Fr. M.D. Philippe: It is difficult to present oneself, especially when it has to be done very quickly, but I will do it, since you ask for it.

First of all, I must thank Bishop Rene Gracida, Bishop of Corpus Christi, for allowing me to do this broadcast. I also very specially thank the Catholic Telecommunications Center of Corpus Christi.

Fr. J.M. Foster: Thank you very much, Father, for your presence here with us. Would you first introduce yourself to us?

I am a Dominican, as you can see: I do not have the same habit as our dear father who is at my side. I entered the Dominicans in France, in the Province of Paris, in 1930. I am therefore becoming an old religious, but, in my heart, I believe that I am still young, and want to be as close as possible to all the young people whom I see and with whom I live. As a Dominican, I was very quickly appointed professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of Fribourg, Switzerland. I say "Pontifical University"; in reality it is the state university of the canton of Fribourg, which depends on Rome. I remained there from 1945, immediately after the war, till 1981, teaching philosophy at Fribourg and also at our great College of Le Sauchoir, France, for some ten years.
At Fribourg I knew students of many different nationalities - I believe of 40 to 45 nationalities - and, one fine day, about 15 years ago, some French students asked me to take care of them in a special way, not only from a philosophical point of view, but also in a spiritual way. This small group of French students asked me to help them and to form them on a spiritual level. This small seed progressively became what we call today the Community of Saint John. If I am here today, it is not because I was professor of philosophy at Fribourg - don't worry, I am not going to give a course of philosophy - but because I was at the beginning of this new community, the Community of St. John, which has recently came to Laredo three years ago. Since some students from the United States had joined this Community, it was normal that after their formation, they could return to the United States. One of them was from Texas, and, as a matter of fact, the first American foundation started in Texas, at the request of the Bishop of Corpus Christi.

If I am here today, it is because the brothers of Laredo asked me to make this program, and I am very happy to do it. I believe it is very important to speak of Jesus as the witness of God, as the one who reveals the mystery of God to us. This is a difficult moment not only in the Church, but in the whole of mankind; we never cease saying it, but it remains true all the same: the Twentieth Century is coming to its close and, as the Holy Father loves to say, "we ought to prepare ourselves for the third millennium". The Twentieth Century, historians will say, is perhaps the century which has known the greatest changes, the greatest mutations. The Church now struggles with an intensity that it has no doubt never known before. We always are tempted to think that the militant Church, the earthly Church, has always known very great struggles, and that the struggles that we now know are not perhaps as strong as the ones of the Fourteenth Century, or those at its beginning. The Church of Christ was born struggling, through the great struggle of the Cross, which was truly the maximum of all possible struggles. An historian, who looks at that from the outside, might say: "Yes, that was a great struggle, a great tearing apart of the people of Israel, but it is the death of a founder." For a believer, it is much more than that: it is the mystery of the Passion, the mystery of the Cross, which remains a summit in the struggles of our humanity. The Church was born in a struggle, and the Church always knows struggles, exterior as well as interior ones.

I was struck very much by what the Pope said during his first stay in France, almost 8 years ago in Paris, at Notre Dame Cathedral. The Holy Father wanted to see the French bishops in a special closed session; I would have liked to have attended, but it was a closed session. I rushed to see the texts of the session, and found a passage which struck me very much. The Holy Father, as everybody knows, had been professor of philosophy at the University of Lublin in Poland. That brought me very close to him, thank God, enabling me to meet him before he was Pope, when he was Cardinal. Meeting him was easier then. It was at an International Thomist Congress, one of the major Congresses celebrating the Eighth Centenary of St.Thomas Aquinas. What the Holy Father said to the bishops struck me very much: the Church is actually living a metatemptation; in the philosophical language of the Pope, a metatemptation is a temptation which goes beyond all the temptations which might have been encountered before. The Holy Father does not hesitate to say that the temptation which the Church is undergoing today is stronger than ever. He explains that this metatemptation is a kind of temptation "par excellence", a temptation which gives meaning to all the other ones. People in today's world would like to bypass God and be saved by themselves. They reject Jesus as Savior, and they believe that, thanks to the progress of science and technology, they will be able to save themselves, and hence will no longer need a Savior. Something like that now exists at an international level, and is very impressive.

When we look at the beginning of Jesus' life, he who was born in Bethlehem, the text of St.Luke underlines: "there was no longer any place for him in the inn's common room of the little town of Bethlehem, the town of David." All the descendants of David had to come for the census, but there was no longer any room for Jesus. Obliged to go outside of Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph took shelter in a stable, a place where animals spend the night. It was in this stable that Jesus came into our world; for us, believers, he is the Son of God who was incarnated and who came to show us how much God loves us, to reveal to us the great mystery of God's love. Israel ignored this marvelous gift of God, even though God had for 2000 years prepared a people to receive the Messiah. Because God hid himself, nobody knew the profound sense of this birth, except Mary, Elizabeth her cousin, Zachariah and Joseph. The people of Israel ignored it all. Jesus wanted to come into our world, I was almost going to say, while surprising us: there was no place for him in Bethlehem, even though he was the descendant "par excellence" of David. The whole progeny of David takes its full meaning in the birth of Jesus, but there was no longer any place for him.

Something similar today impresses me very much. For almost 2000 years, we have prepared ourselves for the end of these 2000 years, but through philosophers, their philosophers, their sages, people now no longer have any place for God in their heart and in their intelligence. They want to acquire a sort of autonomy, of self-sufficiency so that they can be saved by themselves. This can occur in different ways. Religious traditions which played a very important role in ancient civilizations, (for the first philosophers of our western culture, the Greeks) - all these religious traditions which have played a role at the beginning of the coming of Jesus - all are relegated to the background. We consider them myths which undoubtedly allowed humanity to emerge, to have a certain culture; but we no longer need them: they are myths of an ancient, primitive culture, but mankind now evolves through great, rapid, constantly accelerating progress.

Speed is one of the special characteristics of today's culture; accelerated change has increased to the point that some wise men have become alarmed, for they believe that people can no longer fully assimilate all that their precursors have discovered or follow the pace of this acceleration. In a scientific culture, such acceleration sets the pace of everything. Technology, which finds practical applications to these discoveries, increasingly creates a culture centered around efficiency. This might be well-intentioned: it allows people to live better, allows them to gain more control over themselves, and attain a greater well-being. But there is a danger: we must ask ourselves whether this new culture, this great progress of science and technology, really serves people; or is it on the contrary using them? It is a question which, as a philosopher, - I taught philosophy for many years -I ask myself from time to time: does scientific progress truly serve mankind, or is it man who serves scientific and technological progress? I like to stress this question, and I believe that we basically find ourselves faced with this great temptation: can we save ourselves? Are we capable, by our science, by our techniques, which are so marvelous, of saving ourselves? It is clear that I do use technology: I came here in a plane, and very rapidly; thank God, there was no accident, no delay; technology is marvelous, it helps us enormously. Think of what the Pope does for the whole world through his pilgrimages: without technology, it could not be done. Thanks to technology, thanks to the progress of medical science, he was saved a first time, and now he continues his life as Pastor of the entire world. Compared with the life of Jesus, there is astonishing contrast: Jesus remained in Palestine, remained around Jerusalem, around Galilee. When we make pilgrimages into Israel, we see how marvelous this small land is where the Son of God lived, where his footprints in the desert still remain. Jesus remained in Galilee for thirty years. In three years of his papacy, the pope has traveled throughout the entire world. This development of technology is marvelous, but can it give us happiness?

One of my friends, who is dead now, was a disciple of Freud; still pursuing his psychological studies, he had been invited to London to study the case of children who were murderers. During this year, he and seven other doctors saw four hundred cases. They were meeting regularly to try to understand what is happening in today's world, and asked themselves: how is it that these children kill, how is it that they are so aggressive and do not hesitate to wound their brothers, their sisters, their little companions or even kill them? And these doctors, looking for the cause, said: "These children lacked love"; we would have been able to say it right away! but with them it came as a more scientific conclusion and, as such it was more communicable! These children were lacking love, and they added: "Today's world is in great need of love".

I believe that they touched something which is very true: prodigious efficiency and speed have never before reached such astonishing levels, as can be seen for example, with planes. In one sense there is a real progress, but in another one we no longer respect man, his profound life, all his dimensions. People are swept along, in spite of themselves, when they don't follow the scientific current. If we do not join in scientific and technological progress, we quickly become marginal; we no longer can follow its movement, and, by that fact suffer a sort of atrophy of our heart in which we can no longer love as much as before. Love is lacking in today's world, and - here I speak as a Christian -, the devil takes advantage of it. The only thing which makes him afraid is love, a love which comes from the Savior, which comes from Christ. As soon as there is no longer any love, our imagination takes over and extends itself with terrible force and intensity; the devil then uses this imaginary world. Today, he doesn't even hesitate to show himself openly. He is the prince of pride, the prince of the imaginary; he can hide himself, as he can unmask himself. He pushes people to scorn love and to try to dominate whichever ways. He tries to make us believe that true happiness lies in immediate pleasure and domination. Christians, those who know that the only Savior is Christ, find themselves confronted with this terrible temptation, a temptation of pride, a temptation of domination, a temptation of pleasure.

Then the question arises: what can we do in such a situation? I believe that this is a question not only for the Christian, but for anyone who reflects on all the dimensions which exist in the human heart. We are created not only to earn money, but to be happy with a true happiness in our soul and in our heart. We were created to reach those who are close to us and to truly love them in a reciprocal love of friendship which can find here on earth authentic fulfillment and a true joy.

Fr. J.M. Foster: Father, may I ask you a question? You have talked about some of the most profound problems of today's world and of the Church, which ought to be the representative of Jesus Christ in our midst. Often it seems that the Church, which somehow belongs to this world, is so different from the very simple and pure Church that Jesus Christ founded. How can we see in today's Church this presence of Jesus Christ, this presence of the Holy Spirit, which was so evident at the beginning of the Church?
Fr. M.D. Philippe: I believe that this will be the central question of these different programs: to try to understand that the Church is not an obstacle, but that it ought to be a kind of disposition which leads us to Christ.