Rapid
Response for
TUESDAY, January 22, 2013
A
good reminder of
who and what we are.
GS
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ZENIT, The world seen from Rome
News Agency
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Pontiff's Address to Cor Unum
The Christian vision of man is, in fact, a great 'yes' to the dignity
of the
person
Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave Saturday when
receiving
in audience participants in the plenary assembly of the Pontifical
Council Cor
Unum.
* * *
Dear friends,
I offer you my welcome with affection and joy on the occasion of the
plenary
assembly of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum. I thank the president,
Cardinal
Robert Sarah, for his words and I address my cordial greeting to each
one of
you, extending it to all those who do charitable work in the Church.
With the recent
motu proprio Intima Ecclesiae natura I wished to emphasize the
ecclesial
meaning of your activity. Your witness can open the doors of faith to
many
people who seek Christ's love. Thus, in this Year of Faith the theme
Charity,
the New Ethics and Christian Anthropology, which you are taking up,
reflects
the close connection between love and truth, or, if you will, between
faith and
charity. The whole Christian ethos receives its meaning from faith as a
meeting
with the love of Christ, which offers a new horizon and impresses a
decisive
direction on life (cf. Deus caritas est, 1). Christina love finds its
basis and
form in faith. Meeting God and experiencing his love,
we learn no longer to live for ourselves but for him and, with him, for
others
(ibid. 33).
Beginning from this dynamic relationship between faith and charity, I
would
like to reflect on a point that I would call the prophetic dimension
that faith
instills in charity. The believer's adherence to the Gospel impresses
on
charity its typically Christian form and constitutes it as a principle
of
discernment. The Christian, especially those who work in charitable
organizations, must let himself be oriented by principles of faith
through
which we adopt God's perspective, we accept his plan for us (cf. Deus
caritas
est, 1). This new way of looking at the world and man offered by faith
also
furnishes the correct criterion for the evaluation of expressions of
charity in
the present context.
In every age, when man did not try to follow this plan, he was victim
of
cultural temptations that ended up making him a slave. In recent
centuries, the
ideologies that praised the cult of the nation, the race, of the social
class,
showed themselves to be nothing but idolatry; and the same can be said
of
unbridled capitalism with its cult of profit, which has led to crisis,
inequality and misery. There is a growing consensus today about the
inalienable
dignity of the human being and the reciprocal and interdependent
responsibility
toward man; and this is to the benefit of true civilization, the
civilization
of love. On the other hand, unfortunately, there are also shadows in
our time
that obscure God's plan. I am referring above all to a tragic
anthropological
reduction that re-proposes ancient material hedonism, to which is added
a
technological prometheism. From the marriage of a materialistic vision
of man
and great technological development there emerges an anthropology t
hat is at bottom atheistic. It presupposes that man is reduced to
autonomous
functions, the mind to the brain, human history to a destiny of
self-realization. All of this prescinds from God, from the properly
spiritual
dimension and from a horizon beyond this world. In the perspective of a
man
deprived of his soul and of a personal relation with the Creator, that
which is
technologically possible becomes morally legitimate, every experiment
is thus
acceptable, every political demographic acceptable, every form of
manipulation
justified. The danger most to be feared in this current of thought is
the
absolutization of man: man wants to be ab-solutus, absolved of every
bond and
of every natural constitution. He pretends to be independent and thinks
that
his happiness lies solely in the affirmation of self. Man calls his
nature into
question … From now on there is only the abstract human being, who
chooses for
himself what his nature is to be (Speech to the Roman Curia, De
cember 21, 2012). This is a radical negation of man's creatureliness
and filial
condition, which leads to a tragic solitude.
The faith and healthy Christian discernment bring us therefore to pay
prophetic
attention to this problematic ethical situation and to the mentality
that it
supposes. Just collaboration with international organizations in the
field of
development and in human promotion must not make us close our eyes to
these
dangerous ideologies, and the Pastors of the Church – which is the
pillar and
ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15) – have a duty to warn both
faithful
Catholics and every person of good will and right reason about these
deviations. This is a harmful deviation for man even if it is waved
with good
intentions as a banner of presumed progress, or of presumed rights, or
of a
presumed humanism. In the face of these anthropological reductions,
what is the
task of every Christian – and especially your task – involved in
charitable
work, and so in direct relations with many social protagonists? We
certainly
must exercise a critical vigilance and, sometime
s, refuse money and collaboration that would, directly or indirectly,
support
actions and projects that run contrary to a Christian anthropology.
But,
positively speaking, the Church is always committed to the promotion of
man
according to God's plan, man in his integral dignity, with respect for
his
twofold vertical and horizontal dimension. The actions of ecclesial
development
organizations are also oriented in this direction. The Christian vision
of man
is, in fact, a great yes to the dignity of the person called to
intimate
communion with God, a filial communion, humble and confident. The human
being
is neither an individual subsisting in himself nor an anonymous element
of the
collective. He is rather a singular and unrepeatable person
intrinsically
ordered to relationship and sociality. For this reason the Church
stresses her
great yes to the dignity and beauty of marriage as an expression of a
faithful
and fecund alliance between man and woman, and says no to such phi
losophies as the philosophy of gender. The Church is guided by the fact
that
the reciprocity between man and woman is the expression of the beauty
of the
nature willed by the Creator.
Dear friends, I thank you for your commitment on behalf of man, in
fidelity to
his true dignity. In the face of these challenges of our times, we know
that
the answer is the encounter with Christ. In him man can fully realize
his
personal good and the common good. I encourage you to continue in your
work
with a joyful and generous spirit as I bestow upon you the Apostolic
Benediction from my heart.
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]