Chai Brady
Using technology to fly millionaires to space is symbolic of a culture of waste, Chai Brady hears
Billionaire Sir Richard Branson’s flight into the fringes of space as part of his new private space tourism company is symbolic of a “culture of waste” according to an Irish Jesuit.
Fr Kevin O’Higgins SJ, who spent half his ministry in the slums of Paraguay, said Sir Branson’s flight into space was an example of society’s need to make ethical choices with resources.
“I think technological advance in itself is obviously a good, and scientific advance in itself is obviously a good but watching the Branson flight, it seemed to me to symbolise the need for ethical choice in what we do with that kind of knowledge and advances, especially when you look at the state of the world and the fact that for so many people just their very basic needs aren’t addressed or taken care of,” Fr O’Higgins said.
“On the other hand, it seemed to me to symbolise in part what Pope Francis often talks about, the culture of waste, that the way we use our resources and our technology is often just wasteful.”
Sir Branson’s private space tourism company completed its first flight on Sunday, July 11, using the VSS Unity spaceplane. Its rocket fired the craft and its crew into sub-orbital space at least 80km above the Earth.
Tourism
The company ultimately aims to operate multiple flights a year for tourism purposes and already has more than 600 customers, including Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio. A seat costs $250,000 (€210,625).
“When I saw names like Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio, it just seemed to symbolise as well the celeb culture of boredom,” said Fr O’Higgins.
“We’re constantly reading about these very wealthy celebs desperately looking for experiences to fill their lives which must be very empty. It symbolises the enormous gap between those who can afford to spend their money, people like Branson and Jeff Bezos. There’s an ethical choice there and certainly from the Christian perspective it doesn’t seem to be the right choice to be spending our money, or using our resources in that way when as I say, for so many people just their very basic needs are ignored.”
Having helped the poor in the slums in Asunción, Paraguay, Fr O’Higgins said he would identify completely with the experience Pope Francis brought with him from working in the marginalised barrios in Buenos Aires in Argentina.
Fr O’Higgins currently works in Ballymun and is the director of JUST (Jesuit University Support and Training), which aims to contribute to increasing third level educational opportunities of people in the area.
“I suppose my experience in Paraguay heightened that awareness of the gap between rich and poor… which is part of what led me to live in Ballymun,” he said.
“We have our education project in Ballymun, because the same kind of gaps exist here though they are not as obvious because we haven’t got the same material poverty but the gap in terms of education, job opportunities and even life expectancy, people’s access to basic things like just healthcare, it’s shocking…”
Singling out
Fr O’Higgins admits that singling out Branson and his space tourism project “might seem a bit unfair”, but said it is one example of “many similar projects that are catering to the very, very wealthy elite, who often don’t know how to spend their money as they have so much of it and that gap as we know is widening all the time”.
“The wealthiest people, like Bezos and Gates and so on, their wealth has increased by a staggering amount even during the pandemic,” he said.
The world’s 2,365 billionaires saw a $4 trillion (€3.37 trillion) increase in wealth during the first year of the pandemic from March 18, 2020, to March 18, 2021, according to the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies in the US. This represents an increase in their fortunes of 54% during the pandemic.
The world’s wealthiest person, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, saw his fortune soar to $178 billion from $113 billion, or 57%, during that time, the study found.
Throwaway society
Fr O’Higgins said: “I think it’s a pretty constant call from Pope Francis that I think is often not taken seriously enough, about those kind of scandalous contrasts in the world and that culture that we’re part of, the culture of waste, the throwaway society, which is damaging people, damaging the environment and it’s often just taken as normal.
“There’s a challenge regarding what happens after the pandemic, do we go back to that kind of old normality or are we going to really listen to the kind of thing that Pope Francis and others are saying about the need for a fundamental shift in attitudes and values?”
In Ireland, Fr O’Higgins said, the Church is facing “huge credibility issues” – one of the reasons being the Church hasn’t stood clearly enough with the marginalised at home.
He said: “I think we are still often bewildered by why people are turning their backs, there are some obvious reasons, but I think there are other issues where often we lack credibility. We haven’t often stood clearly enough with the poor here at home.”
Ireland’s bishops, during their 2020 winter general meeting, decided to proceed along a synodal pathway in view of holding a national synod. The process is currently underway, with Fr O’Higgins saying the need for some “very basic changes in how we understand ourselves as Church here in Ireland in terms of social justice but also just basic community” is very relevant to the national synod.
Community
“The notion of a community of the Church here in Ireland where some are very well off and don’t know how to use the wealth they have while others are very poor, yet we’re all supposed to be part of the one Church, it’s just such a glaring contradiction.
“Or the fact that in a Church with so many resources in Dublin you can still have people having to sleep on the street and we never ask ourselves why on earth would anybody be on the street in Dublin with so many church buildings available, that we can’t put buildings before people,” he added.
Problems such as these Fr O’Higgins hopes will be part of the agenda of the national synod, and not just discussions about getting people back to Mass – which he says is important – “but I think it’s how we live that is the more basic issue facing us”.