The
New Evangelization and Dominican Charism
by David
Keong Seid, O.P.
In one sense, the
New Evangelization is not new for, for the Church is by its very nature
missionary (cf. Ad Gentes Divinitus, no. 2 & Lumen Gentium,
no. 17). What is perhaps unique about he New Evangelization is the
strong emphasis on dialogue and gospel inculturation for contemporary
contexts. Representing one of the Church’s great historic missionary
orders, Dominicans today can be expected to apply their love of knowledge
and their preaching charism to this task, once again “dedicated in a new
way to the universal Church, ‘being appointed entirely for the complete
evangelization of the Word of God” (Fundamental Constitution,
Article III).
While proclamation of the Word—i.e., leading persons and communities who
have not before recognized Christ as Lord and Savior toward explicit
confession and ecclesial communion—represents the pinnacle of evangelistic
endeavor, evangelization in the broadest sense includes any activity that
aims to extend the salvific basileia (reign) of God. Postconciliar
papal encyclicals affirm that the work of evangelization “promotes the
whole human person” (Centesimus Annus, no. 55) and that salvation
is the “great gift of God which is liberation from everything that
oppresses man but which is above all liberation from sin and the Evil One,
in the joy of knowing God … and being given over to him” (Evangelii
Nuntiandi, no. 9). This view accords well with New Testament
theologies that stress Christ’s followers are a priestly and prophetic
people called to extend the dominion of God over all creation for its
renewal, reconciliation, and redemption (cf. Rom 8.20-21, 2 Cor 5.16-6.2,
& Rev 1.5-6).
The major spheres of Catholic evangelization are most explicitly defined
in Redemptoris Missio (nos. 55-57): (1) proclamation, (2) dialogue,
and (3) witness. Witness encompasses all the forms of loving service to
humanity, including not only practical works of charity but also progress
toward a more just social order that respects human dignity and natural
rights.
It seems almost counterintuitive, however, to call dialogue a missionary
path. Yet, the New Evangelization, which urges renewing the faith of
nominal Catholics and the inculturation of the Gospel for new contexts,
cannot proceed without the dialogue it calls for. I wish to argue that
evangelization by means of dialogue is a Dominican forte and that this is
the path by which the Order may once again render its greatest service to
Church and world.
As an Order “instituted especially for preaching and the salvation of
souls” (Fundamental Constitution, Article II), Dominicans have
always valued study both as a practical necessity for the sake of the
mission and also as a form of spirituality. The Book of Constitutions
and Ordination of the Order of Friars Preachers (LCO, no. 77.I) states
that study, a pillar of Dominican life, aims “before all else … to be
useful to the souls of our neighbors.” Moreover,
By study the brethren consider in their heart the manifold wisdom of God
and prepare themselves for the doctrinal service of the Church and of all
mankind. It is all the more fitting that they should devote themselves to
study, because from the tradition of the Order they are more specially
called to cultivate mankind’s inclination toward truth (LCO, no. 77.II).
Given that no individual or group begins with full possession of the
truth, the dialectical processes inherent to critical dialogue assist in the
development of fuller understanding and deeper insight. Successful
preaching and teaching in challenging situations are contingent upon
diligent study and accurate understanding of what is at first “other” or
foreign before proceeding to speak forth or tease out hidden or obscured
truths seeking expression. Dialogue to meet on whatever common ground exists
or remains is all the more necessary when failure has already occurred, as
in the case of marginal Catholics who have yet to experience
transformative conversion in their lives due to subjugation by
secularization and subjection to failed catechesis.
In some instances, the direct goal of dialogue is not conversion although
not necessarily opposed to it. Francis Cardinal Arinze, immediate past
president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, maintains
that interfaith dialogue can aim to foster mutual understanding and respect
that can in turn lead to greater practical cooperation in projects of
common concern (Francis Arinze, The Church in Dialogue: Walking with
Other Religions (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 10). In the
United States, for example, one of the fruits of ecumenical dialogue is the
establishment of a stalwart alliance with orthodox Protestants against
many aspects of the culture of death. One of the most noble goals of
dialogue can be mutual enrichment and even correction. In Asia, many Hindus
and Buddhists have freely admitted and spoken appreciatively of Catholic
Christianity’s galvanizing effect on the struggle for human rights and
social reform in places where their own traditions have up to now only
spoken feebly. Such activity, in combination with dialogue, has placed a
positive pressure on these traditions to correct and develop their own
social doctrine (e.g., the Hindu caste system, Buddhist passivity in the
face of violence).
Thus, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 854) can speak of
the Church’s mission in terms of a journey shared with all humanity while
being a leaven “and, as it were, the soul of human society in its renewal
by Christ and transformation into the family of God.” The process by which
human cultures are Christianized requires much patience, and “it is only
by degrees that [the Church] touches and penetrates them, and so receives
them into a fullness which is Catholic.”
Dialogue and its fruits, then, are often necessary precursors to full
conversion. Dialogue proceeds most smoothly when my partners are able to
trust me, that is, have confidence that my motive is not to have them
simply mirror me but rather to liberate them for their own hearts’ deepest
longings. Gospel inculturation is perfection not dispossession; it is
grace fulfilling, not destroying nature.
Sometimes, though, the heart of an individual or a culture is divided or
confused; it does not know its true self in the imago Dei. Sadly,
the call to dialogue is not always graciously received. At times, it means
demanding that the truth we know gets the hearing it deserves. The
willingness, indeed, eagerness to intellectually engage those who oppose
what we know to be the truth has long been the hallmark of Dominicans in
their finest moments bringing the Gospel to bear upon the issues of age.
Against the Albigensian-Cathar wildfires that sought purification through
denying the goodness of creation, St. Dominic redirected the power of
ascesis to its proper object. Against Western Christianity’s first
frightful brush with another totalizing ideology, Aristotelianism
mediated through Islam, St. Thomas offered a new and brilliant synthesis.
Against the unbridled and brutal colonial exploitation of natives in the
Americas, Fray Bartolome de las Casas and Fray Francisco Vittoria
campaigned for human rights on the basis of human dignity and, in the
process, laid the foundations for modern international law. In an age in
which intellectuals almost took for granted that liberal democratic values
had no home in reactionary religion seemingly on the verge of
institutional extinction, Lacordaire replanted the torch of the Order of
Friars Preachers in the very heartland of the Revolution with Reason’s own
voice.
However, the evangelization of modernity and, now, postmodernity is far
from complete. Mindful of our own traditions and of our own role in
history, the Order has identified the priorities of evangelization and
justice for today in terms of five frontiers (1986 General Chapter of
Avila, no. 22):
The frontier of life and death—the challenge of justice and peace in the
world
The frontier of humanity and inhumanity—the challenge of the marginalized
The frontier of religious experience—the challenge of secular ideologies
The frontier of Christianity—the great religions of the world
The frontier of the Church—the challenge of non-Catholic confessions and
sects
Collectively, these challenges are imposing. In the light of relentless
globalization, the third frontier—the denial of religion and its right to
influence events—impacts everything else and arguably represents the
greatest threat to Christian mission. Yet, we need not be intimidated.
Bishop Allen Vigneron (in The Two Wings of Catholic Thought: Essays on
Fides et Ratio, pp. 103-104) notes:
liberal democratic culture, with its center on the free self, possesses
material for a new incarnation of the Gospel. The agenda of Pope John Paul
II's ministry is to advance this bold strategy, a strategy of millennial
importance. Yes, the liberation of the self was the fulcrum point on which
the Moderns tipped the Christian culture of the first two millennia off
its foundation. Nevertheless, again and again, ... the Holy Father holds
up the dignity of the human person as the cornerstone of the
inculturatio of the Gospel into Modernity. The human person is the
focal point of so much of the doxa of our modern culture, and its
convictions and attitudes on this central theme are the cache containing
the semina verbi which will blossom during this new evangelization
of culture.
The Church's great task, and that of the Order dedicated to her doctrinal
service, is to find and purify these "seeds of the Word" in the culture.
In our day, political philosophies and economic theories deserve
attention. The social sciences can also prove of great value by helping
evangelizers discern and better understand dominant cultural patterns and
cultural narratives. Like the early Church Fathers who pioneered
intellectual engagement with the major philosophies current in their day
by diligently identifying and cultivating incipient or residual traces of
the Word in those pagan societies, we, too, must "articulate the basic
intuitions of the culture and ... explore where these intuitions harmonize
with the Gospel and where they need to be corrected by it" (Vigneron, p.
104).
As has already been said, we need not be intimidated by the challenges
that lay before us. We need not be intimidated for God is with us and ours
is a tradition with more than sufficient resources to draw upon. We need
not be intimidated because, for Dominicans, evangelization in the midst of
strife is our raison d'etre.
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The Culture We Evangelize:
A Review of Tracey Rowland's Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After
Vatican II
(New York: Routledge, 2003)
by Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.
As Catholic
Christians reflect on the effects of the mass media, the culture of death,
consumerism, capitalist globalism, the public education system, and the
relationship between the Church and the state, it is becoming ever more
apparent that the culture of modernity is not a neutral entity that
enables the personal search for truth, goodness, and beauty, including the
perfection and completion of that search in the life of grace. Rather, our
modern culture (and any culture), because it plays a significant role in
shaping human thinking and human behavior, either promotes or hinders the
transmission, reception, and living-out of the Gospel. But what about our
modern culture? Is it naturally open to the Gospel?
In a book that promises to be hotly debated, the Catholic lay theologian
Tracey Rowland responds to the last question with a resounding "no!" She
maintains that the culture of modernity is an obstacle to the preaching
and living out of the Gospel, and thus must be thoroughly critiqued and
replaced by a Christian culture. Rowland deliberately rejects the
mainstream interpretation of Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes and calls
for a "postmodern Thomism," one with a refined theology of culture
equipped for this critique, a Thomism that should also lay the
intellectual groundwork to replace the culture of modernity with a
Catholic Christian culture. I will offer a summary of the book and
conclude with some reflections.
An Overview of the Book
Rowland begins by pointing out a serious lacuna in Catholic theology:
there is no developed theology of culture equipped to critique the culture
of modernity. Her own book seeks to begin this constructive project. She
starts with a perceived gap in the work of Vatican II. Its last and
perhaps most monumental work was the Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World, Gaudium et Spes. It enshrined one of the basic
tenets of the whole Council, the need to engage the world, especially the
non-Christian world, and to do so with respect, acknowledging the goodness
and truth already present among those persons and societies that have not
yet heard of the Gospel.
Rowland's first critique is that the Council never developed an
understanding of the nature of culture. Second, she points to the
dialectical character of Gaudium et Spes, resulting from different
theological camps within the Council. Parts of the document emphasize the
common ground that Catholics already share with non-Christians and
non-Catholics, while other sections emphasize the inadequacy of non-Christocentric
perspectives. She laments that no interpretive key was given by the
Fathers, so that Gaudium et Spes became the subject of radically
different and harmful interpretations. The dominant interpretation right
after the Council centered on the "opening of the windows" metaphor of Bl.
Pope John XXIII. Coupled with the document's vague language of culture's
"legitimate autonomy" from the Church (GS 59), as well as passages that
praise the ability of the human person to come to an understanding of
truth and goodness through the work of philosophy, science, and the arts
(GS 57), Rowland argues that the Council inadequately integrated the
theology of grace, and that it failed to show the influence of sin and
grace in human experience. Rowland goes on to cite an influential cardinal
(Lercaro) and a key theological advisor (or peritus) of the Council
(Bernard Lambert), according to whom the Church needs to give up her role
as a patron of culture, to recognize culture as an entity separate (and
not just distinct) from herself. All of this means that the Council did
not recognize the extent to which sin and grace shape culture, the way in
which culture supports life according to sin or grace, and thus the degree
to which the Church herself must seek to influence and shape culture in a
very direct and deliberate fashion.
Having lamented the interpretation that Gaudium et Spes received
right after the Council, one far too optimistic about modern culture,
Rowland argues (in chapter 2) that the pontificate of John Paul II has
gone in a different direction, especially with its preaching against the
culture of death. Rowland praises the work of theologians like David
Schindler, Kenneth Schmitz, and Cardinal Ratzinger for continuing this
critical turn. She includes these and many other thinkers (like Hans Urs
von Balthasar) under the category of "postmodern Thomism," thus giving the
term "Thomism" a very broad, untraditional meaning. Rowland calls for an
in-depth look at the cultural embodiment of ideas, to see different ways
of living transmit concepts. In opposition to multicultural theologies,
she retrieves the notion that the classical Greek and Roman cultures
remain normative due to their openness to the transcendent.
Turning to the areas of work and economics, Rowland suggests (in chapter
3) that virtue has been replaced by bureaucracy. The business manager no
longer considers the morality of the final product, but rather focuses
solely on achieving the most efficient means to the end. An aura of
professionalism has even invaded the realms of parish life and pastoral
care in other settings such as hospitals. Capitalism has separated the two
dimensions of work, the objective (the product or service produced) and
the subjective (the internal change brought about in the worker through
the work). Laborers have become mere producers of commodities. Unlimited
wealth is accumulated by some without any growth in virtue. A Catholic
approach to work would emphasize the opportunity it brings to participate
in the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty, and to share those
fruits. As a result, every kind of labor has its own religious or
anti-religious logic.
Gaudium et Spes also affirmed the human person's right to culture,
but failed to define this right (GS 60). In chapter 4, Rowland calls for
an approach for human self-development that is "aristocratic," meaning it
insists that there are standards of personal development, some of which
are better than others. Rowland believes that much of modernity (and
postmodernity) has rejected this approach. She calls for an anthropology
centered on Gaudium et Spes 22, especially the following passage:
"only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take
light." Rowland calls this the neglected hermeneutical key for the whole
document. The theological consequence is that the human person only
possesses self-knowledge to the extent that he or she possesses knowledge
of Christ. The preparation for an encounter with the Gospel must entail
above all an experience of the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and
beauty. To the degree that persons have no experience of the
transcendentals, their right to culture will be self-destructive. Yet,
argues Rowland, Catholic theology still lacks an adequate understanding of
the relationship between the soul, the theological virtues, the
transcendentals (among which she counts beauty), and the relations of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Much work needs to be done in
relating the transcendentals to personal human development, but without
separating them from faith, hope, love, and the Trinity. She especially
laments the loss of beauty in the culture of modernity, and argues that it
has been replaced by technology, efficiency, and functionality.
Chapter 5 defends a key position of the entire book: no culture is
theologically neutral, a conclusion implied by Gaudium et Spes 22.
Every entity in the universe, including every cultural entity, is related
to Christ. Every culture, and in fact (Rowland seems to say) every
concept, implies a grace-nature relationship, an understanding of nature
as fallen or unfallen, and an openness to grace or a lack thereof. If this
is not recognized, then the supernatural will be privatized and the faith
will be excluded from public life. Another consequence will be the
equation of the perfection of the natural order with the Christian
project, an assumption that Rowland detects in Gaudium et Spes. In
contrast to this neat separation of grace and nature, Rowland adopts an
idea of David Schindler, that no entity can be said to have an identity
without its relation to other beings, including its "substantial"
relationship to the Creator. Things have no identity in themselves,
without the transcendent and all beings around them. The way forward is
for the Church to provide society with a large part of its values and
self-understanding, to make the substantial relationship of all things to
the Creator (and to Christ) explicit.
Chapter 6 proposes narrative traditions as the key element for the
reconstruction of a Catholic culture. Rowland's work is heavily dependent
on Alasdair MacIntyre at this point. Concepts are always received in and
shaped by a tradition, a narrative. Thought does not begin with an
individual pondering himself or herself but with the reception of a
cultural heritage. Concepts are embodied in cultures, and this embodiment
changes the concepts themselves. Concepts cannot be neatly placed under
intellectual microscopes and dissected. They are inseparable from their
historical and cultural vehicles of transmission. All of this takes us
back to an ancient and medieval view of education: one begins by
submitting to a teacher. Rowland cites Plato's Academy, the medieval
university, and medieval religious orders as institutions which embodied
concepts that transmitted truth. Rowland concludes chapter 6 with an
interpretation of the place of faith in tradition according to thinkers
like MacIntyre, Schindler, and the Anglican theologian John Milbank: no
rationality or tradition can adequately account for its claims without
faith. There is no complete philosophy without faith. This is the anguish
of philosophy, the gap that only Christ and his grace can fill.
Chapter 7 considers the place of natural law and the rhetoric of rights in
a postmodern Catholic culture. As with other forms of education, moral
formation can only take place with a person's commitment to a particular
narrative tradition. But concepts are so influenced by the traditions that
transmit them that the rhetoric of human rights must be rejected, since it
originated in the secular tradition of Liberalism (in the classic sense,
not in the contemporary sense). Liberalism suffers from radical
individualism. It separates the secular from the sacred, excludes
providence and grace from nature, and subordinates revelation to
rationalism. This means that the Church's teaching on the natural law can
only be understood in the context of the Church's narrative tradition, and
that it cannot be translated into secular language, or at least not into
the language of Liberalism. The Liberal notion of rights is
ultra-individualistic, and some methodological presuppositions of
Liberalism are not open to theism. Rowland concludes her book with a call
for the Church to recover her role as patroness of culture, as the primary
source and guardian thereof.
Reflection & Critique
Rowland's work is stimulating and challenging. She reminds us that
Christian approaches to the culture of modernity have often been naïve.
She is correct in insisting that a Christian approach to culture must
always remember the fallen nature of the human person and the elevating
power of grace. Her thesis that each culture necessarily bears a relation
or has within itself a certain stance towards God, grace, and
Christianity, that no culture is theologically neutral, seems to be borne
out more and more in the experience of Christians engaging their modern
and postmodern cultures. Rowland points out problems with the growing
influence of bureaucracy in life, as well as the effects of capitalism on
the nature of work that deserve further study (chapter 3). Her notion of
an experience of the transcendentals as the necessary preparation for the
Gospel also merits close attention (chapter 4).
However, Rowland's critique of Gaudium et Spes seems inadequate and
partly inaccurate. She fails to consider the long and complex debates and
redactions behind the final draft of that document. Instead, she focuses
on the absence of clear definitions, the absence of a hermeneutical key
that overcomes the tensions of the text, and the views of two Conciliar
figures according to whom the Church has no place in the shaping of
culture. Given the absence of clear definitions of terms like "culture"
and "modernity," Rowland could have turned to a painstaking yet most
likely rewarding analysis of the different approaches to the contemporary
society that emerge in the language of committee statements, interventions
of Council Fathers, and theological advisors. Her conclusion is hard to
accept, considering how nuanced and diverse the approaches to the notion
of the "signs of the times" were at the Council, an idea that is
intimately connected to that of culture. Rowland's wish for a
hermeneutical key that overcomes the tensions of the text and thus could
have avoided harmful and radical interpretations after the Council seems
to be asking the impossible: the Fathers could not provide such a unified
interpretive key precisely because they disagreed in their approach to
modernity, to modern culture, to modern developments. Instead, the way to
read the text is with all of its tensions, and not by ignoring one type of
statement in order to focus exclusively on others. It is precisely this
hermeneutic of Vatican II, one which ignores some texts while
overemphasizing others, that has lead to sinful divisions in the Church.
Rowland's decision to focus on the commentary of two Conciliar figures,
who hardly seem representative of the 2000+ bishops and many theologians
at the Council, seems to obscure the meaning of Gaudium et Spes.
Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the important place of narrative traditions in
the formation and transmission of concepts, as well as the need to submit
to a teacher. One wonders whether the indispensability of these traditions
for this handing on of ideas and truths could deny the creative power of
the human spirit, a power that is a faint reflection of the Triune Creator
God. Is each human being so immersed in their culture and the traditions
that this culture transmits that the only way out is submission to a
teacher?
A similar problem emerges in chapter 7, where Rowland rejects the language
of natural rights, since it has come from the Liberal tradition. How did
the Liberal tradition attain this notion? Was it with or without a
previous tradition? Moreover, must all concepts of a secular culture that
includes anti-Christian and anti-theistic elements be excluded? It seems
that the great Christian thinkers of history did the opposite. However
open the Greco-Roman world may have been to the transcendent, it included
elements that were utterly un-Christian. The resurrection of the body made
no sense to Greek philosophers, yet all Church Fathers and scholastics
used their ideas, including their ideas about the afterlife. St. Thomas
Aquinas did not let the apparent denial of individual identity and
immortality in the Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Averroes prevent him
from using many of their ideas in his metaphysics.
Rowland has correctly pointed out obstacles to the Gospel in today's
Western culture. She has identified a pressing need in the Church, the
creation of a theology of culture. The growing anti-Christian influences
of our culture validate her call to transform that culture in specifically
Christian ways. She has begun this work with her emphasis on the
experience of the transcendentals (the One, the Good, the True) as an
important step to an encounter with the Triune God. But her evaluation of
Gaudium et Spes is inadequate and could be misleading. Her emphasis
on the role of tradition and cultural influences in the transmission of
concepts points to an area that has been neglected by Christian thinkers,
yet she seems to go too far, making concepts and the recognition thereof
too dependent on tradition.
Still, her work should stimulate much fruitful reflection on the Christian
evangelist's approach to culture. In general, the best path seems to be
the complex one taught by Gaudium et Spes: to affirm what is good
and true in the culture (whether that culture is Christian or not), to
perfect what is imperfect, and to reject what is sinful. That would not
involve the replacement of the secular culture with a "pure" Christian
culture, but an uplifting of the former through the human message about
and divine activity of grace. Gratia perficit naturam, non destruit.
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Preaching Through Word and
Action:
A Reflection by a Student Cooperator Brother
by Isaiah Mary Molano, O.P.
In this new chapter in the Church’s history, we constantly speak about the
New Evangelization. However, when we discuss this term, we are not only
talking about the New Evangelization of the laity alone, but also of the
religious life. In this Province, we have felt first hand the New
Evangelization with the re-emergence of the cooperator brother. Since the
beginning of the Order, the cooperator brothers would maintain the house
and the regular prayer life of the community. Because of this, cooperator
brothers were much more contemplative, and saw little of the outside
world. Though today’s cooperator student brothers are very open to having
a member of this noble rank among them, this particular community is not
called to this apostolate. Rather, they are a new breed of the same cloth,
relishing in their heritage of Saints Martin de Porres and Juan Macias,
focused to preach the Word of God, thirsting for the salvation of souls.
Of what we know of St. Martin especially, cooperator brothers see him as a
renewed model of the New Evangelization. Being a gifted healer and
pharmacist, it was well known on the streets of Lima that he was a man of
great holiness, humility and charity. He was so charitable that it can be
said that St. Martin was the New World’s first social justice advocate.
One of St. Martin’s greatest accomplishments was founding the Orphanage
and School of the Holy Cross, the New World’s first adoption agency,
which, according to one source, is still in operation. Breaking out of
the mold of a traditional brother, Martin zealously lived his life in
humble service—an act that the current student cooperator brothers
consistently attempt to achieve.
But what does it mean to be a cooperator brother today? He is a friar of
a happy balance of contemplation, ministry, community and study. He is a
man of prayer, living the regular life. Freed from the duty to dispense
the Sacraments, a cooperator brother is one who preaches through his
ministry and his way of life, and not necessarily through a sermon or
homily.
A cooperator brother is a friar who has been given the broad, challenging,
yet humble task of making “disciples of all nations” in a variety of
ways. Currently, in initial formation, cooperator student brothers are
interested in producing film, teaching philosophy, tailoring, parochial
business administration, campus ministry, as well as running retreat
centers. Dominicans, by our very charism, must share the fruits of our
contemplation with the rest of the world. Who would have ever thought
that the new wave of cooperator brothers would want to share their fruits
of contemplation through mass media or tailoring? Although cooperator
brothers do not typically preach from the ambo, they do, just like any
Christian, perform corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Although small
in number, they too ache for the salvation of souls.
What is a cooperator brother? He is a friar who sincerely appreciates the
rich, ancient heritage that he has received, relying on the prayers of our
brothers-in-vocation (in heaven and on earth) for the gifts of humility,
charity and perseverance. He is a friar of courage, grateful for his
past, looking toward the future. He is a friar who is living an
impossible vocation, performing works of great compassion, keeping his
eyes focused on the Divine Lover, remembering that, “I am with you always,
until the end of the age.”
Br. Isaiah Mary is in his first year in the studentate.
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