Pope’s World Day of Peace message

December 14, 2012 - “Peace is not a dream or something utopian; it is possible.” But for that to happen man needs to go beyond the superficial into his heart where in the image and likeness God he is called to grow and contribute to the building of a new world. Pope Benedict XVI made this point in his message for the Catholic Church’s 46^th World Day of Peace, which will be observed on New Year’s Day, Jan. 1. The message on the theme, “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” was released in the Vatican on Friday. “To become authentic peacemakers, it is fundamental to keep in mind our transcendent dimension and to enter into constant dialogue with God, the Father of mercy,” the Pope said. “In this way,” he explained, “mankind can overcome that progressive dimming and rejection of peace which is sin in all its forms: selfishness and violence, greed and the will to power and dominion, intolerance, hatred and unjust structures. According to the 85-year old Pontiff, the precondition for peace is the dismantling of the dictatorship of relativism and of the supposition of a completely autonomous morality which precludes acknowledgment of the inevitable natural moral law inscribed by God upon the human conscience. Stressing that “the ethics of peace is an ethics of fellowship and sharing,” he urged today’s cultures to overcome forms of anthropology and ethics based on technical and practical suppositions which are merely subjective and pragmatic, in virtue of which relationships of coexistence are inspired by criteria of power or profit, means become ends and vice versa, and culture and education are centred on instruments, technique and efficiency alone. In the message running over 10 pages, the Pope touched upon various areas of peace-making, dedicating sections to the defence and promotion of human life, building new models of true development and economics and the role of family and institutions.