A reaction from Belgium on our Open Letter to Pope Francis on the Ethical Economy.

Rik Verschueren:

“Yesterday I celebrated Easter with our extended family in a Youth accomodation owned by the church. As with many catholic rooted families most of us don’t practice catholicism anymore but are involved in the daily spirituality of educational, ecological, cultural and social work.

I was touched by your letter to the pope and certainly the description:

– ” the reality of real-estate speculation makes many projects unnecessarily difficult to realize.”

We were celebrating Easter on a place where youth was ‘enjoying the open’ in the middle of a village where a lot of economic profit has been made by building on every possible piece of ground. I have witnessed the ‘give away’ of our commons -“the right to build”- to private landlords in the 70’ies, and although we had some successes to conserve some public heritage, it was impossible to stop the alienating and ‘fencing’ urbanisation.

In the game of ‘preservation of the commons’ my brother in law was closer to the established (local) political power than me. I runned a local critical newspaper and was involved in different early -what you can compare to- ‘hackerspaces’.. But indeed, as you described: ” real estate speculation, and often real estate prices made the mutualization of the workplaces a very difficult endeavour.” Most of this ‘common’ spaces disappeared, coöperative initiatives ended. Apart from some wins of nature-preservation in the less capital-intensive not-building-grounds, the only places that resisted the ‘profit optimization’ and individu-oriënted politics were.. the properties of the church.

So we sat there eating and drinking on one of this left ‘open spaces’, telling stories of all the voluntary work family-members -also my late-father- contributed to realise the youth-aaccomodation, while youth was joyfull playing between the trees. My 92-years mother was there too. She had been, as an early-feminist, the first female member of the ‘Kerkfabriek’, the official local managing agency of church property. My eldest sister, who followed my mother in this function, was complaining that the young responsible for the organisations using the church-properties took this spaces ‘for granted’ (as ‘common ground’) and didn’t realise what the difficult task for the board, to balance between conserving and getting liquidity to be able to maintain the properties of the church.

While the idea of powerful, old men, sitting on church-richness and supporting the christian conservative wing still remains, things are changing. The exodus of church-members, the demolition of the social-ideological pillars and the growing volatility of residents (local migration) have destructed the power of the christian-political establishment. This has unseen consequences on the church-properties too. The governance on local church-properties is, since Napoleon, not the domain of the church only, but also of the local politics. These are, if not revanchist, certainly changing. While Napoleon gave the public domain responsibility to co-govern the properties of the church needed to accomplish there non-secular duties, recent generations of politicians put pressure on the church to finance itself by selling its local properties on the private market.

As probably yours, my heart is bleeding when I see that this last conserved semi-communal spaces or sold out and parceled, and the chances for more meaningful uses or destroyed.

I also hold my breath for that huge piece of play-ground used by my former youth-organization, and owned by the local church… where I planted an oak-tree more than 40 years ago…

It wouldn’t be fair not to mention the commune as a ‘saver’ of some ancient church property, but they also have to pay market-prices and or weakened by political instable governance and the involvement of ideological and opportunistic opponents of common-property.
While christians still have to learn to play there role on a more supporting and facilitating base, than on power, their material resources fastly looses their political-juridical cover.

We don’t realize this, but a ‘(kind of) common-conserving’ balance established by.. Napoleon is at stake nowadays.

I think you are right that it is the time to weave the ancient heritage of the ‘exclusive’ but service-oriented ‘common’ resources of the church with the commons-serving movements you describe.

In fact the logic of this movements is closer to the former philosophical ànd juridical ‘property’ logic of church than to the dominating capitalistic short-term real-estate-logic.

For instance: the ground with my loved oak tree, cannot easily be sold because it has been acquired by the church through donations contracting an ‘eternal’ service to the donors.. (!) At least invitation for more long-term governance !

If your proposal is really meant as a win win, I think it can make a chance right by this relatedness to the Church property logic with its less short-time-view based’ and ‘individualistic’ essence than the market-logic. Myself, I feel called at least to support some ‘intergenerational’ work with the youngsters who take there open space to easily for granted and the new governors of church-properties .. and maybe create new meaning for this properties and new space for what you call ‘moral economy'(?)

(Similar interest can be found in the school and care- area. And I can imagine there are opportunities too with non confessional property-owning trusts, evolving private ownerships, and even public-property-agencies.)

Speaking about all this I don’t want to deny the experiences of people who were excluded from the commons of the church, and I certainly respect the offers of many people to liberate our minds and society from a dominant ideology and institution that brought not only good.. But times or changing. The dominant predatory and inhibiting powers or to be met elsewhere. New ethical alliances or obvious to be made.”