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What do you think?
OCTOBER 2012
Editor:
M.A. Joe Antony, SJ
Ed. office administration,
typing & layout:
Udaya Prabhu
Visuvasam
Correspondents:
Benedict Santosh, John Rose,
Shailendra Boora, Victor Edwin
Advisory Board:
Agapit Tirkey, Benny S.,
Jerry Rosario, John Joseph,
V.T. Jose, Luke Rodrigues,
Michael Amaladoss, Rex A. Pai
Published by
Jerry Sequeira, SJ
for Gujarat Sahitya Prakash Society
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and printed by him at Anand Press,
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It is a big nuisance, no doubt. While
I am very busy working, this fellow
will peep in, ask his usual question and
disappear, without waiting for a response.
His question is always the same. ‘Writing..
or.. editing? What do you think you will
achieve? What can one magazine article,
one well-edited magazine, one book
do, when the problems are so huge and
complex? How many do you think will read
what you write, how many will remember,
how many will do something?’
We will call the intruder Mr (or Fr)
Cynic. His question does disturb me for a
while, but I shoo it away and find solace
and strength in a statement that I recall
habitually. ‘True. Not every Jesuit will
read Jivan regularly or carefully. But those
for whom it does not matter do not really
matter. Do this for those who will read and
remember. It is for God to see what will
come out of it.’
This is the only way to find the
energy in order to keep doing something
with enthusiasm. And examples of people
who do something, without asking, ‘What
is the use? What will it change?’ abound.
The cover story refers to short-sighted
scientists who use the new ‘discovery’ of
what they foolishly call the ‘God particle’
to question the need for a Creator. There
is a Jesuit who has done something about
it. Robert Spitzer, SJ has come up with a
film that claims that God’s existence can be
proved through scientific evidence. “We’re
utterly convinced that the evidence from
physics shows the existence of God,” he has
said, according to a CNA report.
His 49-minute documentary, titled,
Cosmic Origins, features eight physicists
who discuss the big bang theory, theories
of modern physics, and eventually the
need for a creator. It has Michael Heller of
the Vatican Observatory, Nobel Laureate
Arno Penzias, and a slew of professors from
Harvard and Cambridge. Fr Spitzer made
sure that every scientist was really world
class - top in their field.
What do these top scientists say
in the Jesuit’s film? They affirm that it is
impossible for the universe to be random
and without purpose. After discussing
the Big Bang theory and affirming it
scientifically, the physicists say there
still must be a beginning or cause of the
universe, even with theories of modern
physics. “When the universe was nothing,
it could not have moved itself from nothing,
something else had to do it, and that
something else was a transcendent creator,”
says Fr Spitzer. This creator would have to
exist outside space and time, because before
the Big Bang, nothing existed, including
space and time, he says.
Not everyone, of course, needs
scientific proof for God’s existence.
Countless artists, poets and saints see God
in the beauty of nature. So Spitzer’s film
aims to reach the other group who do not
consider the possibility of God’s existence
without scientific explanation.
I came across recently of another
interesting example for those who do
something, without worrying about how
many they will reach, how many they
will change. A social action group called
Network, founded by 46 nuns from
different religious congregations in the
United States, has started a bus tour. What
do the nuns hope to do? They want to
counter the budget proposals made by the
Catholic Republican candidate for Vice
President, Paul Ryan. His Budget Plan,
which he claims is inspired by Catholic
Church’s social teaching, would eliminate
or curtail government support for the poor
by 75 percent over the next 40 years.
Like these nuns Georgetown Jesuits
too have done something. In a public letter,
90 faculty members of the Jesuit university
have chastised Ryan for his “continuing
misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a
budget plan that decimates food programs
for struggling families, radically weakens
protections for the elderly and sick, and
gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest
few.” (Messenger of St Anthony, Sept ‘12,
p. 41)
Sometime or the other you too would
surely encounter Mr (or Fr) Cynic. I don’t
know how you tackle him. The way to
counter him is to say, ‘The sower has to
keep sowing. If some seeds fall on the rock
or the path, it is not his problem. Like the
lad in the crowd who had only five barley
loaves, let’s give what we have, do what we
can. It is for Him to do the rest.’
- M.A.J.A.
JIVAN: News and Views of Jesuits in India OCTOBER 2012 3