The end of historical consciousness? A comment on sections 13-14 from the encyclical Fratelli tutti

Abstract

In §§ 13 and 14, the Encyclical Letter Fratelli tutti deals with the crisis of historical consciousness and the serious consequences of the contemporary ideology of the ‘end of history’.

The claim to "build everything from scratch" is a sign of the crisis of modernity and destroys the possibility of building the future. Contemporary man seems to want to do the opposite of what the historian does and what the Church proposes in the conviction that the time of Salvation cannot be only chronological. The attempt to "possess" time and to translate it into something material, into a prize, hides the fear of believing, which arises from the feeling of our fragility.

Historical knowledge and historical awareness are not the same thing, but both are necessary for faith and human coexistence. Knowing the facts of others and ordering one's own is indispensable for judging reality and provides good arguments for the demand for justice, which is always a comparative evaluation based on the awareness that if life is a divine gift, historical research is a precious human gift for orienting us in time.