A day of study in Warsaw dedicated
to the concept of the State in the teaching
of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI
Translated from
VATICAN CITY, April 19, 2017 – “The Holy Father Francis sends his best wishes to the promoters and participants of this significant event, expressing his appreciation for the initiative meant to recognize the meritorious work of his beloved predecessor” and expressed the hope that “the meeting may ins[ire a renewed commitment for a respectful and fruitful dialog between Church and State in the construction of a civilization of love”.
This was the greeting sent by the pope to the conference on the theme “The concept of the State in the Teachings of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI”, which took place today in Warsaw at the headquarters of the Polish bishops’ conference.
The event, in honor of the emeritus Pope’s 90th birthday, was sponsored by the Polish bishops’ conference, the Fondazione Vaticana Joseph Ratzinger/Benedetto XVI, the president of the Polish Republic, and the Catholic information agency KAI.
Benedict XVI himself sent a message to the conference which read:
The Honorable President of the Republic of Poland,
Eminences, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:
With great and profound commotion, gratitude and joy, I learned of the news that on the occasion of my 90th birthday, and with the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic, leading representatives of State and Church authorities in Poland are meeting for a scientific conference on the topic, “The concept of the State in the teaching of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI”.
The topic brings together State and Church authorities to dialog on a question essential for the future of our continent. The confrontation between radically atheistic concepts of State and the emergence of a radically religious State in Islamist movements is leading us towards an explosive situation whose consequences we are experiencing everyday.
These radicalisms urgently demand that we develop a convincing concept of the State which can support the confrontation with these challenges and is able to overcome them.
In the ordeals of the past half-century, with your Bishop-Witness Cardinal Wyszinski and with the Sainted Holy Father John Paul II, Poland gave mankind two great figures who not only reflected on this question but also took upon themselves the live experience of suffering and therefore continue to point the way towards the future.
With my heartfelt gratitude for the work that Your Excellencies will undertake on this occasion, I impart on all my paternal benediction.
BENEDICT XVI
The choice of the conference theme, according to Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ, president of the Fondazione Ratzinger/BXVI, arose from the desire to “reflect together on a field of issues which are really at the heart of the great figure of Joseph Ratzinger, both while he was cardinal and during his Pontificate”.
“Following his activities during his entire Pontificate – every day, and especially during his great international trips – I was able to understand better how his perspective of service, although primarily oriented to the community of faithful Catholics, was not thereby limited but broadened towards the good of every human being, seen as an image of God, respecting and prompting his dignity, defending him from all forms of contempt, arbitrariness and violence.
In this, he was always in profound accord with his great predecessor John Paul II, of which he had been his primary and most faithful collaborator – and friend, we must say – for over 20 years, and then a true continuation during his own pontificate.
A German Pope succeeding a Polish Pope – What a formidable message of profound reciprocal understanding, of reconciliation and commitment peace, we see in considering together these two great figures of our contemporary history – a true gift to the Church and to mankind!...
Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI is profoundly convinced that the true foundation, the most solid guarantee of a human order capable of safeguarding the dignity and value of each human being is the recognition by human reason of the truth that there is an objective moral order, based ultimately on the creative logic of God. Therefore, rejecting God or forgetting him, the marginalization of religion in public life and of any perspective of transcendence in culture, are really caused by a very negative process that poses grave risks for the life of society and to the defense of the dignity of every human being.
And that is why he came back again and again to this issue with insistence and with courage – I would even say, with intense passion, even at the risk of raising strong opposition – before the most authoritative and qualified audiences, in the conviction that this was his precise responsibility in the face of the cultural evolution today of European society, and of the role of Europe in the history of the world.
Because Popes are pastors of their flock, who are responsible above all for the community of the faithful and their spiritual welfare. But precisely because of this, they must look at the human community in its entirety and address their concerns to those who are responsible for the common good of the people.
That is why Popes have always addressed the leaders who are responsible for the destinies of their respective nations, and have done so and will continue to do so with great moral authority.
Those who spoke at the Warsaw conference included: Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio, Apostolic Nuncio to Poland; Marek Kuchcinski e Stanisław Karczewski, presidents, respectively of the Polish House of Representatives and Senate; Minister Małgorzata Sadurska, chief of staff of the Polish President; Mons. Stanisław Gadecki, president of the Polish bishops’ conference; Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and Archbishop Jozef Kuney of Wroclaw. Norman Lammert, President of the German Parliament (Bundestag), sent a message.
Antonio Socci commented on Benedict XVI’s message:
A voice in the desert
Benedict XVI, only prophetic voice today, denounces
the ‘explosive situation’ produced in Europe by
by atheist-secular and Islamist radicalisms
Translated from
April 22, 2017
A surprising intervention these days on this burning issue comes from no less than Benedict XVI, confirming the fact that, although he is retired in his spiritual hermitage, he remains the most lucid and courageous mind of our time.
The occasion was the symposium that Poland’s President Andrzej Duda and the bishops of his country had organized to honor the Emeritus Pope on his 90th birthday, with the title “The concept of State in the teaching of Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI”.
Such a symposium is above all recognition of this great thinker who expresses Catholic thinking best in the current confrontation of ideas. (One cannot say this of the South American Peronism and politically correct thinking of the present Bishop of Rome).
Benedict XVI wrote a brief but most lucid message to the symposium, and in a few lines, he focuses perfectly on the problem because he calls by name Islamism and its concept of the State - with a directness that is rare in the time of Obama and Bergoglio.
But he does not only call into question Islamist radicalism, but also the radicalism of the Western secular states.
[Socci proceeds to quote the entire message.]
It is significant that Benedict XVI indicates as exemplars to emulate two Poles of the 20th century – Cardinal Stefan Wyszinski, who epitomized opposition to the atheist Communist State, and St John Paul II who, beyond fighting atheist totalitarianisms, sought to make Europe understand that it would be disastrous to seek to construct the European Union on extreme secularism, by cutting off the Christian roots of the European peoples and the openness to God of their bimillennial culture, because those roots gave rise to the centrality of human dignity which had always characterized European thought.
Benedict XVI affirms that “radically atheist conceptions of the State”, on the one hand, and “the emergence of a radically religious State among the Islamist movements” lead us to ”an explosive situation” today. Once again, his voice is prophetic, and once again, in all probability, he will not be heeded.
His brief message recalls his historic Regensburg lecture of September 2006, when Benedict XVI, contrary to what many think, did not launch any anti-Islamic invective, but proposed to the Muslim world, to secular Europe and to Christians the only true terrain of dialog that they have in common: reason.
But reason in all its grandeur, not in its widely accepted but limited scientistic and rationalistic scope (because rationalism is to reason as bronchitis is to the lungs).
One of the major philosophers of our time, Rene Girard, defended the Regensburg lecture in these words:
“What I see in this discourse is first of all, a peroration on reason. Yet everyone turned on the Pope, when this Pope, described as a reactionary, has acted as the defender of reason”.
In practice, Benedict XVI indicates a third way – between secularism and Islamism – which is the recovery of the spiritual and humanistic roots of Europe and of Western culture. We would all do well to reflect on this.
I think what distinguishes Benedict XVI from other contemporary thinkers who share the views that he articulates every chance he gets - limited as these possibilities are in his retirement - is that he is conscientious about reaffirming them every chance he gets.
Both radicalisms that Benedict XVI denounces are very real and present in the news and commentary that overloads the world daily but, in part because of this relentless overload, they have become taken for granted, literally taken as simple 'matter of fact', mere white noise to be ignored by the conscious mind, and therefore not worth commenting on, much less denouncing.
Especially since opinion leaders and supposed authorities like Barack Obama (thankfully no longer in power) and the current pope (unfortunately still very much so, and relentlessly peddling his inanities) are willfully blind to the disastrous consequences of such radicalisms and their even more disastrous refusal to acknowledge these realities, much less to confront them.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/04/2017 18:01]