By Colleen F. Halley
1 April 1993

There are many problems facing people today, but one underlying problem that contributes to so many subsequent troubles too often goes without notice. This is the death of universalism. By universalism, I mean the idea, the feeling, the connection that as human beings, we are all one under God. It is the concept that we are bound together as a group of God’s people, not of nations or races. Universalism is the ultimate communism, a Christian communism in which all of our ups and downs are intrinsically tied to those of others around the world. "Christ was a communist," (Miranda, pg. 165) –– a spiritual communist.

There are secretly devastating effects from the fact that, as an international community, we are becoming less and less catholic –– catholic, that is, with a small c. Modern times are marked by a retreat back to sectionalism, where one identification with one specific group, be it ethnic, racial or national, inhibits that person from gaining an understanding of those outside of that group. This tendency has contributed to the breakup of the community of humans under God, making a communion with God all the more difficult. That is precisely the reason that this dilemma needs to be more adequately addressed by Christians around the world.

Perhaps it may seem a little bit backwards, but I would like to examine the effects of this situation before analyzing what its main causes are. I do this because I believe people will be more willing to accept as fact the results rather than the causes. In conclusion, I will propose one measure that can be taken to help correct the situation. Although the solution is only one of innumerable possible ways to remedy the vacuum of universalism, I have personally found it to prove dually rewarding to both the community and the self. But first, let me set out exactly what I mean when I say universalism.

In Romans 12:14–16, it is said, "Be happy with those who are happy, weep with those who weep. Have the same concern for everyone." Throughout all of Jesus’s teachings there rings a thematic chorus of unity among people, of a harmony between God and all of humanity. In Christ’s sufferings on our behalf, he gave us an example for how we are to care for our brothers and sisters in the family of all humanity. Perhaps all the world and its people was an easier concept to handle two thousand years ago. Since then, life has expanded to cover the globe, with lines of ethnic and national boarders drawn to tell people which pieces of land are their home. But when God gave the earth to mankind to care for, he gave it all to all.

Today, these lines and boarders are fought over, blood spilt and lives taken. The color of one’s skin, the way one worships, the homeland of one’s parents ––– all of these things have become human artificial barriers that keep us from the harmony God envisioned. These differences keep us not only from God, but from ourselves when we so shallowly define ourselves as Americans, or whites, or Catholics, or what ever may apply. Today we replace our communal relationship with God with a micro–communal relationship with others in these narrowly defined groups. The security one gains from these groups replaces the security one used to gain from his or her relationship with God. This is not to say that all organizations are bad, but when they become primary, they become false Gods.

Jose Miranda, in Christianity is Communism, reminds us that religion is intrinsically tied to the material world, not only the spiritual and warns that one cannot with God’s blessing become a "selfish escapist". In Christ’s ministry, he called us as Christians into action. We have been unavoidable drafted into the community of the world when we accept Christ as the savior. And that comes with its own set of duties –– duties to uphold the Christian ethics in society and to act as mirrors of Christ in the community.

Unfortunately, life today is made up of many circumstances that complicate those duties, that call us away from Christian unity into a defensive mode of survival. Darwinian precepts drive people into detrimental sectionalism and global numbness. The horrors of today make us want to turn the other way, not to look. But as Christians, we are called to look, and to allow ourselves to feel what others feel, the good and the bad. "Weep with those who weep." As Father Burghardt said in his lecture Faith Doing Justice, "For Christians, action for justice is not an option." Likewise, in Following Christ in a Consumer Society, John Francis Kavanough said, "For the most part, the disaffected have sought refuge either in the negation of all structure and values through utopianism, or in a flight from all structure through a noncommittal and debilitating tentativeness." (pg. 109) We can no longer run; the problems facing society as a result of this problem are too big to ignore.

So what are some of these devastating effects? Economic injustice, for one. As we grouped ourselves off into nations and social classes within nations, each group began to fend for itself at the expense of a rival group. America gained much of her riches from exploitation of Latin America; Russia reaped its benefits from Eastern Europe; whites raped the colored for profit; the rich exploited the poor. You can break it down on many levels, but however you do, the continually increasing gap between haves and have–nots goes against the laws of justice, of nature and of God. Burghardt calls this the modern "gospel of success". This oppression has become so commonplace that it has worked itself into the very structures of social existence. One positive thing we have to learn from Marx was that his analysis of capitalism and its effects was frighteningly accurate. The degradation of the worker and the stultifying effects of labor under capitalism reflect a systematic suppression of basic human rights.

Another result of dying universal human awareness is war. It is hard to look at Bosnia and not say that it is necessary to give up one’s too often perverted sense of ethnic responsibility in order to attain peace. These artificial bonds of race, ethnicity and nationality are so ambiguous, and yet when dealing with other groups, these differences can drive people to mass extermination of fellow humans! Over and over again, genocide rips us apart from everything it means to be human. The Holocaust. The Killing Fields. They are all given names that serve as chapter titles in the book of how humans lost the path to God. And let it be said that being a Jew or a Cambodian has nothing at all to do with it. Martin Luther King was all too correct when he said, "Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere. What affects one directly affects all indirectly." (pg. 290)

So what are the causes and how do we solve this? Father Burghardt in his speech so eloquently spelled out some of the reasons. The political system has failed us; the economic structures have failed us; the church has failed us; we have failed ourselves. Truly, I would say that there is almost no one that escapes blame. Anyone who has not acted on the repulsions from such violations against humanity has in his or her own way contributed to it. Uncontested violence is consensual violence. When Jesus said to his followers to turn the other cheek, he did not, by any means, condone non–action or apathy. Nor would I say that Christ would look particularly favorable on the resurgence of what Father Burghardt called "rugged nineteenth century individualism". Private self–interest is no Christian ethic for surviving the nineties. It is a slap in the face of all that which Christianity espouses, or is supposed to espouse.

The political and economic organizations have only fostered this breaking up of humanity. The materialism of today makes it seem only natural for an American to ignore the troubles an African or Russian or Asian person might be facing, unless of course they will financially affect their own relationships. The value of person, it is asserted by Kavanough, has been reduced to a commodity: marketability rather than intrinsic human value; competition rather than sharing; replaceability rather than uniqueness; coolness rather than tenderness; and hedonism rather than generosity. (pg. 96–97) Capitalism has failed the Christian community and perverted its values.

In the same respect, the growth and development of the church has also contributed to the breakdown of international community. It is here where Father Burghardt took on a harsher tone to criticize the very organization to which he belongs. Like Martin Luther King in his "Letter From a Birmingham Jail", he criticized out of deep love for the institution and hope for its reform. The teachings of the Catholic church have failed to correct the immoral and unsound elements of the political and social worlds. In doing so, it gave its silent approval. The lessons of the community and universalism in Jesus’s mission have been muted. The official position of the church has gone untaught.

In speaking of American Catholics, Father Burghardt pointed out that, "They have not heard of the 1974 Synod concert that the church firmly believes the promotion of human rights to be required by the gospel." When these lessons are left out, what can be expected other than for the social trends to be consumed by the Christian audience with little of a second though? Sadly enough, there are not enough positive role models out there to remind us of our duty. King did that in his time most eloquently and yet with strong conviction. "If the church does not participate actively in the struggle for peace and for economic and racial justice, he said, it will forfeit the loyalties of millions and cause men everywhere to say that it had atrophied its will." (pg. 501) It is no wonder that today, the number in churches on a Sunday morning is dwindling faster than ever.

Left with this dilemma, we must now face the difficult question of how to remedy the problem. First, one must reread the life of Christ to see once again that he calls upon us to look after one another, to live in peace, and seek justice in all of our pursuits.

I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me... I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did it for me. (Matthew 25: 35–40)

Our motto and calling, "We who are strong in the faith ought to help the weak carry their burdens. (Romans 15:1)

From Aquinas, we must remember how to prioritized things in our lives. ‘For while subjects have many obligations toward their superiors, this one [to divine law], that they are bound to obey their command, stands out as special among the rest." (pg. 161) We must once again let God be the ultimate inspiration in our lives, the source from which we draw our energies. And perhaps most importantly, we must seek out injustice and let it affect us. Make it affect us if need be. We need to think of our blessings, and the arbitrary nature in which luck is given out. We must not think ourselves any better a human being for having been granted freedom from strife, from poverty, from illness, from war. We must make ourselves one with the AIDS patient, one with the Somalian child, one with the Bosnian, one with the ghetto mother, one with the person imprisoned for his beliefs. The Christ in each of us should pang from the pains of our community member and that pang should will us into action.

As a last step, action is requisite. This aspect remains vague, for many people pursue it in individualized manners. However, I offer as one prime example, that of international human rights work. While local charity is commendable when done out of love, that vision remains, to some degree, limited by the confines of the sectionalism that divided us to begin with. This is the one outward and symbolic benefit of human rights work with a group such as Amnesty International.

Amnesty works without boarders. It is easy to care for a neighbor; it is challenging to care for a stranger. Having been a member of Amnesty for eight years, I have personally dedicated a great deal of my life towards realizing their goal of freeing people wrongly imprisoned and/or tortured. But more than that, as a member of Amnesty, I have become a beacon light reminding others –– those others very often being the leaders of nations and the instigators of injustice –– that I will not accept their claim to justice through perverted human laws, and I will not forget that I am one with all humans. They cannot ignore me because I am not of their group.

The principle of international pressure is the basis for Amnesty’s course of action –– international letter writing campaigns. By creating a sense of international unity against human rights abuses, the sectional group denying these rights is removed from its social and political pedestal and is replaced by the universal rule of natural law.

Law provides an interesting topic, for too often, the structures that impede human unity are imbedded in human law. If we turn to Aquinas, however, we are reminded that "Natural law is not habit." (pg. 6) Injustices do not become just actions because they are clothed in human legal protection. Very often, Amnesty International works to free people who have broken a law. But those laws are not what Aquinas would call true laws, founded in the natural law, as a derivative of divine law and proceeding ultimately from the eternal law. No, these laws are perversions. As King did not obey unjust laws, so too does the prisoner of conscience on whose behalf Amnesty works.

This is where the main opposition or resistance to the human rights movement arises. Preservation of the status quo –– protection of an unjust peace –– is advocated out of selfishness by Americans, Catholics and in many cases even the church. As Burghardt points out, the church, above all others, has the responsibility to become controversial and challenge the political abuses of human rights. The example of El Salvadoran Bishop Oscar Romero should be more widely accepted as the model for church leadership.

What does Amnesty International offer Christians? Amnesty can be a tool with which Christians can build God’s kingdom on earth. Through letter writing on behalf of the international community, Amnesty members reestablish the community of God. Father Burghardt recounted that, "In freeing the oppressed, the Israelites were mirroring the loving God who had delivered them from prison and freed them from Herod." Amnesty members do the same.

One of the accomplishments of my leadership in Amnesty a few years back was to unite the Catholic service group Pax Christie with the work of Amnesty International. The two groups seemed to have such similar goals. Pax Christie rooted itself in rights and freedoms as defined in the Bible; Amnesty’s were defined in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The two are very similar. Amnesty was able to offer Pax Christie a method of social action that they had previously been without. Together, they increased the light shining into the prison of human rights violations around the world.

Human rights work embraces a universal message about the value of humanity. It also outwardly expresses unity among the movement’s members and friends. I think if Christ were living among us today, he would be a member of Amnesty International, or one of the many other similar human rights groups. For me, I am enriched by my experiences in working for human rights. I have learned about myself and my neighbors around the world. I have grown to be more tolerant and understanding of differences among people and nations. Human rights work offers the fringe benefit of enriching both the "I" and the "we". It is but one way to approach the colossal problem of dying universalism and community in the world. But however one chooses to address this problem, it is important to remember Romans 14:18, "So then we must always aim at things that bring peace and that help strengthen one another."

Bigongiaro, Dino, ed. The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas. NY: Hafner Press, 1953.

Burghardt, Father Walter. Lecture given at Loyola College "Faith Doing Justice," March 16, 1993.

--- The Good News Bible. NY: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1976.

Kavanough, John Francis. Following Christ in a Consumer Society. NY: Orbis Books, 1981.

Miranda, Jose. "Christianity is Communism," as a ppears in Third World Liberation Theologies. NY: Orbis Books, 1986.

Washington, James M., Ed. Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1986.

© Comet Consulting / Colleen F. Halley
Last Updated: November 23, 1999
Contact: cfhalley@madriver.com