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Social Justice and the Sacred: Exploring the Thought of St. Alberto Hurtado, S.J. ed. by Scott FitzGibbon, John Gavin, S.J. and Fernanda Soza

2022; The Catholic University of America Press; Volume: 108; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cat.2022.0060

1534-0708

Henry Shea,

Religious and Theological Studies

Reviewed by: Social Justice and the Sacred: Exploring the Thought of St. Alberto Hurtado, S.J. ed. by Scott FitzGibbon, John Gavin, S.J. and Fernanda Soza Henry Shea S.J Social Justice and the Sacred: Exploring the Thought of St. Alberto Hurtado, S.J. Edited by Scott FitzGibbon, John Gavin, S.J., and Fernanda Soza. (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press. 2021. Pp. 212. $35.00. ISBN: 9780916101091.) There are few figures more important in the history of the Catholic Church in Chile than Alberto Hurtado (1901–1952). One of only two canonized Chilean saints, Hurtado entered the Chilean province of the Society of Jesus in 1923 and yet would complete most of his Jesuit formation in Europe. Returning to Chile in [End Page 428] 1936 as a newly ordained priest with a doctorate from Louvain, Hurtado embarked upon a broad and vigorous spiritual, intellectual, and social apostolate. Within a period of roughly fifteen years until his death in 1952, he authored eleven books and dozens of articles in spirituality and social ethics. He founded the journal Mensaje to address social issues from a Catholic perspective. He established a new Catholic organization to assist labor unions, the Acción Sindical Chilena, and perhaps most notably, he founded the Hogar de Cristo, or the “home of Christ,” which remains one of the largest and most active charitable foundations in Chile today. Despite his prolific authorship and undeniable impact, however, there remains a paucity of scholarship on Hurtado in the English language. For this reason alone, this rich and diverse compilation of academic essays on Hurtado, which is the fruit of a conference on his life and thought held at Boston College in 2018, makes a welcome contribution. Yet as this volume amply demonstrates, there are several deeper reasons that Hurtado merits our sustained attention. In an illuminative and nuanced essay placed near the outset of this collection, Fernanda Soza provides the historical context for Hurtado’s work and ministry. He lived through a period of social and political upheaval in which increasing inequity provoked increased conflict between rival ideologies. While such polarities were not unique to the Chilean context and may even remind us of our own, the profile of Hurtado emerges as more distinctly exceptional. Few figures have combined academic research, public advocacy, and direct social action on behalf of the poor with such inspired, discerning spiritual vision. Even as Hurtado’s devotion to personal charity on behalf of those in need was a fundamental constant of his life, Samuel Fernández, in a well-documented essay analyzing the development of Hurtado’s thought, illustrates how the saint became gradually more committed to structural reforms of a political and economic nature. He advanced markedly progressive positions on the right to education, the right to adequate “housing, the right to unionize and strike, the family wage, and the right to social security” (p. 50). His approach was “integrative rather than dialectical” (p. 93), however. In Hurtado’s last major work, Moral Social, which was first published posthumously in Spanish in 1952 and recently translated and published in English by Soza and Scott FitzGibbon, Hurtado emphasizes that transformation must come both for individual human beings and for the collective structures and society in which they live, all of which are called to be conformed to Christ. Here the distinctiveness of Hurtado’s contribution also rises in relief. In a deeply insightful final essay, John Gavin explains how the mystery of theosis, or the participation of human beings in the supernatural life of God in Christ, provides the theological and spiritual backdrop to all of Hurtado’s writings and endeavors. As emphasized by the nouvelle théologie to which Hurtado was introduced during his formation in Europe, the end not only of the human person but of all human society finds its fulfillment only in this mystery of deification, as within the communion of saints and the body of Christ. Here, what Hurtado describes as a sentido or actitud social, as that which moves us to “seek justice in a broken world,” and the [End Page 429] actitud catolica, as that which moves us by grace towards deifying communion, converge in Christ...