
Acknowledgements

Introduction: A Post-Pandemic Theology of Interfaith Liberation
1. A Crying Praxis of a Shared Humanity
2. Conversion and a Post-Pandemic Theology
3. Theologizing at the Waters
4. Interfaith Dialogue, the Indigenous, and Liberating Praxis
5. A Post-Pandemic Theology of Multiple Belonging
Conclusions: An Interfaith Theology of the Poor





Dedicated to Glenda Tello




Acknowledgements
This book came out of the shock, the trauma and the isolation of the global Covid-19 pandemic that began in 2020. As I couldn’t return to Scotland from Chile, I realized that the BBC and other journalists were asking me to react, to feel the developments of the pandemic and to provide thoughts, prayers and actions for others who were in shock as well. Years ago, I had rejected the notion that I could be an interlocutor for liberation theology and the poor because over the past 26 years I have been cosily reading and writing at the Faculty of Theology of the University of St Andrews. Suddenly, and as the days passed by in quiet quarantine, the solidarity of the poor around me and the quiet breeze of the Lord’s silence started transforming such past thought. As my hair grew longer and 143 days passed in the flat without going out, I understood that liberation theology and interreligious dialogue had a lot to do with each other in the life of the marginalized who pulled together to provide food and shelter to the very poor. The poor looked after me at all times, making sure that I behaved like the one they wanted: a quiet older man who could make sense of what God was saying in those moments. Their understanding was metaphysical: if my writing and my prayers would cease, they would get ill; if I could protect them with my brief appearance they would survive. In the midst of such turmoil, workers asked me about the Dalai Lama, and Jesuits ran through the streets nearby with encouragement for migrants and harsh words towards the government. Only one resident of our building died of the virus and six of us were put on a list of those vulnerable who would follow. In those moments, I prayed, I wrote and I poured issues of social justice and interreligious solidarity to the foreign media.
I dedicate this book to my life companion, who with courage was my anchor to hope and heaven during those months, as always. My life companion, who was elsewhere in the city, made sure that I would not fail to look after myself with an infinite hope that everything would be all right. Like Hildegard: Quadam in visione beatorum in paradiso animas contemplator Hildegard, quae exspectant ut suis corporibus coniungantur .
On the completion of this book Dom Pedro Casaldáliga, bishop, poet and theologian of liberation, died in Brazil (August 2020) while I was in quarantine. His life inspired many of us and I realized how he was a remarkable prophet of the Kingdom, who even prepared his own food and washed his clothes by hand. He was a poet who poured revolution and Eucharist all together in whatever he did. When he died, I went to the streets and told those around me that this was the chance to pray for the intercession of Dom Pedro so that the sick would be healed and the bereaved would be consoled. A new saint had arrived in heaven – St Pedro Casaldáliga of the Amazonia, pray for us!
I am grateful to those who accompanied this writing from other continents and showed their unfailing support, especially Sara Aguilar, Dr Eve Parker, Dr James Morris and Dr Ann Simpson. My gratitude to Dr Gordon Barclay for the hope of having dinner together again, and to the following who commented on this work and reminded me of their companionship: Carolina Sanz, the Revd Dr Webster Siame Kameme, Braulia Ribeiro, Kabir Babu, Porsiana Beatrice, Marjorie Gourlay, Matyas Bodi, Stefanie Knecht, Hunter Daggett, Gillian Chu, Isaac Portilla and Emilie Krenn-Grosvenor.
In Santiago city centre a dozen young immigrants from Venezuela, and Chilean workers at the building where I stayed, looked after me to the point that I was a prisoner of their caution and their encouragement to have eggs and cakes and to remain in my flat while the sick, the infirm and the dying were being taken by ambulances from all these buildings. Particular thanks to Daniela Vidal, a courageous Chilean mother who symbolized the solidarity of the marginalized during the pandemic. Particular thanks to the Vatican press office and civil service who managed to provide every possible document I needed and cleared all materials needed to assess the important role of Pope Francis during the pandemic. My gratitude to friends at the St Mary’s College office who kept me alert and cared for at a distance. To Edna Adan and friends in Hargeisa, Somaliland, thanks for weekly exchanges on developments in Somaliland, and for your example of fortitude and order during the pandemic.
Finally, a word of appreciation to the Fellows and members of Laudato Si’ International and to members of the Milarepa Foundation, particularly Ivonne Bell, Jorge Cuché, Marcela Arévalo and Dr Camila Foncea. To my fellow Knights, Christians and Muslims, Peace! Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini tuo da gloriam !
Santiago, Chile,
August 2020




Introduction: A Post-Pandemic Theology of Interfaith Liberation
‘We are living among the dead’, an intensive care medical doctor who had already battled for ten weeks from the start of the pandemic in Chile told us. It was May 2020 and this shocking proposition had already been outlined by those experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic in China and Europe but not in Latin America. Massive contagion and cases started appearing later, and the media did not show the medical consequences of the pandemic until much later. Thus, sensorial acute shock had not entered the emotional spaces of human fear. Those who had reacted already to the danger and to the global fear had been those Catholics and members of other faith communities who had been invited by Pope Francis to join him online on 27 March to pray for the City of Rome and for the world. 1 Theologically, that was the moment when Pope Francis, the global parish priest, represented the priest of the communal sacrifice. He prayed to the sacrificial Christ on the cross for the end of the pandemic on behalf of all: spare your people, Lord! Spare your people! – a real ‘tempest alone’ that was reported as far as Thailand. 2
For memory and sensorial experience are two different experiences, so they can be compared to the difference between two types of contemporary theologies, one rational and philosophical (European), the other experiential and contextual (within the southern hemisphere). 3 One can study, outline and reflect theologically on the past, be it the Christian incarnation or the Spanish flu, but to experience such incarnation is different. 4 The foundations of the Eucharist, for example, can be thought with an inbuilt sense of the tradition and with clear questions about what happened in Jerusalem when Jesus took bread and wine and shared supper with his disciples. 5 The other kind of theological experience carries in its methodology a theological ‘after thought’ in which the moment of action and the post-reflection become closely intertwined simply because the action and the reaction are closely related. 6 This was the case, for example, with the Eucharist celebrated by Archbishop Oscar Romero in which he was killed on 24 March 1980 in San Salvador. 7 Romero’s last homilies, taken as his theological reflections within political theology, got him killed. If one were to speak of liberating moments of martyrdom and sacrifice, the killing of Romero, of the Jesuit Rutilio Grande and companions, as well as Ignacio Ellacuría and companions in El Salvador, have been deemed martyrdoms and an offering for others by the Church. 8 Not only did they reflect theologically and publicly on the events that affected the Christian communities in El Salvador, but when Ignacio Ellacuría and companions were machined-gunned, such a moment became a moment of sensorial social shock followed by memory, rather than the other way around. 9
Memory and sensorial hermeneutical actions have influenced the development of contextual theologies outside Europe, and the immanent relations of an inter-hybridity between theologies of the world religions and the politics attached to such dialogue in situ, in