SUMMARY:
- FAMILY,
DIALOGUE, NEW EVANGELISATION: CENTRAL THEMES OF BENEDICT XVI'S
ADDRESS TO THE CURIA
-
AUDIENCES
- OTHER
PONTIFICAL ACTS
______________________________________
FAMILY,
DIALOGUE, NEW EVANGELISATION: CENTRAL THEMES OF BENEDICT XVI'S
ADDRESS TO THE CURIA
Vatican
City, 21 December 2012 (VIS) - This morning the Holy Father received
the cardinals and members of the Roman Curia and the Governorate of
Vatican City State for the traditional exchange of Christmas and New
Year greetings. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of
Cardinals, greeted the Pope in the name of those present.
Given
below are ample extracts from Benedict XVI's address.
"Once
again we find ourselves at the end of a year that has seen all kinds
of difficult situations, important questions and challenges, but also
signs of hope, both in the Church and in the world. I shall mention
just a few key elements regarding the life of the Church and my
Petrine ministry. First of all, ... there were the journeys to Mexico
and Cuba – unforgettable encounters with the power of faith, so
deeply rooted in human hearts, and with the joie de vivre that issues
from faith".
Events
2012
"In
Mexico, I recall how the great liturgy beside the statue of Christ
the King made Christ's kingship present among us – His peace, His
justice, His truth. All this took place against the backdrop of the
country's problems, afflicted as it is by many different forms of
violence and the hardships of economic dependence. While these
problems cannot be solved simply by religious fervour, neither can
they be solved without the inner purification of hearts that issues
from the power of faith, from the encounter with Jesus Christ. And
then there was Cuba – here too there were great liturgical
celebrations, in which the singing, the praying and the silence made
tangibly present the One that the country's authorities had tried for
so long to exclude. That country's search for a proper balancing of
the relationship between obligations and freedom cannot succeed
without reference to the basic criteria that mankind has discovered
through encounter with the God of Jesus Christ".
"As
further key moments in the course of the year, I should like to
single out the great Meeting of Families in Milan and the visit to
Lebanon, where I consigned the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
that is intended to offer signposts for the life of churches and
society in the Middle East along the difficult paths of unity and
peace. The last major event of the year was the Synod on the New
Evangelisation, which also served as a collective inauguration of the
Year of Faith, in which we commemorate the opening of the Second
Vatican Council fifty years ago, seeking to understand it anew and
appropriate it anew in the changed circumstances of today".
Family
"The
great joy with which families from all over the world congregated in
Milan indicates that, despite all impressions to the contrary, the
family is still strong and vibrant today. But there is no denying the
crisis that threatens it to its foundations – especially in the
western world. ... The challenges involved are manifold. First of all
there is the question of the human capacity to make a commitment or
to avoid commitment. ... Man's refusal to make any commitment –
which is becoming increasingly widespread as a result of a false
understanding of freedom and self-realization as well as the desire
to escape suffering – means that man remains closed in on himself
and keeps his 'I' ultimately for himself, without really rising above
it. ... When such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human
existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child – essential
elements of the experience of being human are lost".
"The
Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed
and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently
experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father,
mother, and child, goes much deeper. While up to now we regarded a
false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of
the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very
notion of being – of what being human really means – is being
called into question. He quotes the famous saying of Simone de
Beauvoir: 'one is not born a woman, one becomes so' (on ne naît pas
femme, on le devient). These words lay the foundation for what is put
forward today under the term 'gender' as a new philosophy of
sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given
element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense
of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the
past it was chosen for us by society. ... People dispute the idea
that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves
as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and
decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that
they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation
account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the
essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of
what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality
as something previously given is what is now disputed. ... Man calls
his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will.
The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our
environment is concerned, now becomes man's fundamental choice where
he himself is concerned. ... But if there is no pre-ordained duality
of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a
reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the
place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him.
Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights,
the child has become an object to which people have a right and which
they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes
the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker Himself is
denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a
creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being".
Dialogue
"At
this point I would like to address the second major theme, ... the
question of dialogue and proclamation. Let us speak firstly of
dialogue. For the Church in our day I see three principal areas of
dialogue, in which she must be present in the struggle for man and
his humanity: dialogue with states, dialogue with society – which
includes dialogue with cultures and with science – and finally
dialogue with religions. In all these dialogues the Church speaks on
the basis of the light given her by faith. But at the same time she
incorporates the memory of mankind, which is a memory of man's
experiences and sufferings from the beginnings and down the
centuries, in which she has learned about the human condition ...
Human culture, of which she is a guarantee, has developed from the
encounter between divine revelation and human existence. The Church
represents the memory of what it means to be human in the face of a
civilization of forgetfulness, which knows only itself and its own
criteria. Yet just as an individual without memory has lost his
identity, so too a human race without memory would lose its identity.
... In her dialogue with the state and with society, the Church does
not, of course, have ready answers for individual questions. Along
with other forces in society, she will wrestle for the answers that
best correspond to the truth of the human condition. The values that
she recognizes as fundamental and non-negotiable for the human
condition she must propose with all clarity. She must do all she can
to convince, and this can then stimulate political action".
"In
man's present situation, the dialogue of religions is a necessary
condition for peace in the world and it is therefore a duty for
Christians as well as other religious communities. This dialogue of
religions has various dimensions. In the first place it is simply a
dialogue of life, a dialogue of being together. This will not involve
discussing the great themes of faith – whether God is Trinitarian
or how the inspiration of the sacred Scriptures is to be understood,
and so on. It is about the concrete problems of coexistence and
shared responsibility for society, for the state, for humanity. In
the process, it is necessary to learn to accept the other in his
otherness and the otherness of his thinking. To this end, the shared
responsibility for justice and peace must become the guiding
principle of the conversation. A dialogue about peace and justice is
bound to pass beyond the purely pragmatic to an ethical struggle for
the truth and for the human being: a dialogue concerning the values
that come before everything. In this way what began as a purely
practical dialogue becomes a quest for the right way to live as a
human being. ... Thus this search can also mean taking common steps
towards the one truth, even if the fundamental choices remain
unaltered. If both sides set out from a hermeneutic of justice and
peace, the fundamental difference will not disappear, but a deeper
closeness will emerge nevertheless".
"Two
rules are generally regarded nowadays as fundamental for
inter-religious dialogue:1. Dialogue does not aim at conversion, but
at understanding. In this respect it differs from evangelisation,
from mission. 2. Accordingly, both parties to the dialogue remain
consciously within their identity, which the dialogue does not place
in question either for themselves or for the other".
"True,
dialogue does not aim at conversion, but at better mutual
understanding – that is correct. But all the same, the search for
knowledge and understanding always has to involve drawing closer to
the truth. Both sides in this piece-by-piece approach to truth are
therefore on the path that leads forward and towards greater
commonality, brought about by the oneness of the truth. ... I would
say that the Christian can afford to be supremely confident, yes,
fundamentally certain that he can venture freely into the open sea of
the truth, without having to fear for his Christian identity. To be
sure, we do not possess the truth, the truth possesses us: Christ,
Who is the truth, has taken us by the hand, and we know that His hand
is holding us securely on the path of our quest for knowledge".
New
evangelisation
"Finally,
at least a brief word should be added on the subject of proclamation,
or evangelisation. ... The word of proclamation is effective in
situations where man is listening in readiness for God to draw near,
where man is inwardly searching and thus on the way towards the Lord.
His heart is touched when Jesus turns towards him, and then his
encounter with the proclamation becomes a holy curiosity to come to
know Jesus better. As he walks with Jesus, he is led to the place
where Jesus lives, to the community of the Church, which is His body.
That means entering into the journeying community of catechumens, a
community of both learning and living, in which our eyes are opened
as we walk".
"'Come
and see!' This saying, addressed by Jesus to the two
seeker-disciples, He also addresses to the seekers of today. At the
end of the year, we pray to the Lord that the Church, despite all her
shortcomings, may be increasingly recognizable as His dwelling-place.
We ask Him to open our eyes ever wider as we make our way to His
house, so that we can say ever more clearly, ever more convincingly:
'we have found Him for Whom the whole world is waiting, Jesus Christ,
the true Son of God and true man'. With these sentiments, I wish you
all from my heart a blessed Christmas and a happy New Year".
AUDIENCES
Vatican
City, 21 December 2012 (VIS) - This afternoon the Holy Father will
receive in audience Cardinal Fernando Filoni, prefect of the
Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples.
OTHER
PONTIFICAL ACTS
Vatican
City, 21 December 2012 (VIS) - The Holy Father appointed Bishop
Devprasad John Ganawa S.V.D. of Jhabua, India, as bishop of Udaipur
(area 47,000, population 8,224,000, Catholics 24,265, priests 71,
religious 217), India. He succeeds Bishop Joseph Pathalil, whose
resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy
Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.
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