Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi, Bishop Emeritus of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and head of the Doctrine of the Faith at the Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM), offers Exaudi readers his weekly article.

FACTS

The highest authorities in our country proclaim that poverty, especially extreme poverty, has been reduced. If this is true, we are very happy and applaud it, and we must continue the same path to move forward. However, everything depends on the methodology used to measure poverty, because if the government measures itself, it loses credibility. Other data must be taken into account: the persistent levels of illiteracy, poor health, unemployment, and lack of opportunities are undeniable, generating unstoppable migration, social frustration, and the risk of a further spiral of violence. The chasms between the different Mexicos are scandalous: some enjoying all the privileges of a super-first world, and others barely surviving. Peasants and indigenous people remain largely marginalized, excluded, and exploited, as if they were obstacles to progress, surplus, and disposable . Growing globalization leaves them unable to preserve their cultures.

It is also presumed that crime and delinquency rates have decreased. It is true that a change in strategy is noticeable, and hopefully they will continue to seek ways to take away the armed groups’ power, because murders, femicide, assaults, extortions, uprisings, kidnappings, disappearances, exterminations, robberies, disputes, threats, confrontations, insecurity, invasions, blockades, and anxiety persist. Some of our communities have become battlegrounds between drug cartels or between armed groups (organized crime)  that are independent or extensions of a cartel. Drug traffickers and armed groups own plazas, roads, regions of the country, and even electoral processes. This is not being said by foreign governments or enemies of the regime, but by those of us who live with our people and have other data.

It is proclaimed that the group in power is building a new humanism; however, there is a cultural crisis manifesting itself, among other things, in fierce secularism, fragmented and disintegrated consciences, dehumanization of kidnappers and drug traffickers, dominant subjectivism, invasive relativism, distancing between reason and faith, distrust of institutions, and education lacking transcendent moral values. Abortion is justified as a right, same-sex unions are classified as “marriage,” gender can be changed without regard for sex, parental authority is disregarded, family and community customs are dismissed as things of the past, cell phones and social networks are changing criteria and attitudes, and so on.

LIGHTNING

There will be those who say that, as a Church, we should not interfere in these matters. But sharing these facts is not partisan politics. We are not systematic enemies of governments; we simply seek to be faithful to Jesus Christ, who, “when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were weary and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”  (Mt 9:36).  “We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses”  (Heb 4:15).  “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. But the hired hand, who is neither shepherd nor owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming and abandons them and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. Since he is a hired hand, he cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11-15).

Pope Benedict XVI told us in his inaugural address in Aparecida:  “The Church, which shares the joys and hopes, the sorrows and joys of her children, wishes to walk at their side in this period of so many challenges, always to instill in them hope and consolation.”

And Pope Francis:  “The evangelizing community enters into the daily lives of others with works and gestures, bridges the gap, lowers itself to humiliation if necessary, and embraces human life, touching the suffering flesh of Christ in the people. Evangelizers have the ‘smell of sheep,’ and sheep listen to their voice. The evangelizing community is willing to ‘accompany.’ It accompanies humanity in all its processes, however difficult and prolonged they may be” (EG 24).

ACTIONS

Let us congratulate ourselves on all the good works our governments do for the benefit of the people, but let us open our eyes and hearts to the deficiencies that persist and pain us; let us do what we can to remedy them. Let us not be merely critical.