SUMMARY:
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STUDYING VATICAN COUNCIL II FROM THE ARCHIVES
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RESPECTING THE JURIDICAL MECHANISMS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
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STUDYING
VATICAN COUNCIL II FROM THE ARCHIVES
Vatican
City, 2 October 2012 (VIS) - A conference was held in the Holy See
Press Office this morning to present an International Academic
Conference: "Vatican Council II in the Light of the Archives of
the Council Fathers, on the Fiftieth Anniversary of its Opening
(1962-2012)". The event has been organised by the Pontifical
Committee for Historical Sciences in collaboration with the "Vatican
Council II" Centre for Research and Study of the Pontifical
Lateran University, and will take place from 3 to 5 October.
Participating
in this morning's presentation were Fr. Bernard Ardura O. Praem.,
president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, and
Philippe Chenaux, director of the "Vatican Council II"
Centre for Research and Study of the Pontifical Lateran University
and a member of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.
Fr.
Ardura explained how a global project has been organised in view of
the anniversary of Vatican Council II, involving an examination of
the personal archives of the Council Fathers, the aim being to
produce original and academically valid research and to favour an
increasingly deep understanding of an event "which has
profoundly marked the life of the Church over the last half century".
"Following
the path laid down by Blessed Pope John XXIII in his opening address
to the Council, all available archive material must be submitted to
careful historical scrutiny, in order to ensure that people do not,
as the Pope himself said, 'act as if they had nothing to learn from
history, which is a teacher of life'. The consultation and
publication of diaries, memories and correspondence of important
figures who participated in Vatican Council II has already
contributed to the development of an hermeneutic of the Council; ...
that 'hermeneutic of reform in continuity' identified by Benedict XVI
as the way to ensure authentic ecclesial interpretation.
"In
this light", Fr. Ardura added, "we have begun researching
the private archives of the Council Fathers, in order to identify and
catalogue the documents they produced: diaries, notes on the various
meetings of commission, ... and all the documents that may help us to
understand how the Council Fathers experienced the great event, how
they viewed it and how they reacted to the various opinions
expressed".
The
current conference is to be the first of two events on Vatican
Council II. It aims to "present the current state of research
and to highlight, for example, the difficulties encountered in
searching the archives". Of the Council Fathers, 2,090 were from
Europe and the Americas, while 408 were from Asia, 351 from Africa
and 74 from Oceania. A large number of the latter came from mission
lands and belonged to missionary institutions, for which reason much
of their documentation is held in convents. Moreover the 'cult of the
archive' which is habitual in Europe and America is not equally
widespread in Asia and Africa, although the archives of the
Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples do, to some extent,
make up for these shortcomings".
Fr.
Ardura explained that "the intention of the Pontifical Committee
is to promote, in the light of the Holy Father's Magisterium and
following a strict historical-critical methodology divorced from any
ideology, a pondered and academically grounded historiographical
re-reading of what was undeniably 'the great event' of Vatican
Council II".
The
conference will begin with a documentary prepared by the Vatican film
library, and an opening address by two speakers. The first of these
will be Cardinal Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan, Italy, who will
focus on the months between the announcement and the opening of the
Council because, Fr. Ardura said, "the preparatory period offers
many keys to understanding the subsequent development of the
Council". The other opening speaker will be Professor Philippe
Chenaux himself, who will discuss historiography with relation to
Vatican Council II. In order to recall the ecumenical dimension,
"strongly underlined" by Blessed John XXIII, one
representative from the Patriarchate of Moscow and one from the
Protestant churches will also attend the conference.
The
results of the research of recent years, and of the conference, "will
be a preliminary inventory of the Council Fathers' archives. This
will be fed into an online database which may be consulted free of
charge on the website of the Pontifical Council".
For his
part, Philippe Chenaux explained that "the attempt to write a
history of Vatican Council II involves not only research into the
sources, ... but also interpretation, the so-called conciliar
'hermeneutic'. In other words, the historians who devised this
project of the history of Vatican II have 'excogitated' the Council,
whence have emerged two interpretative criteria which guided their
work: the Council as 'event' and the Council as 'rupture'".
"The
fundamental challenge for historians of the Council is, then, how to
reconcile these two opposing readings of Vatican II and its
decisions. This does not mean writing a 'counter history' of Vatican
Council II. Rather, more modestly, it means resuming historical
research on the basis of the widest possible documentation and with
no ideological bias. It means avoiding the manipulation of conciliar
history for ends other than the history itself, in order to achieve a
more balanced and shared understanding of the event and its
decisions. 'Starting again from the archives', that is the challenge
underlying the great research project of into the archives of the
Council Fathers", he concluded.
RESPECTING
THE JURIDICAL MECHANISMS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Vatican
City, 2 October 2012 (VIS) - Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, secretary
for Relations with States, yesterday spoke before the sixty-seventh
General Assembly of the United Nations, which has as its theme:
"Adjustment or settlement of international disputes or
situations by peaceful means".
In his
address the archbishop highlighted how "loss of faith in the
value of dialogue, and the temptation to favour 'a priori' one of the
sides in regional and national conflicts, threaten respect for the
juridical mechanisms of the United Nations. However, the pre-eminence
of the values contained in the Charter should lead to the adoption of
all possible means to ensure the protection of the most vulnerable,
the promotion of respect for the rule of law and the rights of man,
and the safeguarding of centuries-old cultural and religious
balances".
The
secretary for Relations with States went on: "The urgency of the
situation is even more evident with respect to current events in the
Middle East, and in particular in Syria. A solution is impossible if
it fails to respect the rules of international and humanitarian law,
or falls outside the mechanisms established in the United Nations
Charter. All interested parties should not only facilitate the
mission of the special envoy of the United Nations and the Arab
League, but also ensure humanitarian assistance to the suffering
peoples. The international community must unite its efforts so that
all sides replace the race to arms with negotiation, just as it must
insist on effective respect for religious liberty, human rights and
all fundamental freedoms".
"Only
an international community strongly anchored in values that are truly
concordant with human dignity will be capable of suggesting feasible
solutions to new types of conflict. These include transnational
groups which diffuse a hegemonic, pseudo-religious ideology that
fails to respect the rights of persons and civil peace. We are
thinking of recent terrorist attacks in certain parts of Africa and
Asia, and of the collusion between drug trafficking and terrorism in
other parts of the world".
"It
is of vial importance", Archbishop Mamberti concluded, "to
reach an effective outcome in the debate about the reform and
improvement of the working of the United Nations Organisation, in
order to revive its capacities to foresee conflicts and to resolve
then using peaceful means".
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