Renaissance worldview

The European world understands that there is no cultural, scientific, and philosophical continuity between the Ancient Times and the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages was like a trauma that paralyzed the world, and put it in a coma for a long time. The city is the place of culture, because it is where the largest number of people are concentrated, where a countless number of transactions and communications take place, and where a countless number of professions are practiced.

In the bucolic countryside only agriculture is practiced, people live isolated from each other. The medieval world was a rural world. It is true that the countryside is where one has a place to live and food to eat, but a life dedicated only to subsisting can hardly be called human, only animals spend their lives exclusively subsisting, that is their time is entirely devoted to look for food.

Agriculture is therefore the foundation of culture. However, the goal of agriculture should not stop at subsistence, but to create surpluses that will then be the basis of trade, which will allow the acquisition of other goods and promote the relationships between people, giving rise to other activities. In short, they will foster culture and development.

During the Renaissance, cities began to reappear. Europe, realizing the cultural discontinuity between the Ancient Times and the ten centuries of the Middle Ages, tried to perform a bypass, by passing over the Middle Ages to go back to the past to the Greco-Roman world to resurrect this culture without the mediation or the lenses of the Church.

Inspired by the values of classical antiquity, the Renaissance man has the idea that everything medieval is bad and everything belonging to the ancient world is good. This perspective is mistaken on multiple fronts. Philosophy, for example, though of Christian inspiration, advanced in the Middle Ages; architecture, especially Gothic architecture, took a huge step forward during Medieval Times.

The somewhat crude architecture of Greek and Roman times was recreated during Renaissance with the monumental style that lost to the Gothic style in beauty; it is merely monumental, that is, big, immense. For example, St. Peter's Basilica is monumental, it is Renaissance, but it is certainly not more beautiful than the simplest Gothic cathedral.

With the emergence of the burgh, a term that means city, at the end of the Middle Ages, another social class was born in the midst of the people, the bourgeoise, or literally the city dweller. They were not, of course, dedicated to agriculture, but to commerce, arts, and skilled trades which emerged as life became more diversified and no longer revolved around subsistence. This physical aspect was entrusted to the people and their work in agriculture, the spiritual and moral aspect was entrusted to the clergy, and the security aspect was entrusted to the nobility.

Origin of the Renaissance
In the Italian peninsula, cities never totally disappeared and the peoples did not stop trading or using money. There was, however, a decrease in these activities during the Middle Ages. Due to the geographical situation of the Italian peninsula in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, several riverside cities such as Venice, Genoa, Florence, Rome, among others, benefited from trade with the East. Marco Polo is said to have paved the way.

These regions grew rich with the development of trade on the Mediterranean Sea, giving rise to a rich merchant bourgeoisie class. In order to assert themselves socially, these merchants sponsored artists and writers, who inaugurated a new way of expressing art. The Church and the nobility were also patrons of artists like Michelangelo, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro della Francesca, among many others.

The new bourgeoise social class that emerged in the Renaissance had money but no status, unlike the clergy and the nobility. On the other hand, since they had money, they did not fit in with the peasants. Thus, they sought to invest their wealth by sponsoring works of art, in order to be socially recognized.

Reborn
‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.’ John 3:3-5

In mid-14th century, a transition began between the medieval and modern worlds. This transition is known as the Renaissance or being born again, as the Gospel suggests.

The movement began in Italy which had been the center of Greco-Roman culture and its last stronghold, the center of the Roman Empire. It was also the place most dominated by the Church, since almost all of Italy at the end of the Middle Ages was a Papal State, made up of lands that the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne gave to the Church. Therefore, those who call the Church obscurantic forget that it was the greatest promoter of Renaissance in the field of architecture, painting, sculpture, and other art forms. And that Greco-Roman culture was reborn precisely where it had been made extinct by the barbarians.

The Renaissance encompassed almost every facet of life, economics, politics, philosophy, and art among many, and especially science. The major contributors to the Renaissance (such as Petrarch, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Dante) classified the medieval period as slow and dark, a time of limited education or innovation. They saw the medieval period as an interruption of culture between the classical world of Greece and Rome and the Renaissance.

The idea of community distinguished the medieval period. The people—clergy, nobility, and peasantry —faced real threats of famine, disease, and war, which were dangers that fostered community dependence in areas such as labour, religion, and defense. For example, a medieval tradesman belonged to an association that dictated every aspect of his business. The idea was that all craftsmen would earn an equitable living, and not that some would earn more than others.  Uniformity was the norm; each profession had its own way of dressing, even prostitutes had their distinct habit, a way of dressing that distinguished them from other women.

The Renaissance, on the other hand, underlined the importance of individual talents. This idea, known as individualism, is visible in the philosophy and art of the time. Moreover, while medieval scholars had studied ancient Greek and Roman documents to learn about God and Christianity, Renaissance scholars studied them to discover more about human nature. This new interpretation was known as humanism.

Thus, a humanism not directly linked to Christianity emerged, that is, a secular humanism that would grow exponentially throughout the Modern Times. In fact, the Renaissance was the first stone of the materialistic humanistic worldview opposed to a spiritualistic worldview that reigned throughout the Middle Ages.

Renaissance art also reflected this humanistic worldview. While medieval art was intended to teach a lesson, perhaps tell a biblical story, like the stained-glass windows of Gothic cathedrals, Renaissance art glorified the humanity of the individuals portrayed. Medieval statues tend to be of saints and in an unnatural mystical position. In contrast, Michelangelo's David, the Pieta, and Moses seem to be more realistic. The statues stopped being frozen images of piety and began to reveal human emotions, appearing ready for action.

Renaissance Values
Rationalism – Reason was the only path to reach knowledge. Everything could be explained through reason and science. Medieval scholasticism also valued reason, but not exclusively. Faith is another way of knowing, which Renaissance ignores, as does culture in general after it.

Scientism – For the Renaissance, all knowledge should be demonstrated through scientific experiments. The expression "experience is the mother of science" is from this period. Today we know that experience is not the only mother of all sciences. Science is not only the result of logic and deduction, but also of intuition, as demonstrated by the theory of relativity.

Individualism – Human beings sought to assert their own personality, showcase their talents, achieve fame, and fulfill their ambitions through the concept that individual right was above collective right. Thus, liberalism in all its forms emerged. We will have to wait for the socialist revolution to talk more about equality, because the equality of the French revolution was an equality where some are more equal than others, as George Orwell puts it.

Anthropocentrism – Places man as God’s supreme creation and the center of the universe. The phrase “man is the measure of all things” is from this time. God begins to be cast aside, until he is completely replaced by Nietzsche's superman.

Classicism – Artists looked to Greco-Roman Classical Antiquity for inspiration to realize their works. The idea was that any moment in the past is better than the Medieval one.

Renaissance Writings
Great writers who are still famous worldwide are from this time, because they wrote world-renowned works for all times, as well as becoming ex libris or representative of the culture where they arose.

• Dante Alighieri: Italian writer, author of the great poem "Divine Comedy". It deals with the three instances after death – Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory – and is a jewel of universal literature and the ex libris of Italian culture.
• Machiavelli: author of "The Prince", a precursor work of political science where the author gives advice to the rulers of the time.
• Shakespeare: considered one of the greatest playwrights of all times. In his work, he addressed human conflicts in the most diverse dimensions: personal, social, political. He wrote comedies and tragedies, such as "Romeo and Juliet", "Macbeth", "The Taming of the Shrew", "Othello" and several others. Ex libris of English culture.
• Miguel de Cervantes: Spanish author of "Don Quixote", a scathing critique of medieval chivalry. Ex libris of Spanish culture.
• Luís de Camões: stood out in Renaissance literature in Portugal, as the author of the great epic poem "Os Lusíadas", ex libris of Portuguese nationality.

Renaissance Arts
We highlight Leonardo da Vinci who is the ex libris, stereotype or prototype of the Renaissance man; the man of a hundred trades. He was a mathematician, physicist, anatomist, inventor, architect, sculptor, and painter; he was the Renaissance man who mastered several sciences. For this reason, he is considered an absolute genius. The mysterious Mona Lisa and the Last Supper are his masterpieces. When someone tells us about the Last Supper of Christ, the image that always comes to mind is that of Leonardo da Vinci's timeless painting.

Scientific Renaissance
The Renaissance was marked by important scientific discoveries, notably in the fields of astronomy, physics, medicine, mathematics, and geography. The Polish Nicolaus Copernicus denied the geocentric theory defended by the Church, inherited from Aristotle and Ptolemy, by stating that "the Earth is not the center of the universe, but simply one of the many planets that revolves around the Sun”. The new center was now the sun. Today we know that neither the Earth nor the sun is the center of the universe. The universe may not have a center...

Galileo Galilei discovered the rings of Saturn, the sunspots, the satellites of Jupiter. Persecuted and threatened by the Church, Galileo was forced to publicly deny his ideas and discoveries. "And yet it moves," Galileo is said to have said as he left the courtroom where he was forced to lie, the ‘it’ refers to the Earth. The Church was wrong to look at the Bible as a book of science.

Galileo said that it was the Earth that went around the sun, but he never managed to prove it because what people saw was the opposite: empirical experiment in this case tells us the opposite of the truth. Poor Galileo could have simply said that when we ride or move in a horse carriage, we know that it is we who move; yet our eyes see the trees moving. In the same way, we see that it is the sun that moves, even though we know that it is fixed in relation to us because we, inhabitants of this planet, are riding in the motion of a moving planet, like the carriage.

In medicine, knowledge advanced with works and experiments on blood circulation, cauterization methods, and general principles of anatomy. The first autopsies to investigate causes of death and learning about the human body and how it works are from this time.

Conclusion: upon waking up from a dream that had lasted a thousand years, the Renaissance realized that the Middle Ages, from the trauma of the barbarian invasions, was not a logical continuation of the Ancient Times that had been buried alive. The Renaissance was a bypass from the classical world to the present day, without passing through the Middle Ages. It was the drinking of the fountains and putting down roots in the Ancient Times as a model of inspiration, and casting aside the Middle Ages as if it had never happened.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Medieval Worldview

In historical terms, the Middle Ages was so named because it lies midway between the Ancient Times and the Modern Age. It begins in the 5th century, with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and ends in the 15th century, with the Renaissance transition to the Modern Age. These ten centuries of history of Western civilization are usually divided into two periods: the High Middle Ages, from the 5th to the 10th century, and the Late Middle Ages, from the 10th to the 15th century.

Causes of Medieval Cultural Regression
There are those who tendentiously blame the Church for the fact that the Middle Ages was a cultural regression. It is true that the Church filtered out of the Greco-Roman culture only what was of interest to it, but it also kept much of this culture; if this had not been the case, it would not have preserved the ancient manuscripts, which would have made Renaissance impossible.  

For those who are not tendentious or biased, the main factor that plunged Europe into a limbo or a thousand-year dream was the takeover of power by the barbarians, who were more than 2,000 years behind the Greco-Roman culture. This is certainly the main factor, but there are others that contributed to or accentuated the Dark Ages.

Europe lived during the Middle Ages in a climate of constant instability. Culture does not grow in times of war. The Pax Romana had provided for cultural development; but now, the isolation, the lack of trade and communications that feudalism caused transformed the urban world and its culture into a rural and closed world where agriculture was the only activity, and the constant wars between small kingdoms and, within these kingdoms, between the feudal lords did not provide for a cultural development.

While inside Europe, the Church was dedicated to educating the barbarians, outside Europe, it was constantly threatened by other barbarians. On the western side, the Muslims, who had occupied all of North Africa, invaded the Iberian Peninsula and reached as far as the heart of France, to Poitiers, where they were defeated by Charles Martel. The Ottoman Empire threatened from the east to extend into Europe. To the north, the Vikings appeared, another Germanic tribe from Scandinavia that made quick incursions to the coasts of England and France, with the sole purpose of robbing, plundering, and killing.

These are all factors that made Europe, united under the Roman Empire, a bunch of estates or fiefdoms disconnected from each other, with the sole concern of survival. The Church or Christianity was present in all these states and in all of them, it was the only uniting factor. That is why ventures like the crusades were possible, because there was no other factor that could unite the peoples and make them leave their fiefdoms.

High Middle Ages
The High Middle Ages is the time period furthest away from us and closest to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. During this period of barbarian occupation of the Roman Empire, the urban centers were destroyed, the people returned to the countryside. The barbarians formed small kingdoms using the structures of the Roman Empire.

In the 7th century, both North Africa and the Middle East became Muslim; the latter had been part of the Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire (the longest empire in history). This Empire continued to exist for a while longer, until 1453, already in the Late Middle Ages, when it succumbed to the Ottoman Empire which in turn lasted another 600 years and ended sometimes after World War I, in 1922.

During the High Middle Ages, Christianity, which constituted itself as the heir to the Greco-Roman culture, spread throughout Europe and, as we saw in the previous text, the Germanic tribes were giving in to this religious narrative that was far superior to their own. When the chief of the tribe converted, the whole tribe converted, as a matter of loyalty, a very important value among the barbarians.

Still in the High Middle Ages, an attempt was made by the Franks during the Carolingian dynasty, to restore the old Roman Empire. The Carolingian Empire emerged in the 8th and 9th centuries by the unification of the Frankish and Germanic kingdoms during the Carolingian dynasty, which began with Charlemagne.

Later, this Empire split off from this division; the eastern part of France with the rest of Germania formed the Germanic Roman Empire during the reign of the Saxon dynasty, with Otto I as emperor. He was given the title of Holy Emperor by the Pope, which gave rise to the name Holy Germanic Roman Empire.

The Germanic emperors considered themselves direct successors of the Romans. These emperors were elected by a council of four dukes of the most important kingdoms: Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria. The emperor represented the entire Empire, but each of the confederated kingdoms had autonomy over its own territory, which was governed according to the feudal system. This Empire lasted 900 years: from the High Middle Ages, through the Late Middle Ages and the Modern Period, into the Contemporary Age, ending in 1806 with the Napoleonic wars.

Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages began in the year 1000; during this period there was a great demographic growth, feudalism was the prevailing system throughout Europe; the king of each state was only a symbolic figure, he did not have great executive power. During this time, the Church established itself not only as a spiritual powerhouse, but also as a temporal one, as it managed to incite the feudal nobles to embark on a crusade to reconquer the Holy Land that the Byzantine Empire had lost to the Ottoman Empire.

They did conquer it, but for a short time, only to lose it once the Ottoman Empire reached its height. It will not be conquered again, not even by Richard the Lionheart, until World War I by the British. During the crusades, the Germanic tribes showed their barbaric side, so they did more harm than good. Failing to defeat the Muslims, in 1204 in the fourth crusade they turned against the Christians of the East, looting, terrorizing, and vandalizing Byzantium which, weakened, feel easy prey to the Ottoman power.

The last two centuries of the Late Middle Ages were marked by various wars, adversities, and catastrophes. The population was decimated by successive famines and plaques; the Black Death alone was responsible for the death of a third of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1350. There was also the Spiritual Black Death, with the Great Schism of the Church in the West, which had profound consequences on society and was one of the factors behind numerous wars between states.

Cultural life was dominated by scholasticism, a philosophy that sought to unite faith with reason, and by the founding of the first universities. The work of Thomas Aquinas, the masterpieces of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo and the construction of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals are among the most outstanding achievements of this period.

Feudalism
The barbarian invasion caused people to flee from the city to the countryside. Western Europe was becoming rural, and the wealth was land. Agriculture became the main economic activity, and the production of the fields  was for their own sustenance. Charlemagne promoted the distribution of land to feudal lords, demanding in exchange their allegiance and aid in event of war.

Feudalism is the term we use for every social, political, cultural, ideological, and economic organization that existed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Feudalism is the ruralization of urban Roman Europe; cities only came back into existence with the opening of trade in the Modern Period, around the time of the Renaissance.

The symbol of feudalism is the feudal lord’s castle, surrounded by farmland where the serfs, the people, work from sunrise to sunset, paying homage and vassalage to the feudal lord or liege lord, a member of the nobility. From one castle to the next, monastery after monastery were built where monks who constitute the other social class, the clergy, lived.

The nobles defend the fief because they own of the land that the people work; the clergy maintain the culture and teach both religion and agricultural techniques to the people, praying for them; the people support with their work both the nobles and the clergy, although the latter was largely self-sufficient. The Nobility (bellatores) defends, the Clergy (oratores) prays, and the People (laboratores) work: this sums up rural life during feudalism.

The Ideal of Chivalry
The medieval knight embodies values such as courage, prowess, unfailing loyalty, fidelity to his word, dignity, and honor. He usually defends the poorest and fights for justice and peace. He leads an errant life of solitude, because of the battles and skirmishes he faces. He is in love with a maiden with whom he has a platonic love relationship from a distance.

He must show temperance in battle, generosity towards both friends and enemies, and courtesy towards women. The liberality of the knight who redistributes all his possessions to people and the poor is part of his fame. The values celebrated by chivalry are the fruit of a long education.

The aspiring knight must serve his apprenticeship under a lord, first by being his servant and then his squire. He then learns both the handling of weapons and the ethics of chivalry. Once invested, he must demonstrate his worth by performing in tournaments or participating in the adventures that come his way. In the quest for glory and recognition, these errant knights will also undertake multiple quests, the most prestigious of which is that for the Holy Grail, that is, the chalice of the Jesus’ Last Supper as well as for the ark of the covenant.

The Templars
They were so called because they formed this religious military order in the temple of Jerusalem where they sought the Holy Grail. These and other members of religious military orders were the ones who best embodied the spirit of the knight, for by not marrying they devoted their entire lives to holy or just wars. They were the most feared by the Muslims because they were martyrs to the cause; in fact, when Muslims imprisoned a Templar, they were not content with just killing him as they did to any crusader, but tortured him for a long time before killing him.

The Templars grew in power and in wealth, and in France, they came to have more land, more power and wealth than the King of France himself, so the latter, together with the Pope, arranged for their dissolution. Before this happened, the armada of the Templars set sail from France and is said to have gone to Portugal, where King Denis, in a smart move, instead of dissolving the order that has been powerful in Portugal since its first king Afonso Henriques, he changed its name to Knights of the Order of Christ. The Portuguese Discoveries were made by the Templars, financed by the Jews. In fact, the Portuguese caravels carried the Templar’s square cross on their sails.

Eclesia mater ed magistra
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is the king," so says the people; the Church became a powerful and influential institution not only in religion but also in medieval society. The Germanic peoples were not at all interested in culture, they could not read or write, but they knew that formation and information represented power, so they recognized in the Church not only a religious power, but also a cultural one, as heir to Greco-Roman culture. Consequently, the Church was respected, even though, as Hitler later claimed, it had no armies to subdue the peoples.

The power of the Church was only spiritual. However, since the human being is a spiritual being, when you subdue a person’s soul, you subdue his body because the body obeys the dictates of the soul. We can see a picture of this submission in the following episode that is iconographic and representative of the Middle Ages and the relations between the Church and the Germanic peoples:

…When the ferocious chief and king of the Huns was about to invade and plunder Rome, coveted by all the Germanic tribes, Pope Saint Leo the Great went out to meet him and, certainly by peaceful means, succeeded in dissuading him from this invasion.

The Germanic kingdoms adapted their customs to those of the Romans. The Church allied itself with the kings and became the great bridge between the Germanic world and the Roman world. The barbarian peoples abandoned their old religious practices and embraced Christianity. The Christian faith expanded throughout western Europe, reinforcing the power of the Pope. It was in the Carolingian Empire, in the 7th century, that the Church managed to consolidate its dominion, continuing later in the Holy Roman Germanic Empire.

In the 4th and 5th centuries, with intense and general preaching, the Church in a short time converted the conquering peoples of the Roman Empire to Christianity. In a time of wars, disintegration, and fragmentation of power, as was feudalism, religion was the only factor uniting peoples. It was also the only institution in the ancient world capable of standing up to the hegemony of the new barbarian dominators.

It was the Church that guaranteed peace, defended the peoples from the excesses of the barbarian invaders, and fought injustices, not by the force of arms, which they did not have, but by the force of reason, decency, and ethics. The barbarians respected the Church for the ascendancy it had before the people and for being the heir of the great Roman Empire which, in fact, still existed in the East.

With the subjugation of the populations in the more rural areas, the only power was that of the bishop; moreover, at the level of Rome, the Pope was the sole representative of the Roman West. In this way, the Church became a political power, and as such, also committed some errors.

Monasticism
Monks and friars were the spiritual knights of the Middle Ages. The culture of the Middle Ages was concentrated in the monasteries. The production of Classical Antiquity was guarded, and the monk copyists had the mission of copying the ancient texts so that they would not be lost over time. Access to the monastery libraries was restricted and the work was manual.

In the Europe of the High Middle Ages, divided into so many unstable kingdoms, the Church was the only strong and efficient institution, educated, rich and present everywhere. In the cities, the bishop was often the only existing authority. In the countryside, the presence of monasteries was affirmed with the Benedictine rule of "Orat ed labora": the monk must not only pray, but also work to support himself and those in need.

Throughout Europe, Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries arose, which became economic centers and, through agriculture and animal husbandry, produced food for the populations.

These monasteries were oases of culture and granaries for it, because it was here that the ancient Latin and Greek texts were copied by hand. Without these copies, these texts would have long been lost. The barbarian invasion of the Roman Empire seems to have set the culture go back, but the Church preserved this culture, as it was the sole heir to the last civilizations illustrated: that of Greece and Rome.

Americans call this era the Dark Ages, and it was to some point. However, it is hard to believe that precisely in this age the most beautiful buildings the world has ever built were constructed: the Gothic cathedrals. Each stone was carved to occupy an exact place, without cement and without iron, these cathedrals were known for their arches, columns, ogives, and vaults, all forming a harmonious and elegant whole, illuminated by multicolored stained-glass windows, a true heaven on earth.

The Gothic Cathedral as ex libris of the Medieval Worldview
It took Greek temples and Roman basilicas for there to be Gothic cathedrals; however, whatever debt the medieval architects owe to their predecessors, the truth is that they surpassed them a thousand times over. The Gothic cathedral represents an exponential advance over Greek and Roman architecture.

The vertiginous verticality of these buildings fully reveals the transformations in taste, scholastic philosophical thought, and aesthetic ideals, translated, at the architectural level, by a renewal of techniques through the introduction of a series of original elements typical of the Gothic style: the vault supported by an ogival cross, the use of the broken arch instead of the full-turn arch,  or Romanesque arch, the use of the flying buttress, and buttresses to support the stone roof formed by a set of vaults.

It is the Christian worldview that explains the unity of spirit that characterized medieval civilization, and hence the reason for the close relationship between scholasticism and Gothic cathedrals, since the full acceptance of the Catholic conception of life generated not only an authentic and unmistakable lifestyle, but also its own philosophy and architectural style.

As the theses of St. Thomas Aquinas, the founder of scholastic philosophy, indicate, God is reached not only by faith, but also by reason, that is, by an effort of complex but refined thought, rigidly formal but rich in subtleties. These same concepts inspired in architecture the Gothic cathedrals, their ascent to God, through complex but exquisite constructions, formally rigorous, but equally rich in detail. In this way, it can be said that scholastic thought is perfectly expressed in the architecture of the Gothic cathedrals.

Conclusion: It is true that the constant internal instability caused by the barbarian invasions and the end of the Pax Romana, as well as the external instability caused by the constant threat of the Vikings to the north and the Muslims to the east, south and west, plunged Europe into a limbo of paralysis and cultural regression. However, it was also this Age that produced a high paradigm of humanity in the ideal of chivalry, and the highest exponent of world architecture in the Gothic cathedrals.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Barbarians worldview

For the Greeks, the peoples north of their borders spoke a language that the did not understand. To them they babbled to what sounded like bar-bar, which gave rise to the word barbarian, that was then used to designate these foreigners. Later, for the Romans, the Latin term barbarus was applied to foreign peoples who did not speak Latin, did not follow Roman laws, and did not participate in their civilization.

The barbarians who conquered the Western Roman Empire were Germanic tribes who never created culture or civilization, nor were they even interested in creating it. We are talking about the Huns, the Vandals (from which the word vandalism comes from), the Goths, the Franks, the Lombards and the Saxons, and later, already in the Middle Ages, the Vikings. It may seem derogatory to call these peoples barbarians, but they were in fact barbarians, with a very primitive culture compared to the Greco-Roman one, with few human values, and dedicated themselves to destroying, killing, stealing, plundering, and raping.

Since they did not know writing, although it had long been in existence, they were still living in prehistory, around the time of the Iron Age, as Iron was the most important element for their wars. Moreover, their cultural or civilizational development was more than 2,000 years behind the Greco-Roman culture.

Greece could have considered the Roman invasion to be a barbarian invasion since it already had a much more developed culture in general than Rome, although the latter was better at things like state administration, law, and architecture. The Roman invasion of Greece was not regarded as a barbarian invasion by the Greeks because the Romans, although more powerful, were also humbler than the Greeks in not imposing their culture, their religion and not even their language as the Greeks had done on the peoples they conquered.

The Romans accepted the culture of others, respected and were tolerant of their ways and customs, and sometimes even allowed them, as in the case of Galilee, to be ruled by their own kings, provided they paid tribute to Rome. In fact, Rome only enforced its culture on the peoples who did not have one to begin with, as was the case throughout the West. This is why neo-Latin languages are spoken in the West today: Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian and 50% of the English language.

In the East, Greek prevailed and was later the language of the Byzantium Empire, or the Eastern Roman Empire, which lasted considerably longer, being supplanted by a politico-religious empire, the Ottoman Empire, which in turn only ended after World War I.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, the Western world was plunged into what English historians call the Dark Ages. Compared to the Ancient Times, the Middle Ages represented a step backwards on all levels. The barbarians who conquered the Empire were only interested in their material wealth, not in building a culture or a civilization. Culture had to take refuge and hide in monasteries, where a Christian version of the ancient world was preserved. The Middle Ages can be seen as a long period during which the Church patiently went about educating these barbarians who held political power, with the Greco-Roman culture it had inherited.

Causes for the Fall of the Roman Empire
Given that the Empire had grown disproportionately immense, it became too difficult to govern. In the third century, Emperor Diocletian split the Empire into two parts: the West with its capital in Rome and the East with its capital in Constantinople or Byzantium. In the short term, this seemed to be a good move to better govern such a vast empire. However, over time, the parts began to diverge; in the West, only Latin was spoken, and in the East, only Greek was spoken. Without enemies, the East grew in power and wealth, while the West gradually withered away, economically as well as militarily.

One of the main causes for the fall of the Western Roman Empire was the invasion of the barbarians, led by the Germanic peoples who lived in the region to the east of the Empire’s borders. Other causes included the decay of the economy based on slaves who worked the land and were artisans, military disintegration as well as military spending on never-ending frontier wars.

The process of the Germanic peoples’ entry into the Roman Empire initially occurred gradually. In the northeast of the Italian Peninsula, the borders of the Roman Empire were demarcated by the Danube and Rhine Rivers. The peoples and tribes that lived beyond these rivers were regarded as Germanic by the Romans.

Since the time of Caesar, the Romans had known of the existence of these peoples. They were organized into clans, did not have a state institution like the Romans, and their laws were based on tradition, transmitted orally, because they did not know writing. They devoted themselves to agriculture and herding. Because of the cold weather in which they lived, they were fearless and fierce. They were warrior peoples, which earned them the reputation of being violent and cruel.

At first, in the spirit of the famous Pax Romana, the Romans established pacts with these tribes; as we said earlier, the Romans were only interested in tribute being paid to Rome, and when the dominated peoples did so, they were granted a high degree of autonomy. However, with the weakening of the central power, these peoples acquired more and more autonomy and independence, becoming true kingdoms that the weakened Rome was powerless to confront.

Around 300 A.D., barbarian groups like the Goths invaded the borders of the Empire. The Romans resisted a Germanic revolt in the late 4th century, but in 410, the Visigoth King Alaric successfully sacked the city of Rome. The Empire spent the next few decades under constant threat, before "the Eternal City" was invaded again in 455, this time by the Vandals.

Finally, in 476, the Germanic leader Odoacer staged a revolt and deposed Emperor Romulus Augustulus. From then on, no Roman emperor would ever rule again from a post in Italy, leading many to cite 476 as the year in which the Western Empire suffered its mortal blow.

Origin of the Germanic Tribes
The Germanic peoples originated from the plains of Denmark and southern Scandinavia. There are traces of human settlements in this area dating back to the Neolithic period, when men began to control nature, domesticating the land and vegetation as well as some species of animals for their own sustenance.

When we speak of Germanic tribes, we speak of many tribes of which the most important are the Huns, the Vandals, the Goths, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, the Franks, the Lombards, the Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons.

The Vikings were also fundamentally a Germanic tribe that inhabited further north in Scandinavia. They ravaged Europe like pirates during the Middle Ages, when the Germanic tribes were already established, forming the first Kingdoms after the fall of the Roman Empire.

As the Germanic population grew and the Empire weakened, the Germanic peoples began to emigrate in all directions, but more to the south and the west, in search of better lands because theirs were no longer sufficient. The Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Lombards entered Italy; the Vandals, Franks, and Visigoths conquered much of Gaul and the Celts who lived there, and the Vandals, Suebi and Visigoths invaded the Iberian Peninsula. Of these, the Vandals came to settle in North Africa, in Carthage, and the Alans settled along the Rhine and in the Alps.

In Great Britain, the Saxons joined the Angles and other local tribes to form the Anglo-Saxons who dominated England until the Norman conquest in the Middle Ages. The rest of the islands, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland remained mostly Celtic. The Celts were not a Germanic tribe. They had their own culture and inhabited Central Europe. They were the famous inhabitants of Gaul, the Gauls conquered by Julius Caesar. They had also invaded the Iberian Peninsula before the Romans, joining the first peoples who had invaded, the Iberians, from North Africa.

Culture and Organization of the Germanic Tribes
Early Germanic society was characterized by a strict code of ethics, which valued above all trust, loyalty, and courage. Acquiring honor, fame, and recognition was a primary ambition. Independence, autonomy, and individuality were highly emphasized values.

This is probably the reason why the Germanic peoples never constituted a great empire or even a unified Germanic state. The environment in which the Germanic peoples were emerged, namely their connection to the forest and the sea, played an important role in the formation of these values. Germanic oral literature is full of scorn for characters who failed to live up to Germanic ideals.

In the Germanic language, ger-man means the man of the spear. For the Germanic peoples, the loss of the spear or shield was equivalent to the loss of honor. The Germanic peoples were warriors by nature, born in war and for war; from an early age, they were trained in the art of war just like the Spartans. Loyalty and devotion to the clan they belonged to, and through it, to the tribe and its leader, was one of their highest values; this sense of unity won them many victories.

Kingship is therefore a fundamental element that unites Germanic society. As with other peoples, its origin as an institution is sacred, and so the king combines the functions of military leader, high priest, legislator, and judge.

The Germanic monarchy was partly elective; the king was elected by free men from among eligible candidates from a family that could trace its ancestry back to the divine or semi-divine founder of the tribe. Although Germanic society was highly stratified between leaders, free men, and slaves, its culture also emphasized equality. Occasionally, the freemen of the tribe would even overrule the decisions of their own leaders.

Through the influence of the Roman Empire, the power of the Germanic kings over their own people increased over the centuries, in part because the mass migrations at the time required more severe leadership.

Literature
Because the Germanic peoples did not know writing before their encounter with Roman culture, Germanic literature was passed orally from generation to generation. Its content was linked to its main purpose which was to honor the gods or praise tribal ancestors, chieftains, warriors and their associates, wives, and other relatives.

Religion
According to the Roman writer Tacitus, the Germanic peoples worshipped mainly "Mercury", but also "Hercules", and "Mars". These were generally identified with Odin, Thor and Týr, the gods of wisdom, thunder, and war, respectively. They also worshipped the goddesses Nerthus and Freya.

Archaeological discoveries suggest that early Germanic peoples practiced some of the same "spiritual" rituals as the Celts, including human sacrifice, divination, and belief in spiritual connection with their natural surroundings. Like the Romans, there was a difference between domestic worship and communal worship; in the home, the father of the family played the role of a priest.

Religious ceremonies were performed in woods, lakes, and islands considered sacred, not in temples; the Germanic peoples did not build temples to perform their religious rites. For the sacrifices offered to the gods, all kinds of livestock were slaughtered, and sometimes even humans, and the blood was sprinkled over the people who then made toasts to the gods and ate the meat. The victims, both human and animal, were hung from trees. One of the trees in the woods would be the most sacred of all, and underneath it there would be a pit in which a live man would be buried.

No common conception about life after death is known to any Germanic peoples. Some believed that the fallen hero warriors would go to Valhalla to live happily with Odin, while the evil ones could pursue the living after they were dead; if that were to happen, they would have to be killed more than once to stop pursuing the living. This is probably where the "Game of Thrones" series was inspired to create the "Walkers", the undead who had to be killed by fire to stay dead.

After the conquest of the Roman Empire, the Germanic peoples gradually converted to Christianity at different periods: the Goths in the 4th century, the Saxons in the 6th and 7th centuries, under pressure from the already converted Franks; the Danes, under German pressure, in the 10th century. Paganism held out longer in the northernmost lands, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

Conclusion: Despite lagging more than 2000 years behind the Greco-Roman cultural development and civilization, the Germanic peoples contributed to medieval Europe with their values of autonomy, independence, and freedom, based on the principle that we are all equal in dignity.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Muslim Worldview

This is the rival worldview with the implicit and explicit vocation, and past attempts to conquer the world, replace Christianity and impose its way of seeing life and the world, that is, its worldview. This vocation to submit the world to their own worldview still exists and is the main goal of today's jihad, terrorism, invasive immigration, and the demographic growth of Muslims in Western countries.

As happened in the Middle Ages, when an inferior, more aggressive, and violent culture imposed itself on a superior one, it was followed by a period of darkness and ignorance, the same could happen in the West. History can repeat itself, and social change is not always accompanied with progress and improvement.

Theological Inconsistencies of the Qur’an Narrative
From a theoretical or theological point of view, Christianity that was born in Western culture has over the centuries been exposed to criticism, refinement, and purification by the Western rational culture. The same is not true of the Muslim narrative which, despite claiming to be historical, remains shrouded in myth and lives by a faith that is barely reasonable, plausible, or humanly credible, such as, for example, that the Qur’an was dictated by God to the Prophet Mohammed who wrote down word for word what God dictated to him. There are still other inconsistencies:

Muhammad, the last prophet, Jesus, the son of God
Islam accepts as valid the Jewish religious tradition described in the Old Testament which they also consider as their own. Mohammed is therefore the last of the prophets that God sent into the world, Jesus being the second last.

If humanity lives another 10,000 or 20,000 years, what sense does it make that the last prophet came in the year 524? The world and the humanity have changed much more since the year 524 than in all the millions of years before; why, then, did the prophets often succeed one another before this date, and after the year 524 they are no longer needed?

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.  Hebrews 1:1-2

In the case of Christianity, even if humanity lives to the year 20,000, it still makes sense that the revelation happened in year zero. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews explains, the one sent is not another prophet, but God himself who comes to live among us.

There is a qualitative leap here; prophets bring messages for a specific time, while God's word is eternal for all times and all places because God in his perfection does not need to speak twice. Furthermore, Christ is not just a spoken word, he is a lived incarnated word and he only lived once.

In what sense is he the last prophet? Is it because Islam has a more refined doctrine and, on an ascending path, has already reached the summit? But the top looks more like Christianity, with its love of enemies. while Islam, in its practice and doctrine, resembles more the Old Testament than the New, when we think that even today women are stoned to death under Islam, and Christ was already against this sort of justice in his day.

God is one and triune, He is a community
Islam inherited the simple monotheism from the Hebrews. Therefore, both Jews and Muslims have no theological basis with which to conclude that man is made in the image and likeness of God. If God is love, and love that does not go out of itself is self-centeredness, God is more than one; God is a family, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in this we find the model of the human family: father, mother, and child.

God is one and triune, just as a human family is called to be a unity of three persons where the existence of one is not possible without the existence of the other two; a man is not a father without having a wife and a child; a woman is not a mother without having a child and a husband; and a child does not exist by himself or herself without having a father and a mother.

As Christ is the role model for individual human life, the Holy Trinity is the role model for social human life, a model of peace, harmony, and love. Judaism and Islam lack models, or theological reference points for life in the family and in society, conceiving God as a great loner.

Prophet Isa (Jesus), son of Mary ever virgin
With an entire chapter (sutra) dedicated to her alone, the Virgin Mary is the only woman indicated by her own name in the book of the Qur'an; all other women are spoken of in relation to a man; for example, there are no references to Sarah, but rather to Abraham's wife. Regarding Mary's virginity, the Qur'an clearly states that whoever does not believe in it or calls it into question is in sin.

According to both Christian and Muslim traditions, both Mary and the prophet Mohammed receive a visit from the Archangel Gabriel who blows the Word into both of them. The Word in Mohammed became a book, the Qur’an, and in Mary, a man, Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, some scholars of Islam say, Jesus or the Prophet Isa as he is called in Islam, is the Qur’an in the form of a man and the Qur'an is Jesus in the form of a book.

Faced with these facts, let us look at another inconsistency in the Muslim religion; if for the Muslim faith, as it is for us, Mary, the mother of Jesus is a virgin, then who is the father of Jesus? It obviously cannot be Joseph the carpenter, for if he were, Mary could not have remained a virgin.

And if Joseph is not the father of Jesus and Mary remains a virgin after conceiving, then the conception cannot have been natural and the father cannot have been human; if it is not the work of a human, it can only be the work of God, and if it is God's work, then God has a son, and it is not as Judaism conceives Him, a solitary God, but as Christianity conceives Him and how He was revealed to us by Jesus Christ, a God of love, a divine family or community.

If you owe nothing, you have nothing to fear
We are never more violent than when fighting for self-preservation. While the Christian religion, called into question by the French Revolution, the age of reason, the Enlightenment, and lately, by atheistic philosophies, has survived, the Muslim religion opposes all internal and external critical thinking and threatens with death anyone who does so.

"If you owe nothing, you have nothing to fear", this aggressiveness is nothing more than a way to hide the serious deficiencies from a philosophical, historical, and theological point of view. Fueled by oil and hatred of the West, the Muslim expansion is like a giant with feet of clay: the day these deficiencies come to the light of reason, perhaps not a stone will be left standing.

According to Carl Jung, fanaticism is a way to stifle an inner doubt. This is how Jung explained St. Paul's fanaticism against Christians before his conversion. St. Paul's doubt was between the security given by the law, a false security, and the freedom of grace that St. Stephen offered in his speech.

It is clear, even from the way they treat women as second-class citizens, that the Muslim religion was fine for the Middle Ages, but not for today's world. As today's way of thinking infiltrates by many means, even in Muslim countries, by the TV, by the internet, they feel intimidated and fear losing believers. They are afraid that their religion will not withstand the clash of reason, as Christianity has endured by refashioning itself.

Islam and Violence
There are two concepts that have perhaps been misinterpreted, or interpreted in ways that satisfy, justify, and bless the thirst for power of some. What is certain is that it was this "misinterpretation" of the concepts that wrote history and cause much blood to flow. I refer to the concept of JIHAD, which means effort, struggle, holy war, and the concept of ISLAM, which means to submit to the will of God.

As scholars say, JIHAD refers to the struggle that every human being must wage within himself or herself against evil. The case is that, historically, the inner struggle that should have remained inward, became an outer struggle; in practice, this struggle translated and still translates today into the struggle against those whom Islam considers infidels, declaring a war against them that is justified because it is holy, because it is for a good cause. At this time, they have not yet understood that "the ends do not justify the means."

Christianity also has its own version of holy wars, the Crusades. The first crusade was born in response to the request of the Christian Emperor of the East, Alexis I, to help him recapture the holy city of Jerusalem and free the Eastern Christians from Muslim rule. However, it quickly became a way to halt the advance of the Muslims who threatened to wipe out the Christian world. It started out as a right to self-defense that quickly turned into aggression, conquest, and massacre in the name of Christ.

Islam means to submit to God; the basis of the Muslim religion lies in this submission which is symbolically represented by the posture Muslims adopt when praying. This was the purpose of Jihad, the effort, the struggle to submit the whole personality of each person to God; indeed, this is what it means to worship God, to submit to his will. Christians do it by choice, not out of duty, because their Master tells them “I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you friends…” (John 15:15)

As long as the religion did not go beyond the personal sphere, and remained reflective and intransitive, everything went well and smoothly; but this is not the submission that history prayed for. Submitting to God quickly turned into subjecting others to their version of God. Therefore, just as Judaism calls everyone who is not a Jew a Gentile, Islam calls everyone who is not a Muslim an infidel.

Unlike Christianity, which was born in an adverse world dominated by the Romans and for five centuries was a clandestine and persecuted religion that spread by the examples and preaching of early Christians, Islam was born from a warlike conquest of Mecca and in the submission of Christians and polytheists that were there to the new faith.

Resentment Against the Christian Western World
With the victory of the Christians against the Muslims at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, Christian culture and civilization ended once and for all the constant threat of Islam and grew to be what they are today, while Muslim civilization, whose heyday had been Averroes and Avicenna, stagnated in a medieval mentality.

The Muslim world has yet to recover from the resentment and hatred that this defeat caused; and the success of Western civilization that has overridden the rightness of the world. This hatred motivates the actions of Al Qaeda, Islamic State, and other terrorist organizations, especially against the United States, which represents the Western world.

Currently there is no traditionally Christian country that persecutes Muslims for their faith, while in traditionally Muslim countries Christians are systematically persecuted: Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia...

Muslims in the West are protected by democracy and the right to religious freedom; Christians in the Arab world have no rights; they are at the mercy of fanaticism. Muslims in the West can build their mosques, Christians in the Arab world have no right to build churches or repair those that have existed for centuries, and in Saudi Arabia, they Christians cannot even wear crucifixes around their necks.

Differences in Core Values
As we have already said, the Muslim worldview is fundamentally a re-edition of the Old Testament Judaism for Arabs.

Unity – Or union is a human value for both Muslims and Christians; however, Christians, advocate for unity in diversity, since Jesus chose a group of people so diverse to the point of being once enemies, for Muslims unity is uniformity, oneness, they do not accept or tolerate differences.

Time – Regarding time, Christians are more future oriented, Muslims have remained stagnant in the past. Clinging to their traditions that give them identity and security, they fear the future and change. Change in the West is progress, in the Muslim world it is loss of identity, it is insecurity.

Family – Unlike in the West, the extended family is more important than the core family of father, mother, and children. And there is more solidarity among family members. With the wife's submission to her husband, the divorce rate is low. The West is more individualistic and free, so the nuclear family is the only one that counts.

Peace – It is the greeting of Jews and Muslims, it means not only the absence of conflict as in the West, but also success, prosperity, and happiness.

Honor – It is a very important value in Islam; dishonor is the worst tragedy that can happen to a family. The West values honor equally, but only applies it individually, meaning family members do not pay for the misdeeds of any one of them.

Status – For Muslims, this is assigned or inherited. In the West, it is neither inherited nor attributed, but rather earned on one’s own merit.

Individualism – Muslims do not value independence, freedom, autonomy, but more the interdependence, and social and communal meaning of life. Therefore, they more easily support the dictatorships of their countries. Conformity and obedience are more important values to them.

Secularism – In Muslim countries Caesaro-papism is still accepted. Religion meddles in politics and vice versa. Religion in Western countries is a private matter, it does not come up in public life since Jesus said, "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's", there is a sharp division between the two powers, the Church and the State.

Conclusion: Standing still in time, the Muslim world seems to have become trapped in the past, it looks to the present and the future with anxiety; it resists change and progress for fear that it will be robbed of its inner peace, security, and identity.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Christian Worldview

His Divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  2 Peter 1:3

Christianity, as the inheritor of Judaism, assimilated, implemented, and made its own all the good Jews brought to the world. Jesus of Nazareth is fundamentally a Jew who came, not to abolish Judaism and its laws (Matthew 5:17), but to purify it; what is important is not the letter of the law and its formal fulfillment, but the spirit of the law when applied to life.  

Since Jesus presented himself to mankind as the only role model of humanity, reference measure, paradigm, the only way, the only truth, and the only way to live life, (John 14:6), being a Christian and being authentic and genuinely human are one and the same thing. There is no such thing as human morality or ethics side by side with Christian morality because Christ is the only benchmark for measuring and evaluating the extent to which we are human.

In addition to a program of individual salvation, the way, the truth, and the life for the mental, spiritual, moral, and physical health of the human being, according to his or her nature, Christ also presented a program of salvation for society, for the human being as a social being: the Kingdom of God, that is, as Saint Paul says (Romans 14:17), “… is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”.

The Christian worldview is to view the world, to see and understand the world with the eyes of Christ, from his perspective, from his viewpoint. From this outlook, the worldview also has to do with the way we act with the world and in the world, the place we occupy in it. While the materialistic worldview answers with NOTHING the question about our origin, our destiny, and the meaning of our life, then the Christian worldview answers these same questions in the following way:

Where did we come from? – We came from God, creator of the universe, of everything and everyone, of time, of space, and of matter or energy. He made everything good and created everything out of love. As for us humans, he created us in his image and likeness. That is, besides being like everything else, spatial-temporal beings that occupy a space for a period of time, we, unlike other creatures, have in us a seed of eternity, a spiritual aspect that we possess, and it is up to us to make it grow in order to enter eternity with God.

Where are we going? – We are going to God who sustains our life beyond death, so death is not our final destination, but a passage into eternity. As birth was a passage from our mother’s womb to the bosom of the world, death will be our birth to Heaven, that is, our passage from the bosom of this world to the bosom of God, the return to the house of the Father paraphrasing the prodigal son’s parable, or the end of our pilgrimage.

What is the meaning of life? – “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). The meaning or the objective of our life is to give glory to God. Giving glory to God who created us is the best way for us to use the talents we have received and to self-actualize, achieving the happiness that is life in abundance that God wants for us.

We were taken out of nothing to do something with our lives, so that, using our physical body, resources, materials, and talents at our disposal, as scaffolding for the spiritual body, we can make the seed of eternity, that is in us, germinate.

Every material good can be spiritualized in the Still of our life, just as alcohol can be distilled from every fruit or vegetable, or a perfume extracted from flowers that ascends to God. Created from nothing in the image and likeness of God, it is up to us to do something with our life, or go back to nothing, that is eternal death.  

By living like Christ and constantly measuring up to him, as the role model and paradigm of humanity, we acquire divine sonship, we become adopted children of God, and according to Roman law with the same rights as God’s only begotten Son, Christ (Romans 8:14-16).

Humans are both individual and social beings. The value over which stands our individuality and personhood is freedom. Whereas the value over which stands our being social and always part of a family, group or community is equality. Therefore, we fight like Christ for a better world, a more just, peaceful, and fraternal world, as we seek to extend the kingdom of God, a project that Christ brought to Earth.

It is in this struggle that we realize ourselves individually, so there is no individual self-realization without a social dimension. Whoever is not useful to others is useless to himself. Whoever does not live to serve is not fit to live. The one that is not good for something is good for nothing, that is, disposable and useless like garbage.

The Gospel, the Best Human Narrative of All Time
Christianity in the New Testament, especially in the gospels that relate the life, the talents, and the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, has the most fascinating narrative of all time. The worldview, ethics, philosophy of life, human rights, what is truly human, is all laid out in the gospels.

Christianity is a historical religion because the gospels are not mythological accounts, like the holy books of many other religions like Hinduism. The gospels speak of a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, about his life, his behavior in everyday situations, his miracles and healings, his deeds, and his preaching and teachings.

Since they were written by four different authors, they have been the subject of study and research. In fact, no literary work has ever been so thoroughly subjected to literary, historical, hermeneutical, grammatical, meticulously word-for-word criticism.

The parable of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the shortest and most significant story that mankind has created. It has inspired poets, painters, musicians, and literature, in addition to shaping the universal idea of unconditional forgiveness. It is difficult to talk about forgiveness without mentioning this parable.

The parable of the Good Samaritan has entered the minds and imagination of every man and woman as a synonym for solidarity with those who suffer or those who occasionally need our help. Samaritan today, more than an inhabitant of Samaria, means an empathetic person who weeps with those who weep and suffers with those who suffer.  

The gospel is the magna carta of human life, the standard of reference, the ultimate criterion of humanity that serves as a genuine and authentic reference for every individual. There is no narrative in the world that surpasses the gospels in humanity. The gospels have been the inspirational text of Western civilization, the beacon that illuminates it.

The United Nation human rights charter, which almost every country has signed, is clearly taken from the gospel. Christianity played an important role in stamping out practices such as human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide, and polygamy. In general, it affected the status of women, condemning infanticide (female babies were more likely to be killed), divorce, incest, infidelity, birth control, abortion, and defending marriage and the family as the cell of social life.

Christianity is the most practiced religion on the planet, as the mother and mentor of Western civilization, it is the most developed and most extended in the world. Therefore, Christianity has shaped not only the minds of Christians, but also the minds of almost every human being living on this planet, even those who refuse to acknowledge it, such as the Muslim societies.

The feasts of Easter and Christmas are universally marked as holidays; the Gregorian calendar (of Pope Gregory XIII) was adopted internationally as the civil calendar; and time itself is measured by the West from the calculated date of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth: the AD (Anno Domini). In the list of the 100 most influential people in human history, 65% are Christian figures from various fields.

Women's liberation
The rights of minorities, the respect of each person’s sexual orientation, the liberation of women, the values proper to Western civilization that place it at the forefront of human rights, cannot be explained without the gospel.

Jesus was the most feminist person the world has ever known; the only founder of a religion who never made a statement against women, who treated them as equal to men, who had female disciples - something never seen before or after him (even today rabbis do not have female disciples). It is true that his disciples followed the patriarchal mentality of the surrounding areas more than their Master’s practices. However, we cannot deny the importance of the gospel in the conversion of minds and hearts for gender equality, which started in the Western civilization and, little by little, is being assumed by the other civilizations, with the Muslim one being the most reticent in the matter.

It is true that even in the West women do not yet enjoy full equality, but it is certainly in the Christian West that women enjoy the most rights. What makes the degree of gender equality vary from country to country, is not wealth or poverty; that is, it is not necessarily in the richest countries that women are treated as equals. Saudi Arabia is wealthy, and yet women there are treated as second-class citizens. The determining factor is culture, not wealth.

Japan and the Philippines are two Asian countries not far from each other; the former is much wealthier than the latter, and yet there is much more gender equality in the Philippines than in Japan. As both are Asian countries, they have cultural elements that are in common. The big difference, however, is that the Philippines has been a Christian country for 500 years, while in Japan, Christianity has never been able to penetrate in such a way as to influence the culture. Like in Japan, restaurants where food is served on the naked body of a female teenager do not exist in the Philippines and it is unthinkable that they could ever exist there.  

Moral Conscience and Conscientious Objection
One sabbath he was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath? And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’

Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so, the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’ Mark 2:23-28

In one of his inflammatory speeches, intended to guide the German people into World War II, Hitler acknowledged that the moral conscience was a Jewish invention. The applied law, without jurisprudence, becomes injustice, so the ancient Romans used to say "sumum jus summa injuria": it is one thing to be just, it is another to overdo justice, that is, a strict application of the law can turn into a great injustice. Moral conscience, like conscientious objection, are creations of Christianity.

Nobody and no institutions are above our moral conscience; it is in our moral conscience that we are free, people with rights and duties, with responsibility and free choices. I may object to taking up arms and going to war to kill my brothers; I can object to participating in an abortion or assisting someone to die. The state cannot force me to do anything that my moral conscience guides me not to do.

Other higher values rise up, as Camões would say. Our moral conscience, well formed and informed by the gospel, doctrine, and tradition of the Church, in a hierarchy of values discerns in every situation with the help of the Holy Spirit what to do or what not to do. If I am on my way to Church on a Sunday to participate in the Eucharist and someone asks me for urgent help, I must leave the value of the Eucharist to assist my brother.

The above text quotes Jesus who says that he is Lord of the Sabbath, we are all lords of the Sabbath, the law, the rule, the norm; therein lies the dignity and freedom of the human person. Jesus cites the exception of David who, apparently, also already used his moral conscience to discern what to do in each moment. To steal is a sin, but to steal to eat is not a sin, says the people.

Sin is in the one who has too much and does not share with the one who does not have. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  The law exists for the sake of human life, self-realization, and happiness, and not the other way around.

Freedom and Equality
As we said above, the human value of the individual dimension of human beings is freedom; the human value of the community dimension of human beings is equality. Freedom and equality are the values on which human life rest and on which the political and economic systems of society rest or should rest.

Capitalism exacerbates freedom, socialism exacerbates equality. The balance or harmony of freedom and equality is as difficult to internalize for the individual as it is for society. The mundane world does not have an ideal formula for harmonizing these two dimensions; but Christianity has: the commandment of love.

The cross, the symbol of Christianity, is where the verticality of love of God above all things and the horizontality of love of neighbor as oneself meet and harmonize. Without freedom there is no human life, without equality there is no social life, without fraternity there is neither.

Welfare State
‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. (…) And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.  Matthew 20:1-2, 6-9

The welfare state was not invented by Karl Marx when he said that the state should demand from each according to his possibilities and give to each according to his needs. The welfare state, like so many things that we assume today to be part of our culture, was created by Jesus, and already put into action by the apostles in the first Christian community in Jerusalem, where they had everything in common and each was given according to his needs (Acts of the Apostles 2:44-47).

As the parable described above says, when the landowner paid those who worked a single hour the same wage as those who worked all day, he did not pay the labourers according to the work done, but according to their needs.

The labourers who had been in the market place all day because no one hired them, had the same needs as those who had worked all day, a wife, and children to support. The landowner, aware of this, paid them the same amount as those who bore the heat and weight of the day. In this Jesus invented the welfare state where from everyone is demanded according to his means and given according to his needs.

Christianity is not a Religious Religion, but a Civil Religion
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?”

And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (…) Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.  Matthew 25:37- 40, 45-46

When Jesus appears to Paul, he does not ask him, "Why are you persecuting my disciples?" but rather "Why are you persecuting me?" Jesus, the older brother, the universal brother, is on the side of the reviled against the reviler, on the side of the poor against the rich exploiter, on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor, it is He who makes sure that injustice does not have the last word.

If a teenage girl while returning home alone at night, was approached by a group of delinquents intending on raping her, this violation will surely take place because the girl would have no way to defend herself. However, if one of these potential offenders recognized the girl as the sister of a feared and fearless police officer, the group would think twice before committing the rape and would most likely look for another victim. Christ is our older brother, our feared and fearless brother, with Him by our side we have nothing to fear.

The truly revolutionary thing about Matthew’s text is that Jesus turns religion into a civil matter; he had already done this by saying that the only two commandments that count are the love of God, which guarantees freedom, and the love of neighbor, which guarantees equality. In this last text, there is no religious question, the questions at the Last Judgment are not about what religion you practiced, what church you went to, or even whether or not you were an atheist; every man and woman will be judged by their degree of humanity, and not by their religious practice.

Christ, in fact, came into the world to teach man how to be man; those who, with Christ or without Christ, have shown in their daily lives a high degree of humanity, shall enter eternal life; those who, on the contrary, have lived for themselves cultivating temporal values, have reduced their life to nothingness and to NOTHING they shall return, dying eternally.

Conclusion: Christianity reveals human nature and shows the way it can be lived in order to achieve fullness of life in this world and in the next. To be authentic and genuinely human and to be Christian are one and the same thing.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC


 

Biblical Worldview

The Jews, or Hebrews, contributed to civilization more than any other nation; they have given religion to three quarters of the world and have influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily, than any other Nation, ancient or modern.  - John Adams, Second President of the United States (1797–1801)  

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world. - Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister (1940–1945/1951–1955)

After having talked about the four ancient worldviews – the Fertile Crescent (Sumer, Egypt, Akkad, Babylon, Persian Empire), the India of the Indus Valley, the China of the Yellow River and the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca of Central and South America – the medieval worldview comes next. However, before we speak of this worldview, we will have to talk about the Christian worldview because it greatly influenced the former. On the other hand, before talking about the Christian worldview, it is only right that we should speak about the Hebrew biblical worldview, since Christianity began as a sect of the Jewish religion, that is Judaism.

Someone might ask, "So now we go from talking about worldview to talking about religion?" Yes and no. Yes, because after the introduction of monotheism, religion began to influence people's lives more and more until it became a way of conduct. Polytheism was only a mythological explanation of reality. And no because monotheism, in addition to being an explanation of reality, is also a way of life. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are, at the same time, a religion, and a way of seeing the world, a way of being in it.

By biblical worldview, we mean the way the Jewish people see the world, see themselves in the world, and how they should live in it. Of course, by Bible we mean only the books that the Jewish people understand as canonical, excluding Tobit, Judith, Esther, and 1 Maccabees from the Old Testament, as well as the entire New Testament.

Nature of the Hebrew People
A Jew is a symbol of civil and religious tolerance. ‘So, show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt’ … A Jew is the symbol of eternity. The nation which neither slaughter nor torture could exterminate, which neither fire nor sword of civilizations were able to erase from the face of the earth, the nation which first proclaimed the word of the Lord, the nation which preserved the prophecy for so long and passed it on to the rest of humanity, such a nation cannot vanish. A Jew is eternal; he is an embodiment of eternity."  Leo Tolstoy (1829-1910)

The Hyksos, the Etruscans, the Celts, the Franks, the Vikings, the Visigoths, the Suebi and so many other peoples no longer exist; the people of Israel, who predates many of them, still exists today. Israel is today what it has always been, a bridge, a place of passage between Africa, Asia, and Europe. Ancient peoples disappear giving way to other peoples. The Jewish people never constituted an empire, never dominated other peoples, on the contrary, because of its geographical location in the Fertile Crescent, it was always part of an existing empire.

Egypt extended its power over Israel, as did Babylon, the Persian Empire, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire, until the United Nations in 1948 gave the Jewish people the land of their ancestors, the result of the commotion of the whole world caused by the Nazi extermination of 5 million of them.

David defeats Goliath, Jacob defeats his brother Esau, not by physical strength or force of arms, but by intelligence. This people has no parallel, it stands out for its intelligence, it is in fact the people with the most Nobel Prizes in modern times. It represents less than one percent of humanity but has received 20 percent of the Nobel Prizes. Jews may live in another country and have that country’s nationality, but they never stop being Hebrews, in fact, they are Hebrews first, and only then do they take American, Canadian, or other nationality.

It was their passion for the search of meaning, purpose, morality, and respect for human dignity that gave the Jews the idea of progress, their commitment to a better and more just, peaceful, and fraternal world. Among the most famous Hebrews we cite the following:

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) – among the 30 most famous and important Jews in history is a German, one of the most important figures of the 20th century, especially for his theory of relativity. He was the winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Sigmund Freud (1885-1939) – Freud is considered one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century. He was a physician, of Austrian and Czech descent, and of Jewish origin. He is known as the father of psychoanalysis.

Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) – known as the father of the atomic bomb. He was an American Jew and was his country's first theoretical physicist.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) – philosopher, economist, journalist, intellectual activist and communist, Marx was the one who forever changed social sciences with his analyses of capitalism and surplus value. Moreover, he is considered the father of modern communism, historical materialism, and scientific socialism. Convinced that revolution was the way to overcome the crises of capitalism, his major work was Das Kapital published in 1867.

Outside of Israel, within any society, the Jews are like the oil in the soup: never mix and always manage to float, to hover above everything and everyone. Despite all the exiles they suffered, and scattered in more than 100 nations for over 2,000 years, the Jews have always kept their identity, and never lost the hope to say every year at Passover "next year in Jerusalem”.

Perhaps in this difference lies the origin of racism against this people; for being different and not like everyone else, for having a well-defined identity and not like a people with blurred outlines , for calling themselves God’s chosen people implying that others were not chosen. Personally, I think they are a people to be envied because they are intelligent and rich; they occupy the best places in the world of finance, economics, and science.

They are the chosen people, but they think that God elected them by privilege. God never chooses anyone by privilege, but rather for a mission. The mission of the Hebrew people was to be the cradle of the Messiah, of the savior of humanity.  God decided to incarnate in a member of this people, for being a people who had already reached the highest point in the development and progress of religious sentiment. Some contemporaries of the Jewish people were still animistic, others polytheistic, only the Hebrews were monotheistic, believing in a personal and spiritual God, creator of everything and everyone.

There is certainly a nationalistic and even racist current in the Jewish people, headed by the prophet Elijah, the one expected before the coming of the Messiah, the one who always has a reserved place at every Passover meal. However, undeniably one of the longest books of the entire Old Testament, the one found in the best condition of all those at Qumran, is the book of a prophet of lesser importance to Judaism. Isaiah is a Christian “avant la lettre”, he is a universalist, he understands that salvation comes to all peoples who are to meet at a banquet in Jerusalem. (Isaiah 25:6)

Perhaps much of the importance of this people and its narrative, the Bible, for better or for worse, comes from the fact that it was the cradle of Christianity. If this were not so, perhaps it would not have been all that important. The dialogue between a Christian and a Jew can never exist and the only possible conclusion is to agree to disagree. This is because the existence of one requires the non-existence of the other. If the Messiah has already come, the Jewish people should have ceased to exist like so many others by becoming Christians. On the other hand, if the Messiah has yet to come, then Christianity should not exist.

There is a rabbinic anecdote that tries to solve this impasse. It goes like this: when the Messiah comes, a Christian and a Jew will ask him if this is the first time he is here or if it is the second, since Christians are waiting for the second coming of Christ. And the Messiah will answer, for you, Hebrew, it is the first, for you, Christian, it is the second.

Origin of the Jewish People
The history of Israel is the story of a man who wanted to be different. According to the Bible, the patriarch Abraham from Ur, in Mesopotamia, moved with his flocks and people to the land of Canaan in the area of the Jordan River. Historically, it is believed that this may have effectively happened around 1700 B.C. The motivation for this migration would have been the scarcity of food in Canaan, while in Egypt there was an abundance of fertile lands.

The arrival of the Hebrews in Egypt would have coincided with the period when the region was under the rule of the Hyksos, a people of Semitic origin, like the Hebrews. This made it possible for the Hebrews to settle in Egyptian territory without any problems, and even to occupy prominent positions in Egypt’s administration.

After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Hebrews would have been punished for collaborating with the invaders. The Hebrews, enslaved by the Egyptians, achieved their liberation through Moses around 1300 B.C.

The deliverance from Egypt and the return of the Hebrews to Canaan shaped the so-called Exodus. Historians claim that the migration of Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan did happen, although they claim that the number of Hebrews who migrated may not have been as large as the biblical narrative suggests. Therefore, we can say that the story of the Exodus really occurred, but it was presented in a mythicized form in the Bible.

In any case, the Hebrews lived as nomads in the Sinai Peninsula and then sought to settle in Canaan, but the region was occupied by the Canaanites. The biblical narrative reports that the Hebrews conquered the land. However, there is not much evidence that points to a full-scale military invasion; most likely the Hebrews infiltrated slowly over time.

Contributions and Greatness of the Jewish People
Scattered all over the world, they have influenced cultures globally; this great influence or contribution, more than financial, economic, or political, was more spiritual and cultural. While in most of the Middle Ages in Europe not even kings could read and write, the Jews of Christ's time were 0% illiterate, because the rite of passage from childhood to adulthood involved the boy reading the Torah in front of the community.

Monotheism
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and will all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.  Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Yet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay, and you are our potter… Isaiah 64:8

The progress of monotheism over polytheism is the union among humans under the one God whom they can call Father. The French Revolution, however secular it may seem, would not be possible in a country with a polytheistic worldview such as India, where the existence of various gods justifies the existence of castes and where men are not equal. Human equality and dignity do not coexist with polytheism, they are the achievement of monotheism.

The idea that there is only one God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, is perhaps Jerusalem's greatest contribution to Western civilization. Both the Greeks and the Romans were polytheists; polytheism does not lead to unity or harmony among peoples, nor to the unification of concepts such as truth and justice. The idea that there is only one God leads to the cohesion of peoples, to unity in diversity.

Equality Before the Law
The same primacy of law, the fact that everyone is equal before the law, would be more difficult to maintain in polytheism: everyone is equal before the law because everyone is equal before God, because there is only one God who is the creator and father of everything and everyone.

On Mount Sinai, Moses gave the people a compass, a GPS, not only to facilitate social coexistence like the Hammurabi code of the Babylonians, but also a comprehensive code covering all aspects of human life. Monotheism, in this sense, made a distinction between to be and should be, both from an individual and a social point of view.

Moral Conscience and Social Responsibility
Monotheism humanized God, in the way that he would become a model for humanity. As Feuerbach would say, it was not God who created man in his image and likeness, but man who created God in his image and likeness.

Religion for Jews is for life. As a guide and model to follow, religion becomes a complex system of laws, norms, and rules to follow in order to modify life. Until this moment, this had never happened. Religion came to influence human conduct, both from an individual and a social point of view. Keep in mind that before the Jewish monotheism, in all polytheisms, the Greek, the Roman, the Hindu, or the ancient Chinese, gods are as good or as bad as humans. That is, they are not the way, the truth, and the life, they are no one’s role model. Ethics comes from philosophy both in the Chinese culture (Confucius) as well as the Greek (Aristotle).

The concepts of freedom (loving God above all things) and equality (loving your neighbor as yourself) are best explained from a religious point of view. They are Jewish concepts, and so it is understood that without Judaism there would have been no French Revolution. In Israel there were never castes or blue-blooded people, everyone considered himself or herself equal before God and before each other, with the same dignity and social responsibility, subjected to as many duties as rights.

Linear conception of time – paradigm of progress
In Ancient Greece and the Far East, a circular understanding of time has always prevailed: from the cosmic point of view, with the 365 days that the Earth takes to go around the sun, from the point of view of Nature, with the changes in climate and the four seasons of the year: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. From these facts, the myth of the "eternal return" was born in philosophy, in science the idea that "There is nothing new under the sun", and in religion the belief in "reincarnation".

Human time, as a straight time – From an existential and human point of view, each day that passes is one more day that we are going to live, and one less day that we have left to live. Conceiving time as a straight line, coming from the past, passing through the present, and heading towards the future, is not something that can be observed in nature.

Time in a straight line is the time of individual and community history, the time that integrates the idea of moral progress: today was better than yesterday, tomorrow will be better than today. In philosophy, Heraclitus' maxim "we do not bathe twice in the waters of the same river" shares this understanding of time, the same is true in cosmology and religion, which convey the notions of the beginning and the end of the world.

This is also the Jewish conception of time: the exit from Egypt (land of slavery), the passage through the desert (place of suffering, penance, purification, and effort), and the entrance into the Promised Land, where milk and honey flow (land of freedom, rewarded effort, and finished work).

Holiness of Life
Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.  Psalms 127:3

You shall not murder. Exodus 20:13

As a gift from God, life belongs to Him; it comes from Him and it returns to Him, we are not its owner, but its administrator, and we will be accountable for this administration. We can live it as we please, but we cannot extinguish it, from conception to natural death life is sacred, it is an absolute value.

Dignity of the Human Person
Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping think that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.     Genesis, 1:26-27

The human person may have been the result of the evolution of time. However, only we  have evolved to the point of self-awareness of seeing ourselves as different from all other creatures. We were created in the image and likeness of God, like Him we are also creators, the only difference is that He has the ability to create out of nothing while we create from created things or given elements.

The Universality of Rest
For six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in ploughing time and in harvest time you shall rest.  Exodus 34:21

For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore, the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.  Exodus 20:9-11

We do not know who invented work, it probably has no inventor or founder. However, rest does have an inventor, it was invented by the Jewish people. The idea of a day consecrated to God, the Sabbath, the origin of the Sabbath rest and also of the sabbatical year (a year in which one does not work, but studies or does any other activity), belongs to the Jewish people.

Of course, to justify it to the people, the anthropomorphism that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh is used. It is not that the peoples before the Jewish people did not rest, they certainly did, but only the masters rested, the slaves always worked. Rest was not democratic or universal; what is exceptional about the Jewish people is that rest is mandatory for everyone, masters, slaves, foreigners and even working animals such as donkeys and oxen.

Conclusion - concepts such as the sanctity of life, the dignity of the human person, freedom, equality, social responsibility, universal rest, progress in every sense, justice, and peace are today part not only of the worldview of the Jewish people, but also part of the “furniture” of the human mind.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC