Ivan Illich

Kevin L. Hughes on "the once-famous (or notorious) priest-scholar-anarchist-activist" who "was convinced that modernity itself makes sense only as a distortion of the Christian gospel" — Hospitality in a World Immune to Grace. An excerpt:

Illich devoted the early years of his career to opposing grand schemes of “development” like the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress. He saw “development” as a “war on subsistence,” replacing, as David Cayley says, “a tolerable absence of goods with a much more painful condition which he named ‘modernized poverty.’” Development, perhaps contrary to its intention, cultivates a culture and an ethic of consumption in “underdeveloped” peoples, such that they become entirely dependent upon costly services provided by global institutions. When development programs are “successful,” they succeed in cultivating needs that outstrip the institutions’ capacity to provide these services. “Underdeveloped” countries thus find themselves in greater need but with fewer indigenous resources. Illich’s crusade against global development programs led to the establishment of the Center for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC), and this, in turn, led to considerable tensions between him and Rome, to the point that he voluntarily stepped away from his title and role as a Catholic priest. He remained a man of deep Catholic faith, but he was careful to respect the terms of his departure, devoting himself entirely to his work in sociology and history.