I am glad Angela Ambrogetti wrote this blog entry, as it is the best presentation I have read - limited as all news reports necessarily are - of Cardinal Bagnasco's address to the Italian bishops' Permanent Council.
The Pope and Cardinal Bagnasco
call on Christians to be
witnesses and political movers
Translated from
January 25, 2010
The themes were the usual ones, faultless and undeviating.
In his opening address to the winter meeting of the CEI (Italian bishops conference) permanent council, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco reviewed the most important developments in the past several months regarding bioethics, protecting the environment, the dignity of immigrants, the successes of the CEI's Cultural Project, without exposing himself in any way.
Which means, without taking on the position of either Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone nor of his predecessor as CEI president, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who represent, in Italy today, the Church's two lines of action in society and politics.
[IMHO, Bertone and Ruini do not represent two lines of social and political action for the Church. Their fundamental divergence is whether the Italian bishops should involve themselves directly in the political discourse (Ruini's very successful strategy in over 15 years as CEI president) or should let the Vatican Secretariat of State do that exclusively (which does not make sense, since that organism is concerned with the administration of the universal Church, and who better than the Italian bishops can deal with Italian reality, as against a Secretariat of State which is an international bureaucracy and only happens to be headed by an Italian? In this respect, one can only be happy that Cardinal Bagnasco has not been a pushover, and that apparently, Cardinal Bertone has stopped pushing!]
And just a few days before administrative elections in Italy, with uncertain alliances in each region, 'political' positions have a certain importance.
Bagnasco's low-key speech also took care not to overshadow the other great event today: the Vespers led by the Pope to mark the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. A coincidence that could perhaps have been avoided, considering that both events were foreseeable.
The Pope called once more for a 'common testimony' by Christians "in the face of the ever more complex challenges of our time such as secularization and indifference, relativism and hedonism, the sensitive ethical issues on the beginning and end of life, the limits of science and technology, the dialog with other religious traditions".
Before Anglicans, Lutherans and Orthodox Christians, the Pope listed the fields for common action: "safeguarding Creation, promoting the common good and peace, defending the centrality of the human being, commitment to defeat the miseries of our time, such as hunger, indigence, illiteracy, the inequitable distribution of goods and resources".
The same issues he brought up at the Rome Synagogue on Sunday, January 17. The same issues Cardinal Bagnasco treated in his address today. Doing so by taking the neutral stance of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, a sober and moderate style of intervention in civilian society.
In the words of the cardinal:
It does not serve anyone that public confrontation is always systematically reduced to rupture, in the attempt of each side to dominate the other. In the same way, it is insupportable to concentrate only on reciprocal denigration, to the point sometimes of denigrating the entire nation itself simply to make the other side look bad.
Even the media, who should carry out the task of information and verification which is their duty in an evolved society, should not end up in systematic defeatism or in self-inflicted wounding. A journalism of resentment that is based less on facts than on true or imagined conflicts ends up harming even the causes for which it is mobilized.
The nation needs to come out of its own habits of mental laziness, from prejudices cloaked in superiority, to be more conscious of the resources and qualities they have, to give the right consideration to successes that have been achieved, as for instance in the fight against criminality, or in technological excellence, or in medico-scientific research, or in bio-alimentation, or in creative industry.
We must be proud of our own good name, our own good work, of our often selfless commitment, which when it is present, cannot be negated by anyone.
Starting with such premises, it is therefore possible for politics - undertaken in the sense of the greatest work that one can do for others - to give itself the urgent but always postponed objective, to effect expected reforms that can fulfill those institutional, political or structural measures of transition, because further delay simply eats up resources and corrodes enthusiasm.
Very opportunely, the President of the Republic never tires of reminding the political, administrative and judicial classes and their various managerial elements, to set aside individual calculations that are sometimes quite petty, in order to achieve general objectives.
The cardinal kept his equilibrium on the issue of the economy, family support and the 'bad literature' that has left its mark. Then he tackled the issue of immigrants and the recent events in southern Italy involving immigrant farm workers:
Those hovels of cardboard or plastic, without water or electric service, without the minimum hygienic and health requisites, found within abandoned or ruined industrial buildings, exposed to the inclement weather and invaded by mud flows, demonstrate an unacceptable standard: it cannot be so. It is inhuman.
It is realistic to think that in contexts like these, serious attempts at integration cannot take root even as parallel and self-referential pieces of society take on a life of their own, about which tensions and micro-conflicts are inevitable, but end up weighing heavily on the perception of immigrants by native citizens.
As always, the cardinal goes beyond politics, in keeping with the theme of the conference on 'God today' - which was Cardinal Ruini's big 'comeback' to the limelight, and reproposes the Pope's suggestion to the Roman Curia with the image of a 'court of teh Gentiles' as a place for encounter with non-believers.
He ended his address preceding three days of work by the CEI Plenary Assembly with a wish which was as general as it is necessary:
I wish that this season can contribute to the emergence of a new generation of Italians and Catholics who, in the midst of today's cultural anguish and equipping themselves to cope sensibly with it, feel that public issues are important and elevated, insofar as they can shape the fate of everyone, and therefore are ready to give the best of themselves, their thoughts, their plans, their days - Italians and believers who realize their responsibility before God as decisive for political action.
Thus, Bagnasco kept perfect equilibrium while awaiting how things will develop but it was an occasion to remind Italian bishops that "each one is called on to repel the intimidations of secularism".
And in line with the Pope's message at St. Paul's today, an invitation for "a new and intense work of evangelization, not only among peoples who have never known the Gospel, but also those for whom Christianity is widespread and part of their history".
I have always regretted not having the time to translate Cardinal Bagnasco's interventions in full. Like Cardinal Ruini before him, he is always sensible, insightful and eloquent, whether he is addressing spiritual, philosophical, pastoral or routine practical issues. And although his interventions are necessarily focused on Italian affairs, much of it has universal resonance for Catholics.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/01/2010 13:09]