January 29^th 2002

Most Reverend Eminence,

As I will be unable to attend today’s Videoconference, I must ask you to pass on my warmest wishes to those taking part in today’s conference.

This precious initiative for the permanent formation of the clergy underlines the need to overcome any destructive dualisms between the cura animarum and the intellectus fidei. In fact, the effectiveness of the Christian proposal for education depends mainly on the integral formation of the person, so that the person may become capable of respecting the necessary articulations of the object of knowledge, without excessively suffering from the modern fragmentations.

It comes naturally for me to refer to the Very Blessed John XXIII, who before taking the helm of Peter’s boat, was called upon to lead the Church in Venice. He proposed a significant interpretation of priestly formation. He stressed the pastoral characteristics of research, of teaching and of studies, the specific experience of ecclesiastical academic Institutions. This element is at the foundations of that pastoral dimension of doctrine that has marked, from the very beginning, the guidelines impressed by Pope John XXIII on the Second Vatican Council. From the apostolic constitution Humanae salutis – with a title that is in itself meaningful – to the Radio message to all the faithful one month after the Council, there is no word from Pope John that does not stress the need for the Church to be faithful to its pastoral vocation. The opening speech of the Council in particular – the famous allocution Gaudet Mater Ecclesia – marks at the same time both the arrival pint and the starting point of a renewed pastoral self-conscience of the Church.

Leaving aside all excessively emphatic interpretations of this document, it is impossible to doubt the objective importance it has represented for all the work of this Council. It opened the difficult and fertile way for the overcoming of any false opposition between doctrine and pastoral. It reads: "it is necessary that this certain and humble doctrine, which must be faithfully respected, should be studied in depth and presented in a manner that is suitable for the needs of our times. In fact the deposit itself of the faith is something different, meaning the truth contained in our doctrine, as different is also the form with which these truths are enunciated, preserving however the same sense and the same importance (…) and it will be necessary to have recourse to a manner of presenting matters that is better suited to the Teachings, whose characteristics are preeminently pastoral" (See John XXIII, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, in Enchiridion Vaticanum I, Bologna 1993 (14), 26*-69*, qui 55*).

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To His Most Reverend Eminence

The Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos

Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy

00120 The Vatican City

Underlining this pastoral dimension of the Christian doctrine means affirming the intrinsic link between Truth and the freedom of mankind. Truth, calling upon freedom to witness this, shows its redeeming strength which commands us to discern a mistake with mercy for the wanderer.

This sensitivity has found a paradigmatic expression in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, which was written also with help from His Holiness John Paul II, at the time the young archbishop of Cracow. His pontificate – an admirable synthesis of personal testimony, of dynamic Teachings and an overall vision of mankind – is entirely permeated by the events of the Council understood as the source of the pastoral renewal of the Church.

Your Eminence, thanking you once again for your courtesy, I wish to remind everyone of my friendship.

For your Eminence

Devoted in the Lord

+ Angelo Scola