Sandro Magister always has the good sense to quote Pope Benedict directly and liberally to call attention to the Pope's words. Here is what he thought to be the key points in the Pope's address to the Vatican diplomatic corps yesterday:
Benedict XVI to the diplomats:
Three levers to lift the world
An ecology of nature but above all of man, positive secularity, freedom of religion.
The salient points of the pope's annual speech to representatives of states.
ROME, January 11, 2010 – As at the beginning of every year, Pope Benedict XVI delivered his state of the world address this morning to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.
The address was in the prudent style of Vatican diplomacy. For example, it does not mention India or China, the two emerging superpowers where the Catholic Church is for various reasons oppressed and attacked.
However, this does not change the fact that the address transmits messages that intentionally go against the mainstream. Three of them in particular.
1. ECOLOGY OF NATURE, BUT ABOVE ALL OF MAN
The first message coincides with the one previously issued by Benedict XVI for the World Day of Peace, celebrated on New Year's Day: "If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation." With a decisive and unconventional emphasis: the primacy that must be given to the comprehensive safeguarding of man.
Here are three passages from the address that develop this theme:
Twenty years ago, after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the materialistic and atheistic regimes which had for several decades dominated a part of this continent, it was easy to assess the great harm which an economic system lacking any reference to the truth about man had done not only to the dignity and freedom of individuals and peoples, but to nature itself, by polluting soil, water and air.
The denial of God distorts the freedom of the human person, yet it also devastates creation. It follows that the protection of creation is not principally a response to an aesthetic need, but much more to a moral need, in as much as nature expresses a plan of love and truth which is prior to us and which comes from God." [...]
If we wish to build true peace, how can we separate, or even set at odds, the protection of the environment and the protection of human life, including the life of the unborn? It is in man’s respect for himself that his sense of responsibility for creation is shown. [...]
Creatures differ from one another and can be protected, or endangered, in different ways, as we know from daily experience. One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes. I am thinking, for example, of certain countries in Europe or North and South America.
Saint Columban stated that: 'If you take away freedom, you take away dignity.' Yet freedom cannot be absolute, since man is not himself God, but the image of God, God’s creation. For man, the path to be taken cannot be determined by caprice or willfulness, but must rather correspond to the structure willed by the Creator.
2. POSITIVE SECULARITY
A second unconventional message is addressed mainly to Europe and the West. It defends the public role of the Church. In this sense:
The causes of the situation which is now evident to everyone are of the moral order, and the question must be faced within the framework of a great programme of education aimed at promoting an effective change of thinking and at creating new lifestyles.
The community of believers can and wants to take part in this, but, for it to do so, its public role must be recognized. Sadly, in certain countries, mainly in the West, one increasingly encounters in political and cultural circles, as well in the media, scarce respect and at times hostility, if not scorn, directed towards religion and towards Christianity in particular.
It is clear that if relativism is considered an essential element of democracy, one risks viewing secularity solely in the sense of excluding or, more precisely, denying the social importance of religion. But such an approach creates confrontation and division, disturbs peace, harms human ecology and, by rejecting in principle approaches other than its own, finishes in a dead end.
There is thus an urgent need to delineate a positive and open secularity which, grounded in the just autonomy of the temporal order and the spiritual order, can foster healthy cooperation and a spirit of shared responsibility.
Here I think of Europe, which, now that the Lisbon Treaty has taken effect, has entered a new phase in its process of integration, a process which the Holy See will continue to follow with close attention.
Noting with satisfaction that the Treaty provides for the European Union to maintain an 'open, transparent and regular' dialogue with the Churches (Art. 17), I express my hope that in building its future, Europe will always draw upon the wellsprings of its Christian identity.
3. FREEDOM OF RELIGION
Finally, a third message defends freedom of religion, and denounces situations in which this freedom is violated.
Benedict XVI cites some of the examples that see Christians as the victims: Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Middle East. He doesn't mention Islam, but in all of the cases cited the aggressors are Muslims:
Out of love for the dialogue and peace which protect creation, I exhort the government leaders and the citizens of Iraq to overcome their divisions and the temptation to violence and intolerance, in order to build together the future of their country.
The Christian communities also wish to make their own contribution, but if this is to happen, they need to be assured respect, security and freedom. Pakistan has been also hard hit by violence in recent months and certain episodes were directly aimed at the Christian minority.
I ask that everything be done to avoid the recurrence of such acts of aggression, and to ensure that Christians feel fully a part of the life of their country.
In speaking of acts of violence against Christians, I cannot fail to mention also the deplorable attack which the Egyptian Coptic community suffered in recent days, during its celebration of Christmas. [...]
The grave acts of violence to which I have just alluded, combined with the scourges of poverty, hunger, natural disasters and the destruction of the environment, have helped to swell the ranks of those who migrate from their native land.
Given the extent of this exodus, I wish to exhort the various civil authorities to carry on their work with justice, solidarity and foresight.
Here I wish to speak in particular of the Christians of the Middle East. Beleaguered in various ways, even in the exercise of their religious freedom, they are leaving the land of their forebears, where the Church took root during the earliest centuries.
To offer them encouragement and to make them feel the closeness of their brothers and sisters in faith, I have convened for next autumn a Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Middle East.
Here's the editorial in today's L'Osservatore Romano on the Pope's 'state-of-the-world' address.
In God, the Church
lives for others
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from
the 1/11-1/12/10 issue of
Benedict XVI's address to the diplomats accredited to the Holy See looks to the future. With a breadth of vision that is generally not found among international leaders, and with a realism that does not hide problems.
In a review that is traditional in form but very well demonstrates the attention and attitude of the Bishop of Rome towards the world, the Pope says in his introductio, that "the Church is open to all because in God, it lives for others".
This opening was demonstrated in the past weeks by the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Russian Federation - reason for 'profound satisfaction', the Pope said - and by the visit of the President of Vietnam, added to the numerous meetings the Pontiff has held with the world's political representatives at the Vatican and during his travels.
Still in the forefront of the international panorama is the tragic crisis in the world economy and the resulting social instability.
At the root of the crisis - as one reads in
Caritas in Veritate - is selfish and materialistic mentality. Whose effects threaten Creation itself - such as the environmental degradation, brought to light after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the European countries that had been under atheist regimes.
That is why the Holy See shares the strong concern over the substantial failure of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, and hopes that follow-up meetings in Bonn and Mexico City will be able to overcome political and economic resistance to positive measures against environmental degradation. Otherwise, the very fate of some countries is at stake, the Pope declared.
For more reason, the Church - while attentive to the protection of the environment - insists on the irrenunciable respect for the human person, which means protection of life from conception, and an equitable distribution of food resources, of which the world has enough for its entire population, as the Holy See has repeated over the decades against the advocates of catastrophism [with increasing population].
Thus Benedict XVI once again expressed his concern over the exploitation of enormous zones of Africa, drug production in Afghanistan and some nations of Latin America, but above all, the constant increase in military spending and for nuclear arms, which will be the subject of a UN conference in New York this May.
Many insupportable situations due to the spread of violence, poverty and hunger are at the origin of the evident phenomenon of migration worldwide, in the face of which the Pope also appealed once more to civilian authorities to act with "justice, solidarity and foresight" - recalling in particular the forced migration of Christians from their historic homelands in the Middle East.
It is precisely this tragic and preoccupying phenomenon - which risks the extinction of the Christian presence in the lands where the Church was born - that prompted Benedict XVI to call a special assembly of the Bishops' Synod in the autumn.
He also reiterated his advocacy of universal recognition of the rights to statehood of Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the unique identity and character of the city of Jerusalem.
The crises of the world and of individual societies begin in the hearts of men, the Pope reiterated - and they can be overcome by a change in mentality and lifestyles through massive educational efforts.
The Church wishes to be part of such efforts, and therefore, its public role should be acknowledged - in Europe which should not abandon the sources of its own identity, and in the world.
Where the Church does not seek privileges, but only to be allowed to live for others, faithful to its only Lord.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/01/2010 13:47]