Technical conceptions and praxis did not necessarily agree: the anxieties of having more, of being more meet and produce consequences of immense value, as well as destructive consequences in epochs that do not recognise the idea of progress as a value. The idea of progress, the impulse to progress, progresses themselves realised in every area are ambivalent: in themselves, as service to humanisation, they can reach even impiety and madness to the extreme of being used against humanity.

Every difficulty, which humanity has been meeting along its journey, has given an impulse to elaborate a strategy for overcoming: both poverty and super-abundance push us towards progress. This forward journey, constantly signed by the persistence of our limits, and animated by the disposition of pushing our own limits ahead, is very beautiful in itself and possesses an inherent spiritual-theological charge. The fact that its fruit has not always been good and humane must not induce us to deny its dignity and to forget that human progress is undoubtedly in the original design of God and it is a way of responding to God.

The Encyclical Populorum progressio by Paul VI, systematically quoted by our Pope in his Caritas in Veritate, states that vocation to progress pushes men "to do, to know, to have and to be always more" (n. 41). We must highlight the balance of this expression, which refers to the classical distinction between "to have" and "to be" in a critical and articulated manner.

Obviously, possible misunderstandings gather in the concept of "to be more". The spirit of power and oppression, often concealed under unsuspected appearances, lurks. The sense of "our being" confuses itself with that of the importance others attribute to us. The mystery of personal uniqueness confuses itself with the role. In other words, we see that the "to be" confuses itself with "to be recognised"; the acting faculty with power in its most vulgar declination. Through this way the "to be" may fall back into the sphere of "to have", which is very dangerous when it is omni-comprehensive.

We often use the words "progress" and "development" as synonyms. In reality the idea of development seems to be vaster: it includes also the progress in various areas, but it would be reductive if it were identified with this.

The Populorum progressio stated that true development is that of all men and of the whole man. This truly indispensable and fundamental idea (one of the important ideas of Vatican 2) is quoted by Benedict XVI in his Encyclical, particularly in no. 18, in which he states substantially that the Gospel is a fundamental element of human development.

Here he does not refer to the Gospels, to a specific text, but to the message of Jesus, to his event and his teaching understood as unity of word and action.

For us Christians, the event of Jesus is the definitive phase of the covenant: Jesus takes the Father to men and men to the Father. His public life identifies with the proclamation of the Kingdom, a mysterious and total reality, which sounds more or less like "Paradise" to those who are not familiar with the Gospel, to be shifted beyond our earthly life, beyond history, thus becoming an irrelevant reality.

The public life of Jesus starts with the announcement of the nearby Kingdom (cf Mark 1,15), of a nearby God, in solidarity with men more than what the usual religious schemes of every religion allow us to believe; of a hope beyond evidence, of a forgiveness whose right measurement is to be without measurement.

However, it is not the matter of another covenant, of another revelation alternative to that of the Old Testament. In the Gospel message, we find the central idea of the theological anthropology of creation: the human being to the image of God, creation as a call, the state of creatures as a mission. The second narration of creation says that the Garden of Eden –symbolic image of a harmonious world fit for man – is entrusted to the just created human being "so that he may guard and cultivate it" (Gen 2, 15). To cultivate means to put a given reality in the condition of bearing fruit; to guard means the vigilant attitude of him who tries to protect from evil the reality, which he loves and of which he is responsible. The mission of Adam does not stop after his fall; rather it extends not only to the Garden, but also to the whole world. This is the place of complexity, of contradiction and fatigue, but always the place, which God cares for. If sometimes the apparent silence of God disturbs us, that silence could be a kind of question, a challenge full of love, the waiting for an autonomous human word.

In fact, autonomy, creativity and freedom are dimensions of the logic of creation and salvation, not "in spite of God" but, for the believers, rooted in God.

The Pontiff reminds us that the Christian vision has the peculiarity of stating and justifying the unconditional value of the human person and the sense of its growth" (CV 18).

Living in the logic of the Gospel means to believe "not only in words, but also in facts and truth" that the human being is the image of God. We experience that to live and to believe this is possible in given existential situations, also without being aware of recalling God. There are apparently non-believing persons who live in this logic in an exemplary way. God and His spirit know infinite ways to penetrate the heart of man and the events of history. Every ethical principle and every spirituality of earthly reality flow from this centrality. He who believes this will always treat (this is the indelible Kantian expression) as an end and not as a means, individual relations, organising and structural decisions, the vastest historical-political planning.

The Pontiff states the logical landing of this vision in the successive no. 19 of Caritas in Veritate: charity is central in human development, in the sense that its lack would prevent every progress from being integral and human. However, also in the sense that every true progress is also a growth in love, whatever name people give to it.

We know that several unbelievers, who cannot bear any religious vision of existence, as well as any lexicon that sends back immediately to its religious use, have criticised a lot this idea, just as if it attacked the legitimate autonomy of earthly realities, or it cracked the centrality of justice. In reality, we feel that one of the most significant contributions of the Encyclical is just the appeal to clear charity from the traditionally private area, where people tend to confine it. It is an appeal to make of it the motor and the guiding principle of the public life in its various dimensions, according to a style, which may be coherent with the charity-principles of dialogue, collaboration and respect. The first requisite of charity is that of respecting the other (single or collective), never using against him actions or cultural attitudes that could be perceived, even wrongly, as offensive. Proclamation is essentially a problem of language.

Therefore, we Christians go on calling it charity, in order to underline the agape dimension. "Love" in our common language seems to be too much linked with the sphere of sentiments or sympathy – we must live and possibly make it shining, contagious, without calling it with its name, when its name could sound like something that puts an obstacle against dialogue, rather than helping it. This is not opportunism at all; it is not a strategy, but something much nobler: a form of prudence-discretion and respect for the other, which we cannot dissociate from charity.

Lilia Sebastiani
Writer of articles
and lecturer in theological matters
Via Isonzo, 9 – 05100 Terni