Paloma (r) in Vienna

Paloma (r) at the NGO-DPI conference, New York

Born in Pamplona, Spain, Paloma lives in Vienna and works at the Austrian Catholic Academy of Social Sciences.

Our Daily Journey
The Academy of Social Sciences
Since 1990 I have been working in the Austrian Catholic Academy of Social Sciences, and practically all my activities are organised around it. It is an institution of the Bishops’ Conference, created in 1956 in response to a social pastoral letter which pioneered the line of action later opened up by the Council. The academy was created to “deepen and transmit the Church’s social doctrine”. Ever since its foundation, the management has been entrusted to the Jesuits, so you would have some familiarity with the spirituality that inspires it. But the Jesuits took on this work in close collaboration with the people of HOAC (Brotherhood of Workers - Catholic Action), which has had a powerful influence on the institution’s identity. We devote ourselves to analysis and study, and at the same time to the accompaniment and formation of adults, not only giving courses and seminars, but also taking part in social projects, or launching our own projects. Among these are, for instance, the network in favour of the basic wage in Austria, or the project “ethical investment” with which we are trying, on the one hand, to get this debate going in Austrian society, and on the other, to form groups of people who would like to invest their savings according to criteria of their choice.

Ecumenism and networking
We collaborate with movements, not just in our own Church, but in churches in the plural, since there exists a very active ecumenical network to which we belong. We also co-operate with NGOs, even though they sometimes have little or no interest in the religious aspect of things. But that doesn’t matter. Here, as everywhere, I suppose, the lines of demarcation in social work and in the fight against discrimination do not usually coincide with denominational boundaries. A movement for others is also a “movement which is demonstrated in action” (Santiago2, 18). We are in contact with politicians too, almost always from the local area, since here it is mostly on the municipal level that the struggle against social discrimination takes place. At this point, I realise that I am giving an over-rosy picture of the academy. But what can you expect? That’s how I see it. The institution has a team with its own unique character, open to widely varying points of view; they really strive to make their contribution to a world of greater justice and solidarity. They don’t confine that to mere words or projects on paper. This spirit is also shown in the internal structure of decision-making and in economic questions. Had it not been for our internal co-operative organisation, we would have ceased to exist long ago, because of the way things are developing in this country; there is a growing stress on neoliberal policies, with the suppression or cutting of social funds, and a longstanding, strongly negative attitude to the Catholic Church. Since I finished my thesis in 1996, I have been devoting myself to social investigation, specifically on questions of family life and discrimination, with special emphasis on the integration of immigrants. Like most of my companions, I combine this type of “heady” theoretical work with adult education, and in recent years that education is concerned very particularly with questions related to Information Technology. My primary interest in it is not from the methodological point of view (though that too interests me), but especially as an ingredient of our daily life nowadays; it is influencing our perceptions and behaviour, modifying our systems of political participation and opening up so many new breaches in the social fabric.

I am very grateful to be able to combine reflection and praxis. I have been growing constantly more aware that knowledge, at least the type of knowledge that is recognised socially, brings power. In spite of this, I have always felt it is important for me to try to understand the world around me and learn from anyone I may hear (or read). There is no experience without reflection. Study means coming to grips with complex or obscure processes, striving to understand them a bit better and pass on to others the information that really counts, i.e. information about factors that are making their mark on our lives; it seems to me that it’s a service like any other. Being able to search with other people, to accompany one another, to seek direct contact with those who have to live in hard and unjust situations, to aim at communication not just according to what we think, but according to what we are, making sure of our mutual growth – this is a service I am grateful to be able to give. Education makes us more human, or it is not education.

The passion for the possible
Bishop Gaillot defined Christian social work as “the passion for the possible”. Passion, because without a passion for life and for the people we call “us” in the Our Father, the door closes on utopia to open on what is merely and barely possible, and, after that, on a more or less well-disguised indifference. The possible, because we also put at risk the people we call “us” when we persist in living on dreams that cannot bear the slightest confrontation with reality, when through lack of reflection we get our priorities wrong, when in the name of what “must” be done we rant on without realising the needs and priorities of others. We feed the passion of the possible by living in a permanent search for answers that are valid today; tomorrow God will show us what is needed then. From that perspective, one way of praying with the Our Father is to say: “show us today just where to tread”, the one step that is appropriate for today.

Paloma Fernández de la Hoz rscj
Province of Central Europe