The tenacity of hope

Thursday, November 25th, 2021

Recently some readers of my blog “Another Voice” told me they fear I am becoming “negatively critical and pessimistic”.

Their remarks surprised me. I am critical but I think it is healthy and responsible to be constructively critical.

Being critical, however, is not the same thing as being negative. And I am really not pessimistic.

But I am a clear-eyed realist and greatly concerned about the problems that confront present and future generations in our contemporary world.

This reflection does not focus on the problems. I call it the “Tenacity of Hope” because I am not a prophet of doom. And my faith and my reading of history give me hope and encouragement.

Yes very big problems confront us today: political and religious polarization, climate change, and, of course, a rebounding coronavirus.

If people work together, all of these problems can be resolved. I do believe that.

For some problems it may take a lot of time. For other problems like the pandemic, there will be yet more suffering and death before we can say we have safely moved beyond that.

One’s life perspective is important

As an older historical theologian, I am also confident that there will be a greatly needed reconfiguration of our Christian Churches. But I am not certain I will live to see it.

Right now I enjoy witnessing what I call the new Church transformation movements, like those involving women priests.

And I find encouragement from truly well-informed contemporary theologians – like the men and women teaching and researching at the Catholic University of Leuven. They know the tradition and its history. They understand and know how to interpret today’s signs of the times.

One’s life perspective is important. I grew up with family stories about fear and hope.

In corona days I have thought a lot about my father, his four brothers and, of course, my grandmother.

My grandfather, Alonzo William Dick, a schoolteacher in Indiana, died in 1919 in the Great Influenza epidemic of 1918-1920. Most of his children as well as my grandmother were too sick to attend his funeral.

Town authorities in Montpelier, Indiana wanted to put the boys in foster care homes. My grandmother said, “Absolutely not.”

She had a big challenge in front of her. Fortunately, there were neighbours and family members who encouraged and helped her, especially in the first couple of years after Alonzo’s death.

It was not always easy but she raised the five boys on her own and they all became wonderfully mature, optimistic, warm and wise adults.

Their mother had often reminded them – and often reminded me as I was growing up — that “bad things do happen but we cannot allow them to destroy us”.

Historical reminders that give us hope

Yes, my perspective and optimistic vision are historically based. I look at what happened in the past, what is happening today, and what can happen tomorrow.

These days I also find that my current Belgian environment is helpful when reflecting about tragedies and the tenacity of hope.

Although I was born and grew up in Michigan (USA), I now live in Leuven (“Louvain”). Many years ago I came here to complete a doctorate, was offered a job, and never left…But I am still very much a US American.

Historical reminders are all around my family and me. In our back yard, my wife and I can look at the area, not far from our house, where there was once the local community hanging-tree.

Soldiers of the fiercely anti-Protestant Duke of Alba, “The Iron Duke,” used the hanging-tree in the sixteenth-century religious wars to execute citizens of Leuven suspected of Calvinist sympathies.

Alba, strongly supported by Pope Pius V (1566-1572), was governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1567 to 1573. During those six years, across the country, he executed more than a thousand people.

Nevertheless, Leuven not only survived.

It flourished because enough people maintained courage and hope. And the area of the local hanging-tree — which I am sure is unknown to most contemporary people — has been greatly transformed and is now quite safe and peaceful.

Life is stronger than death.

Hopeful people can pick up and move forward

Close to 350 years after the terrorism of the “Iron Duke,” Leuven suffered again in World War I. Starting on August 25, 1914, and over the course of five days, German troops burned and looted much of the city and executed hundreds of civilians.

Our world-renowned university library with its magnificent collection of ancient manuscripts was burned. This provoked great national and international outrage.

Nevertheless, people did not give up and Leuven was rebuilt. And, starting in 1921, thanks to countless fundraisers (mainly Americans) and the personal efforts of Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), who was chairman of the Commission for Relief of Belgium, a new library could be built.

Then, just about thirty years later, the city was bombed in World War II. There was great devastation. Again, people picked up, rebuilt, and moved forward.

The tenacity of hope.

Hopeful people pick up and move forward. But thanks to the narrow-minded, and often belligerent behaviour of the anti-vaxxers, we are confronted with a major resurgence of the coronavirus.

So our contemporary challenges are very real.

I confess that I find it very easy to point my fingers at and write articles about problematic and negative people. I get annoyed and frustrated. But I know we need to work against polarization and I do try to reach out to the problematic and negative.

It is not easy. I have lost a lot of Facebook friends in the process.

Examples of hope-filled men and women

From the Apostle Paul, I know that “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful” (1 Cor 13: 4–5).

And I know as well that, in my dealings with negative and often obnoxious people, I do need to be humbly alert to the exhortation of Jesus in Matthew 7 and Luke 6: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

Thinking about strengthening our own tenacity of hope, we greatly need to learn from the examples of hope-filled men and women.

My old friend, Archbishop Jadot, the subject of my recent book, was for me a supportive teacher.

I remember complaining to him about problems in the church and my frustrations with problematic bishops. One US archbishop had tried very hard — but without success — to get me fired from the University of Leuven.

Jadot looked at me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said: “Yes it is winter now. But spring WILL return.”

We all need people like Jean Jadot in our lives.

Actually, I guess we are all called to be prophets of hope and hopeful change. We need to critically examine our own perspectives because they can make us open or closed.

“Noble, generous and heroic”

A few days ago I met a very old fashioned-thinking young priest. His theology was medieval and his comportment was haughty and arrogant.

What a disappointment.

Then a couple of days later I met a group of energetic young men and women, who are theology students at our university. They are wonderfully bright, well informed; and their theological perspectives are contemporary and pastoral.

What a delight. What a healthy perspective.

These young people who are working on advanced theological degrees are, indeed, whether they realize it or not, prophets of hope and hopeful change for today and for tomorrow.

In a couple of weeks, one of my adult discussion groups will discuss an article about the English anthropologist Jane Goodall (b. 1934). She is a wonderfully prophetic and inspiring person.

I remember Reason for Hope, the book she wrote in 1999 with Phillip Berman. It details Goodall’s spiritual epiphany and her belief that everyone can find a reason for hope.

“Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference,” she wrote.

And she continued with these lines:

It is these undeniable qualities of human love and compassion and self-sacrifice that give me hope for the future. We are, indeed, often cruel and evil. Nobody can deny this. We gang up on each one another, we torture each other, with words as well as deeds, we fight, we kill. But we are also capable of the noblest, generous, and heroic behaviour.

The tenacity of hope.

With constructive criticism and collaborative efforts, we can indeed be “noble, generous, and heroic” in Church and in civil society.

John Alonso Dick is a historical theologian and former academic dean at the American College, KU Leuven (Belgium) and professor the KU Leuven and the University of Ghent. His latest book is Jean Jadot: Paul’s Man in Washington (Another Voice Publications, 2021).
First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.