Bridges For Peace - A Dialogue

Some might seriously weigh spending their penultimate years in a brave and noble endeavor to benefit others , an adventure to advance the cause of truth, goodness, beauty, or holiness. (Robert Nozick, The examined life, 1989, p27)

True love is always contemplative , and permits us to serve the other not out of necessity or vanity, but rather because he or she is beautiful above and beyond mere appearances: “The love by which we find the other pleasing leads us to offer him something freely”.  The poor person, when loved, “is esteemed as of great value”,  and this is what makes the authentic option for the poor differ from any other ideology , from any attempt to exploit the poor for one’s own personal or political interest. (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, n.199) Photo by  Shail Sharma  on  Unsplash

Solidarity is a spontaneous reaction by those who recognize that the social function of property and the universal destination of goods are realities which come before private property. The private ownership of goods is justified by the need to protect and increase them, so that they can better serve the common good; for this reason, solidarity must be lived as the decision to restore to the poor what belongs to them . These convictions and habits of solidarity, when they are put into practice, open the way to other structural transformations and make them possible. Changing structures without generating new convictions and attitudes will only ensure that those same structures will become, sooner or later, corrupt, oppressive and ineffectual. (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, n. 189)