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.
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.
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
"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".
Gilles Bernheim: The Chief Rabbi of France
"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".
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