In search of a national equilibrium

By Roberto Veiga González

HAVANA – The Cuban nation, especially the society living on the island, is today a lot more plural, perhaps more plural than ever. That diversity is increasingly deepened and established. There is also an increased intensity in the way the various stances are expressed and how they position themselves in relation to one another.

This can be extremely positive, because the diversity of analyses, criteria and proposals always enriches the nation’s life. It constitutes a possibility to warn of the failings that harm the social activities and facilitates the search for new courses that can lead the country toward greater prosperity and greater balance.

However, despite such a plurality, there might be no joint effort to benefit the country.

The members of a society form a body of persons wherein each one is unique and unrepeatable. For that reason, they can complement each other, because each possesses some attribute that is lacking in the others. Nevertheless, this is attained only when there is a positive relationship among all the members.

Obviously, such a positive relationship does not mean an angelical bond bringing the members of society together. It doesn’t intend to make discrepancies and tensions disappear. However, it does try to incorporate a methodology of social relationship based on an opening toward those who think differently, based on civility and understanding.

Without that, there will only be an unfair competition among all the views, where those participants who have greater quotas of power will impose themselves – perhaps with some doses of exclusion. Evidently, this is not what many of us wish for Cuba.

However, we’ll get there if the growing national plurality that somehow makes its presence known does not correct certain coordinates. It is worrisome that many people uphold their criteria by undermining the bases of the others and condemning those who think and act differently from them.

This does not mean that we should stop making a critical analysis of the pillars of others’ opinions and behaviors or stop pointing out any wrongdoings, but it means that we must do it with objectivity, respect and even consideration.

Also inescapable is the fact that critical analysis and condemnation do not constitute the essential perspective of one’s relationship with diversity. Rather, it is the search for roads on which we can walk together – even while being different – to create a country where we can all live together in the most harmonious way possible.  

To do this, it is necessary to incorporate a culture of respect, of authentic respect. This attitude – which is always positive – establishes a certain deference toward the other party, capable of making us consider his attitude and criteria even when he seems to be undeserving of sympathy. Respect, therefore, calls on us to accept a priori that “the other fellow” may be right, or at least partly right.

To this end, we must accept that no opinion should necessarily be the absolute expression of the truth, because nobody has a monopoly on knowledge and universal information, which is mandatory to form an absolute judgment on things.

In that sense, it is possible to affirm that each person’s opinion can possess only some aspects, elements or moments of truth. Therefore, we can conclude that the unity of the truth is pluralistic and leads us to a free and integrative dialogue.

Of course, to attain such respect and the aforementioned dialogue, humility is indispensable. Without it, it would be difficult to accept that perhaps “the other fellow” is right and to accept the need to think together in order to approach what is correct.

Humility is truth, said Saint Teresa of Jesus.

It is also the human capacity to understand that nobody is superior to others in dignity and, consequently, in opinion, rights and duties, and that therefore only through a common and brotherly approach can we attain what’s right, what’s just. But humility, we must acknowledge, is a virtue proper to intelligent and kind people who are psychologically well balanced and sure of themselves, educated in hearts and minds.

For that reason, I think I can affirm that, to work toward improving our country, we must begin from a personal analysis of conscience, in search of our lack of humility and the potential for love that’s inscribed in human nature.

With this possible ideal in mind, an ideal we can approach, our magazine, Espacio Laical, proposes the construction of Casa Cuba [Cuba House], that beautiful metaphor that more and more Cubans inhabit daily. When our publication talks about Casa Cuba, it sees two horizons.

The first one, Cuba as a single and great family whose members have differences but acknowledge and accept a link that binds them: the love of one’s own, which emerges from a shared history, as well as the present and a future still to be built.

The second, Cuba as a house, a home where everyone finds a welcome and understanding; a space where everyone experiences the tranquillity that their dreams and accomplishments, their joy and sadness, are truly shared.

The Catholic Church wishes to help build that. And, to do so, wishes to accompany and serve every Cuban, wherever he or she may live, in the task of life, both personal and national. In that sense, it wants to dialogue with all opinions, to offer spaces so Cubans may express themseves – so long as their intention is to procure goodness through goodness – and contribute to an understanding of all the positions, as well as to assume everything positive from the gamut of opinions and desires of society, to profile it from evangelical foundations and promote it.

To achieve that responsibility, the Church desires to broaden religious freedom, with the objective of contributing to the spiritual development of society, thus laying down the foundations for the nationalism that the Church offers to Cuba. This nationalism has its roots in the proposal of priest Félix Varela, one of the most exalted founders of our nationality, wherein he affirms that a nation will exist to the degree that we practice patriotism, patriotism will exist to the degree that we practice virtue and virtue will exist to the degree that we grow in spirituality.

With this proposal, which is adopted by many Cuban Catholics, we hope to build a very free, very plural Cuba, but also fraternal – or at least respectful – and very just. We emphasize that we must promote these categories (freedom and plurality, fraternity and justice) and achieve an intrinsical relationship between these binomials because only if we’re supported by this relationship can we achieve a grand, i.e., prosperous and balanced nation, both materially and spiritually.

Attorney Roberto Veiga is editor of the magazine Espacio Laical [Lay Space] at the Archdiocese of Havana.

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