Leo XIV, Christianity and us

The Pope's visit has made us reflect. What is religion today? At what point is the discrepancy between believers and non-believers? Historically, this discrepancy has been reduced to whether man is a creation of God or God a creation of man. For believers, God is an eternal reality who creates man in his image. For non-believers, God is a concept invented by man in search of refuge and protection. This discussion has existed for as long as man has been man and expresses a desire and need for transcendence.Among the philosophical attempts to demonstrate the existence of God, that of the medieval scholastics stands out. One of the first scholastic approaches in this regard was made in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas, who establishes five ways of demonstration in the Summa Theologica, his major work. According to the way of motion, everything that moves is moved by another, it is necessary that there be a first mover, and this must be God. According to the way of causality, there must also be a first efficient cause: it must be God. According to the way of contingency, since beings in the world can exist or cease to exist (they are contingent), there must be, in their origin, a being that is not contingent, but necessary: God. According to the way of degrees of perfection, the existence of a gradation of qualities means that there must be a being that is maximum in goodness and other virtues, and this must be God. According to the way of finality, in the world all things tend towards an end, but they could not do so without being directed like an archer's arrow: there must be an intelligent being who has designed them this way, and this must be God.But what about today? Today, both what is enormously large (the universe, space and time, mass and energy) and what is extraordinarily small (the quantum world, or light, which is made of particles and waves at the same time) are explainable without a first cause. The paths of Thomas Aquinas are no longer universal. And Newtonian physics is no longer sufficient for us to understand the world. Science has changed our perspective.

Today more than ever, therefore, belief in God cannot be supported by rationality, but only by faith. But this does not make it any less powerful for man and society. Now, how is religion lived today? There is an idea that permeates Christianity and is a source of unhappiness for man: the need for penance and self-abasement before God to obtain forgiveness for one's own faults. As Spinoza says, without personal self-esteem there can be no happiness. It is not surprising that in a hedonistic world like today's, the idea of God is repulsive.The Church has come to this day, like any other human institution, thanks to its will to self-protect in order to survive. And in 2,000 years it has gone through all sorts of moments depending on the evolution of society and politics. The 16th century, as a consequence of the invention of the printing press, which allowed everyone to read sacred texts, saw a famous discussion about the free interpretation of the Bible between Erasmus, more discursive, and Luther, more assertive. And in Erasmus's rejection of the free interpretation of the Bible, there was a desire to preserve the ecclesiastical structure: a free interpretation inevitably led to the emergence of different doctrines derived from different interpretations. This is what has effectively happened in the Protestant Church, while the fight against heterodoxy has allowed greater unity to be maintained in the Catholic Church, which has paid the price of a certain degree of intolerance that has permeated Catholicism. The will to maintain unity in Catholics, and to promote freedom in Protestants, were at the origin of the schism. And that tradition maintains its principles in force today.It is also true that the Christian doctrine derived from the Sermon on the Mount, one of the milestones of the Gospel and at the heart of Christianity, has generated a more open, easier, and widely accepted Church by citizens in Europe and America, and this has allowed the extension of a social doctrine of the Church. The work of helping the needy through Caritas and similar institutions is an undeniable social good, as is the education of young people from school to university. The Church must focus on these and other ways it has of improving the world, and it must, evidently, repair the pain it has inflicted with the cases of abuse.From this point of view, the visit of Pope Leo XIV, with the discourse and proximity he has shown to diverse people, generates adherence to Christian principles, and to the extent that this is so, it can generate a lower level of political and social confrontation. Furthermore, there is the surprising paradox that those less confessional social groups and political parties, who are the ones who have most criticized the ostentation and cost of the trip (observations that in my opinion are secondary), are at the same time the most tolerant and, therefore, the most profoundly Christian. The distance that many perceive with the Church stems from its most intransigent and ultramontane moments, such as the absolutely anti-evangelical era of the Inquisition.