The Tablet Lecture 2008 - Part 2

These are some of the issues which I would like to explore with you this morning but first let me continue to share with you something more personal. It’s my conviction that for any one following Christ, in my case as a Jesuit priest, to be occupied with these people, and with the issues that preoccupy these people, despite the very occasional temptation to flee reality and find refuge in the sacristy, is a most religious activity.

For many of you, this will, I am sure, need no explanation. But I find I frequently need to revisit my foundational convictions in order to renew my commitment.  I do this by reminding myself, what else, of those words, familiar to us all, I am sure, which open the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes:

The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well.

These words then lead me to focus again on that attitude of faith which they presuppose, namely, that in our activity in this world, far from being alone, we are in dialogue with the Spirit of God who speaks to us through the events, the happenings and encounters, of our lives, calling for a response. This in turn reminds me that a primary responsibility of the followers of Christ, and so a responsibility of mine, is to read the signs of the times, and, within the Church community, to listen out for what the Spirit is saying to us.

It is in responding to the joys and hopes, the grief and the anguish of our time, especially of the poor and afflicted, that the Christian fulfils his or her vocation. “The logic of the Christian experience is very clear”, says the recently elected Superior General of the Jesuits, Fr Adolfo Nicolás,

God is love, and so we too love. God is mercy, and so we too show mercy. God is good, and so we too desire to be good. If we do not love, we really do not have anything to say…. Here is our raison d’être. Why do we want to love the poor, to help the lonely, to console the sad, to heal the sick and to bring freedom to the oppressed? Simply because this is what God does. Nothing else.

A longing to fulfil that vocation leads us to see the world from the perspective of the poor upwards. That is the prophetic mission of the Church in our society and in any society because it’s the perspective God takes.

“Go”, Pope Benedict told our General Congregation when we met with him in February of this year, “to the frontiers”. Go to the geographical frontiers, certainly, but still more to the frontiers which have emerged within our cultures and societies, and there make known the face of Jesus.

The Jesus whom the founder of the Jesuits, St Ignatius Loyola, accompanied was  a Jesus who carried his cross. Our General Congregation decided that to accompany that same Jesus as he carries his cross today means opening ourselves to every thirst that afflicts humanity; it means announcing the Gospel to the poor; it means above all joining in the mission of the one who, as he carries his cross, sets people free, proclaims release and leads them from the jaws of death to the new and abundant life.

Getting involved in issues such as these cannot be anything other than a profoundly religious activity, but it’s one we should always engage in with humility. The kind of humility which avoids black and white condemnations because our public culture in its many guises, not least as it affects young people, has its lights as well as its shadows. It’s the kind of humility that recognises the paucity of our resources. It’s the kind of humility which recognises that if society has got itself into a fix, then we have all played our part in getting it there. It’s the kind of humility which recognises that we are the first who need to be led from the jaws of death to life.  But a religious activity this remains, so it is back to the streets of London we must go.

For sure, there are aspects of the phenomenon of gang culture and street violence we experience today that are not new. We may remember the skinheads and the bovver boys of the late ‘sixties and early ‘seventies or the mods and the rockers of ten years earlier and their bank holiday hostilities on the beach at Brighton, which my brother and I as small boys charmingly used to mimic in the back garden at home. While in the ‘fifties Leonard Bernstein immortalised the sharks and the jets on New York’s West Side, we had our teddy boys. Even earlier, in the ‘thirties, Graham Greene wrote about Pinkie and the razor gangs of the race courses. There is something about boys’ growing up that they identify strongly with a group that in turn identifies itself in opposition to, and in rivalry with, other groups.

What makes the present situation more alarming is the extent of the violence – the numbers affected – and its degree – it results too often in death. To the amateur observer - and in so much of this (as you will have gathered) that’s exactly what I am - there are other features equally disturbing. It is clear, for example, that those involved are deterred neither by the threat of a prison sentence for so much as  carrying a knife nor by the fact that in fatal stabbings the culprits are almost always tracked down and arrested within 72 hours. 

While my present job has taken me away from direct daily contact with young people, it nonetheless gives me access to a number who work with them and with groups of young people, albeit far too few, whose involvement with gang culture and street crime is more immediate. What do they understand as the causes of what’s happening and what do they think can be done to improve things?

I was surprised that high on their list of causes came what they see as the breakdown of community. Perhaps because there has been a decline in a sense that there is a body of commonly held beliefs about how to live as individuals and to relate in society, fewer people than previously are now prepared to intervene – “Stop that or I’ll tell your Mum”. Values and virtues which were shared in society were once reinforced in the course of day to day living. This was the means by which individuals learnt their own individual and social values. Indeed, the fact that they were commonly shared values was a powerful motivator for individuals to adopt them themselves.

There is also, they agreed, an issue with parenting. Some parents shrug their shoulders (“what can I do, he’s sixteen?”), some take refuge in denial while others actively encourage membership of gangs in the belief that they will keep their children safe. Another issue with parenting was raised too: that early emotional neglect which can mean that a child is unable to develop empathy, that essential social skill of appreciating from within the feelings of others.

In families without a father, children as young as eight are taking on the burden of parental responsibility which leads them out in search of sources of additional income. Such young people find easy role models in the older teenager with his BMW or Audi sports car. These youngsters crave to be a “somebody” and see their self-esteem as caught up in what only the money they don’t have can buy. Many such youngsters don’t fear the police because they have little respect for them, having been the victims (as they see it) of stereotyping in random stop and searches.

The youngsters I spoke with marvel at the lack of aspiration and ambition amongst their peers. They complain about the negative images of the ethnic minorities portrayed in the media which powerfully reinforce a “no we can’t” mentality.

Meanwhile, they are a prey to mixed signals about the value of human life. Death is portrayed as commonplace and may seem easy to young people without the emotional wherewithal to develop a strong empathy. They lack the depth understanding of what a death involves.

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