For a new world:
The Pope's insistence
on the question of God
Editorial
by Carlo Di Cicco
Translated from
the 1/1/2010 issue of
In the year that has just passed, the question of God seems to have returned to actuality. His traces had seemed to have disappeared or become confused with an endless list of new idols on whom even the most evolved societies seem to confer celebrity so easily.
But no one can guarantee that the return of God to debates, nor even his 'presence' on the Internet, means his friendly reception into the history of our day and in the life of religions themselves.
Benedict XVI - who is without doubt the most passionate and convinced advocate of a renewed encounter with God that can make the earth and the homes of men more livable - invites us above all to take reasonable steps towards a God who is not generic, but who was incarnated in Jesus Christ.
Thus, his Pontificate is showing itself increasingly to be a bridge between God and modernity. The Pontiff, above every other concern, has opened in the Church a new attention to the things of the spirit.
Evangelization - announcing the Gospel of Jesus, Savior of the World - takes place through the practice of charity. Papa Ratzinger has pointed out, in every phase of his Magisterium and with every kind of interlocutor, the need based on reason to actualize the encounter of contemporary society with God, a decisive point even for the future of mankind.
Opening with the use of the senses a broader horizon of progressive inquiry into the cosmos helps to find new harmonies in the universe which, in small steps that have been registered by science even in the year just past, appears to us more and more known.
Benedict XVI's belief that a new era for humanity is facilitated by man's friendly encounter with God is a perspective that is far from banal.
To reason about God makes man more careful, it liberates him from ire and from the will to dominate, because it teats both his greatness as well as his limitations.
This sense of limitation is helpful to scientists, politicians and churchmen, as the Pope continually reminds himself and everyone. Just as he repeats thorough various formulations a basic concept: to be Christian is to live as the family of God.
Familiarity with God is a gift open to everyone. And God - at least, the God shown by Jesus, the one we invoke in praying 'Our Father' - should not be brandished against anyone. Because to be with God cannot be reduced to using God.
Everyone who wants to may draw up a balance sheet and evaluate the actions of Papa Ratzinger, but it would be necessary to soar as high as he does, without getting bogged down in internal diatribes that are also partial, because they lose sight of the whole picture.
Among the many significant events that the Church experienced in the year just past - one can just think of the Synodal assembly dedicated to Africa with its prophetic power that Benedict XVI himself has noted - two deserve special reflection, as signs that reveal a plan and a method that, like seeds, could flower.
In the first place, one must reread the letter of March 10, 2009, addressed by the Pope to the bishops of the Catholic Church "on the remission of excommunication from the four bishops ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre".
For the circumstances that gave birth to it, for its tone, for the unexpected and exceptional gesture that it was, and for the questions it touched upon, it cannot be easily shelved. Indeed, it lays bare the burning issues that are disquieting the Church
The return to a peaceful confrontation among Catholics is, in fact, capitally important in order to understand the authentic sense of Vatican II without without recriminations and without instrumentalization - but rather, accepting it, with all its consequences, as a true Pentecost in our time.
Benedict XVI reads the disquiet that degenerates to harsh confrontation as a manifestation of the gradual attenuation and disappearance of God from the horizon of men. Discord among believers weakens their credibility as witnesses to Christ's message.
In the second place, it is impossible not to recall the encyclical
Caritas in veritate, in which, while effectively expressing the love and respect of the Church for secular society and its autonomy, the Pope has chosen to deal with economics, one of the central problems with the present international order.
Casting seeds for a new economy, the encyclical is open to a very wide circle of persons and peoples. The global crisis has shown very concretely how much the world economic order affects the life of individuals, besides its effects on international politics and within individual nations.
If the economy goes wrong, everyone suffers, and the poor suffer worse. From the disorder that is created under the skies, with its cyclical crises, it is possible to find a way out, if man learns to look at the skies again.
Because the God who lives in heaven and that Benedict XVI has been 'showing' to everyone, also lived once on earth among men. He will help men to overcome through effective solidarity the repugnance for each other that man, forgetting fraternity, drags him down and that he feeds continually - thinking up and raising, with incredible imagination, walls and fences of every kind.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/01/2010 11:10]