Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

tion, and other humiliations were the rule, even if one should not overlook the fact that there
were capable colonizers „ whose skills and technical know-how brought benefits to many
untamed lands, and whose work survives to this day. The structural machinery they introduced...did
help to reduce ignorance and disease, to promote communication, and to improve
living conditions“(Populorum progressio, 7). Negro slavery prevailed into the nineteenth century.
It is estimated that, in the course of the centuries, approximately three million blacks
were hauled to America, a frightful number when one considers that probably just as many
perished in the slave hunts and on the transport ships.
Four conclusions follow:
a) The age of colonialism is at an end. States which strive desperately to retain the remains of
their colonial domination have not understood the signs of the times. Among all nations of the
world, the consciousness of their own freedom and of the dignity of every person is extremely
alive.
b) Western culture and civilization cannot be set up as the norm for all mankind. Certain expressions
of Western thought such as technology and industrialism have indeed traveled
around the whole earth, but it must, of course, be observed that even these phenomena assume
a different shape in each case among the individual nations. The unique value and right to
existence of all cultural areas is to be recognized as a matter of principle. It would be foolish
to refuse to realize that Europe has lost its leading position and prestige in the world. The focal
points of world affairs have shifted to other continents. All these developments and
changes show that, for the modern world, which has become a unity and is conscious of this
unity, the law of the reciprocal fertilization of different cultural areas must hold if worldwide
catastrophes are not to come about. It is understandable that former colonial nations embraced
an exaggerated nationalism at first, which hinders the peaceful exchange between cultures. In
many former colonial nations, there is also only a thin stratum of educated people capable of
leadership. But one is allowed to hope that conditions will be normalized in the course of
time.
c) The Church and its mission recognize the value and unique characteristics of all peoples
and cultures. We do not know how long the Church will still make its way through history. It
will perhaps still be many millennia until the return of the Lord, so that only a small part of
Church history lies behind us. The Church of Christ is „bound to no particular form of human
culture, nor to any political, economic, or social system“ (Gaudium et spes, 42). By taking
shape in the different cultures, it receives a new richness and adornment as the queen who
„takes her place at your right hand in the gold of Ophir“ (Ps 45:l0). 78
d) Whoever surveys the history of colonialism will have to consider it as a moral obligation
for the European nations to come to the aid of the former colonial nations.
§ 2 Development Aid
1. The Moral Obligation of Development Aid
A worldwide power of suggestion is proceeding today from the developed industrial society.
Nations that have lived for millennia in a certain static contentedness have awakened and
come to a new consciousness. This awakening, however, is taking place with a view to the
comforts of civilization in the developed industrial states in the face of which they feel themselves
to be disinherited, backward, or even exploited. As the industrial working classes of
78 Cf. Joseph Höffner, An den Quellen der Evangelisierung 2nd ed., Themen und Thesen, vol. 7 (Cologne: Presseamt
des Erzbistums, 1974); idem., Kolonialismus und Evangelium, 3rd ed. (Trier, 1972).
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