Speechs 2008
TO H.E. Mr GIORGIO NAPOLITANO Quirinal Palace
Saturday, 4 October 2008
Mr President,
It is with true pleasure that I once again cross the threshold of this palace where I was welcomed for the first time a few weeks after the beginning of my ministry as Bishop of Rome and Pastor of the Universal Church. As I enter your official residence, Mr President, the symbolic home of all Italians, I recall with gratitude the courteous visit you wished to pay me in November 2006 at the Vatican, immediately after your election to the Supreme Magistrature of the Italian Republic. The present occasion is an opportunity for me to renew to you my grateful sentiments, also for the not forgotten and especially appreciated gift of the concert, a fine musical performance, which you were pleased to offer me last 24 April. Thus with deep gratitude I offer you, Mr President, your good wife and all who are gathered here my respectful and cordial greeting. My greeting is also addressed in a special way to the distinguished Authorities who govern the Italian State, to the illustrious figures present here, and is extended to the entire People of Italy, who are very dear to me and who are heirs to an age-old civilization and tradition of Christian values.
My Visit, the Visit of the Roman Pontiff to the Quirinal, is not only an act that fits into the context of the many relations between the Holy See and Italy, but, we might say, acquires a far deeper and more symbolic meaning. Indeed, for more than two centuries several of my Predecessors lived here, and from here governed the universal Church, even experiencing trials and persecution, as was the case for the Pontiffs Pius VI and Pius VII, both of whom were torn violently from their episcopal see and taken to exile. The Quirinal, which has witnessed many joyful and some sorrowful pages of the Papacy's history over the course of the centuries, preserves many signs of the Supreme Pontiffs' patronage of art and culture.
At a certain time in history, this palace became almost a sign of contradiction when, Italy, on the one hand, was longing to be a unified State, and the Holy See, on the other, was concerned to preserve its independence as a guarantee of its universal mission. As the conflict lasted some decades, it was a cause of suffering for those who sincerely loved both their Church and Country. I am referring to the complex "Roman Question", which was definitively and irrevocably settled on the Holy See's part with the signing of the Lateran Pacts on 11 February 1929. The first Visit by a Pontiff to the Quirinal Palace subsequent to 1870 took place towards the end of 1939, 10 years after the Lateran Treaty. On that occasion, my Venerable Predecessor, the Servant of God Pius XII, the 50th anniversary of whose death we are commemorating this month, thus expressed himself using somewhat poetic images: "The Vatican and the Quirinal, divided by the Tiber, are reunited by the bond of peace as they remember the religion of their forebears and ancestors. The Tiber's waves have swept away and drowned the murky currents of the past in the Tyrrhenian Sea's whirlpools, and along its shores caused olive branches to flower once more (cf. Discourse, 28 December 1939).
Today it can truly be said with pleasure that the Italian State and the Apostolic See coexist peacefully and collaborate fruitfully in the city of Rome. My Visit also confirms that the Quirinal and the Vatican are not hills that ignore or resentfully oppose each other. Rather, they are places that symbolize mutual respect for the sovereignty of the State and for the Church, ready to cooperate in order to promote and serve the integral good of the human person and the peaceful development of social coexistence. This I would like to reaffirm is a positive reality that can be verified almost daily at various levels, and to which other States too can look, in order to learn a useful lesson.
Mr President, my Visit today is taking place on the day on which Italy is celebrating with great solemnity her special Patron, St Francis of Assisi. Among others, it was to St Francis that Pius XI made reference in his announcement of the signing of the Lateran Pacts and especially the Constitution of Vatican City State; for that Pontiff, the new sovereign reality was, as it was for the Poverello, "enough body, to keep body and soul together" (Discourse, 11 February 1929). Together with St Catherine of Siena, St Francis was proposed by the Italian Bishops and confirmed by the Servant of God Pius XII as the heavenly Patron of Italy (cf. Apostolic Letter Licet Commissa, 18 June 1939; AAS xxxi [1939], 256-257). At a time when the threat of war was looming over Europe, Pope Pacelli wanted to entrust Italy's destiny to the protection of this great Saint and illustrious Italian, dramatically involving your "beautiful Country" as well.
The choice of St Francis as Patron of Italy was thus motivated by the profound correspondence between the personality and action of the Poverello of Assisi and that of the noble Italian nation.
As the Servant of God John Paul II recalled during his Visit to the Quirinal on this very same day in 1985, "it would be difficult to find another figure who so richly and harmoniously embodies the characteristics of the Italian genius. "At a time when the establishment of independent City States was arousing ferments of social, economic and political renewal which shook the old feudal world to its very foundations", Pope Wojty³a continued, "Francis was able to rise above the warring factions, preaching the Gospel of peace and love in full fidelity to the Church of which he felt himself to be a son, and in total adherence to the people of whom he knew himself to be a part" (Address to President Francesco Cossiga, 4 October 1985; L'Osservatore Romano English edition [ORE], 14 October 1985, p. 1).
In this Saint, whose figure attracts believers and non-believers, we can glimpse the image of what the eternal mission of the Church is, also in her relations with civil society. In our epoch of profound and often anguishing change, the Church continues to propose the Gospel message of salvation to all and strives to contribute to the edification of a society founded on truth and freedom, on respect for human life and dignity, on justice and on social solidarity. Therefore, as I have recalled on other occasions: "In pursuing this aim, the Church is neither proposing goals of power for herself nor claiming privileges or aspiring to advantageous social or financial positions. Her sole purpose is to serve men and women, drawing inspiration as the supreme norm for her conduct from the words and example of Jesus Christ, who "went about doing good and healing all' (Ac 10,38)" (Address to H.E. Mr Antonio Zanardi Landi, Ambassador of Italy, 4 October 2007).
To bring her mission to completion, the Church must everywhere and always be able to enjoy the right to religious freedom, considered in its full breadth. At the United Nations Assembly, in which the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is being commemorated this year, I wished to reaffirm that, "the full guarantee of religious liberty cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion, and hence, to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order" (Address to the United Nations General Assembly, New York, 18 April 2008). The Church makes this contribution to building society in many ways, being a body of many members, a reality at the same time both spiritual and visible, in which the members have different vocations, tasks and roles. She feels particularly responsible for the new generations: indeed, the pressing problem of education, the indispensable key for access to a future inspired by the perennial values of Christian humanism, is being felt today. The formation of youth is therefore an undertaking in which the Church also feels involved, together with families and schools. Indeed, she is well aware of the importance education has in learning authentic freedom, a necessary presupposition for a positive service to the common good. Only a serious educative commitment will make it possible to build a supportive society truly motivated by a sense of legality.
Mr President, I am pleased here to renew the hope that the Christian communities and many Italian ecclesial bodies may fittingly form people, especially youth, besides training responsible citizens committed to civil life. I am sure that the Pastors and faithful will continue to make their important contribution in order to build, also at these moments of financial and social uncertainty, the common good of the country, as well as of Europe and of the entire human family, paying special attention to the poor and the marginalized, young people in search of employment and those who are unemployed, families, and the elderly who have built our present with effort and hard work, and hence deserve the gratitude of all. I likewise hope that the contribution of the Catholic community may be welcomed by all in the same spirit of openness as that in which it is offered. There is no reason to fear prevarication to the detriment of freedom on the part of the Church and her members, who moreover expect their right to be recognized not to betray their conscience, illumined by the Gospel. This will be even easier if it is never forgotten that all the members of society must work, with reciprocal respect, to achieve in the community that true good of the human being of which the heart and mind of the Italian people, nourished for 20 centuries by a culture steeped in Christianity, are well aware.
Mr President, in this most significant place, I would like to renew the expression of my affection, indeed of my special love for this beloved nation. I assure you and all Italians of my prayers, as I invoke the motherly protection of Mary, venerated with such deep devotion in every corner of the peninsula and the islands, from north to south, as I have also been able to see on my Pastoral Visits. In taking my leave, I make my own the exhortation that Bl. John XXIII addressed to Italy as a pilgrim to Assisi on the eve of the Second Vatican Council: "Beloved Italy, you on whose shores the barque of Peter came to rest and it is for this reason principally that from all lands the people of the whole universe come to you, who can welcome them with supreme respect and love may you preserve the sacred testament that commits you before heaven and earth" (Discourse, 4 October 1962).
May God protect and bless Italy and all its inhabitants!
Synod Hall
Monday, 6 October 2008
Dear Brothers in the Episcopacy,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
At the beginning of our Synod the Liturgy of the Hours presents a passage from Psalm 118 on the Word of God: a praise of his Word, an expression of the joy of Israel in learning it and, in it, to recognize his will and his Face. I would like to meditate on some verses of this Psalm with you.
It begins like this: "In aeternum, Domine, verbum tuum constitutum est in caelo... firmasti terram, et permanet". This refers to the solidity of the Word. It is solid, it is the true reality on which one must base one's life. Let us remember the words of Jesus who continues the words of this Psalm: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away". Humanly speaking, the word, my human word, is almost nothing in reality, a breath. As soon as it is pronounced it disappears. It seems to be nothing. But already the human word has incredible power. Words create history, words form thoughts, the thoughts that create the word. It is the word that forms history, reality.
Furthermore, the Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter, solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the two possible foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock. The one who builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The one who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all things. Realist is the one who builds his life on this foundation, which is permanent. Thus the first verses of the Psalm invite us to discover what reality is and how to find the foundation of our life, how to build life.
The following verse says: "Omnia serviunt tibi". All things come from the Word, they are products of the Word. "In the beginning was the Word". In the beginning the heavens spoke. And thus reality was born of the Word, it is "creatura Verbi". All is created from the Word and all is called to serve the Word. This means that all of creation, in the end, is conceived of to create the place of encounter between God and his creature, a place where the history of love between God and his creature can develop. "Omnia serviunt tibi". The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing which happens by chance on a lost planet. It is the motive for everything, the motive for creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist, the encounter between God and his creature. In this sense, salvation history, the Covenant, precedes creation. During the Hellenistic period, Judaism developed the idea that the Torah would have preceded the creation of the material world. This material world seems to have been created solely to make room for the Torah, for this Word of God that creates the answer and becomes the history of love. The mystery of Christ already is mysteriously revealed here. This is what we are told in the Letter to the Ephesians and to the Colossians: Christ is the protòtypos, the first-born of creation, the idea for which the universe was conceived. He welcomes all. We enter in the movement of the universe by uniting with Christ. One can say that, while material creation is the condition for the history of salvation, the history of the Covenant is the true cause of the cosmos. We reach the roots of being by reaching the mystery of Christ, his living word that is the aim of all creation.
"Omnia serviunt tibi". In serving the Lord we achieve the purpose of being, the purpose of our own existence. Let us take a leap forward: "Mandata tua exquisivi". We are always searching for the Word of God. It is not merely present in us. Just reading it does not mean necessarily that we have truly understood the Word of God. The danger is that we only see the human words and do not find the true actor within, the Holy Spirit. We do not find the Word in the words.
In this context St Augustine recalls the scribes and pharisees who were consulted by Herod when the Magi arrived. Herod wants to know where the Saviour of the world would be born. They know it, they give the correct answer: in Bethlehem. They are great specialists who know everything. However they do not see reality, they do not know the Saviour. St Augustine says: they are signs on the road for others, but they themselves do not move. This is a great danger as well in our reading of Scripture: we stop at the human words, words form the past, history of the past, and we do not discover the present in the past, the Holy Spirit who speaks to us today in the words from the past. In this way we do not enter the interior movement of the Word, which in human words conceals and which opens the divine words. Therefore, there is always a need for "exquisivi". We must always look for the Word within the words.
Therefore, exegesis, the true reading of Holy Scripture, is not only a literary phenomenon, not only reading a text. It is the movement of my existence. It is moving towards the Word of God in the human words. Only by conforming ourselves to the Mystery of God, to the Lord who is the Word, can we enter within the Word, can we truly find the Word of God in human words. Let us pray to the Lord that he may help us search the word, not only with our intellect but also with our entire existence.
At the end: "Omni consummationi vidi finem, latum praeceptum tuum nimis". All human things, all the things we can invent, create, are finite. Even all human religious experiences are finite, showing an aspect of reality, because our being is finite and can only understand a part, some elements: "latum praeceptum tuum nimis". Only God is infinite. And therefore His Word too is universal and knows no boundaries. Therefore by entering into the Word of God we really enter into the divine universe. We escape the limits of our experience and we enter into the reality that is truly universal. Entering into communion with the Word of God, we enter a communion of the Church that lives the Word of God. We do not enter into a small group, with the rules of a small group, but we go beyond our limitations. We go towards the depths, in the true grandeur of the only truth, the great truth of God. We are truly a part of what is universal. And thus we go out into the communion of all our brothers and sisters, of all humanity, because the desire for the Word of God, which is one, is hidden in our heart. Therefore even evangelization, the proclamation of the Gospel, the mission are not a type of ecclesial colonialism, where we wish to insert others into our group. It means going beyond the individual culture into the universality that connects all, unites all, makes us all brothers. Let us pray once again that the Lord may help us to truly enter the "breadth" of His Word and thus to open ourselves to the universal horizon that unites us with all our differences.
At the end, we return to a preceding verse: "Tuus sum ego: salvum me fac". The text translates as: "I am yours". The Word of God is like a stairway that we can climb and, with Christ, even descend into the depths of his love. It is a stairway to reach the Word in the words. "I am yours".The word has a Face, it is a person, Christ. Before we can say "I am yours", he has already told us "I am yours". The Letter to the Hebrews, quoting Psalm 39, says: "You gave me a body.... Then I said, "Here I am, I am coming'". The Lord prepared a body to come. With his Incarnation he said: I am yours. And in Baptism he said to me: I am yours. In the Holy Eucharist, he say ever anew: I am yours, so that we may respond: Lord, I am yours. In the way of the Word, entering the mystery of his Incarnation, of his being among us, we want to appropriate his being, we want expropriate our existence, giving ourselves to him who gave Himself to us.
"I am yours". Let us pray the Lord that we may learn to say this word with our whole being. Thus we will be in the heart of the Word. Thus we will be saved.
Basilica of St Paul Outside-the-Walls
Monday, 13 October 2008
Your Eminences,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate
and in the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The concert this evening is one of the various initiatives planned for the special Jubilee of the Pauline Year. It is taking place in the evocative setting of the Basilica of St Paul Outside-the-Walls where several days ago the Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops was solemnly inaugurated. I naturally extend my greeting and cordial thanks to all those who have promoted and organized this beautiful evening with a high quality musical performance. In the first place, I wish to thank the Pro Musica e Arte Sacra Foundation, well known for its numerous initiatives. I then greet and thank the members of the Wiener Philarmoniker Orchestra, which has offered us a masterful performance of Anton Bruckner's Sixth Symphony, steeped in a religious sense and profound mysticism.
With joy and full of gratitude I greet the Wiener Philarmoniker, conducted today by Christoph Eschenbach, which for the seventh time in the context of the International Festival of Sacred Music and Art has imbued its audience with deep joy. Dear friends, with your professionalism and your musical ability you always succeed in moving the hearts of your listeners and in offering them Bruckner's marvellous music, you have plucked all the heartstrings of human feeling. With your musical talent you raise society from the human to the divine sphere. For this, I say to you all a heartfelt "Vergelt's Gott!".
The Sixth Symphony expresses the faith of its composer who, with his compositions was able to transmit a religious vision of life and of history. We might say that Anton Bruckner, drawing from the Austrian Baroque and from the Schubertian tradition of popular song, took to its extreme conclusion the romantic process of interiorization. In listening to this famous composition in the Basilica dedicated to St Paul one spontaneously thinks of a passage from the First Letter to the Corinthians in which the Apostle, after speaking of the diversity and unity of spiritual gifts compares the Church to the human body, made up of very different members but all indispensable for its good functioning (cf. 1Co 12). The orchestra and the choir are also comprised of different instruments and voices, which in tune with one another offer a harmonious melody, pleasing to the ear and the spirit. Dear brothers and sisters, let us take note of this teaching which we see confirmed in the splendid musical performance we had the pleasure of hearing. I greet you all with affection, as I address a special thought to the Synod Fathers and to the other important people present. Lastly, I extend a fraternal greeting to Cardinal Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, Archpriest of this Papal Basilica, who has once again offered us such a cordial welcome. I would like to thank him, together with his collaborators, for the various religious and cultural events planned for the Pauline Year underway. May this Roman Basilica where the mortal remains of the Apostle to the Gentiles are preserved truly be a fulcrum of liturgical, spiritual and cultural initiatives which aim at rediscovering his missionary work and his theological thought. As I invoke the intercession of this eminent Saint and the motherly protection of Mary Queen of Apostles I warmly impart the Apostolic Blessing to everyone present and gladly extend it to their loved ones.
Synod Hall
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Working on my book on Jesus has provided ample occasion to see what good can come from modern exegesis, but also for recognizing the problems and risks. Dei Verbum, n. 12 offers two methodological guidelines for suitable exegetical work. Firstly, it confirms the necessity of using the historical-critical method, of which it briefly describes the essential elements. This necessity is the result of the Christian principle formulated in Jn 1: 14, "Verbum caro factum est". Historical fact is a constituent dimension of the Christian faith. The history of salvation is not mythology but rather true history, and is therefore to be studied alongside serious historical research methods.
Nevertheless, this history has another dimension, that of divine action. Dei Verbum, consequentially, speaks of a second methodological level necessary for the correct interpretation of the words that are simultaneously human words and the divine Word. The Council says, according to a fundamental rule of interpretation for literary text, that Scripture is to be interpreted in the same spirit in which it was written. There are therefore three fundamental methodological elements that contribute to taking proper account of the divine, pneumatological dimension of the Bible. One must 1) interpret the text taking into consideration the unity of all of Scripture. Today this is called canonical exegesis; at the time of the Council this term did not yet exist, but the Council expressed the same thing: it is necessary to take into account the unity of the entirety of Scripture; 2) one must also take into account the living tradition of the entire Church; and finally 3) it is necessary to observe the analogy of faith. Only where the two methodological levels, both historical-critical and theological, are observed can one speak of theological exegesis of an exegesis adequate to this Book. While at the first level, academic exegetical work is currently being done to an extremely high standard and provides us real help, the same cannot be said of the other level. Often this second level, the level consisting of the three theological elements mentioned in Dei Verbum, appear almost absent. And this has rather grave consequences.
The first consequence of the absence of this second methodological level is that the Bible becomes solely a history book. Moral consequences can be drawn from it, history can be learned from it, but the Book as such speaks of history alone and exegesis is no longer truly theological but instead becomes purely historiographical, literary history. This is the first consequence: the Bible remains in the past, speaks only of the past. The second consequence is even graver: where the hermeneutics of faith explained in Dei Verbum disappear, another type of hermeneutics will appear by necessity a hermeneutics that is secularist, positivist, the key fundamental of which is the conviction that the Divine does not appear in human history. According to this hermeneutics, when there seems to be a divine element, the source of that impression must be explained, thus reducing everything to the human element. As a result, it is the grounds for interpretations that deny the historicity of divine elements. Today the exegetical "mainstream" in Germany, for example, denies that the Lord instituted the Holy Eucharist and says that Jesus' corpse remained in the tomb. The Resurrection in this view would not have been a historical event but a theological view. This happens because the hermeneutics of faith is missing: profane philosophical hermeneutics is affirmed instead, which deny the possibility of the entrance and presence of the Divine in history. The result of the absence of the second methodological level is what has created a profound fissure between scientific exegesis and Lectio divina. From precisely this point there sometimes also arises a sort of perplexity in regard to the preparation of homilies. When exegesis is not theological, Scripture cannot be the soul of theology, and vice versa; when theology is not essentially Scriptural interpretation within the Church, then this theology no longer has a foundation.
Therefore for the life and mission of the Church, for the future of faith, it is absolutely necessary to overcome this dualism between exegesis and theology. Biblical theology and systematic theology are two dimensions of one reality, which we call theology. Thus it seems desirable to me that one of the propositions treats of the necessity of keeping in mind within exegesis the two methodological levels mentioned in Dei Verbum, n. 12, where it speaks of the need to develop not only a historical but also a theological exegesis. It will therefore be crucial to expand formation of future exegetes in this sense, so as to truly open the treasures of Scripture to today's world and to all of us.
Consistory Hall
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Dear Brothers in the Episcopate,
I receive you with great joy on your ad limina visit which I have looked forward to with such pleasure, and which gives me the opportunity to put into practice the mandate that the Lord entrusted to the Apostle Peter to strengthen his brethren in the faith (cf. Lk Lc 22,32). May I first of all express to you my deep sorrow at the death of Cardinal Antonio José González Zumárraga, Archbishop emeritus of Quito, who served the Church to the end of his days with such great self-denial and fidelity. I ask the Lord to grant him eternal repose and to increase the fruitful work carried out by this most exemplary Pastor.
I am grateful for the kind words of Archbishop Antonio Arregui Yarza of Guayaquil, President of the Bishops' Conference, expressing your sentiments of affection and communion as well as the principal desires that inspire your mission as successors of the Apostles. Motivated by concern as Pastor of the universal Church, I feel very close to you in your anxieties and encourage you to persevere with hope in your generous work at the service of the diocesan communities entrusted to our care.
I note with pleasure that one of the pastoral initiatives that you consider most urgently necessary for the Church in Ecuador is the realization of the "great mission", convoked by the Latin American Episcopate in Aparecida (cf. Final Document, n. 362), which was confirmed at the Third American Missionary Congress, celebrated in Quito last August. The call that the Lord Jesus addressed to his disciples, sending them out to preach his message of salvation and to make disciples of all the peoples (cf. Mt Mt 28,16-20) must be a constant cause of meditation and the raison d'être of all pastoral action for the entire ecclesial community. Today too, as in all times and places, men and women need a personal encounter with Christ, in which they can experience the beauty of his life and the truth of his message.
To face the numerous challenges of your mission amid a cultural and social environment that seems to forget the deepest spiritual roots of its identity, I ask you to open yourselves with docility to the action of the Holy Spirit so that under the impetus of his divine power the missionary zeal of the first Gospel preaching, as well as of the first proclamation of the Gospel in your regions, may be renewed. This requires that you make a generous effort to spread the Word of God in such a way that no one is left without this indispensable spiritual food, the source of life and light. The reading of and meditation on Sacred Scripture, in private or in the community, will lead to the intensification of Christian life, as well as to a renewed apostolic impulse in all the faithful.
On the other hand, be fully aware that this missionary effort is based in a special way on priests. Full of love and gratitude for your priests, you must accompany them as fathers and brothers with prayer, affection and closeness, assuring them in addition a satisfactory continuing formation that helps them keep their priestly life vibrant. Continue likewise to encourage religious in their witness of consecrated life, which has brought so many fruits of holiness and evangelization to those lands, and encourage them so that faithful to their charism and in full communion with the Pastors they may continue in their self-sacrificing service to the Church.
At the same time, as you face the scarcity of clergy in many parts of your country, you are firmly committed to involving all the groups, movements and people in your dioceses in a broad and generous vocations ministry, sowing in young people a passion for the figure of Jesus and the great ideals of the Gospel. This effort must be accompanied by the greatest possible care in the selection and intellectual, human and spiritual training of seminarians. In this way, faithful to the teachings of the Magisterium and with the clear awareness that they are ministers of Christ the Good Shepherd, they will be able to assume the requirements of their future ministry with joy and responsibility.
At this important stage in her history, the Church in Ecuador needs mature and committed lay people who, with a solid doctrinal formation and a deep inner life, live out their specific vocation to illumine with the light of Christ all the human, social, cultural and political reality (cf. Lumen gentium LG 31).
In this regard, I would like to thank you for the effort you are making, not without great sacrifices, to attract the attention of society to those values that make human life more just and supportive. Although the Church's activity cannot be confused with political action (cf. Deus caritas Est 28), she must nevertheless make her contribution to the human community overall through reflection and moral judgments on those political issues that especially affect the dignity of the person (cf. Gaudium et spes GS 76). Among these should be pointed out, partly because of its importance for the future of your People, the promotion and stability of the family, founded on the bond of love between a man and a woman, the defence of human life from the moment of its conception to its natural end, and also the responsibility of parents for the moral education of their children, in which the important human and Christian values that forged the identity of your peoples are transmitted.
I also urge you to pay special attention to the charitable action of your Churches in which the merciful love of Christ is made present, especially to people in need, the elderly, children and emigrants, as well as women who have been abandoned or abused.
Dear Brothers, the recent canonization of St Narcisa de Jesus Martillo Morán expresses the spiritual fruitfulness of our communities. May the example and intercession of this young Ecuadorian Saint obtain fresh vitality and great apostolic zeal for all your particular Churches, so that, full of faith and hope, they may throw themselves into the exciting task of sowing the Gospel in the hearts of all the men and women of this blessed land!
At the end of our brotherly meeting, I reaffirm my encouragement to you in your pastoral tasks and ask you to convey the Pope's greeting and closeness to your priests, deacons and seminarians, to the missionaries, to the men and women religious, and to all the lay faithful. Together with these fervent good wishes and invoking the protection of the Virgin Mary, I impart the Apostolic Blessing to you all with affection.
Clementine Hall
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Your Eminences,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am pleased to meet you on the occasion of the Congress fittingly organized on the 10th anniversary of the Encyclical Fides et ratio. I first thank Archbishop Rino Fisichella for his cordial words introducing today's meeting. I am glad that the study days of your Congress involve the effective collaboration of the Lateran University, the Pontifical Academy for Sciences and the World Conference of Catholic University Philosophy Institutions. Collaboration of this kind is always desirable, especially when one is called to account for one's faith in the face of ever more complex challenges that confront believers in the contemporary world.
Ten years after its publication, an attentive look at the Encyclical Fides et ratio enables one to perceive admiringly its lasting topicality; it reveals the farsighted depth of my unforgettable Predecessor. In fact, the Encyclical is characterized by its great openness to reason, especially in a period in which its weakness was theorized. John Paul ii, on the other hand, underlines the importance of combining faith and reason in their reciprocal relationship, yet while also respecting the sphere of autonomy of each. With this Magisterium, the Church has voiced an emerging need within the contemporary cultural context. She has chosen to defend the power of reason and its ability to attain the truth, presenting faith once again as a special form of knowledge, thanks to which we are opened to the truth of Revelation (cf. Fides et ratio, n. 13). We read in the Encyclical that we must trust in the abilities of human reason and not set ourselves goals that are too modest: "It is faith which stirs reason to move beyond all isolation and willingly to run risks so that it may attain whatever is beautiful, good and true" (n. 56). Moreover, it is in the passing of time that the achievement of reason's goals, motivated by the passion for truth, are manifest. Who could deny the contribution that the great philosophical systems have made to the development of human self-awareness and the progress of various cultures? What is more, these cultures become fruitful when they are opened to the truth, enabling all those who participate in them to reach goals that make social life ever more human. The quest for the truth bears most fruit when it is sustained by love for the truth. Augustine wrote: "What one holds with the mind is held by knowing it, but no good may be known perfectly unless one loves perfectly" (De diversis quaestionibus, 35, 2).
Yet we cannot deny that a shift has occurred from predominantly speculative thought to that which is primarily experimental. Research has above all involved the observation of nature in the attempt to discover its secrets. The desire to know nature then became the desire to reproduce it. This transformation was far from painless; the evolution of concepts damaged the relationship between fides and ratio, resulting in each taking its own separate path. Scientific and technological breakthroughs, which fides is increasingly challenged to face, have modified the age-old concept of ratio; in a certain way they have marginalized the reason that was seeking the ultimate truth of things in order to make room for a reason content with discovering the contingent truths of the laws of nature. Scientific research undoubtedly has its positive value. The discovery of and increase in the mathematical, physical, chemical and applied sciences are the product of reason and express the intelligence with which man succeeds in penetrating the depth of creation. Faith, for its part, does not fear scientific progress and the developments to which scientific achievements lead when they are aimed towards the human being, his well-being and the progress of humanity as a whole. As the anonymous author of the Letter to Diognetus recalled: "The tree of knowledge does not kill, but disobedience kills. For there cannot be life without knowledge any more than there can be sound knowledge without genuine life, and so the two trees were planted close together" (xii, 2, 4).
Nonetheless, it happens that scientists do not always direct their research to these aims. Easy earnings or, even worse, the arrogance of replacing the Creator, at times play a decisive role. This is a form of the hybris of reason, which can acquire characteristics that are dangerous to humanity itself. Science, moreover, is unable to work out ethical principles; it can only accept them and recognize them as necessary to eradicate its potential pathologies. In this context, philosophy and theology become indispensable aids which must be placed alongside science in order to prevent it from proceeding on its own down a twisting path, full of unexpected accidents and not without risks. This does not mean restricting scientific research or preventing technology from producing the means for development; rather, it consists in maintaining vigilance about the sense of responsibility that reason possesses in regards to science, so that it stays on track in its service to the human being.
Augustine's lesson is still meaningful even in today's context: "What does someone who can use reason well attain other than the truth?" the holy Bishop of Hippo asks. "The truth is not obtained by itself with reasoning but it is what those who use reason seek.... It confesses that what the truth is is not you, for it does not seek itself; you, on the other hand, have not attained it by passing from one place to another, but by seeking it with the disposition of your mind" (De vera religione, 39, 72). In other words, wherever the search for the truth comes from, it remains as a given that is both offered and recognizable as already present in nature. The intelligibility of creation, in fact, is not the result of the scientist's effort, but a condition offered to him to enable him to discover the truth that is present within it. "These things are not made by the process of reasoning, but discovered", Augustine continues in his reflection. "Therefore they abide in themselves even before they are discovered, and once they are discovered they renew us" (ibid., 39, 73). In brief, reason must fully run its course, strong in its autonomy and its rich intellectual tradition.
Reason also understands and discovers that, in addition to what it has already attained and achieved, there exists a truth that it will never be able to discover based solely on itself, but only receive as a gift freely given. The truth of Revelation does not superimpose the truth achieved by reason; rather, it purifies and exalts reason, thereby enabling it to broaden its horizons to enter into a field of research as unfathomably expansive as mystery itself. The truth revealed, when "the time had fully come" (Ga 4,4), assumed the Face of a person, Jesus of Nazareth, who brought the ultimate and definitive answer to the question of human meaning. The truth of Christ, since it affects every person in search of joy, happiness and meaning, far exceeds any other truth that reason can discover. It surrounds mystery, so that fides and ratio might find the real possibility of a common path.
The Synod of Bishops on the theme: "The Word of God in the life and mission of the Church", is taking place in these days. How can we fail to see the providential coincidence of this event with your Congress? Passion for the truth impels us to re-enter into our interior selves to grasp the profound meaning of our lives. True philosophy must take every person by the hand and bring them to discover how fundamental it is to their dignity to know the truth of Revelation. Before this demand for meaning, which gives no respite until it flows into Jesus Christ, the Word of God reveals his character as a definitive response: one Word of revelation that becomes life and that asks to be welcomed as an inexhaustible source of truth.
As I hope that each one of you will increasingly feel within you this passion for the truth and will do everything in your power to satisfy its demands, I would like to assure you that I am following your commitment with appreciation and pleasure, accompanying your research with my prayers. To confirm these sentiments, I willingly impart the Apostolic Blessing to you who are present here and to your loved ones.
Paul VI Audience Hall
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Your Eminences,
Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
The film we have just seen takes us back in spirit to that late evening of 16 October 1978, 30 years ago, which has remained impressed in the hearts of all. On this day, and at almost the same time, the new Pope addressed the multitude of the faithful thronging St Peter's Square, and said: "If I make a mistake, you will correct me" (First words of Pope John Paul II following his election, 16 October 1978; L'Osservatore Romano English edition, [ORE], 26 October 1978, p. 6). It was the first encounter with the City and with the world of the newly-elected Bishop who came, as he himself said, from a distant country. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow, chose the name John Paul ii, thus putting himself in continuity with his Predecessor, Pope Albino Luciani, who had guided the Church for only 33 days.
We could say that John Paul II's Pontificate is contained in two of his expressions. The first: "Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors to Christ!" (Homily inaugurating the Pontificate, 22 October 1978) was vibrant; it made an impression, an impact on public opinion and was to be frequently on his lips in the following years. The Pope spoke his other words, "Let me go to the Father's House", feebly, as he lay on his deathbed, at the end of a long and fruitful earthly pilgrimage. Those who heard his first words were many; his last words were heard only by those close to him, including his faithful secretary, Fr Stanislaw, today Metropolitan Archbishop of Krakow. In his book "A life with Karol", made into a film entitled: "Testimonianza", he recounts his long familiarity with this great Pontiff, first in Krakow and then in Rome, retracing moments of joy and sorrow, of hope and apostolic daring. Revealing unheard of episodes, the film portrays the human simplicity, decisive courage and, finally, the suffering of Pope Wojtyla, which he faced to the very end with the stamina of a mountain man and the patience of a humble servant of the Gospel.
This moving cinematographic narrative comes in addition to the large number of publications on this Pontiff, who marked the history of the Church and the world in the last part of the 20th century and the beginning of the third millennium. Thanks to this film, constituted of both documentary material and narrative reconstructions of historical events, the spectator unacquainted with John Paul II is given a means to take in his spirit and evangelical passion. The film offers us who knew him an opportunity to relive with deep emotion certain moments of his life with original interpretations that assume the book's content and enrich it with new elements. The film also gives us an opportunity to become more familiar with Poland, Pope Wojtyla's homeland, and its cultural and religious traditions; it enables us to retrace well known ecclesial and civil events as well as episodes unknown to most. It is all recounted as we have seen with the affection of one who shared closely in these events, in the shadow of the protagonist.
Then how could I not express special gratitude to those who contributed to the production of this new film? My sincere thanks go first of all to dear Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, to whom I am grateful for this book and for this film. It truly makes us relive those days and see once again our beloved Pope John Paul II who from Heaven is certainly with us at this moment. I thank Pawel Pitera, the director, and the other collaborators it would take too long to list them all who have done a truly masterful job in editing the book and adapting it for the cinema. I also greet with affection all those who are gathered here this evening, starting with the Cardinals, Bishops, priests and men and women religious, then the great number of lay people present here who admired and loved my great Predecessor. At this moment, let us take up in particular his invitation not to be afraid. Following his example, let us too courageously bear our witness to Christ. With this hope, I renew my thanks to all those who produced this film and collaborated in organizing the event this evening. I impart my Blessing to you all.
FIRST VESPERS OF THE 29th SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
Speechs 2008