Posted earlier in BENEDICT NEWS:
Along the paths of man:
Cardinal Canizares presents CIV
at a summer course in Spain
Translated from
the 8/8/09 issue of
"There is no economy without people, nor is there true development unless man in his wholeness is taken into account".
Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, said in Aranjuez, Spain, yesterday at a summer course on economy at King Juan Carlos University.
Canizares, who was Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain until he was named to the Curia last year, lectured on "The Person and the Economy", starting from the premise that in the present context, "it is the question of God that is in play".
He proposed an analysis of society in which the Church "must be present, placing God at the center of everything", referring to Pope Benedict's third encyclical,
Caritas in veritate, whose very title, he said, was 'courageous, significant and stimulating'.
The Pope's encyclical, he said, confronts social issues in order to offer "the light of the Gospel of which the Church is the bearer" and does so 40 years after the publication of Paul VI's
Populorum progressio.
Thus, "at the complex crossroads in which humanity finds itself today, in a full-blown global economic crisis,
Caritas in veritate proposes 'a new path for mankind'... (providing) a singular contribution to the world today".
Stressing that this was not just a social encyclical, the cardinal noted how the Pope 'entered' not only into the roots of the financial-economic crisis but also into the day-to-day lives of families and individuals, not limiting himself to theoretical principles nor offering technical solutions, but inviting those concerned to always consider the actual needs of individuals.
With man as the center of attention, therefore, financial instruments alone will not overcome the global recession. Rather, man must trust in 'the power of love' - on that nearness to one's fellowmen that is not simply almsgiving, but solidarity, free generosity, sharing.
Indeed, the Church does not have any technical solutions to offer, but "its mission is truth in the name of a society built to the measure of man... (since) the truth about man insures that there is hope for mankind in the future".
Referring to the Pope's meeting last month with US President Barack Obama, the cardinal pointed out that the defense of life was a major topic, since practices contrary to human dignity are "the maximum expression of a materialistic view of the world".
Against such a view, he said, "the Church looks to the future with hope". He then went on to review past interventions on the subject by Benedict XVI before he became Pope.
As early as the 1950s and 1960s, he said, then Prof. Joseph Ratzinger already spoke and wrote about "recovering the authentic concept of Christian brotherhood, one of the key themes of the encyclical, and of which he never lost sight."
Canizares said that Benedict XVI has never been "an abstract thinker, but one very much in the world" who has always been able to conciliate faith and reason as a response to the problems of modernity, advocating full integral human development as necessary for the authentic progress of peoples.
"He has always sought to respond to the great problems of mankind and morality by offering the light of faith as the instrument of salvation."
As Archbishop of Munich-Freising, he recalled, Ratzinger first undertook a study of Europe in which he advocated "the defense of democracy and of the rule of law" along with "the need not to relegate the faith to an exclusively private sphere".
For this reason, the cardinal concluded, "there is no economy without
people, without resolving the question of man, without the truth of man who needs Jesus Christ, and without a sense of the common good."
Responding to newsmen's questions before he gave his lecture, Canizares also referred to the encyclical, particularly its section on the defense of life.
He said "laws should protect defenseless beings but today, they are used instead to eliminate the weak, the innocent and the defenseless. Medicine itself exists to cure persons, not to eliminate them".
He noted that the present economic conjuction also indicates an anthropological crisis, as the Pope points out in the encyclical, because "it is man himself and one's view of man" that is at stake - and so "the crisis is also cultural social, and moral, a crisis of humanity itself."
'Caritas in veritate':
It transcends the concept
of the modern nation-state
by Giandomenico Picco
Former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations
Translated from
the 8/7/09 issue of
The modern nation-state, which was born with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and took form with the American and French Revolutions, has always had a secret weapon: the concept of individual/national identity.
American historian Arthur Schlesinger has said that our intellect is not structured to be able to imagine the multiple possibilities of the future.
Indeed, it would have been difficult to imagine globalization as it has developed in the past few decades. It has changed the concept of 'neighbor', in the sense of anyone who could have a positive or negative impact on the life of every person.
Today, in fact, the activities of those who live on other continents can and do influence our personal day-to-day, whereas when I was a child, my idea of 'neighbor' was Carinthia in Austria, Slovenia which was then Yugoslavia, and the Veneto.
Caritas in veritate underlines that globalization "makes us neighbors, but not brothers".
In my experiences with peoples at war or living with terrorism, the concept of communication and dialog, of coexistence and even friendship - no matter how different various cultures are - appeared to be and was realizable.
But I must admit that the concept of brotherhood never figured among the objectives of any negotiation, official or otherwise. And the encylical explains it thus: reason is capable of establishing 'coexistence' but not 'brotherhood'.
In the eyes - the only part of the face I could see - of the masked Lebanese who placed a hood over my head while he drove me through the streets of Beirut at night, I sought some element of human commonality.
Some words of the encylical, words very dear to Pope Benedict XVI, would have been helpful to me then: "Religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentic human face" (No. 56).
In
Caritas in veritate, I found the seeds of a vision for a future international order which conform to my own reading of reality and of my own multicultural personal history as someone from a border area that was always involved in mediating conflicts.
The reference to the limitations of State in a globalized world (cfr No. 24) and even more, the statement that "it is not necessary that the State has the same characteristics everywhere" (No. 41), open the doors to a concept of the nation-state that I would call post-Westphalian.
In the system that I see emerging, every protagonist is stronger, and at the same time, weaker, than thirty years ago, as an effect of inter-relations and interdependeces that were unthinkable before then.
The possibility that every experience of nationhood has a duration independent of others after which it exhausts itself is plausible: for some nation=states, that experience may be coming to an end.
The Pope makes a reference to a world political authority that does not yet exist, but also to the role of individuals and non-government organizations, unelected, as protagonists in the emerging international society.
Are they perhaps the first germinating elements of a direct democracy in a global society in which the individual has instruments as never before to communicate his own will and opinions?
The encyclical encourages the concept of the 'responsibility to protect' (No, 67) the citizens of every nation from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, even if individual states are unable to do it themselves: this is the new frontier of international law that goes beyong Westphalia.
[A concept well articulated by Benedict XVI in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in April 2008, but then, that speech never got the attention and study that it merited - and continues to merit.]
Even more important in the encyclical's indications for a future world order is the appeal to free ourselves of those ideologies "which simplify reality, often in an artificial way" (No, 22).
That is a hope that encounters strong resistance today in many parts of the world because of the fear that the new complexities of a globalized world arouse in many.
Fundamentalisms of varying extraction are unfortunately present in many nations, and with them, the arrogance of ignorace continues to sow the seeds of confrontation and conflict.
The number of variables that the managers of the world must take into account has grown a lot in the last twenty years, and the temptation to find refuge in simplistic theories is nourished by ancestral sentiments.
The encyclical responds to this: "Hope encourages reason and gives it the power to orient the will" (No. 34). Thus, the need to generate hope.
Benedict XVI also hopes for a reform of the United Nations system and of international economic and financial institutions. And I hope that this can be accomplished not only at the numerical level.
For example, a much enlarged Security Council would be a modest reform but it could also result in further lessening its efficacy. The proper objective of reform should be the method of work employed by the various organisms of the United Nations.
"The unity of the human family does not in itself annul persons, peoples and cultures, but makes them more transparent to each other, better united in their legitimate diversities" (No. 53), the Pope states in the encyclical, perhaps with the subtext of reading identities differently.
Globalization is slowly undermining what Amartya Sen calls 'the illusion of choiceless identity', which has been the secret of the nation-state.
The emergence of multiple identities, in my opinion, will not simply change the international system but the nation-state itself, thus making more realizable the concept of a human family.
Then, perhaps, we will have leaders who will know how to be leaders even without an enemy to rally their followers against.
This is a good occasion to translate a couple more front-page commentaries on CIV that have been published in OR in the past week:
Like a lightning bolt
through the malaise of society
by Xavier Darcos
Member, Institute of France
French Minister of Labor and Social Relations
Translated from
the 8/3-8/4/09 issue of
Addressing a disoriented world, non-egalitarian and traumatized by the spasms of a global crisis, the encyclical
Caritas in Veritate arrived at the right time, like a lightning bolt ripping through dark clouds.
It allows Benedict XVI to spell out anew the doctrine of the Church in the face of the social realities today which have been based on the cynical laws of profit and unregulated economic interdependence.
It proclaims that other ways are possible and necessary. From the very sources of the Christian message, it draws hope for innovative orientations and solutions.
Benedict XVI celebrates love, the cardinal virtue of the faith - the impulse of the spirit towards other,s 'the master way of the social dostrine of the Church".
He places himself in the stream of light cast by Leo XIII's
Rerum novarum to Paul VI's
Populorum progressio.
The Pope first of all reaffirms what is fundamental in Christianity - love, sharing, justice - as a remedy for the selfish tactics of each-one-for-himself.
He reminds us that the Gospel opens the path towards a society of freedom and equality. And that "a Christianity of love without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance."
John Paul II made an impression on the public because of the spiritual struggle that he embodied against Soviet and Stalinist Marxism. But he, too, criticized the generalized anomie that capitalism had drifted to.
With the same impulse, Benedict XVI draws a severe balance sheet of the criminal drifts that globalization has taken, thanks to financing based on quick profits for a few.
His analyses are precise, documented and ample. They show the alienation of a humanity that has been devastated by insupportable inequalities among men, societies and nations.
Such a balance sheet, made even gloomier by the present crisis, demands a redefinition of development that is not reduced to simple continuous economic growth. The Pope stigmatizes the evident failures in their various visible forms.
The process of development requires a guide: truth.
"Love in truth' - 'the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity". Otherwise, "social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation".
Let us open our eyes: voracious progress, based on material and speculative resources, has failed. The world is devouring itself, as Chronos devours his own children. The Church proposes another choice: 'integral development' which assures shared humanistic emancipation.
Growth is beneficial, globalization does not necessarily generate catastrophe, technology in itself is not perverse - but these brute forces should be subordinated to an ethic.
In a world without compass, there are promising experiences that have started to establish new relations among men. Benedict XVI asks that such attempts be generalized, in order to explore the ways of giving, of gratuitousness, of redistribution.
He condemns the vacuity of a relativism which deprives men, in some way, of any sense to their collective life. Thus he blames the two dangers that threaten culture: an eclecticism in which everything is as good as another, without references nor hierarchy; and the uniformization of lifestyles.
In the face of the failure of 'having' and the chaos of 'being', Benedict XVI calls for a new alliance between faith and reason, between divine light and human intelligence.
Even if "she has no technical solutions to offer", the Church has 'a mission of truth to fulfill' towards "a society built in the measure of man, of his dignity, of his vocation".
Because if one goes beyond appearances, the causes of underdevelopment are not primarily of a physical and material order. Rather, it resides more than anything in the lack of brotherhood among men and among peoples: "A society which is ever more globalized makes us neighbors but not brothers".
The Pope has launched an appeal in order that this crisis may oblige us to reconsider our itinerary, in view of the fact that while global wealth has grown, the disparities have also increased.
Such a magma which erodes values, has led to a depreciation of life in its specificity, to discourage natality, to suppress religious freedom, to terrorize spirituality, to put a brake on confidence and on expansion.
All it takes is that men become aware of being part of one single family, which means a recovery of uncommon values: of giving, of rejecting the market as an instrument of domination, of abandoning the culture of hedonism, of an equitable distribution of resources, cooperation, and the like.
The Pope's thinking reveals the incubus of mankind drunk on the Promethean claim to being able to 're-create' man himself by availing of the wonders of technology such as cloning, genetic manipulation, eugenics.
The source of these deviations is one and the same: dehumanization. Thus, wherever we live and whatever degree of responsibility we have, each of us must reconcile ourselves with love and forgiveness, reject the superfluous, be generous to our neighbor, work for justice and peace.
Such conduct is a moral demand that has become a condition for survival.
Reading this encyclical, which is permeated with magnificent spiritual fervor, one does not get the impression of an abstract meditation or a prayer. Rarely has a Pope looked at reality so closely in order to analyze its evils in depth and to propose, with pragmatism and lucidity, the most useful antidotes.
May his message be understood and heeded!
Two Popes and the Transfiguration
by Fr. Robert Imbelli
Translated from
the 8/5/09 issue of
The Transfiguration - one of the religious feast days that is most theologically rich - reveals the true face of Christ, beloved Son of the Father, and the destiny to which the disciples and all men are called, revealing the truth about Christ and all mankind, as St. mark narrates: "After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them" (Mk 9,2).
Some Fathers of the Church have interpreted the words 'after six days' as an announcement of the fulfillment of creation. The creation of Adam and Eve by God is thus fulfilled in the revelation of the true man, the new Adam, Jesus Christ, in whom the glory of God physically dwells.
Moreover, the progressive education of mankind by God, through the patient pedagogy of the Torah and the Prophets, also culminates in the Son of God. That is why Moses and Elijah appear wrapped in light whose source is Christ. Their testimony was an anticipation of the glory fully revealed in Christ, their words an echo of the Word of God become human in Jesus.
In
Caritas in veritate, Pope Benedict XVI writes: "Only if we are aware of our calling, as individuals and as a community, to be part of God's fmaily as his sons and daughters, will we be able to generate a new vision and muster new energy in the service of a truly integral humanism" (No 78).
This theme, so dear to Paul VI, inspires the social doctrine of the Church and impels us to work for integral human development. Drawing from Paul VI's
Populorum progressio, Benedict XVI's encyclical underscores that "the truth of development consists in its completeness: if it does not involve the whole man and every man, it is not true development" (No. 18).
Integral humanism exalts the dignity of every person from conception to natural death. It recognizes the material and spiritual needs of the human family. It promotes social justice and attributes the highest place to the common good.
It knows that service to the common good demands concrete and effective solidarity at every level. it acknowledges that the destiny of mankind is collective and that its ultimate end is the communion of saints who live with God for eternity.
A truly integral humanism contemplates mankind and all creation ultimately transfigured in Christ. In this light, one may celebrate the Transfiguration as a feast in which the Church proclaims its vision of integral humanism.
Contemplating the beauty of Christ transfigured makes his disciples desire that the world may be enveloped in the light of his transfiguration and act audaciously according to this holy desire.
But the Transfiguration also reveals 'the price of ddiscipleship' (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). In the narration of St. Luke, Moses and Elijah speak to Jesus "of his exodus, that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem" (Lk 9,31).
The full weight of Jesus's love, his
caritas in veritate, would be manifested only in the Paschal mystery. The new transfigured life can be obtained only through the death of the old Adam in us, so that we may be reborn to the newness of the transfigured life.
To faithfully live the journey of faith, we need a renewed commitment to follow the transfigured Christ. The Christian vision of integral humanism should be incarnated in an integral spirituality in which prayer and action, truth and love, individual responsibility and social justice, together form a seamless whole.
Caritas in veritate is permeated by the conviction that spiritual discipline and constant conversion are necessary: "Development requires attention to the spiritual life, a serious consideration of the experiences of trust in God, spiritual fellowship in Christ, reliance upon God's providence and mercy, love and forgiveness, self-denial, acceptance of others, justice and peace. All this is essential if 'hearts of stone' are to be transformed into 'hearts of flesh' [Ez 36,26) , rendering life on earth 'divine' and thus more worthy of humanity" (No. 79).
Paul VI manifested this mystery in his life. The image of the transfigured Lord energized the heart of his spirituality and his hopes for the Church and mankind. It was a wonderful grace of Providence that this Pope died on the evening of the feast, on August 6, 1978.
Among the last words we heard from Paul VI, on the month of the Transfiguration, were perhaps those from the second Letter of Peter (1, 17-19), which constitute a testimony from this great Pope.
Jesus "received honor and glory from God the Father when a voice of majestic glory came: 'This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well-pleased'. We heard this voice descend from heaven while we were with him on that holy mountain. And we also heard, very solidly, the words of the prophets, to which you would do well to pay attention as to a lamp that shines in a dark place until day comes and the morning star rises in our hearts".