Luis Fernando Figari on the youth of today

The founder of Sodalitium Christianae Vitae and other ecclesial associations speaks about his impressions of - and his hopes for - the youth of today.

By Ursula Murua

Ya es hora (“This is the hour!”) has handed me the task of interviewing Luis Fernando Figari. He is the founder of several important associations of the Catholic Church. Among them is the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (founded in 1971), a religious institute of priests and consecrated laymen, the Association of Mary Immaculate (founded in 1975), the Christian Life Movement (founded in 1985), a society for consecrated women called the Marian Community of Reconciliation (1991), the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Reconciliation (1993) and finally, for the time being, a society of nuns, the Servants of the Plan of God (1998).

Luis Fernando Figari is a consecrated layman, which we might consider the equivalent of a brother in older religious congregations. He is a very well known writer and speaker, even beyond the borders of his native country. He is also currently an advisor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity. He was born in Lima, Peru in 1947 where he spent his childhood years. He studied in a Catholic high school, the Pontifical Catholic University and the Pontifical Faculty of Theology of Lima.

In his early youth he was involved in politics, inspired by the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, and by the book Peruanidad (“Peruvianness”) by Victor Andres Belaunde, the famous Peruvian thinker. He was passionate about what seemed to him the epic sense of existence. He looked for a new answer to help his country and he read widely about politics hoping that it might provide it. After some years of involvement he discovered that politics wasn’t the way to change the grave socio-economic situation that he witnessed in his country. It is well known that since he was a child Luis Fernando had a great social sensitivity, a trait he had learned in his family home.

Towards the beginning of the seventies he began to see politics as a calling for other people, and not for him. At the age of fifteen, full of religious yearnings and convinced that the answer he was looking for was to be found along the road of faith, he dedicated himself to exploring the religious answer. He began to live an intense process of conversion.

His social sensitivity did not abandon him and he found a channel for it in the social teaching of the Church, of which he became an exponent and important promoter during a time in which it was valued by few and attacked by many. Today, thanks to people like Luis Fernando Figari, the Church’s social teaching again resonates widely. In the concrete field of his preferential love for the poor, the works he has instigated and his approach towards the needy are an eloquent testimony of a person who joins thought and action, prayer and the concrete.

A man ahead of his times, he has been misunderstood by some and applauded by many. The applause doesn’t interest him, actually it rather makes him uncomfortable. He lives a simple and modest life. He prefers to be addressed informally rather than with deference. His demeanor is natural and polite, he knows how to laugh and also how to take things seriously.

Misunderstood at times he may be, but Luis Fernando is not afraid of being criticized as a ‘sign of contradiction.’ “As a matter of fact,” he says, “that’s what Our Lord is. One of the books which has most touched me is written by Karol Wojtyla, today the Holy Father, John Paul II, and is called Sign of Contradiction. It is the text of a profound retreat he gave to Pope Paul VI and the Vatican curia.”

UM: You have worked with young people for over 30 years. Has seeing so many generations changed in any way your concept of ‘youth’?

LFF: Before all else, youth is a stage in the life of a person. It lasts a few years before becoming what we call adulthood. Today, however, there are more divisions…

UM: For example?

LFF: Well, we have what are called “young adults,” or “older adults.” These are modes of naming a reality which in itself doesn’t change. I’m referring to the chronological stages of existence. It’s a cultural question.

Obviously a person is influenced by the passing of decades –who could ignore that? I’ve seen, for example, surprising changes thanks to technological advances. Have you ever seen a jukebox? That’s what vinyl records were played on when I was a child - he says, smiling. Today changes are no longer surprising. Moreover, change itself has become - how shall we say - accelerated. Many changes come with the succession of generations. But young people are not the same all over the world. There isn’t a globalization of youth. There are common features, yes, but, thank God, the personality of youth is maintained, including in urban realities. Young people from rural areas also have their own characteristics. Not all young people are the same. They have their own habits and perspectives of the world, of beliefs. There exists a very wide plurality.

UM: Could you clarify that?

LFF: Each human being is singular, created with a series of characteristics. Each one has a familial environment, a personal history, and his own trajectory. That is, each person gets to be influenced by the family in which he is born, by the environment in which he grows up, by the situation in which he finds himself, by the education which he receives or does not receive, by his own personal reality, by the choices he freely makes. Although he forms part of a certain cultural environment and lives certain trends, the human being is free to choose. This way, in a certain and very real sense, he sets about forming himself from this basic nucleus that he is as a person. And I think that he has the right to do it. That he has the right to see himself free from impositions, to be truly respected as a person, to explore his own interior, to keep attentive to cultural movements, to listen to the advice and warnings of elders... The nucleus of personal freedom is key, and all of us have to respect it. There’s so much to say about what freedom is! Another time...

So, then, even though there are currents and cultural trends that are expressed in youth, or that impact it, every young man or woman is an individual person, with their dignity, rights, and own characteristics. That’s why I talked about plurality. Obviously, between a youth of the 19th century and one of today there exist differences in their ways of seeing the world. Likewise, between a young man of the 20th century and one of today there are differences which can be attributed to cultural changes. But the essence of the human person, there in the young man or woman, remains the same.

UM: What are the new challenges that confront youth at the beginning of the 21st century?

LFF: Before all else I think it is that which in the Church’s teaching has come to be called the “culture of death,” and which implies a diminishment or forced renunciation of the properly human, that is to say, of human nature as such. The lack of appreciation of the humanities which is seen in school curricula in many countries contributes to the ignorance of very important topics in the history of humanity, in literature, in music, in art.

I have nothing against the sciences. When I was at school, at 14 or 15 years of age we had to choose between sciences or humanities. For the penultimate year of studies I chose… sciences. And I did well that year. But thinking of the future, especially of marginalized people whose life situation it seemed to me had to change, I switched to humanities. I thought that it was better to create laws that at that time I believed were the means to the desired change into a more just society.

The simple haste to “get a degree” brings about the search for shorter, or abbreviated, degrees, composed of just the basics (and much of the time lacking in even some of the basics). Education is another topic about which there would be a lot to talk about. The fact is, it seems to me that many young people let themselves be swept along by the current. They assume the criticism and the stages of development which correspond to them, but, allow me a technological metaphor, they lack software. They lack formation in values, in character, in knowledge. There is a lot of information, maybe too much, but it is superficial and produces - to stay with the metaphor - an “information overload.” Obviously youth itself conserves its values, generosity, its look set upon tomorrow, its solidarity. In some cities it is more notable than in others.

UM: Could you signal the most serious challenge?

LFF: It’s difficult...perhaps it lies in relativism with regard to truth, in putting in question whether or not truth is really accessible. Accelerated change helps to give the wrong impression. ‘Everything is changing, therefore there isn’t any truth.’ But that’s a fallacy. There has always been change. And there has always been something which doesn’t change. This is why I spoke of the importance of educating. Moreover, educating for life seems fundamental to me. Today there are many myths, a lot of half-truths. And people, generally all of us, let ourselves be swept along by this flood of information which comes to be, for many of us, like the smog which covers our cities and falls unnoticeably. This is how one lives a functional agnosticism...

It’s a subject that would need to be developed more, it’s sort of half-finished. Nevertheless there is a very interesting book written by a Spanish author, called El Hombre Light (“The ‘Lite’ Man”). Whoever wants to learn in greater depth about these themes should read it. It’s a very suggestive book.

UM: Luis Fernando, could you explain why Pope John Paul II considers hedonism to be the principal enemy of young people?

LFF: Hedonism is a philosophy of life that holds up enjoyment and pleasure as the decisive objective of human existence. It’s nothing new. I think it comes with the concupiscences. Roman hedonistic philosophies - I’m referring to the era of Imperial Rome - opposed Christianity. Following the same logic, it is the same with today’s hedonistic philosophies, or more precisely, with today’s hedonistic praxis, since I think that more than a current of thought - not to deny what it is - it is what we call a forma mentis; it’s something which pervades the culture, which the mind assimilates through the environment, and which drags along whoever succumbs to the current.

For this disposition of mind the search for pleasure would be above any question of good and evil. There are those who identify pleasure with the absolute good. This is the way that we enter the land of egoism and subjectivism, when one’s likes and dislikes become the measure of all things and all fulfillment. Sentimentalism, not sentiment, which is something very human, but sentimentalism - he emphasizes these words - is letting yourself be taken along by pleasant feelings, which are considered good, and feelings of unpleasantness or discomfort, which are considered bad. Certainly this is a serious problem which the culture of death brings along with it.

Today it isn’t something strange to note that in the Pontifical Magisterium, as well as among our own Latin American bishops, there is no scarcity of denunciations of the existence of a hedonistic and consumer mentality which opposes Gospel values. I seem to recall that on one occasion Pope John Paul II pointed to hedonism as a cause of, or at least related to, the marginalization of the religious dimension of culture. Of course, hedonism goes against human realization, altering the meaning of human life and action, whose place is taken by pleasure, although it is not an absolute which lies above good and evil. Hedonism, understood as that identification between pleasure and the good, becomes an obstacle to perceiving the spiritual hunger born of the depths of the human being. It makes for an intoxicating false substitute.

With regard to this, I think I read a piece by a non-Catholic author which makes a comparison between Saint Anthony of the Desert and Caesar. Saint Anthony and his spiritual hunger would have been richer than Caesar, lord of the world and all its pleasures. Saint Anthony would have been responding to this infinite interior hunger, while Caesar would have traded it in for that which is finite and exhaustible. I think the author’s discourse was along these lines. In any case it’s nothing more than an example.

UM: Why is it that young people are increasingly lacking a clear reference or role model?

LFF: More than 60 years ago the Blessed Chilean priest, Alberto Hurtado, had often said that in his country they were invaded by a runaway materialism, and that everyone went about in search of pleasure, without caring for anything else. I’ve associated a few ideas with your previous question: if the forma mentis of the culture of death is non-access to the truth, relativism, materialism, hedonism, subjectivism, then the personal universe contracts, shrinks. The look towards eternity, towards the future, is transformed into the look of Gulliver towards the Liliputians. This way subjectivity suffers from an explosion of egoism that criticizes the good because it doesn’t accept it’s own egoism. It seems illogical, but there would be a self-rejection of that which impedes being and living according to a profound reality, the ontic reality, one might say, of the human being. And like this a certain number of “lite men” evade reality, maintaining a negative vision which sees bad in everything that isn’t their own vision. They are those mercenaries against everything which questions or contradicts them. They want to devalue the good which they do not accept or understand. They don’t tolerate people who represent different values. They’ve made themselves the measure of everything!

UM: That’s affecting young people?

LFF: It’s not exclusively a youth phenomenon. There are many adults involved in this perspective of hate without any reason other than that of the measure of their own subjective vision. And they feed off of each other. They repeat themselves. It’s like some news from the media. One media channel spreads it, then others copy it, and this way it appears that the news is confirmed by the fact that it’s published by various media channels. But on more than a few occasions it is actually an invention. In the past there was a saying, “I’m old, but my heart is young...”

UM: The saying still exists…

LFF: Good! There are adults who have not freed themselves from a subjective and immature vision which leads them to denigrate all the good that they’re not convinced by or that they don’t understand. There are also young people who are disconcerted, lost, and who complicate everything just the same. Usually they evade, flee from the real. Others, even more painfully, turn destructive. But, as I said earlier, it is not a phenomenon of youth, or exclusive to it. Nor do all young people suffer it.

UM: The cause of it would be immaturity, then?

LFF: Look, not all young people are immature. That notion of juvenile immaturity is nothing more than an invention. There are some who, yes, are immature, just as there are immature adults. We mustn’t confuse the lack of mileage covered in terms of years lived with immaturity. They are two different things. And it is precisely the case that very mature young men and women exist who part from this vision of things which in the end leads to nihilism.

There are youth who aspire to the great interior adventure, who discover that which is spiritual in existence, and they are not scarce. They are not a few, like some communications media - cultivators of the diminishment of the human - would have us believe. They are millions and millions of young people who treasure their spiritual hunger and search for someone who can satisfy it. By the way, there are also multitudes of adults in the same situation. How can you explain the two million young people who met at Tor Vergata in Rome [at World Youth Day, 2000] in an atmosphere of searching, of celebration, of prayer? Or the 800,000 who went to meet the Pope in Toronto? And in Spain? A Spanish journalist - of the type who have a taste for proclaiming the end of the Catholic faith - in a moment of sincerity or disconcertedness, wrote: ‘Where did all of these young people who go to see the Pope come from?’

These are palpable facts. To my understanding, in those events which I have mentioned, the participants are like a delegation of that healthy youth, which certainly does exist. Not all of them can travel. Those who go to these encounters are like go-aheads, representatives of the youth who harbor a longing for the infinite. They are of those who responded, with their physical presence, to the convocation of the Vicar of Christ, to take them to the encounter of “He who has the words of eternal life.” Many other millions did the same from their own homes, in their hearts.

If there is a hunger, and if there is confusion in responding to it, it is time to sharpen our vision in order to orient ourselves towards the truth. And let us not forget that Jesus tells us: “I am the truth.”

UM: Do you believe that defending the family implies protecting young people?

LFF: I think that the family has its own worth. Today it is besieged by many people and by many forces which seek to destroy it. The family is fundamental. For a Christian, marriage is a call to holiness through conjugal and familial life. That’s the truth. I’m totally convinced of it.

As the Second Vatican Council has well taught, there is no second-order Christianity. All of the baptized are called to holiness, all of us are called to participate in the mission of the Church, obviously according to our own state. The universal call to holiness also implies constructing a better world, a more just and reconciled world, the civilization of love.

The family is a vocation and marriage is a sacrament. It would be good if people listened to the Church and understood that one should prepare himself for such a high responsibility. The family is a sanctuary of life. To defend the family is to defend its nature, those who constitute it, society itself, and, of course, the human being called to live according to the divine Plan. The decomposition of the family is a tragedy for its members, and the echoes of this tragedy impact upon society as well. We must be passionate about defending the family, its characteristics, its reality as domestic church, as the Second Vatican Council calls it. And the best defense, besides the clarifications, for the proclaiming of the goodness of the family, of the Christian vision of the family, is the example of authentic families, of families that are cenacles of love, that live in mutual respect, in integration, respecting the dignity and human rights of its members, not imposing upon the freedom of any one of them.

The example of families that try to live like this is fundamental. They stop being on the defensive in order to adopt a more positive attitude: the family as the proclamation of life, of peace among human beings, of respect for dignity and human rights, of human relationships respectful of freedom, that precious gift, of love and fidelity between spouses, examples of love and life.

Obviously families like this constitute a true environment of support and impulse for the growth and unfolding of its children. Thanks be to God that here also, it can be said that there are millions of families that endeavor to be cenacles of love.

UM: Finally, how can the family help the young person discover his vocation?

LFF: Definitively my answer must situate itself totally within Christian parameters. I say so explicitly since all my answers are situated within a Christian vision of existence.

The Christian family that lives truly as a Christian family is already a propitious environment for the discovery of the child’s vocation. The family that prays, that proclaims the faith in the home and celebrates it, is a domestic church. The parents are their children’s first educators. To them corresponds the right and the duty to teach catechesis. Christian spouses also have the irrevocable responsibility of the Christian education of their children - in a very emphatic way - through their own example and coherence.

I am convinced that neither the father nor the mother must impose their points of view on the vocation of their sons and daughters. They must accompany them, instruct them and respect their freedom. It is not a matter of leading them but of educating them in freedom. This is very important. Already in his mother’s womb the human being is being formed with his individuality and his own DNA, and is a subject of rights. Children, being persons, have their rights and dignity, just as they have their family duties. That’s why education and the respect for freedom are so important. If parents love their children they won’t prohibit them from going to Mass. In the marriages between a Catholic and a non-Catholic, the non-Catholic commits to not placing any obstacles before the Catholic education of the children. In certain countries, so it seems, the parents, or even the young people themselves, at a determinate age, can ask to be exempted from religion classes. The freedom factor is present.

In this environment of freedom, with catechesis and example, spouses help their children open themselves to God, and to search for what state of life He is calling them to. Instruction about these states of life, respect for dignity and freedom, accompaniment, respectful dialogue and much love are elements which I find determinant in the help that parents offer their children in discovering which vocation they are called to: priesthood, consecrated life, marriage. Vocation is always a travelling along the path to sainthood. And each person has his calling. It’s a fact that God calls the majority to holiness by the road of matrimony. But, not all. Others are called by God to the priesthood or consecrated life. That’s why discernment is so important. It’s crucial for the person. For this reason the function of the parents is that of true accompaniment, loving and respectful.

UM: Anything more to add?

LFF: Well, to say that I trust in people’s capacity for reaction. Despite all the evil that is in the world, I have hope for a change for good. In a special way I believe that youth, in general terms, is a time in which it is easier to realize the necessity of change. The critical sense brings many young people to not stay with the vision that the current trends give them, and at one moment they react and they become “searchers of the truth,” using an expression of the Pope.

This interview of L.F. Figari was originally published in Spanish at www.yaeshora.net on June 29, 2003.

Translation by CLM Resources. The translation and digital version of this document are © by Christian Life Movement. 2005. All rights reserved.

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