(Vatican Radio) “The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes
clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God
is defending man”, said Pope Benedict XVI Friday in his Christmas address to members
of the Roman Curia. Emer McCarthy reports:
Often referred to as the Pope’s
‘State of the Church’ address, his discourse encompassed the main ecclesial events
of the past year: the visit to Mexico and Cuba, and the “unforgettable encounters
with the power of faith” there; the Meeting of the families in Milan, the visit to
Lebanon for the consignment of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation; the Synod on
the New Evangelization; the inauguration of the Year of Faith; the 50th
anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. All these occasions,
the Pope noted “spoke to fundamental themes of this moment in history: the family
(Milan), serving peace in the world and dialogue among religions (Lebanon) and proclaiming
the message of Jesus Christ in our day to those who have yet to encounter him and
to the many who know him only externally and hence do not actually recognize him”.
The Holy Father then focused particularly on the theme of the family and the
nature of dialogue, dedicating most of his lengthy discourse to them.
The Milan
meeting, he said shows that “the family is still strong and vibrant today” but he
added “there is no denying the crisis that threatens it to its foundations – especially
in the western world”. The Pope recognized the widespread refusal in today's world
"to make any committment ” as one of the biggest challenges to family life, "a false
understanding of freedom and self-realization as well as the desire to escape suffering"
. Only in self-giving, noted Pope Benedict “does man…discover the breadth of his
humanity. 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”.
But concern for family is not exclusive to Catholic Church.
In a lengthy reference to writings of the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim,
on the same topic, the Pope said that the very notion of what being human really
means and the differences between male and female, "is being called into question
under the term “gender” as a new philosophy of sexuality".
Thus he noted,
"sex is no longer a given element of nature" but has been reduced to "a social role
that we choose for ourselves”. While we deplore the manipulation of nature where our
environment is concerned, it has now become man’s "fundamental choice where he himself
is concerned”.
Pope Benedict warned, “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, concluded the Pope “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”.
The Holy Father then addressed
a second major theme, “which runs through the whole of the past year from Assisi to
the Synod on the New Evangelization: the question of dialogue and proclamation”.
He spoke of three principal areas of dialogue, in which the Church 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. “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 quest for 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”.
Regarding dialogue with other religions, Pope
Benedict spoke of two fundamental rules: Firstly that dialogue does not aim at conversion,
but at understanding. In this respect it differs from evangelization, from mission;
Secondly, that 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”.
Pope Benedict XVI concluded by reflection on evangelization:
“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...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”. Below
please find the full text of the Holy Father’s Address:
Dear Cardinals, Brother
Bishops and Priests, Dear Brothers and Sisters, It is with great joy that I
meet you today, dear Members of the College of Cardinals, Representatives of the Roman
Curia and the Governorate, for this traditional event in the days leading up to the
feast of Christmas. I greet each one of you cordially, beginning with Cardinal Angelo
Sodano, whom I thank for his kind words and for the warm good wishes that he extended
to me on behalf of all present. The Dean of the College of Cardinals reminded us
of an expression that appears frequently during these days in the Latin liturgy: Prope
est iam Dominus, venite, adoremus! The Lord is already near, come, let us adore him!
We too, as one family, prepare ourselves to adore the Child in the stable at Bethlehem
who is God himself and has come so close as to become a man like us. I willingly
reciprocate your good wishes and I thank all of you from my heart, including the Papal
Representatives all over the world, for the generous and competent assistance that
each of you offers me in my ministry.
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. I recall how, on my arrival in Mexico, there were endless
crowds of people lining the long route, cheering and waving flags and handkerchiefs.
I recall how, on the journey to the attractive provincial capital Guanajuato, there
were young people respectfully kneeling by the side of the road to receive the blessing
of Peter’s Successor; 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 Evangelization, 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.
All these occasions spoke to fundamental themes of
this moment in history: the family (Milan), serving peace in the world and dialogue
among religions (Lebanon) and proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ in our day to
those who have yet to encounter him and to the many who know him only externally and
hence do not actually recognize him. Among these broad themes, I should like to focus
particularly on the theme of the family and the nature of dialogue, and then to add
a brief observation on the question of the new evangelization.
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. It was noticeable that the Synod repeatedly emphasized the significance
of the family as the authentic setting in which to hand on the blueprint of human
existence. This is something we learn by living it with others and suffering it with
others. So it became clear that the question of the family is not just about a particular
social construct, but about man himself – about what he is and what it takes to be
authentically human. The challenges involved are manifold. First of all there is
the question of the human capacity to make a commitment or to avoid commitment. Can
one bind oneself for a lifetime? Does this correspond to man’s nature? Does it not
contradict his freedom and the scope of his self-realization? Does man become himself
by living for himself alone and only entering into relationships with others when
he can break them off again at any time? Is lifelong commitment antithetical to freedom?
Is commitment also worth suffering for? 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. Yet only in self-giving does man find himself, and only by opening himself
to the other, to others, to children, to the family, only by letting himself be changed
through suffering, does he discover the breadth of his humanity. 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. The profound falsehood of this theory
and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. 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. The words of the creation account: “male and female
he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was
not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide
for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being,
no longer exist. 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.
From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his
nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of
what it means to be human are disputed. 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.
The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God
is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.
At
this point I would like to address the second major theme, which runs through the
whole of the past year from Assisi to the Synod on the New Evangelization: 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, she has experienced its boundaries and
its grandeur, its opportunities and its limitations. 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. What the Church has learned from the encounter
between revelation and human experience does indeed extend beyond the realm of pure
reason, but it is not a separate world that has nothing to say to unbelievers. By
entering into the thinking and understanding of mankind, this knowledge broadens the
horizon of reason and thus it speaks also to those who are unable to share the faith
of the Church. 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 quest
for 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. Even if the
fundamental choices themselves are not under discussion, the search for an answer
to a specific question becomes a process in which, through listening to the other,
both sides can obtain purification and enrichment. 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 interreligious dialogue:
1. Dialogue
does not aim at conversion, but at understanding. In this respect it differs from
evangelization, 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.
These rules are correct, but in the
way they are formulated here I still find them too superficial. 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. As far as preserving identity is concerned, it would be too
little for the Christian, so to speak, to assert his identity in a such a way that
he effectively blocks the path to truth. Then his Christianity would appear as something
arbitrary, merely propositional. He would seem not to reckon with the possibility
that religion has to do with truth. On the contrary, 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. Being inwardly held by the hand of Christ
makes us free and keeps us safe: free – because if we are held by him, we can enter
openly and fearlessly into any dialogue; safe – because he does not let go of us,
unless we cut ourselves off from him. At one with him, we stand in the light of truth.
Finally,
at least a brief word should be added on the subject of proclamation, or evangelization,
on which the post-synodal document will speak in depth, on the basis of the Synod
Fathers’ propositions. I find that the essential elements of the process of evangelizing
appear most eloquently in Saint John’s account of the calling of two of John the Baptist’s
disciples, who become disciples of Jesus Christ (1:35-39). First of all, we have
the simple act of proclamation. John the Baptist points towards Jesus and says: “Behold
the Lamb of God!” A similar act is recounted a few verses later. This time it is
Andrew, who says to his brother Simon “We have found the Messiah” (1:41). The first
and fundamental element is the straightforward proclamation, the kerygma, which draws
its strength from the inner conviction of the one proclaiming. In the account of
the two disciples, the next stage is that of listening and following behind Jesus,
which is not yet discipleship, but rather a holy curiosity, a movement of seeking.
Both of them, after all, are seekers, men who live over and above everyday affairs
in the expectation of God – in the expectation that he exists and will reveal himself.
Stimulated by the proclamation, their seeking becomes concrete. They want to come
to know better the man described as the Lamb of God by John the Baptist. The third
act is set in motion when Jesus turns round, approaches them and asks: “What do you
seek?” They respond with a further question, which demonstrates the openness of their
expectation, their readiness to take new steps. They ask: “Rabbi, where are you staying?”
Jesus’ answer “Come and see!” is an invitation to walk with him and thereby to have
their eyes opened with him.
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.