Invite the poor

Stephen Cave wrote an article not long ago describing the questioning today as to whether we really have free will. He records a current view that the notion was dreamt up by theologians and law-makers – the former to explain the reality of sin (breaking the Ten Commandments) and the latter the reality of crime (breaking the laws of the state). The presumption is that people freely choose to offend.

But how many choices are really free? If we imagine a society where there are very few choices we find people just do what they have traditionally done for centuries. They have no other options. In what sense do they have free will? Or how do we explain that there are far more Afro-Americans in US prisons then whites? One obvious explanation is that historically they have enjoyed less educational and economic advantages than whites and have had a hard time breaking out of poverty. Need, or just sheer frustration, leads them into crime and so to prison. What, Cave asks, do a deprived person and a privileged person have in common when we say they both enjoy “free will”?

From my little experience in Zimbabwean and Zambian prisons I have often  asked myself how many of the people I meet there committed their crime “freely”? For how many of them was it circumstances that was largely led them to it?

The Church and the state both view transgressions according to their laws but the actual offender may be anywhere on a broad spectrum of “freedom”, from a person who is fully aware of the crime/sin they are committing to another who is such a victim of circumstances they have virtually no choice but to do what they did.

I do not think that anyone would deny human beings can make choices but it can be a rather theoretical statement and many on our planet have virtually no experience of it. So when Jesus says, “Invite the poor” he is appealing to us to open the way to freedom for the many who have little experience of what it means. It is of great interest that this question is being addressed today both by the state and by the Church.

Philosophers are making us aware of the problem and gradually judges will not only apply the law but pay much greater attention to “extenuating circumstances”, mitigating the seriousness of the crime in terms of diminished responsibility. This is widely applied to people judged to be not in their right mind. But there are many in their right mind who, only theoretically, made free choices.

And the whole weight of Pope Francis’ recent letter, the Joy of Love, is to combine law with compassion. We are beginning to heed Jesus’ exhortation.

28 August 2016                      Sunday 22 C             Sirah 3: 17…29                     Hebrews12:18…24                 Luke 14:7-14