Introduction In Vienna, in the summer of 2002, a Rwandan theologian had a meeting with the Austrian Catholic press. He was asked some challenging questions, including: “What image would you choose to represent the current situation in Rwanda?” Without hesitation, he answered, “A cemetery and a construction site.” He was well aware of how things were in that country, but he could not describe it as he would have liked. In fact, perhaps there was no more effective image than...
“No one’s private life runs smoothly. That only happens in the movies, Alphonse. No traffic jams, no dead periods. Movies go along smoothly like trains in the night. And people like you and me are only happy in our work.” That was how French director François Truffaut expressed his love for cinematography in his masterpiece Day for Night (La nuit américaine, 1973), one of the most extraordinary films ever about the world of cinema. These words of the French filmmaker...
Tunisia is the birthplace of the “Spring” that shook the Arab world in 2011. Indeed, it is the only country where the democratic reforms called for by the so-called “Jasmine Revolution” had a great effect politically and institutionally, resulting in one of the most progressive constitutions in the Arab world. But a decade of democracy has not brought prosperity and good governance. Tunisians have instead become disillusioned with politics and the extensive corruption of their elected representatives, which has generated...
Modern society is based on the interaction of workers who want to rationally shape nature, including our social nature. In fact, work, which involves today, more than in the past, an expenditure of personal energy aimed at modifying, according to an instrumental rationality, the physical or social environment. At the same time it transforms not only the worker, physically, mentally and spiritually, but also society. The relationship between services and powers is reversed. This article presents the relationship today between...
Man on Donkey Beaten, still breathing, as awkward as a dog, He swags across the donkey, unaware Of who’s beside them, footsore in the slog Uphill for shelter and a kind of care. Under the bloody bandages, some oil Soothes where wine has washed away the dirt To leave him clean and mortal. Alien soil, Continuing fear, is mingling hope with hurt. Downslope, the priest is hustling on his way, Clean as a whistle, and the levite too,...
The context Many people are overwhelmed by what is going on in our times: the rise of fundamentalism, deceitful populism, malicious majoritarianism, violent right-wing politics with their jingoistic policies, the abject poverty of the masses, forced displacement of people, misery unleashed by the COVID pandemic, the “almighty” corporates building their empires on the skeletons of the exploited, the expanding ecological disasters. Above all, people are dumbfounded by the oft-perceived and dreadfully deadening “silence” of God, and a resulting human cry...
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