"We have to make the world a better place"

Here are the full texts of Cardinal Hume's thoughts for the day, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this week.
During these last few weeks I have been brooding on our industrial problems. I have watched the mass of rubbish piling up in the streets outside the window of my study. I have shared the concern that we all feel for the sick in our hospitals. I have felt for those who had to wait anxiously for the burial of their loved ones. Many people have urged me to say something in public. Many, I suspect, wanted me to condemn those who inflict hardship on others. In fact, I do not feel inclined to condemn anyone. How could I? As a churchman I do not consider myself competent to pass judgement on complex economic factors. That is a task for the experts. Instead, I feel I ought to stand back and deal with more fundamental questions.
Many people today are asking what kind of society do we want. One thought comes immediately to my mind. Our society has become very secular. I mean by this a society which denies God and ignores or rejects spiritual values. It accepts only those things which can be touched, seen, weighed, bought and sold. This has very real dangers. I shall speak of one. In a secular and materialistic society, men and women run the risk of fashioning for themselves their own gods. I call these "wealth, power and uncontrolled pleasure".
Please do not misunderstand me. Wealth, power and pleasure are good things in themselves, if controlled and disciplined.
But if they are the only purpose in life — if they become the peak towards which all our striving is directed — then they will please only to deceive. A society that is dominated by them contains within it the seeds of its own decay. The pursuit of wealth, power and pleasure for their own sakes is, after all, a kind of idolatry, a worshipping of false gods. They make us slaves rather than free men, rivals rather than co-workers, conflicting groups rather than a community.
But if we are not to concentrate on wealth, power and pleasure as our ultimate objectives, what are we to aim at? That, I believe, is a major problem for us all. God no longer plays an effective and important part in the lives of many people in our society. And yet many are also gradually coming to realise that we must find nobler ideals to pursue and rediscover values that are worth while.
We must keep a sense of proportion. All is not wrong in Our society. Beset by weakness and frailty we may be. But we are made in the image and likeness of God; we are made to search for God and ultimately to find Him. That is the truth to which we must hold fast, and upon which, I believe, we can build. And that is the task to which we must set ourselves anew. Condemnations and accusations will inevitably lead into the blind alley of confrontation and bitterness. But appeal instead to the noblest and deepest in man and we can yet build with God's help a new Jerusalem, a society that is based upon justice and peace. But before we begin we must ask; which master do we serve, God or Mammon. _ At times during the bitter wrangles of the past weeks I feared for our national unity. We seemed to inflict wounds on each other almost recklessly. We now need to heal those wounds. Where do we start? I have already said that we need to discover God. Now we also need to rediscover respect for each other and trust and confidence in each other. There has to be a foundation on which to build and an agreed attitude to each other.
We might start from our common humanity. Each in diviclual, rich or poor, black or white, is a person whose dignity should command our total respect. Every human being is precious and important. Can we agree that any exploitation and oppression of the individual is always morally wrong? This will have practical consequences for the way we behave towards each other. This leads us to think of human rights and responsibilities. I call human rights those things which are necessary for a person to be a fully free human being, hut ensuring that others enjoy the same rights is my responsibility. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. I cannot claim for myself what I deny to others.
These rights are universal; everyone has a claim to them. They are inviolable; no human authority can deprive roe of them. All have the right to those things which are necessary for a truly human life: food, clothing, housing, freedom to choose a state of life and to found a family, education, work, reputation, respect, freedom to live according to a right consience, protection of privacy and religious freedom.
Furthermore, if a person's wages do not permit him or her to enjoy these rights, if these basic freedoms are threatened, then there is something wrong and the community must act.
We should not forget, I suggest, that greed, fear and insecurity are always threats to the well-being of any community. Unless controlled, they can turn a good community into warring factions and the individual and his rights sufler. Powerful groups may fear for their standards of living and press for big wage claims, regardless of the harm to others. On the other hand, the more affluent, let is be said, can be insensitive to the just claims of the lower paid. We need urgently to discover ways of reducing the level of greed, fear and insecurity in our society.
We should speak more often of our "responsibilities". What we want for ourselves we must also want for others. Rights we claim for ourselves are rights for others, too. Recognition of this is the necessary first step to reconciliation and the healing of wounds within the community.
We should not be too obsessed with our local difficulties. We have responsibilities towards every one. As we worry about our economy, it is sobering to remember that a third of the world suffers from malnutrition and over 400 million people are actually starving. Put in Gospel terms, Dives is quarrelling with Dives while the dogs lick the sores of Lazarus outside the gate as he waits for the rich man's crumbs.
But man does not live by bread alone nor, in the last analysis, can his vision be limited to material well being.
Economic growth and increased productivity are valid objectives, of course. but they never have satisfied, and never will satisfy, man's deeper needs and aspirations. We need nobler aims. Ultimate fulfilment and happiness lie elsewhere. About this we need in our day to hear much more.
I have been thinking about a girl called Mary. She belongs to a United family. She is generous and idealistic, unspoilt and friendly. There are many like her. Robert comes from a broken home. He is quite different. Insecure, lost, suspicious of authority, he is a wounded person. He has never had Mary's advantages. In fact the health of any society is to a large extent dependent on the strength of the family.
If we respect and affirm the family, much else will be right. Security within the family — and I mean emotional and economic security — is the normal environment for a full and happy life. It is also the normal environment in which young lives grow and mature into generous and responsible adults.
The family at its best is, without doubt, the school in which the art of loving is first Learned and practised. If that lesson is not learned in the family, the human personality can remain stunted. We have to get right the fundamental relationships within the family first, before they will be right in society as a whole. If we work out these relationships, we learn respect for each other, generosity. compassion for the weak and the aged; we learn openness and honesty and how to trust one another. These are qualities which are always important; they are essential in the boardroom, the branch meeting, the
classroom and the neighbourhood. The health of the nation is based on the well-being of the family.
In fact many things have combined to undermine the security of family life in Britain today. Respect fbr life in all its stages is no longer universal in our society. This has had profound conse quences. It has surely dulled our moral sensitivity, particularly towards the unique role of the family in fostering human life. But this morning I am thinking more of the social and economic factors which threaten the security of the family. Some of these are at issue in our current disputes.
Unemployment and inflation hurt the whole community and weigh heaviest on the most vulnerable, the elderly, the unskilled and the low-paid. They present the biggest problems to those who already suffer disadvantages in housing, education and conditions of work. There can be no doubt that low pay and the constant anxiety it brings does damage to family life. It must surely be a priority to eliminate levels of pay which do not allow workers to support their families properly. And is it right that those in service industries, or in parts of the public sector should have to come out on strike to escape from poverty? Must people work long hours of over time in order to bring home an adequate wage?
I am not qualified to point to detailed solutions. It is not the responsibility of a Church leader to point to detailed solutions. But even as a layman in these matters, I cannot accept that this is an impossible task.
The family is important. In the family we learn to relate to each other and become secure, confident and self reliant so that when we leave home we go as mature adults to make our contribution as citizens. We endanger family life economically or spiritually at our peril. I believe that the quality of family life is absolutely fundamental. We must not underestimate it.
This year. 1979. has so far been a very difficult one. But in spite of our present troubles the words of the prophet Joel have been coming constantly to my mind: "Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men see visions". (Joel 3:1). We must not lose heart; we must "dream dreams" and "see visions", and, difficult though it may be, translate them into programmes for action.
There is one dream about which I would like to speak. It is of a future life, where we shall enjoy total fulfilment, know complete and uninterrupted happiness, and understand fully man's purposes and ultimate meaning. The riddles of this world will have been answered. That is for later on. We are citizens of this world. There is ajob to be done here and now — and we must start today. We have to change the world and make it a better place.
As a Christian, 1 would like to build a city in which I am inspired to love and serve God. And I want to be able to love and serve my neighbour. This world of ours, and indeed our lives, are gifts. We accept them gratefully and we have a right to enjoy them in the way our Creator intended. Now this is a fundamental Christian attitude and It is a vision which can give true pers pective to all our activities. Many have rejected religion — but what has been put in its place?
I have spoken on previous occasions about the dignity of the individual and about the place of the family in society. Protecting these and giving them their true value is basic to the happiness of each one of us. But no society coafn nbleartlhyouingdhitvoidfuaasitshewsuum mtoutsatl
think and speak of community.
One of our responsibilities today is to make of our nation a true community. The heart of every community must always be a common purpose shared by its members. Of course, there will be differences of opinion, and important differences, but these must never be allowed to undermine the sense of a common purpose. A successful cornmunity is one in which individuals are enabled to realise their full potential as human beings. Strong, free and independent but at the same time very much interested and concerned for others. In a corn munity there is no room for passive spectators. We have to be concerned for each other and take our full part in contributing to their welfare. Christians would express this in terms of responding to the Creator's gift of love by living out the two-fold commandment of loving God and their neighbour.
There are, of course, dangers to any community. Insecurities, fears, envy, undermine the kind of trust and confidence which are necessary for living in harmony. We need, I think, to be very much on our guard against those who would want to wreck the peace and harmony which should prevail in our society. We have to ty.:. on our guard in respect of those who work deliberately for the collapse of our economy and institutions. Reform is one thing: anarchy another.
I am very aware that from time to time I have been critical of other people. Have I looked too much at the moat in other people's eyes and failed to see the beam in my own? I think so, for I, too, have been less than adequate in doing my task which is to bring the good news of the Gospel to those who are in search of spiritual values. But I propose to try again. 1 take consolutaion in the thought that we can always start again, cheerfully and confidently. We learn from our mistakes. But we must learn.