Cathy's dad bought me a book for my birthday: "The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich as told to David Cayley" Foreword by Charles Taylor [Yes, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor] (2005). I've jumped into it.
In the first part of the book, Ivan Illich centres his reflection on "The Good Samaritan" parable told by Jesus. For Illich the parable is about the gratuitous reality of compassion. For their time, the priest and the Pharisee who passed on by the wounded man were acting ethically. The wounded man could have been a polluting dead man. Both those who passed by had demanding responsibilities urging them not to stop.
Likewise, the Samaritan should not have got involved. The Samaritan should not be helping a Jew, a man not of his group. But he is moved "in his bowels" with compassion. The Samaritan breaks through the ethical norms. Jesus is putting forward a love that breaks through the ethical norms. Illich considers it a perversion of what Jesus taught to suggest that the Good Samaritan parable sets a norm for Christian or universal human behaviour. The point here is not to establish a new burdensome law. Jesus is not making some universal statement about everyone in need being our neighbour. No, your neighbour is the person to whom you respond with compassion. Sin is not breaking a law but is turning away coldly from another person.
Monsignor Illich, a Catholic priest, established a language training school in Cuernavaca, Mexico in the early 1960's. He is renowned as a critic of educational and medical institutions. At his school, Illich challenged the optimism for development that was the spirit of the time -- as seen in the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Core and so on. Illich withdrew from active ministry and through work as professor and scholar challenged what he considered the inversion of Christianity and ultimately the sin of Western culture -- the conviction that the good can institutionalized.
In the present book, Illich gives an illustration of what he means. Christians in the early period kept a mattress, some bread and a candle ready in their homes for a person who might wander by in need. With the conversion of the Emperor Constantine the bishops could act publicly to establish houses for strangers. The great preacher, St. John Chrystostom, criticized this development claiming that the houses for strangers undermined the early practice of personal hospitality to the stranger in need.
As I reflect on the Canadian snowbirds who have reached out to people in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, I wonder whether whether they might not agree with Illich. The first agreement might have to do with a distancing from institutional religion and its new forms in secular government.
The second agreement might have to do with the question of who is my neighbour. My neighbour is not a generic citizen with a right to universal benefits; my neighbour is the person who makes a call on me. I have no obligation to act, but in the freedom of the Spirit I do act to respond to this neighbour who calls on me. Sin is not acting when called and moved to act.
Much of what Illich is saying rings true to me. The implications can provoke and disturb. What is the task of the International Support Worker in relation to governmental organizations and NGOs with their institutionalized procedures? Where is the emphasis to be put -- on training to better support institutional structures or on learning to engage the person who makes a call on us?
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