Address by Pope Benedict XVI to the Pontifical Academies
(January 28, 2010) “Today's culture is strongly influenced by a vision dominated by relativism and subjectivism, both in methods and in attitudes, sometimes superficial and even trivial, affecting the reliability of research and reflection and, consequently, also dialogue, confrontation and interpersonal communication. It appears, therefore, an urgent need to re-create the essential conditions for an effective capacity-depth study and research, because with reasonably effective dialogues we can compare the various issues, in view of a common growth and preparing human persons in their totality,” said Pope Benedict XVI. He was addressing 14th Meeting of the Pontifical Academies in Rome on Thursday, 28th of January on the feast of St Thomas Aquinas. A Pontifical Academy is an academic honorary society established by or under the direction of the Holy See. Currently there are ten academies in Rome such as Academy for Fine arts, Science, Social Sciences, Theology, Archaeology and Mariology. The Pontiff called on the Academy to make a contribution “qualified, competent and passionate, so that the whole Church, and in particular the Holy See, will have opportunities, expression and appropriate means to communicate with contemporary cultures, and respond effectively to questions and challenges that come up in different fields of knowledge and human experience.” The Pope added that this commitment must be particularly visible in the training of candidates for ordained ministry, as required by the Year for Priests and confirmed by the choice of their theme for the annual public meeting, namely Theological Formation of Priests. Reflecting on the writings of Aquinas, Pope Benedict called on the Pontifical Academies to be ever alert to perceive the demands of the society and cultures in the context of the Church, and provide an appropriate and valuable contribution towards an authentic Christian humanism.
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