Zenit: Interview with Dominican Sister Helen Alford

Justice and the Order of Preachers


Interview With Dominican Sister Helen Alford




By Miriam Díez i Bosch

ROME, JAN. 11, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The whole concept of human rights is threatened if there is no such thing as the truth of the human person, says a Dominican nun who recently edited a work that reflects on her religious congregation's contribution to social ethics.



In this interview with ZENIT, Sister Helen Alford, dean of the faculty of social sciences at the University of St. Thomas, the Angelicum, in Rome, explains how justice needs truth to have a firm foundation.
The Dominican co-edited with Father Francesco Compagnoni the book titled "Preaching Justice: Dominican Contributions to Social Ethics in the 20th Century."

Q: Dominicans are famous for being preachers of truth. What then is the connection between truth and justice?

Sister Alford: It is very hard to make sense of justice, and impossible to give it a solid basis, without a sense of truth.

This problem is made clear if we look at the problems that the idea of human rights is experiencing today. If there is nothing that we can hold to be true about the human person, over and beyond cultural or historical differences, then the whole concept of human rights is threatened.

On the other and, if we can accept that one can move toward a truer and deeper understanding of a situation, even with great difficulty and the need for a lot of patient research, then one can begin to formulate what is the just thing to do in those circumstances.

The Dominicans discussed in the book "Preaching Justice" committed themselves, sometimes for a whole lifetime, to deepening their understanding of the social problems that faced them, and, thanks to the Thomistic moral formation they received, they had the tools -- an understanding of the moral principles and of the virtues needed for putting these principles into practice -- to formulate just responses to them.

Q: Are the concepts of the social apostolate and the new evangelization the same?

Sister Alford: There is a big area of overlap, but I think the two terms are not the same -- and that is why it is worth having both of them.

In the idea and practice of the new evangelization, explicit reference is made to our faith in renewing culture and public life. In the idea of the social apostolate, explicit reference can be made, but does not have to be; the social apostolate can also be carried out in an implicitly faithful way, on the basis of philosophical concepts and principles that are coherent with the faith, but which can also be accepted by nonbelievers.

Servais Pinckaers, the important Dominican moral theologian, shows the crucial importance of the implicit faith-based approach in his contribution to "Preaching Justice" on Dominique Pire, the Belgian Dominican who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1958.

After the war, Pire wrote he was horrified to see the lack of unconditional kindness in the refugee camps: "Some only help Protestants, others only Catholics, and still others will only help Hungarian Catholics." This shock inspired him to devote his life to working with whoever would collaborate with him for peace and reconciliation, and in so doing he lived his vocation as a Catholic and a Dominican to the full.

Q: Benedict XVI encourages Catholics to be engaged in public issues. Why is there sometimes a tendency to remain distant from public spheres?

Sister Alford: I think there are two general comments we can make. First, the idea of the universal call to holiness and the real way in which laypeople are sanctified through their vocation is still relatively new in the Church; while people may no longer think that one has to be a priest or a nun to be really holy, they may not have fully realized what a Catholic politician, or business leader or academic is called to do in bringing their faith to bear on their area of competence -- as we said above, this can be done implicitly as much as explicitly.

Second, the technical complexity of the issues involved can be bewildering. In the face of globalizing financial systems, for instance, what can one say that could be taken seriously by financial experts and also really lead to a more just economic order? The fear of saying something that reveals ignorance of the technical issues involved can hold people back too.

It is here where the Catholic and pontifical universities need to be more active, since we should be forming future leaders in public life with both the philosophical and religious grounding they need to sustain their vocations and the technical competence to be able to tackle real social problems and propose practical solutions.

Louis-Joseph Lebret, the French Dominican who developed the idea of the "human economy," and who was also one of the directors of the top French research institution, the CNRS, is an example to us in this.

Q: As a dean of a faculty in a pontifical university in Rome, what is your perception of the students' interest in social issues?

Sister Alford: I think the fundamental idea that "the Church's social doctrine is an integral part of her evangelizing ministry" -- Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Church, No. 66 -- is still to be fully understood by many students. While some are fully convinced of this, many others have not grasped its significance.