The E-catechism: October 2000
	Hope	Moral and demography
	Archives of Partenia
	History of Partenia, Biography of Bishop Jacques Gaillot

		Each month the team working on this catechism presents you with two texts, and we hope that with your help and cooperation they will improve. Any suggestions you may have would be most welcome, as would ideas on subject matter. We look forward to hearing from you. Hope Hope often flourishes from the core of a trial, like a plant manages to grow through the rocks. Nevertheless, they are grieves that leave no room for hope, we are overcome by depression, by horror. By experience, hope can find a way through the darkness, through the anguish. Some among us can testify about it, they are wounded by life, they had the experience of the dregs of society, of going into the wilderness. They had to face their own death or the death of some one else. Unexpectedly, they managed to go over their distress, they are not overcome by it. Contrary to what some times happens, their struggle has not been in vain. They kept the passion for what is possible. Hope dos not rely only on one person but on a group of persons, a community or above all a people. We can stand firm if we keep a link to people who bring hope. Hope is some thing we desire but do not have and we don't know that we will have it. It is a longing for without knowing the outcome. When so many people are in distressful and hopeless situations, we have a sense of enclosure in a universe of neo-liberalism, of exclusion, of violence, of corruption and of over spread lying… The disillusion is real but, in the events of every day life, we are pushed in some way to say no, to welcome and to show solidarity. We want to participate to private associations or to community organizations. When we are with the families stricken by diseases or death, with our neighbors, with our colleagues at work, with the poor and oppressed people, there is hope. It is a message of hope for the Christians. Jesus is there, really present in these situations, suffering with us and in the mean time opening a break through towards a possible future.

		Moral and demography. The increase in world population raises problems of extreme gravity. It exemplifies the evident injustice in the distribution of resources between the rich countries and the third world and also between different groups of people inside a same region. The insane luxury and the futile way of living of some people are mixed with the most severe economic deprivation of others. A better distribution of the resources among humans is imposing itself any way. However, even if we could participate at our own level of ability to the building of a world worth to live for all, the growth of the population in many places and for the whole of the planet will still raise major problems. Theoretically our planet can have more inhabitants living in acceptable condition. But the high rate of population growth - the world population has been multiplied by five between 1930 and 2000- does not allow to cover the essential needs of all human beings including their needs in education, culture, social care etc… . Regarding such a dilemma, religions have certainly some important points to make, but a true and open dialogue has to be established with many other institutions. If religions can bring the great values that they carry, they don't have all the elements of analysis or all the possibilities that are required to face the reality of the problems. Religions have to be careful in applying to the present world their founding precepts. For instance the precept "Grow and multiply" from the book of Genesis (1,28) is seen today in a different prospect than at the beginning of the world. The matter at that time was to populate the earth and more so to fertilize it in order to make it fit for the human beings. Up to recent times and still likely in certain regions of the globe, the main problem was the survival of the species when a woman had to give birth to 10 or 15 children to hope to raise 3 or 4 to adult age. Well after the number it is now the transmission of the quality of life for their children that becomes the legitimate and concerned goal for the parents. In a more and more complex world, to ascertain the biological life is not enough, it is the question of resources for education, culture and friendship that make the verity and the essence of a human existence. In general, and far beyond this question of demographic explosion, we have to wonder if religion ought to ultimately interfere and legislate about concrete and multiple serious ethic problems of our modern time. Aside the duty of the religions to recall the great precepts of solidarity, justice and love, have they enough knowledge and a right to determine the precise rules of action for the humans today? More so do they tend to lay down and impose hard-and-fast rules supposedly permanent in a world in constant mutation and for situations that are very often largely diversified. By the way he was doing, even more than by his words, Jesus was testifying for his own great moral values, but he never was the spokesperson for any standards in precise terms. It is for these reasons that his Good News is still of universal value after 2000 years. Instead of imposing compulsory rules for specific behaviors, it is the duty of the religions to raise the tone of the proceedings by proclaiming and giving themselves the example, at any time, of the greatness of the human beings and the joy of today living. We need such a message.