Social Doctrine Compendium Has a Companion
Prelate Encourages Laypeople to Apply Principles
DUBLIN, Ireland, SEPT. 27, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The compendium of the Church's social doctrine is a "theological reading of the signs of the times," and a recently published companion makes its wealth more accessible, says an Irish prelate.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, primate of Ireland, said this Wednesday at the launching of the Companion to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, written by Father Padraig Corkery.
The Compendium was released in 2004, prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
"Curiously, interest in Catholic social teaching waned with the coming of Vatican II," Archbishop Martin said. "Many were unhappy with the term doctrine, preferring social teaching or social reflection or social thought.
"There was the feeling in many places that the social teaching of the Church should be a form of social ethic which could be shared by people of various viewpoints, religious or not."
The prelate encouraged getting back to the "grass roots in the formation of laypersons […] for the 'secular nature of their Christian discipleship,' their duty 'to proclaim the Gospel with an exemplary witness of life rooted in Christ and lived in temporal realities.'"
He added, "Irish society and Irish democracy would benefit from a new generation of laypeople, prepared and capable of informing public opinion, on the contribution that can be derived from the message of Jesus to establishing values to inspire pluralistic Irish political and social life."
No recipes
Archbishop Martin explained the nature of Catholic social doctrine: "A book on Catholic social teaching is not a recipe book, or a catechism old-style with a list of ready made answers to the social and political questions of the day.
"It presents a unified corpus of principles and criteria which draw their origin from the Gospels and which are applied to the realities of the times in order to form Christians to make their own personal responsible judgments on the best manner to stimulate the ideals proposed by the Gospel in contemporary culture.
"Catholic social doctrine does not take away the risk of politics, but it aims to provide an in injection of purpose, idealism, integrity and truthfulness into the way politics is carried out."
The 62-year-old prelate continued: "The social teaching of the Church is an admirable instrument for community formation. […] As I said at the launch of the Compendium, the Compendium is too important a document to be usurped by episcopal commissions or professional Church bureaucrats.
"There is a sense in which the real 'translation' of any social encyclical or any document of the social teaching of the Church is written not by professional interpreters, but by the action of Christian laypeople in the world -- who try, day by day, to apply these principles in their life and commitment."
For his part, Father Corkery, who is also the director of postgraduate studies and a lecturer in moral theology at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, said he hopes his Companion has two effects: to "introduce people to the richness of Catholic social teaching; and to move them toward action so that we can construct a society and local communities that live the virtue of solidarity and treasure the gift that is the human person."
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Social Doctrine Compendium Has a Companion
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Fr. Flynn on Euthanasia
Dignity in Life and Death
Debate Continues Over Euthanasia
By Father John Flynn, L.C.
ROME, SEPT. 24, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The issue of euthanasia came to the forefront of news again recently, with the publication of a note Sept. 14 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The statement, written in reply to questions sent to the Vatican by U. S. bishops, stipulated that providing nutrition and liquids to people who are in what is often termed the vegetative state is, with rare exceptions, morally obligatory.
After the fierce debate over the 2005 Terri Schiavo case in Florida, news came from Arizona a few months ago about a man who unexpectedly woke up from a coma. Jesse Ramirez suffered brain injuries in a May 30 car crash, reported the Arizona Republic newspaper June 27.
On June 8 his wife, Rebecca, had asked his doctors to remove the tubes providing him with food and water. Jesse's parents objected and obtained a court order to reconnect the tubes. Subsequently, Jesse suddenly woke up from his coma.
Earlier this year another case was reported, from Denver, Colorado. Christa Lilly had been in coma since the mid-'80s in the wake of a heart attack and stroke. In the past, Lilly had woken up for brief periods, but until this year the last time was on Nov. 4, 2000, reported the Denver Post newspaper March 8.
According to the article, a neurologist from the University of Colorado Hospital, James Kelly, thinks that Lilly might have been in a "minimally conscious state" during these years, as opposed to a persistent vegetative state.
Killing machines
Euthanasia came up for debate in Germany recently, after the announcement by Roger Kusch, ex-justice minister in Hamburg, that he has designed a machine to help people commit suicide.
According to a report in the Sept. 9 edition of the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, a simple push of a button injects a lethal solution into the terminally ill patient. German federal law prohibits helping someone commit suicide, but does not make illegal the actual act of suicide by the person involved. So with his machine Kusch hopes to avoid any legal difficulties in helping people die.
News of the invention drew immediate criticism, both from politicians and Archbishop Werner Thissen of Hamburg. Kusch is a candidate in Hamburg's October elections.
Meanwhile, in Switzerland, protests by residents in a Zurich suburb have forced the assisted-suicide group Dignitas out of its premises, according to a July 13 report on the Web site of the German magazine Spiegel Online.
Since 1998, around 700 people have come to the Dignitas center to put an end to their lives. According to the article, the largest group of clients is from Germany, with Britain in second place.
Earlier, in June, the Swiss Senate called on the government to draft a law aimed at improving controls of organizations offering assisted suicide. The National Commission on Biomedical Ethics, a government advisory panel, has also recommended increased state supervision of organizations such as Dignitas.
July also saw a court in the Swiss city of Basel sentence Peter Baumann to three years in prison for having helped three people with psychological problems commit suicide, the agency Swissinfo reported July 6.
Baumann, a retired psychologist, helped the people die between January 2001 and January 2003. According to the court, Baumann acted out of egoistic motives, hoping to obtain public recognition of his methods. The judges, however, defined his conduct as "inhuman," and criticized his behavior as negligent.
Care, not death
During his trip to Austria, Benedict XVI raised the issue of euthanasia in his Sept. 7 speech to members of government and the diplomatic corps. Saying that the issue was of "great concern" to him, the Pope added that he feared tacit or explicit pressures on the elderly and ill to put an end to their lives.
"The proper response to end-of-life suffering is loving care and accompaniment on the journey toward death -- especially with the help of palliative care -- and not 'actively assisted death,'" the Pontiff stated. He also called for reforms in the social welfare and health systems in order to assist people who are terminally ill.
Some of Canada's bishops also addressed euthanasia earlier this year. In April the Ontario episcopal conference published a brochure titled "Going to the House of the Father: A Statement on the Dignity and Destiny of Human Life."
"It seems a cruel twist of history that societies with such great medical capabilities are turning against the disabled and sick -- with lethal results," the introduction stated.
The bishops insisted that protecting life is not just a Christian or religious argument, but a basic human right. "To permit the killing of the disabled, frail, sick or suffering, even if motivated by a misplaced compassion, requires a prior judgment that such lives are not worth living," they said. "No one forfeits the right to life because of illness or disability."
"Unless the right to life is secure, there can be no sure foundation for any human rights," they added.
The statement also explained that there is a difference between deliberately causing death and unduly prolonging life. We are not morally obliged, the bishops said, to prolong life if the means used are unduly burdensome or cause additional suffering and when there is little hope of recovery.
The bishops also recommended that Christians not neglect the soul and that they should draw comfort from the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection. Suffering and death for Christians, they continued, is not only a matter for medicine.
Disabled concerns
Another source of opposition to euthanasia comes from groups representing disabled people, as the Los Angeles Times reported Aug. 6. According to the article, one of the reasons why legislative proposals to allow medically assisted suicide have failed in California in the past few years is the hostility of the disabled's rights movement.
A combination of legalized euthanasia and pressure to cut increasing costs in the health care system could lead to the withdrawal of treatment for the disabled. The Los Angeles Times quoted a number of disabled people, active in groups who have fought against assisted-suicide proposals.
"The conditions I have are expensive to treat, and it would be a lot cheaper for the health care system to just let my health go to the point where I would want to die," said Los Angeles activist Laura Remson Mitchell, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, kidney disease and diabetes.
Legal leniency
Other concerns arise from the increasing reluctance by some courts to punish family members who help a sick relative commit suicide. The application of the law in Britain in recent years has been eroded to the point where courts are reluctant to punish those who say they help kill someone out of love, commented Robert Verkaik, law editor for the British newspaper the Independent in an article published May 8.
Among other examples, Verkaik noted a case from October 2006, when a man who helped his terminally ill wife to die was set free with just a nine-month suspended sentence.
Earlier, in March, a French court convicted a doctor for poisoning a terminally ill cancer patient, reported the Associated Press on March 15. In spite of his guilt, the tribunal in southwestern Perigueux sentenced Laurence Tramois to just a one-year suspended prison sentence for his role in the Aug. 25, 2003, death of Paulette Druais in the nearby town of Saint-Astier.
Misguided compassion seems destined to lead to the deaths of still more people as pressures to ease restrictions on assisted suicide continue.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Vindicated Thinker to Be Beatified
Vindicated Thinker to Be Beatified
Father Rosmini's Writings Were Condemned
NOVARA, Italy, SEPT. 21, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The beatification of a 19th-century priest whose writings were once condemned by the Holy Office will take place in Novara this fall.
Father Antonio Rosmini, a theologian and philosopher, will be beatified Nov. 18 by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes.
Some of his works were condemned because of erroneous interpretations promoted by a few of his followers.
Ordained a priest in 1821, he went on in 1830 to found the Institute of Charity, a religious congregation recognized in 1839 by Pope Gregory XVI.
Despite his absolute fidelity to Pope Pius IX, in 1849 the ecclesiastical authorities placed two of Father Rosmini's works on the Index of banned books. Condemned later with the doctrinal decree "Post Obitum" were 40 of his propositions, taken especially from posthumous works and others published in his lifetime.
It was not until July 1, 2001, that a note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by the then prefect, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, stated that "the reasons for concern" regarding the work of Antonio Rosmini have been surmounted.
"The beatification of Father Rosmini," said Bishop Renato Corti of Novara in a press conference, "will be a singular event for the Church in Italy because it will focus the attention of today's Christians on the example of a person who dedicated his life to bringing together faith and reason. This is exactly the challenge facing us today."
According to the bishop, "The beatification will be above all a moment of great celebration for the men and women religious of the Rosminian order, who are present today throughout the world, and also for the city of Novara."
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Georges Lemaître, a modernist?
From Priest of the Cosmos, a review of The Day Without Yesterday: Lemaître, Einstein, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology by John Farrell:
What Catholics looking for scientist-heroes don't know about them...
Georges-Henri Lemaitre Biography - Father of the Big Bang Theory
'A Day Without Yesterday': Georges Lemaitre & the Big Bang
Farrell quotes from a telling 1933 interview of Lemaître on this topic:The writers of the Bible were illuminated more or less—some more than others—on the question of salvation. On other questions they were as wise or as ignorant as their generation. Hence it is utterly unimportant that errors of historic or scientific fact should be found in the Bible, especially if errors relate to events that were not directly observed by those who wrote about them.
“The idea,” he concluded, “that because they were right in their doctrine of immortality and salvation they must also be right on all other subjects is simply the fallacy of people who have an incomplete understanding of why the Bible was given to us at all.”
So Lemaître maintained that God preserved those truths in Scripture related to salvation. But Scripture had nothing to say on specific scientific questions, and might even be full of scientific errors.
What Catholics looking for scientist-heroes don't know about them...
Georges-Henri Lemaitre Biography - Father of the Big Bang Theory
'A Day Without Yesterday': Georges Lemaitre & the Big Bang
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
John Farrell takes on IDers
at his blog
Note to self: check out the following pieces of "evidence"
common ancestry in plants
chromosomeo 2 in man
via Rod Dreher
Response from James Kushiner at Mere Comments.
Note to self: check out the following pieces of "evidence"
common ancestry in plants
chromosomeo 2 in man
via Rod Dreher
Response from James Kushiner at Mere Comments.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Pope's Message for Catholic-Orthodox Symposium
Pope's Message for Catholic-Orthodox Symposium
"We All Look With Hope" Toward Full Communion
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, SEPT. 17, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Sept. 12 message Benedict XVI sent to Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, on the occasion of the 10th Inter-Christian Symposium, dedicated to dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox.
* * *
With great joy I learned that the Tenth Inter-Christian Symposium, promoted by the Franciscan Institute of Spirituality of the Pontifical Antonianum University and by the Department of Theology of the Theological Faculty of the Aristotle University of Thessalonica, will take place on the Island of Tinos, where Catholics and Orthodox live together in brotherly love.
The ecumenical cooperation in the academic field contributes to maintaining an impetus toward the longed for communion among all Christians. To this regard, the Second Vatican Council had glimpsed in this field a possible opportunity to involve all of God's people in the search for full unity. "This importance is the greater because the instruction and spiritual formation of the faithful and of religious depends so largely on the formation which their priests have received" ("Unitatis Redintegratio," 10).
The theme of the symposium: "St. John Chrysostom: Bridge Between East and West," coinciding with the 1,600th anniversary of his death on Sept. 14, 497, will offer the occasion to commemorate an illustrious Father of the Church venerated in the East as in the West -- a valiant, illuminated and faithful preacher of the Word of God, upon which he founded his pastoral action; such an extraordinary hermeneutist and speaker that, from the fifth century, he was given the title of Chrysostom, which means golden-mouthed. A man whose contribution to the formation of the Byzantine liturgy is known to everyone.
For the courage and faithfulness of his evangelical witness he was able to suffer persecution and exile. After complex historical events, from May 1, 1626, his body reposed in St. Peter's Basilica, and on Nov. 27, 2004, my venerated predecessor John Paul II gave part of the relics to His Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and, thus, this great Father of the Church is now venerated in the Vatican basilica as well as in the Church of St. George in Fanar.
The reflection of your symposium, which will deal with a theme related to John Chrysostom and communion with the Church of the West while analyzing some problems that exist today, will contribute to upholding and corroborating the real -- though imperfect -- communion that exists between Catholics and Orthodox, so that we may reach that fullness which will one day enable us to concelebrate the one Eucharist. And it is to that blessed day that we all look with hope, organizing practical initiatives such as this one.
With these sentiments, I invoke God's abundant blessing upon your meeting and all of the participants: May the Holy Spirit illuminate the minds, warm the hearts and fill each one with the joy and peace of the Lord.
I would like to take this opportunity to send a brotherly greeting to the Orthodox and Catholic faithful in Greece, and in a truly special way, to the archbishop of Athens and all Greece, His Beatitude Chrystodoulos, wishing him a full recovery in health, so that he may return to his pastoral service as soon as possible, and I assure my prayers for this intention. May the "Theotokos," loved and venerated with special devotion on the island of Tinos, offer her motherly intercession so that our shared intentions will be crowned by the much wished for spiritual successes.
From Castel Gandolfo, Sept. 12, 2007
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
[Translation by ZENIT]
Jesuitica
JesuiticaThe Maurits Sabbe Library at the Catholic University Leuven houses a vast number of historic volumes that once belonged to one of the regional Jesuit houses and centres of education. This collection is momentarily in the process of being catalogued so it can be accessed by researchers and scholars worldwide. Uncatalogued holdings remain accessible in situ.
The site hopes to help scholars trace that very volume they've always had an eye on.
Come again regularly and witness the collection grow.
Monday, September 17, 2007
John Flynn, Divine Diplomacy
Divine Diplomacy
Religion's Role in International Society
By Father John Flynn, L.C.
ROME, SEPT. 16, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Amid the clatter of popular books attacking religion, one of the more frequent accusations made is that faith is guilty of fomenting political conflict. Clearly, it can't be denied that religion is sometimes a factor in provoking dissension. On the other hand, it can also be powerful force for good both in national and international politics.
A study published in July by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), provides an interesting overview of the interplay between faith-related factors and the foreign policy of the United States.
The report is titled, "Mixed Blessings: U.S. Government Engagement With Religion in Conflict-Prone Settings." It starts by observing that faith-based groups have played a major role in determining U.S. foreign policy in countries such as Sudan and China. In addition, religiously motivated terrorists have threatened security, and the United States is also involved in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where religion is a critical factor.
In spite of religion's importance, in general there has been a failure to understand its role -- a failing that has hampered U.S. policy, the CSIS comments -- even to the point of harming the country's national security.
These inadequacies stem from a variety of causes, according to the report.
-- Government officials are often reluctant to address the issue of religion. Many in the government see religion as a dangerous or divisive issue best left out of analysis.
-- Official frameworks for approaching religion are narrow, often approaching religions as problematic or monolithic forces, overemphasizing a terrorism-focused analysis of Islam and sometimes marginalizing religion as a peripheral humanitarian or cultural issue.
-- Institutional capacity to understand and approach religion is limited due to legal limitations, lack of religious expertise or training, and a lack of structures able to deal with religious groups and leaders.
Peace and conflict
The bulk of the report is dedicated to analyzing how the U.S. government deals with religion in its foreign relations. Nevertheless, it also deals with questions related to religion as a source of, or a solution to, strife.
Religion, the report points out, can be an aggravating factor in conflicts in a number of ways. These include provoking strife between different faith communities, repressing minority religious groups, and conflict between the government and religious groups over control of the state.
On the positive side, the CSIS argues that religious groups and leaders can often be effective diplomats due to their credibility with local communities. This can give them what the report terms a "unique leverage for promoting reconciliation among conflicting parties." A case in point cited by the study is the faith-based Community of Sant'Egidio, which played an effective part in resolving conflict in Mozambique.
In addition, religion can help to heal persons and communities after conflicts are over and provide a place where both grievances and discussions on how to achieve greater tolerance can be held.
Another way in which religion contributes to communities is through helping the poor. The charitable works carried out by many faith communities often play a vital role in developing nations. The report noted, for example that more than half of the hospitals operating in Africa are run by faith-based organizations.
In some countries U.S. government agencies provide aid in partnership with religious groups. A further example of working together comes from Burundi, where a U.S. agency worked with Catholic Relief Services to encourage the establishment of a peace and reconciliation commission comprising members of various ethnic and religious orientations.
So far almost all the government aid has been channeled through Christian groups. Of the $1.7 billion identified going to faith-based organizations from 2001 to 2005, 98% went to Christian organizations.
Spiritual perspective
Another look at the relationship between religion and U.S. foreign policy came in an article published in the May 14 issue of the Weekly Standard magazine. John J. Dilulio Jr., who for a period in 2001 was the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, titled his essay "Spiritualpolitique."
From Brazil to Belize and Beirut to Boston, he commented, "religion in over a hundred forms and in a thousand different ways has outlived 'modernity' and 'postmodernity.'"
Dilulio explained that by the term "spiritualpolitique," he means a view of religion that takes into account its significant power to shape politics within and among nations. It also means understanding religion not as something portrayed as being in conflict with modernity, but as something preached and practiced by many people.
Even in stable democracies we need to realize, Dilulio commented, that religious differences play an important role. In countries where democracy and constitutional rule are still in the process of formation, religion can be a complicating factor in achieving national unity.
Therefore, he recommended that government officials should wake up and pay a lot more attention to the role of religion and its impact on global politics.
Religion in action
A broader consideration of religion's impact on conflicts came in a book published earlier this year titled: "Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolution." The book, a series of essays edited by David Little, is dedicated to a number of case studies of religious figures who have helped to promote peace.
A useful concluding chapter by Little draws together some conclusions that can be deduced from the book's profiles. He urges readers to avoid two oversimplifications. The first is that religion can best be seen as violence, or clashes of civilization. The second is that "good" religion always brings peace.
A number of the testimonies in the book give eloquent testimony that contradicts the first oversimplification, Little points out. Moreover, religion is only one among a whole series of factors that are present in causing violent conflicts.
The second affirmation is also unsustainable, Little adds. The experience in situations such as the warfare following the break-up of Yugoslavia demonstrate that religion, and even the clergy themselves, can inflame hostilities.
Little then lists a series of lessons that can be drawn from the book's case studies, some of which are:
-- Religion neither causes violence by itself, nor, by contrast, is it without influence, particularly in its extremist form, on the course and character of violence.
-- Religion is not just a source of violent conflict, but also a source of peace.
-- Proper religion exhibits a preference for pursuing peace by non-violent means and for combining the promotion of peace with the promotion of justice.
-- Religion dedicated to promoting justice and peace by peaceful means often prompts a hostile and violent response, at least in the short run.
Faith and peace
Looking at the religious figures presented in the book, Little comments that their beliefs provided an important foundation for the task they took on of promoting peace. They drew vision, motivation and perseverance from the theological traditions of their faith.
Religion can also play a part in helping build institutions that will increase and sustain social harmony and civil unity. As well, nongovernmental groups and individuals can foment an environment conducive to peace and to negotiations for resolving conflicts.
Benedict XVI addressed the relationship between religious belief and peace in his message for this year's World Day of Peace, celebrated by the Church in Jan. 1. He termed as "unacceptable" those conceptions of God that encourage intolerance and violence (No. 10). War in God's name is never acceptable, the Pontiff warned.
"Let every Christian be committed to tireless peace-making and strenuous defense of the dignity of the human person and his inalienable rights," he urged in the conclusion of his message. An appeal that should find an answer in the hearts of all believers.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Cardinal Martino on migration and ecumenism
On Migration and Ecumenism
"The Church Must Feel Concerned Regarding Immigrants"
VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 15, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is the text of an address given by Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, at the annual meeting of European national directors for the pastoral care of migrants, held in Sibiu, Romania, from Sept. 3 to 4.
* * *
Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People
Annual Meeting of European National Directors for the Pastoral Care of Migrants
(Sibiu, Sept. 3-4, 2007)
Migration, an opportunity for the ecumene
Cardinal Renato Raffaele MARTINO
President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People
Recently, a book entitled “Globus. Per una teoria storico-universale dello spazio” (Globus. Toward a historical-universal theory of space), a translation from German, was published in Italy. In this volume, the author, Franz Rosenzweig, makes a rapid but well-studied, original and significant reconstruction of the whole world history. The first part of the publication is entitled “Ecumene,” seen from the point of view of relationships between earthly forces that push toward the unification of the world.
“If millennia were needed for us to acquire theoretical awareness of the spherical form of the earth,” the author affirms, “we cannot be surprised by how slow world history walks toward unity of the globe. Yet, God created only one sky and one earth. Ecumenism is the final goal of humankind’s journey,” a sign of which is migration, indeed an opportunity for the ecumene.
Today, in fact, migration is one of the most important and most complex challenges of our modern world. Consequently, social transformation, caused by welcoming immigrants, is discussed in public hearings, such that the question of “migration” appears as one of the top issues in the international agenda.
The migration phenomenon is therefore analyzed in relation to development. Migrants’ contribution to the labor market is studied, leading to the conclusion that they are important for world economy. A witness to this is the First Global Forum on Migration and Development, recently held in Brussels, last July 9-11.
In spite of this, however, many governments are adopting more restrictive measures to counter immigration, especially if irregular. Researchers on the migration phenomenon, on their part, are for the opening of frontiers, not simply to solve contingent problems, but to situate the process in a global scenario. Migration has indeed become a structural phenomenon. This does not mean, however, that a vision of a “total” and “indiscriminate” freedom to immigrate is being adopted. It is rather the task of governments to regulate the magnitude and the form of migration flows. They should, however, take common good into consideration, so that immigrants would be worthily welcomed, and the population of the receiving countries would not be put in a condition that would lead them to reject the newcomers. This would have unfavorable consequences both for immigrants and the local population, as well as for relations between peoples. Naturally national common good must be considered in the context of universal common good. This brings us back to that vision of the “ecumene” that I mentioned at the beginning of my talk.
Our task, however, is that of identifying facts and aspects of migration that would help us understand the value of the phenomenon itself. This will enable us to interpret this “sign of the times”[1] from a Christian perspective, and to offer our pastoral service to the world of human mobility in its totality, in its universality. And for you, this is true for Europe.
There has always been solicitude on the part of the Church for migration -- we have to take note of this.[2] Involvement in various forms confirms its ability to interpret this rapidly changing reality. Active ecclesial commitment, especially at a pastoral level, naturally includes socio-humanitarian action so that the foreigner would be accepted and integrated in society, through an itinerary leading to authentic communion, where there is due respect for diversity. It is however necessary to remember that rights and duties come together, also for migrants.
Regarding respect for the fundamental rights of the human person, hence also of those who are involved in human mobility, the Church is continuously dedicated to this at various levels and in different areas. Specific initiatives, messages of the Holy Father, action to build awareness among international entities and governments of migrants’ countries of origin, transit and destination, define the Church’s “strategy." This is based on the central position and “sacredness” of the human person[3], to be upheld particularly when he/she is unprotected or marginalized. This “brings to light certain important theological and pastoral findings that have been acquired. These are: […] the defense of the rights of migrants, both men and women, and their children; [the question of the migrant family]; the ecclesial and missionary dimension of migration; the reappraisal of the apostolate of the laity; the value of cultures in the work of evangelization; the protection and appreciation of minority groups in the Church; the importance of dialogue both inside and outside the Church; and the specific contribution of emigration to world peace” (EMCC No. 27). In all this, we can clearly see a basis for an ecumenical commitment.
Indeed the recent position of the Holy See regarding migration shows that attention is given to the continuous transformation of the phenomenon of human mobility and to the current exigencies of people in contemporary society. This is because it wants “to respond to the new spiritual and pastoral needs of migrants” bearing in mind “the ecumenical aspect of the phenomenon, owing to the presence among migrants of Christians not in full communion with the Catholic Church, and also the interreligious aspect, owing to the increasing number of migrants of other religions, in particular Muslims” (EMCC No. 3)[4]. We cannot ignore the fact that “recent times have witnessed a growing increase in the presence of immigrants of other religions in traditionally Christian countries” (EMCC No. 59). The great diversity of immigrants’ cultural and religious origin poses new challenges and leads toward new goals, putting dialogue at the heart of pastoral care in the world of migration. After all, it certainly is part of the mission of the Church.
The instruction "Erga Migrantes Caritas Christi" carefully proposes programs that are appropriate for the various phases in the life of the migrant. It distinguishes “between assistance in a general sense (a first, short-term welcome), true welcome in the full sense (longer-term projects) and integration (an aim to be pursued constantly over a long period and in the true sense of the word)” (No. 42). In this case, it is important to give a sensible direction to an issue of great significance. I am referring to the difficult concept of integration, and its even more difficult application, keeping in mind also its ecumenical and interreligious aspects, particularly in societies hosting migrants. This concept is being seriously analyzed. We refuse to see it as a process of assimilation, but stress the aspect of cultural meeting and legitimate exchange. We are practically insisting on a concept of intercultural societies, meaning those that are capable of interacting and producing mutual enrichment, going beyond multiculturalism, that can be contented with a mere juxtaposition of cultures[5].
This gradual itinerary -- as I was saying -- provides, first of all, for “assistance or ‘first welcome’” (EMCC No. 43), but this is not enough to express the authentic vocation to Christian agape, also because it might be confused with philanthropy.
As a result, our instruction offers a wider horizon, providing for “acts of welcome in its full sense, which aim at the progressive integration and self-sufficiency of the immigrant” (ibid.). Here, too, we cannot fail to consider the ecumenical and interreligious dimensions.
In his Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees this year, Benedict XVI stated that the Church, through its various institutions and associations, “has opened centers where migrants are listened to, houses where they are welcomed, offices for services offered to persons and families, with other initiatives set up to respond to the growing needs in this field”.[6]
Also through these services in the context of human mobility, the Church offers its assistance to everyone, without distinction of religion or nationality, respecting everyone’s inalienable dignity as a human person, created in the image of God and redeemed by the blood of Christ.
In assisting migrants, therefore, it is possible to deepen ecumenical dialogue since contact with those among them who belong to other Churches or ecclesial communities gives “new possibilities of living ecumenical fraternity in practical day-to-day life and of achieving greater reciprocal understanding between Churches and ecclesial communities, something far from facile irenicism or proselytism” (EMCC No. 56). In fact, when migrants arrive in a place with a Catholic majority, the first meeting point should be hospitality and solidarity, within the context of “an authentic culture of welcome (cf. EEu 101 and 103) capable of accepting the truly human values of the immigrants over and above any difficulties caused by living together with persons who are different (cf. EEu 85, 112 and PaG 65)” (EMCC No. 39).
Therefore “the entire Church in the host country must feel concerned and engaged regarding immigrants. This means that local Churches must rethink pastoral care, programming it [ … appropriately for] today’s new multicultural and plurireligious context. With the help of social and pastoral workers, the local population should be made aware of the complex problems of migration and the need to oppose baseless suspicions and offensive prejudices against foreigners” (EMCC No. 41).
However, ecumenical dialogue does not stop there. It could also take the form of a specifically ecumenical cooperation, whereby resources are pooled and a common Christian witness is given (cf. Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, No. 162). Indeed the different Churches and ecclesial communities are particularly intent on welcoming and accompanying all migrants, in the pastoral sense, especially when alongside the flow of regular migrants, there are irregular migrants who are a cause for concern and are usually and unjustly blamed for crimes. Also, there are unscrupulous evildoers, who speculate on the tragic situation of people and promote the trafficking of human beings. Their presence increases xenophobia and at times provokes manifestations of racism (cf. EMCC nos. 29 e 41). All this can make the ecumenical commitment in favor of migrants more difficult.
The Church is called upon to open a dialogue with everyone, but this “dialogue should be conducted and implemented in the conviction that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation and that she alone possesses the fullness of the means of salvation” (EMCC 59). At the same time, migrants of other religions “should be helped insofar as possible to preserve a transcendent view of life” (ibid.).
There are surely some values in common between the Christian faith and other beliefs, but it is necessary to take into consideration the fact that “beside these points of agreement there are, however, also divergences, some of which have to do with legitimate acquisitions of modern life and thought” (EMCC No. 66). On the part of the migrant, therefore, the first step to take toward the host society is to respect the laws and the values on which that society is founded, including religious ones. If this is not done, then integration would just be an empty word.
The Church is also called to live fully its own identity, without renouncing to give witness to its own faith, also in view of respectfully proclaiming it (cf. EMCC No. 9). Thus, dialogue with others “requires Catholic communities receiving immigrants to appreciate their own identity even more, prove their loyalty to Christ, know the contents of the faith well, rediscover their missionary calling and thus commit themselves to bear witness for Jesus the Lord and his gospel. This is the necessary prerequisite for the correct attitude of sincere dialogue, open and respectful of all but at the same time neither naïve nor ill-equipped” (EMCC No. 60).[7]
Finally, it is necessary to take into account the important principle of reciprocity[8], “understood not merely as an attitude for making claims but as a relationship based on mutual respect and on justice in juridical and religious matters. Reciprocity is also an attitude of heart and spirit that enables us to live together everywhere with equal rights and duties. Healthy reciprocity will urge each one to become an ‘advocate’ for the rights of minorities when his or her own religious community is in the majority. In this respect we should also recall the numerous Christian migrants in lands where the majority of the population is not Christian and where the right to religious freedom is severely restricted or repressed” (EMCC No. 64).
It remains true, however, that solidarity, cooperation, international interdependence and the equitable distribution of the goods of the earth show the need to operate also in ecumenical communion, or rather, with a vision of “ecumene” in the broad sense of the term. This has to be done in depth and forcefully, especially in the areas where migration flows originate, so that the inequalities that induce people, individually or collectively, to leave their own natural and cultural environment would be overcome (cf. EMCC nos. 4; 8-9; 39-43). On its part, the Church will not stop encouraging everyone, but particularly the members of Christian communities, to be authentically available and open to others, including migrants, as it affirms that “notwithstanding the repeated failures of human projects, noble as they may have been, Christians, roused by the phenomenon of mobility, [should] become aware of their call to be always and repeatedly a sign of fraternity and communion in the world, by respecting differences and practicing solidarity, in their ethics of meeting others” (EMCC No. 102).
To conclude, we have to acknowledge that migration is a process in constant evolution. It will continue to be present in the development of societies and will bring us more and more into an intercultural world, where legitimate diversity will be lived also in the context of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.
--- --- ---
[1] Cf. Benedict XVI, Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2006: http://www.vaticaNo.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/migration/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_200510 18_world-migrants-day_eNo.html; A. Marchetto, "Le migrazioni: segno dei tempi", in Pontificio Consiglio della Pastorale per i Migranti e gli Itineranti (ed.), La sollecitudine della Chiesa verso i migranti, (Quaderni Universitari, Comments to the First Part of Erga Migrantes Caritas Christ -- henceforth EMCC), Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City 2005, pp. 28-40.
[2] Pius XII’s prophetic intuition regarding the pastoral care of migrants is present in the Apostolic Constitution Exsul Familia (AAS XLIV [1952] 649-704), considered the magna carta of the Church’s teaching on migration. Paul VI, in continuity with and as an application of the teaching of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council, later issued the "motu proprio" Pastoralis migratorum cura (AAS LXI [1969] 601-603), promulgating the Instruction of the Congregation for Bishops De Pastorali migratorum cura (AAS LXI [1969] 614-643). In 1978, the Pontifical Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migration and Tourism published a Circular Letter addressed to the Episcopal Conferences, entitled Church and Human Mobility (AAS LXX [1978] 357-378): see EMCC nos. 19-33 and Pontificio Consiglio della Pastorale per i Migranti e gli Itineranti (ed.), La sollecitudine della Chiesa verso i migranti, op. cit. Cf. also A. Marchetto, "Chiesa conciliare e pastorale di accoglienza": People on the Move XXXVIII (102, 2006), pp. 131-145.
[3] See the Pontifical Message for the World Day of Peace 2007, "The human person, the heart of peace": http://www.vaticaNo.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20061208_xl-world-day-peace_en.html.
[4] In 2004, the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People published the Instruction Erga migrantes caritas Christi: AAS XCVI (2004), 762-822 (see also People on the Move XXXVI, 95, 2004, and website: www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/migrants/documents/rc_pc_ migrants_doc_20040514_erga-migrantes-caritas-christi_eNo.html). Cf. comments on this Instruction by highly competent authors in People on the Move XXXVII (98, 2005), pp. 23-125, particularly on ecumenism and interreligious dialogue: pp. 45-63.
[5] Issues related to this important chapter of the pastoral care of human mobility were studied more in-depth and then published in Pontificio Consiglio della Pastorale per i Migranti e gli Itineranti (ed.), Migranti e pastorale d’accoglienza (Quaderni Universitari, Comments to the Second Part of EMCC), Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City 2006.
[6] Benedict XVI, Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2007: http://www.vaticaNo.va/ holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20061208_xl-world-day-peace_en.html.
[7] Cf. Proceedings of the XVII Plenary Session of our Pontifical Council, held from May 15 to 17, 2006, on the theme "Migration and Itinerancy from and toward Islamic majority countries": People on the Move XXXVIII (101 Suppl., 2006). Specifically regarding interreligious dialogue, see pp. 187-224. Particularly important is No. 11 of the conclusions and recommendations: "It was also deemed vital to distinguish between what the receiving societies can and cannot tolerate in Islamic culture, what can be respected or shared with regard to followers of other religions (see EMCC 65 and 66), and to have the possibility of giving indications in this regard also to policymakers, toward a proper formulation of civil legislation, with due respect for each one’s competence": ibid., p. 74.
[8] Also Benedict XVI mentioned this in his address to the participants in the aforementioned XVII Plenary Session: loc. cit., p. 5.
[Text adapted]
I wouldn't be surprised if someone at Vox Nova blogged about this.
Friday, September 14, 2007
On Fox's "House," Bioethics Meets Television
On Fox's "House," Bioethics Meets Television
Life Academy Member Offers Critique of Series
ROME, SEPT. 13, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The Fox Broadcasting Company's series titled "House" reflects the existence of good and evil and the need to choose between the two, says a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Dr. Carlo Valerio Bellieni is director of the Department of Newborn Intensive Therapy of the University Polyclinic Le Scotte in Siena, Italy. He told ZENIT that the series "shows something interesting."
He explained: "The show seems to be an apology for separation and absence: It tells the story of a misanthrope and harsh doctor, Gregory House, who doesn't want any contact with patients.
"This separation, however, caused by his existential and physical suffering, is only apparent. While remaining surly and anti-social, each time he insistently tries to understand the depths of the person he is caring for.
"He is able to recognize suffering in others because of his own suffering and it is because of this that he can see things that may escape others.
"It is even more strange, and interesting, that the 'non-politically correct' actions and judgments, with some exceptions, come from a character who is in constant struggle with the world."
A doctor's role
The series debuted in November 2004 and stars British actor Hugh Laurie.
House "doesn't follow the crowd when it comes to ethical relativism in medicine -- the autonomy of the patient, the doctor as a 'provider of a service' that has lost the ability to give moral judgments on the practice of medicine," Bellieni continued.
The pontifical academy member explained: "He speaks harshly with his patients to persuade them to accept a cure, not to give in to their wishes. He knows that there exists a good medical practice and a mistaken one and he wants his patients to choose the good one. But also because in the patient's answer he is trying to find an answer for himself."
Bellieni said this "is much better than those who leave the patient alone in the face of a diagnosis of words and numbers, only 'free' to choose to live or die."
He explained: "To put it another way, the writers of the series paradoxically seem to tell us that often words, and certain sweet and pious expressions that are fashionable, serve to cover up distance between persons.
"This is wonderfully underlined by the soundtrack, full of music with a religious tone or that shows the dissatisfaction of a life without meaning, like 'Desire' by Ryan Adams or 'Hallelujah' by Jeff Buckley."
"We observe two clear points by the creators of the series," continued Bellieni. "First, that the doctor is not a 'provider of a service' to whom every request is equal, but he knows how to recognize a good answer from an evil answer and how to find the strength to not give them the latter.
"Second, the doctor-patient relationship is never a one-way street: There is not only the one who gives, the doctor, and one who receives, the patient, but the doctor either finds himself in the position to learn strength from the patient, his way of communicating and his hidden signals … or he gives an ineffective treatment."
"House," Bellieni explained, "goes to the depressed manager who is waiting to be placed on the heart transplant list and screams at him saying 'Do you want to live? Tell me, because I don't know if I do!' and he doesn't do this so he will write a 'living will,' but to reawaken in him, and in himself, a love for life.
"House is certainly not a saint and he sometimes makes bad moral choices. But if he were a saint, would it be so surprising to hear him cry out, as sometimes happens, against drugs or incestuous sex or in vitro fertilization?"
Finding humanity
The fourth season of the series is set to begin in the United States on Sept. 25. Laurie was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 2005 and this year.
Bellieni said: "House knows how to astonish: He makes mistakes, grinds his teeth, but he knows how to recognize what is human when he sees it."
"This is the important point, often overlooked in medical practice: amazement at the mysterious humanity of the patient."
"House," Bellieni remarked, "lets the little girl with a tumor hug him, whose life he prolonged by one year, and impressed with the moral strength of the little girl he begins to change his way of life."
"In the same way," he continued, "he is amazed by the little hand of the fetus as it comes out of the womb during surgery and grasps his finger. For the rest of the day he continued to look at his finger, asking himself who is that life that no one considers human, maybe not even himself, but that touched him.
"His amazement is the foundation of his curative ability."
"House never seems to be there for his patients," concluded Bellieni. "He is not a good doctor, he is full of pain; but he is rich with a meaningful question, which does not lead him to despair.
"For this reason he is impressive, in an age in which nothing seems to have value except one's own whims, especially in medicine."
Unlocking the Mystery of Life
Mr. Gerald Hiestand talks about Unlocking the Mystery of Life.
Center for Science and Culture page for the video. Official page. The video is available at Google Video.
Center for Science and Culture page for the video. Official page. The video is available at Google Video.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Define your terms!
It never ceases to amaze me how people (especially geometers) can say that non-Euclidean geometry has "proven" that Euclidean geometry is false--evidently they don't know the basic rules of logic, especially the fallacy of using equivocal terms. A prime example: the definition of a line, as it applies to the so-called "parallel lines" postulate. I will be getting a copy of Dr. Augros' dissertation, and I recommend it, despite the price UMI charges.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Is God in hell?
a murky answer from CAI Q&A for September:
Care is ambiguous--if we use the word "love" instead, we can say that God still loves the damned, because if He did not love them, they would not continue to exist, and so on.
Question 9 - Is God Present in Hell?
R. Sungenis: God is everywhere, even in Hell, in his omnipresence. But he is only there in his divine being, not his divine care. When we speak about the "absence" of God we are speaking about the absence of his divine care. God does not care any longer for the souls in hell.
Care is ambiguous--if we use the word "love" instead, we can say that God still loves the damned, because if He did not love them, they would not continue to exist, and so on.
Bizarre Parasitic Star Found
Bizarre Parasitic Star Found
Ker Than
Staff Writer
SPACE.com
Wed Sep 12, 12:15 PM ET
A dead, spinning star has been found feeding on its stellar companion, whittling it down to an object smaller than some planets.
"This object is merely the skeleton of a star," says study team member Craig Markwardt of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "The pulsar has eaten away the star's outer envelope, and all that remains is its helium-rich core."
Pulsars are the cores of burnt out "neutron" stars that spin hundreds of times per second, faster than a kitchen blender.
The system was discovered in early June when NASA's Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellites picked up an outburst of X-rays and gamma rays in the direction of the Milky Way galactic center in the constellation Sagittarius.
Not a planet
The smaller companion orbits its parasitic companion from a distance of only about 230,000 miles--slightly less than the distance between the Earth and moon. It has an estimated minimum mass of only 7 times that of Jupiter, but it could be much larger. Unlike three Earth-sized objects found around a pulsar in 1992, scientists do not consider the new object to be a planet because of how it formed.
"It's essentially a white dwarf that has been whittled down to a planetary mass," said study team member Christopher Deloye of Northwestern University.
Scientists think that several billion years ago, the system consisted of a very massive star and a smaller star about 1 to 3 times the mass of our sun. The bigger star evolved quickly and exploded as a supernova, leaving behind a spinning stellar corpse known as a neutron star. Meanwhile, the smaller star began to evolve as well, eventually puffing up into a red giant whose outer envelope encapsulated the neutron star.
This caused the two stars to draw closer together, while simultaneously ejecting the red giant's envelope into space.
Survival unclear
After billions of years, little remains of the companion star, and it's uncertain whether it will survive. "It's been taking a beating, but that's part of nature," said study team member Hans Krimm, also of NASA Goddard.
Today, the two objects are so close to each other that the neutron star's powerful gravity siphons gas from its companion to form a spinning disk around itself. The disk occasionally dumps large quantities of gas onto the neutron star, creating an outburst like the one detected in June.
The system will be detailed in two studies authored by Krimm's team and a team led by Deepto Chakrabarty of MIT, which reached the same conclusions, to be published in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The system is only the eighth pulsar with a period of about one millisecond that is known to be accreting mass from its companion. Only one other such system has a pulsar companion with such a low mass. The companion in that system, XTE J1807-294, also has a minimum mass of about 7 Jupiters.
"Given that we don't know the exact mass of either companion, ours could be the smallest," Krimm said.
Cardinal Dulles, God and Evolution
In the latest issue of First Things.
He first discusses theistic evolutionists and Intelligent Design advocates, then moves on to a third group.
It's not clear to me why Cardinal Dulles is able to criticize the Deists and a mechanistic view of the universe, without seeing how theistic evolutionists fall into the same errors.
What role does God play in synthesis? What are the potencies for the development of new parts and of new forms of life? And how do we know that such potencies are limited?
He first discusses theistic evolutionists and Intelligent Design advocates, then moves on to a third group.
Darwinism is criticized by yet a third school of critics, one which includes philosophers such as Michael Polanyi, who build on the work of Henri Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin. Philosophers of this orientation, notwithstanding their mutual differences, agree that biological organisms cannot be understood by the laws of mechanics alone. The laws of biology, without in any way contradicting those of physics and chemistry, are more complex. The behavior of living organisms cannot be explained without taking into account their striving for life and growth. Plants, by reaching out for sunlight and nourishment, betray an intrinsic aspiration to live and grow. This internal finality makes them capable of success and failure in ways that stones and minerals are not. Because of the ontological gap that separates the living from the nonliving, the emergence of life cannot be accounted for on the basis of purely mechanical principles.
In tune with this school of thought, the English mathematical physicist John Polkinghorne holds that Darwinism is incapable of explaining why multicellular plants and animals arise when single cellular organisms seem to cope with the environment quite successfully. There must be in the universe a thrust toward higher and more-complex forms. The Georgetown professor John F. Haught, in a recent defense of the same point of view, notes that natural science achieves exact results by restricting itself to measurable phenomena, ignoring deeper questions about meaning and purpose. By its method, it filters out subjectivity, feeling, and striving, all of which are essential to a full theory of cognition. Materialistic Darwinism is incapable of explaining why the universe gives rise to subjectivity, feeling, and striving.
The Thomist philosopher Etienne Gilson vigorously contended in his 1971 book From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again that Francis Bacon and others perpetrated a philosophical error when they eliminated two of Aristotle’s four causes from the purview of science. They sought to explain everything in mechanistic terms, referring only to material and efficient causes and discarding formal and final causality.
Without the form, or the formal cause, it would be impossible to account for the unity and specific identity of any substance. In the human composite the form is the spiritual soul, which makes the organism a single entity and gives it its human character. Once the form is lost, the material elements decompose, and the body ceases to be human. It would be futile, therefore, to try to define human beings in terms of their bodily components alone.
Final causality is particularly important in the realm of living organisms. The organs of the animal or human body are not intelligible except in terms of their purpose or finality. The brain is not intelligible without reference to the faculty of thinking that is its purpose, nor is the eye intelligible without reference to the function of seeing.
These three schools of thought are all sustainable in a Christian philosophy of nature. Although I incline toward the third, I recognize that some well-qualified experts profess theistic Darwinism and Intelligent Design. All three of these Christian perspectives on evolution affirm that God plays an essential role in the process, but they conceive of God’s role in different ways. According to theistic Darwinism, God initiates the process by producing from the first instant of creation (the Big Bang) the matter and energies that will gradually develop into vegetable, animal, and eventually human life on this earth and perhaps elsewhere. According to Intelligent Design, the development does not occur without divine intervention at certain stages, producing irreducibly complex organs. According to the teleological view, the forward thrust of evolution and its breakthroughs into higher grades of being depend upon the dynamic presence of God to his creation. Many adherents of this school would say that the transition from physicochemical existence to biological life, and the further transitions to animal and human life, require an additional input of divine creative energy.
It's not clear to me why Cardinal Dulles is able to criticize the Deists and a mechanistic view of the universe, without seeing how theistic evolutionists fall into the same errors.
What role does God play in synthesis? What are the potencies for the development of new parts and of new forms of life? And how do we know that such potencies are limited?
Dr. Laurence Paul Hemming on Summorum Pontificum
Rev’d. Dr. Laurence Paul Hemming
If a motu proprio is a ‘personal motion’ of the pope, it is important to understand that Benedict XVI has in the expanations around the motu proprio conceded a point long argued by those who love the traditional rites and that was rumoured (but never confirmed) to have been decided by the special commission of cardinals appointed to consider the matter in some secrecy by Pope John Paul II (of which the present pope was a member). The matter in question was the exact status of the traditional liturgical books. Benedict XVI’s explanatory letter tells us ‘as for the use of the 1962 Missal . . . I would like to draw attention to the fact that this Missal was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted’. In this sense the motu proprio has not freed up the liturgical books at all, it has simply defined and clarified a freedom they already possessed in their own right. The importance of this cannot be understated: a future motu proprio could not therefore revoke the freedom of the traditional liturgical books – or put another way, strictly speaking the motu proprio has only defined the character of the freedom of the former liturgical books, it has not been the act whereby there are freed.
He explains how "rupture" is to be understood:
When the Pope speaks in the supporting letter of there being ‘no rupture’ between the two forms of the Roman Rite he asserts a truth which the whole Church has yet to discover – that when the 1970 missal and the other reformed rites are understood in the context of the former rites, then their orthodox interpretation is assured, and all ambiguity is removed. What the motu proprio does is make possible in the ordinary life of the Church that the ‘rupture’ proposed by adherents of the ‘spirit of the council’ can only be healed through the Church’s sacred activity of prayer and administration of the sacraments. What he announces as a ‘fact’ – that there is no rupture between the two forms of the rite will then become an actual truth, one which will have effects in every aspect of the Church’s life. In fact what he proposes is that the living presence of the former rites – as themselves active vehicles of the Holy Spirit and of divine grace – will ensure the freedom and health of the future Church. What he announces as a fact is really a task to be carried out over the next decades of the Church's life – in prayer (the liturgical life that is the life of the Church), in charity, and through the Church’s sacred actions.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Crux et Cithara
From Jeffrey Tucker at NLM:
Crux et Cithara is a 1983 book, completely unavailable, edited by Robert Skeris in honor of the 70th birthday of Johannes Overath. It contains many important pieces that I look forward to reading now that the technical side of things is done. It is right here.
Among the pieces is J. Ratzinger's Theological Problems of Church Music, which has also been completely unavailable (to my knowledge). So it is extracted as a separate file. If anyone wants to extract the text and send it to me in HTML, please do, and we can put it up at MusicSacra.com.
Message of European Ecumenical Assembly
Message of European Ecumenical Assembly
"The Light of Christ Shines Upon All!"
SIBIU, Romania, SEPT. 9, 2007, (Zenit.org).- Here is the final message of the 3rd European Ecumenical Assembly, which ended today in Sibiu.
* * *
We, Christian pilgrims from all over Europe and beyond, witness to the transforming power of this light, which is stronger than darkness, and we proclaim it as all-embracing hope for our Churches, for all of Europe and for the entire world.
In the name of our Triune God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we have assembled in the city of Sibiu, Romania (Sept. 4-9, 2007). This third European Ecumenical Assembly was marked especially by the richness of Orthodox spirituality and tradition. We recall and renew the serious commitments we already made in Basel and Graz and we regret that, up to now, we have failed to fulfil some of them. However, our confidence in the transforming energy of the light of Christ is stronger than the darkness of resignation, fatalism, fear and indifference.
Our third European Ecumenical Assembly began in 2006 in Rome and continued in 2007 in Wittenberg. This ecumenical pilgrimage involved many regional meetings and those of Orthodox Churches in Rhodes and young people in St. Maurice. We welcome with joy the young people's commitment and the contribution they made to the Assembly. Assisted and motivated by the "Charta Oecumenica," our Assembly pursued the work started in earlier assemblies and has been an occasion for an exchange of gifts and of mutual enrichment.
We are not alone on this pilgrimage. Christ is with us and within the cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), the contemporary martyrs accompany us: the witness of their life and death inspires us individually and corporately. In communion with them, we commit ourselves to let the light of the transfigured Christ shine through our own witness deeply rooted in prayer and love. This is our humble response to the sacrifice of their lives.
The light of Christ in the Church
The light of Christ leads us to live for others and in communion with one another. Our witness to hope and unity for Europe and for the world will be credible only if we continue our journey toward visible unity. Unity is not uniformity. There is enormous value in experiencing afresh that "koinonia" and exchanging those spiritual gifts that energised the ecumenical movement from its beginning.
In Sibiu we again felt the painful wound of division between our Churches. This even concerns our understanding of the Church and its unity. The distinct historical and cultural developments in Eastern and Western Christianity have contributed to these differences, and understanding them requires our urgent attention and ongoing dialogue.
We are convinced that the wider Christian family has to deal with doctrinal questions, and it must also seek a broad consensus about moral values derived from the Gospel and a credible Christian lifestyle that joyfully witnesses to the light of Christ in our challenging modern secular world, in private as well as in public life.
Our Christian spirituality is a precious treasure: once opened, it reveals the variety of its riches and opens our hearts to the beauty of the face of Jesus and to the strength of prayer. Only if we are closer to our Lord Jesus Christ, can we become closer to one another and experience true "koinonia." We cannot but share these riches with all men and women who are seeking light in this continent. Spiritual men and women begin with their own conversion and this leads to the transformation of the world. Our witness to the light of Christ is a faithful commitment to listen, live and share our stories of life and hope, which have shaped us as followers of Christ.
Recommendation One: We recommend renewing our mission as individual believers and as Churches to proclaim Christ as the Light and the Saviour of the world;
Recommendation Two: We recommend continuing the discussion on mutual recognition of baptism, taking into account the important achievements on this topic in several countries and being aware that the question is deeply linked to an understanding of Eucharist, ministry and ecclesiology in general;
Recommendation Three: We recommend finding ways of experiencing the activities which can unite us: prayer for each other and for unity, ecumenical pilgrimages, theological formation and study in common, social and diaconal initiatives, cultural projects, supporting society life based on Christian values;
Recommendation Four: We recommend the full participation of the whole people of God and, at this Assembly in particular, note the appeal of young people, the elderly, ethnic minorities, and disabled people.
The light of Christ for Europe
We consider that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27) and deserves the same degree of respect and love, despite differences of belief, culture, age, gender, or ethnic origin, from the beginning of life to natural death. Being aware that our common roots lie much deeper than our divisions, while looking for renewal and unity and the role of the Churches in today's European society, we focussed on our encounter with people of other religions.
Aware in particular of our unique relationship with the Jewish peoples as people of the Covenant, we reject all forms of contemporary anti-Semitism and, with them, will foster Europe as a continent free of every form of violence. There have been periods in our European history of harsh conflicts but there have also been periods of peaceful coexistence among people of all religions. In our day there is no alternative to dialogue: not compromise, but a dialogue of life where we can speak the truth in love.
We all need to learn more about all religions, and the recommendations of "Charta Oecumenica" should be developed further. We appeal to our fellow Christians and all who believe in God to respect other people's right to religious freedom, and express our solidarity with Christian communities who live in the Middle East, Iraq, and elsewhere in the world as religious minorities and feel that their very existence is under threat.
As we meet Christ in our needy sisters and brothers (Matthew 25:44-45), together enlightened by the Light of Christ, we Christians, according to biblical injunctions to the unity of humanity (Genesis 1:26-27), commit ourselves to repent for the sin of exclusion; deepen our understanding of 'otherness'; defend the dignity and rights of every human being, and ensure protection to those in need of it; share the light of Christ which others bring to Europe; call upon European states to stop unjustifiable administrative detention of migrants, make every effort to ensure regular immigration, the integration of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers, uphold the value of family unity and combat trafficking in human beings and exploitation of trafficked persons. We call on Churches to increase their pastoral care of vulnerable immigrants.
Recommendation Five: We recommend that our Churches should recognise that Christian immigrants are not just the recipients of religious care but that they can play a full and active role in the life of the Church and of society; offer better pastoral care for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees; and promote the rights of ethnic minorities in Europe, particularly the Roma people.
* * *
Many of us are thankful that we have experienced profound changes in Europe in recent decades. Europe is more than the European Union. As Christians we share the responsibility for shaping Europe as a continent of peace, solidarity, participation and sustainability. We appreciate the commitment of the European Institutions, including the E.U., Council of Europe, and the OSCE, to an open, transparent and regular dialogue with the Churches of Europe. Europe's highest political representatives honoured us with their presence and thus expressed strong interest in our work. We have to face the challenge to bring spiritual strengths into this dialogue. Europe was initially a political project to secure peace and it now needs to become a Europe of the peoples, more than an economic space.
Recommendation Six: We recommend developing the "Charta Oecumenica" as a stimulating guideline for our ecumenical journey in Europe.
The light of Christ for the whole world
The Word of God disquiets us and our European culture: those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again! Christians must be free from fear and insatiable avarice that make us live for ourselves, powerless, narrow-minded and closed. The Word of God invites us to avoid squandering the precious heritage of those who for the last sixty years have worked for peace and unity in Europe. Peace is an extraordinary and precious gift. Entire countries aspire to peace. Entire peoples are waiting to be delivered from violence and terror. We urgently commit ourselves to renewed efforts toward these ends. We reject war as a tool for resolving conflict, promote nonviolent means for conflict resolution, and are concerned about military re-armament. Violence and terrorism in the name of religion are a denial of religion.
The Light of Christ shines on the term "justice," linking it to divine mercy. Thus enlightened it escapes any ambiguous pretence. Throughout the world and even in Europe the current process of radical market globalisation is deepening the division of human society between winners and losers, harms the value of countless people, has catastrophic ecological implications and precisely in view of climate change is not compatible with sustaining the future of our planet.
Recommendation Seven: We urge all European Christians to give strong support to the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations as an urgent practical step toward the alleviation of poverty.
Recommendation Eight: We recommend that a consultative process, addressing European responsibility for ecological justice, facing the threat of climate change; European responsibility for the just shaping of globalisation; the rights of Roma people and other European ethnic minorities, be initiated by CCEE and CEC, with the Churches in Europe and with Churches of other continents.
Today more than ever, we acknowledge that Africa, a continent already intertwined with our own history and future, experiences levels of poverty about which we cannot remain indifferent and inactive. The wounds of Africa touched the heart of our Assembly.
Recommendation Nine: We recommend backing initiatives for debt cancellation and the promotion of fair trade.
Through sincere and objective dialogue, we contribute to and promote the creation of a renewed Europe, where unchangeable Christian principles and moral values, derived directly from the Gospel, serve as a witness and promote active engagement in European society. Our task is to promote these principles and values, not only in private but also in public life. We will cooperate with people of other religions who share our concern for creating a Europe of values that also prospers politically and economically.
Concerned about God's creation, we pray for a greater sensitivity and respect for its wonderful diversity. We work against its shameless exploitation, from which the "whole creation awaits its redemption," (Romans 8:22) and commit ourselves to working for reconciliation between humanity and nature.
Recommendation Ten: We recommend that the period from Sept. 1 to Oct. 4 be dedicated to prayer for the protection of Creation and the promotion of sustainable lifestyles that reverse our contribution to climate change.
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Paying tribute to all who contributed to this journey, particularly the young "oikumene," who urged this assembly to be courageous in living the Gospel, we unite in prayer: O Christ, the True Light, which illumines and sanctifies every human being coming into this world, shine on us the light of your presence, that in it we may behold the unapproachable light, and guide our paths for the work of your commandments. Save us and lead us into your eternal kingdom. For you are our Creator, Provider and Giver of all that is good. Our hope is in you and to you we give glory, now and forever. Amen.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Nicholas Rescher
Friday, September 07, 2007
Climate Change a Grave Issue, Says Benedict XVI
Climate Change a Grave Issue, Says Benedict XVI
Urges Care for God's Creation
VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 6, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI reiterated his concern for the environment, saying that the attention being given to global warming is very important.
The Pope made his appeal for the protection of the planet, and especially the prudent use and distribution of water, before concluding the general audience Wednesday in St. Peter's Square.
He made these comments as he greeted the participants of the symposium titled "The Arctic: Mirror of Life." The conference, held in Greenland and inaugurated by Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, began today.
The Holy Father wanted "to greet all the participants -- various religious leaders, scientists, journalists and other interested parties -- and to assure them of my support for their endeavors."
"Care of water resources and attention to climate change are matters of grave importance for the entire human family," the Pontiff added. "Encouraged by the growing recognition of the need to preserve the environment, I invite all of you to join me in praying and working for greater respect for the wonders of God’s creation!"
The symposium is being held under the patronage of Bartholomew I; José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission; and Kofi Annan, former U.N. secretary-general.
The symposium is organized by an Athens-based nongovernmental organization called Religion, Science and the Environment.
This year's symposium is the seventh to be organized by the group, with the aim of raising environmental consciousness in diverse parts of the world.
Benedict XVI has repeatedly mentioned environmental issues in recent days. He discussed ecology with Israeli President Shimon Peres at Castel Gandolfo today and also told youth in Loreto, Italy, last Sunday that protecting creation is an urgent task.
Papal Address on Ministry to Prisoners
Papal Address on Ministry to Prisoners
"Called to Be Heralds of God’s Infinite Compassion"
VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 6, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a Vatican translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today to the participants at a world congress on pastoral care in prisons.
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ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE TWELFTH WORLD CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF CATHOLIC PRISON PASTORAL CARE
Castel Gandolfo
Thursday, 6 September 2007
Dear Friends,
I am pleased to welcome you as you gather in Rome for the Twelfth World Congress of the International Commission of Catholic Prison Pastoral Care. I thank your President, Doctor Christian Kuhn, for the kind words expressed on behalf of the Executive Board of the Commission.
The theme of your Congress this year, “Discovering the Face of Christ in Every Prisoner” (Mt 25:36), aptly portrays your ministry as a vivid encounter with the Lord. Indeed, in Christ the “love of God and love of neighbour have become one”, so that “in the least of the brethren we find Jesus himself, and in him…God” ("Deus Caritas Est," 15).
Your ministry requires much patience and perseverance. Not infrequently there are disappointments and frustrations. Strengthening the bonds that unite you with your bishops will enable you to find the support and guidance you need to raise awareness of your vital mission. Indeed, this ministry within the local Christian community will encourage others to join you in performing corporal works of mercy, thus enriching the ecclesial life of the diocese. Likewise, it will help to draw those whom you serve into the heart of the universal Church, especially through their regular participation in the celebration of the sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist (cf. "Sacramentum Caritatis," 59).
Prisoners easily can be overwhelmed by feelings of isolation, shame and rejection that threaten to shatter their hopes and aspirations for the future. Within this context, chaplains and their collaborators are called to be heralds of God’s infinite compassion and forgiveness. In cooperation with civil authorities, they are entrusted with the weighty task of helping the incarcerated rediscover a sense of purpose so that, with God’s grace, they can reform their lives, be reconciled with their families and friends, and, insofar as possible, assume the responsibilities and duties which will enable them to conduct upright and honest lives within society.
Judicial and penal institutions play a fundamental role in protecting citizens and safeguarding the common good (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2266). At the same time, they are to aid in rebuilding “social relationships disrupted by the criminal act committed” (cf. "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church," 403). By their very nature, therefore, these institutions must contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders, facilitating their transition from despair to hope and from unreliability to dependability. When conditions within jails and prisons are not conducive to the process of regaining a sense of a worth and accepting its related duties, these institutions fail to achieve one of their essential ends. Public authorities must be ever vigilant in this task, eschewing any means of punishment or correction that either undermine or debase the human dignity of prisoners. In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture “cannot be contravened under any circumstances” (Ibid., 404).
I am confident that your Congress will provide an opportunity to share your experiences of the mysterious countenance of Christ shining through the faces of the imprisoned. I encourage you in your efforts to show that face to the world as you promote greater respect for the dignity of the detained. Finally, I pray that your Congress will be an occasion for you yourselves to appreciate anew how, in attending to the needs of the imprisoned, your own eyes are opened to the marvels God does for you each day (cf. "Deus Caritas Est," 18).
With these sentiments I extend my heartfelt wishes to you and all the participants in the Congress for the success of your meeting and willingly impart my Apostolic Blessing to you and your loved ones.
© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
A Look at the Agora Meeting
Benedict XVI in Loreto
A Look at the Agora Meeting
ROME, SEPT. 1, 2007 (Zenit.org) - Here is an overview of the Italian bishops' three-year plan to give special emphasis to youth ministry, titled the Agora of Italian Youth. The plan's program for this year is highlighted by Benedict XVI's meeting with youth taking place today and Sunday in Loreto, Italy.
The texts, including two interviews, are provided by the Fides news agency.
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Interview with Monsignor Paolo Giulietti, head of National Service for Youth Pastoral Ministry at the Italian bishops conference.
Q: Monsignor Giulietti, with what objectives did the March 2006 session of the bishops' standing council approve the proposal for a national path of special attention for the world of youth articulated in three years: the Agora of young Italians?
Monsignor Giulietti: The objectives were many within the framework of renewed attention on the part of the Catholic community for the world of youth. The bishops defined young people a "pastoral priority" and the "Agora dei giovani italiani" intends to concretize this statement.
Hopefully it will lead to greater educational effort on the part of the community, serious efforts to invest in human and material resources to offer young people space for more participation in Church life and new missionary impulse with the involvement of the young people themselves.
Q: The Agora at Loreto is also dedicated to the theme of creation. What is the best way to educate young people to respect creation and nature?
Monsignor Giulietti: It is important on the one hand to intensify knowledge and motivation, anchoring attention for nature to a sound Christian vision of the relationship between man and creation; on the other hand it is decisive to offer young people the proposal of realistic and practical actions in day to day living -- small individual and community actions that can improve the present situation and generate hope for the future. It is important to realize that we are all responsible for creation, we must not wait for someone else to solve the problem for us.
Q: Benedict XVI has confirmed his presence at Loreto. After the World Youth Day in Cologne this is the second major event he dedicates to young people. What do they expect from the meeting with the Holy Father? In your opinion why did the Pope accept to insert the meeting in Loreto among his appointments?
Monsignor Giulietti: The Pope -- as he said on June 17 in Assisi -- is anxious to be with young people, dialogue with them, propose the "great yes" of the Christian faith as the answer to their longing for a truly human life. He has confidence in the new generations and entrusts them with the mission to carry the Gospel to their peers.
For us the Pope's presence in Loreto almost puts a seal on this three-year path, to which he will make a fundamental contribution in contents and motivation. In particular, the meeting with the Holy Father will be the celebration of a year devoted to listening and will open the year devoted to proclamation in interpersonal relations.
Q: Mission is an integral part of the life of faith. It is possible in your opinion that young people today still sense the urgency to communicate the Gospel of Christ to their peers? How can we kindle in young people a desire for mission?
Monsignor Giulietti: Mission is not something to do, it is more a way of being: Communicating with word and deed the beauty, the greatness of the experience of an encounter with Christ who makes life new. It is possible to kindle missionary impulse if we help young people to view their ordinary life with new eyes and to live it in an "extraordinary" manner. Naturally it is necessary to rethink the words and ways to speak of this at work, at school, at leisure time … for witness to be effective. The problem of little missionary spirit is due too often to dis-incarnated formation and spirituality.
Q: The Church often organizes meetings and appointments but there is little real faith life in our country especially among young people. In your opinion are these great rallies helpful for the faith of young people or not?
Monsignor Giulietti: To say there is little real faith life in the country would appear to me to be a generic statement: We have many young people who live their Christian faith with consistence. Some experienced the decisive moment in their journey of faith precisely at one of these great gatherings. I do not think we can say these great events are of no use; instead we must say that there is a right way and a wrong way to approach them. If well prepared, young people who take part can benefit greatly; if left to improvisation, participation can be disappointing. The event is an opportunity, a channel, and it is up to us to use it well."
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Interview with Monsignor Mauro Parmeggiani, prelate secretary of the Vicariate of Rome and director of the Diocesan Service of Youth Pastoral Ministry.
Q: Benedict XVI has confirmed his presence at Loreto. After the WYD in Cologne this is the second major event he dedicates to young people. What do the young people of Rome diocese expect from the meeting with the Holy Father? In your opinion why did the Pope accept to insert the Meeting in Loreto among his appointments?
Monsignor Parmeggiani: Actually since the World Youth Day in Cologne the Pope has had other meetings with young people, for example recently in Assisi and Vigevano, and -- in greater numbers -- in Brazil -- and before that in Krakow. I am thinking of his annual meetings in Rome with the young people of his diocese on the Thursday before Palm Sunday.
Certainly the meeting in Loreto will be an important national happening for young people with the Pope. The young people of the diocese of Rome are anxious to listen to Benedict XVI, knowing that he listens to them seriously. Our young Romans have already seen how the Pope is anxious to listen to them. They realized this when he agreed to answer questions off the cuff on various issues on life in their meeting with him in 2006 and then this year when the listening was more intimate and even sacramental when Benedict XVI, like all the priests present at the Roman appointment for WYD, entered the confessional and heard the confessions of six young people.
I think that in Loreto, too, the Pope will want to listen to the young people and speak to them in the name of the One whom he represents and of this responsibility he is deeply aware. The young people are aware that the Pope knows them and he knows the world in which they live, the relativistic, secularized and de-Christianized culture in which they are submerged, their family and affective difficulties, often much greater than one would imagine.
Certainly Benedict XVI appears to be reserved and shy … but as his secretary said recently in an interview published in one of our national dailies, his shyness, rather than a mark of his character, is due to a keen awareness that the Pope represents Christ and it is to him that he must give way.
I think therefore that our young people expect the Pope to help them solve their difficulties. This will not be a meeting of superficial youth, celebrating without contents, instead it will give interesting answers for life which broaden the scope of reason to make way for Christ to enter, which propose Christ as God's magnificent "yes" to all men and women and to all the young men and women of today.
I think the meeting will be transformed into supplication, praise and prayer to the God whom the Pope will announce. I have the impression that Benedict XVI is most selective in his choice of appointments. If he has called the young people to Loreto it is to let them know that they are not alone as they strive to live their faith and to be disciples of Christ today, that the Church for them is a "trustworthy companion" in which to pronounce their yes for life, to Christ and to neighbor, and to spur them on to be together credible witness of Love."
Q: Mission is an integral part of the life of faith. It is possible in your opinion that young people today still sense the urgency to communicate the Gospel of Christ to their peers? How can we kindle in young people a desire for mission?
Monsignor Parmeggiani: Certainly. They may have doubts as to how to propose the Gospel, but they -- perhaps more than adults -- realize that as John Paul II said, faith is strengthened when it is given to others.
Through the grace of God I see every year in Rome many young members of groups, movements, parishes preparing for youth Mission at the School for Evangelization, organized by the Diocesan Youth Pastoral Service in view of our youth mission called "Jesus at the Center" now in its 4th annual edition and which will take place in Rome's city center from Sept. 29 to Oct. 7 this year.
Actually I believe that young people, more than adults, sense the urgency of mission and they desire an extroverted faith which spreads to their friends, their environments, starting with the school, leisure places, sport, university … And it is good to see how these young people, regarded by certain over-clerical lay adults or even priests at first with some diffidence, succeed in converting even the latter to mission.
Basically the truth, a sense of life, beauty, happiness is never lacking in the heart of a young person including the young person of today. This desire -- we have been told many times by John Paul II and now by Benedict XVI -- has a name: Jesus Christ, his mercy, his love. Young people need love and "Deus caritas est," God is Love!
And if we help them encounter this love by being close to them, listening, explaining the word of God, administrating of the sacraments well celebrated, if we are witnesses of charity, of life, if we are adults consistent with their decisions -- even though poor sinners -- and faithful to the love of Christ who came to encounter them and captivate them, then they too will feel impelled to witness, to be missionaries because love spreads, it cannot be kept for one's self, it demands by nature to be shared with everyone, through the power of the Holy Spirit who has been given to us -- as Benedict XVI writes in his message to the young people of the world in view of the next World Youth Day in Sydney -- "to the ends of the earth!"
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Agora of young Italians: three years of work
It all began during the March 2006 session of the Italian bishops' conference standing council, which approved a proposal of a national path of special attention for the world of youth articulated in three years: the Agora of young Italians. A committee was set up to support youth initiatives and Monsignor Giuseppe Betori, former secretary of the conference, was appointed president.
The objective of the Agora of young Italians is to foster the realization of this path giving new impulse to youth pastoral ministry, greater participation of the new generations in the Church's missionary activity and involvement in the path of the Church in Italy. The value of missionary activity is the fundamental dimension of the life and action of Christians, individuals and communities.
Year 1
The first pastoral year 2006-2007 was devoted to listening to the world of youth. This is the first dimension of mission; the aim is in fact to carry the Church (communities, young people, priests, pastoral workers) out of their own spaces in order to build new relations with young people on the terrain of hope, sought after and lived in the ambits of daily life, using the interpretations, analysis and proposals suggested at the 4th Church Meeting in Verona: affective relations; experience of fragility; commitment for citizenship; study/work dynamic -- celebration; relations with other generations. The first year was oriented to the national meeting in Loreto, which follows on the Verona Meeting, which gave decisive impulse (motivations and contents) to what remains to be done.
The theme "As I Have Loved You," connects the Church's becoming encounter with young people to the mystery of God becoming an encounter for humanity in Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Truth guides our listening, revealing the presence of Christ in the midst of our young people and leading the Church to "discern what is 'true' present in the guise of what is 'new.'"
Year 2
The pastoral year 2007-2008, will be devoted to the interpersonal dimension of evangelization. The objective is to continue the extrovert dynamic of year one, at the level of witness in daily life and with special initiatives of mission. The central event of year two is World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney: an opportunity for young people to deepen their sense of the mission mandate for their Christian life, in an extremely stimulating cultural and social context. Physical or "virtual," participation at the event in Sydney is therefore an important passage for those involved in the three year journey.
The theme, "You Will Be My Witnesses," shows that mission is part of the Christian identity of individuals and communities called to narrate the joyous experience of the encounter with the risen Lord. Mission is lived not as "proselytizing, which wants to 'capture' young people, but as a joyous communication of the beauty of a discovery which one feels compelled to share."
Year 3
The third pastoral year 2008-2009 will be devoted to the cultural and social dimension of evangelization. The objective is to pursue the extrovert dynamic treating the questions of Christian witness (personal, but above all as a community) exercised on frontiers of major cultural and social issues. The itinerary will conclude with an event lived simultaneously in every diocese in Italy, in the squares or diocesan shrines or some of the "new shrines" of our times such as, for example, shopping malls, railway stations, cinemas, sports grounds and places of marginalization.
The theme "To the Ends of the Earth," underlines the necessity for the Gospel to be proclaimed in the languages and cultures of young people today often very distant from those of the previous generations.
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First Lap: Loreto, Sept. 1- 2
"Loreto 2007" will be the first of three great gatherings in the three-year path of the "Agora of Young Italians." On Sept. 1 - 2, thousands of young people from all over Italy and delegations from European and Mediterranean countries will meet at the Marian Shrine for a great festival with the participation of Benedict XVI.
The appointment in September is a key moment for year one with the theme "As I Have Loved You," which includes the post-Verona journey and gives decisive impulse (motivation and content) to what remains to be done.
The Loreto event involves not only the organizers and participants but also the local Catholics: In the days preceding the event (Aug. 29-31) the young guests will stay with families in 32 dioceses in the regions of Marche, Umbria, Emilia Romagna and Abruzzo and take part in days of reflection and sharing, bringing the voice of the world of youth to the local Catholic communities and the civil realities.
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Loreto Program:
-- Hosting days (Aug. 29-31). In the 32 dioceses of Romagna, Marche, Umbria and Abruzzo the young people will meet to discuss and share their journey. The days will be characterized by consolidated dynamics (hosting families, festive events, and getting to know the local people and the territory …), as well as initiatives connected with the theme of year one of the Agora of young Italians.
-- National meeting (Sept. 1-2). Saturday, Sept. 1, pilgrimage to Loreto: Groups will make their way on foot to Montorso Plain. The pilgrimage will be animated as a path of faith. Then there will be the embrace with Benedict XVI, reflection, celebration … Sunday, Sept. 2, a day of prayer and the culminating celebration of the Eucharist at the end of which the Pope will entrust the young people with the Mission Mandate.
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The voices of some 800 delegates to Loreto
About 800 young delegates representing 50 countries of Europe and the Mediterranean will join their Italian peers for the meeting with Benedict XVI in Loreto from Sept. 1 to 2.
In the Montorso Valley, which will host the event, will fly the flags of England, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lebanon, Moldavia, Holland, Austria, Switzerland. The most numerous delegations will include: 100 young people from Poland (including 50 from Krakow) 50 each from France and Spain, and 25 each from Croatia, Hungary, Greece, Russian, Portugal, Slovenia.
Although less numerous but just as enthusiastic, smaller groups of young people will be coming from Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Syria, Palestinian Territories, Israel and Turkey. Ukraine will send representatives of Latin and Greek Catholic rite and the Libyan delegation will comprise three Iraqis, two Filipinos and one Egyptian. There will be young people from Luxembourg, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Cyprus and Malta who will be guests of the diocese San Marino-Montefeltro. The diocese of Ancona-Osimo will be twinned with Romania, Montenegro and Krakow, and that of Macerata-Tolentino-Recanati-Cingoli-Treia with Croatia and Albania. The diocese of Foligno with Belgium, Imola with Scotland, Teramo-Atri with Australia, which will offer hospitality on the occasion of the 23rd Word Youth Day in Sydney2008.
"The presence of foreign delegations," the organizers explain, "is a call to share experiences and an opportunity to build relationships to last after Loreto." And this is the spirit of the young delegates.
"For me to participate in this event," said Dalia from Lithuania, "means celebrating, sharing with young Italians the joy of belonging to the same family of believers, expressing the youthful enthusiasm of being Christians, drawing courage to continue to be His apostles among my peers."
Armantos from Cyprus says the same: "I will carry to the young people of Cyprus the message that there are many like us, different in color and nationality, but similar in way of life and thought, and with an extraordinary spirituality for our times."
"In Greece," said Maria, "as a minority, young Catholics have little occasion for sharing and expression and the ecumenical path is still long, but I hope this great event will fill everyone with the desire to be true witnesses in deed and in faith."
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Photo Exhibition -- John Paul II and Benedict XVI
The inauguration of the Photograph Exhibition "John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Young People, Creation, Marian devotion" at the Church of Santo Stefano at Carisolo, marked the beginning of the "5th Youth Pilgrimage to the Cross of Adamello." In view of "Loreto 2007," in memory of John Paul II, the young people made a pilgrimage to the spot where, during the Jubilee Year 2000, a cross was planted dedicated to the late Holy Father, where young people go on regular pilgrimages.
"The initiative," the organizers explained, "calls attention to the permanent educational and spiritual value of the mountains and looks towards the appointments in Loreto (September 2007) and Sydney (July 2008), where Pope Benedict XVI expects to see the boys and girls of Italy, Europe, the world."
This year the project promoted in collaboration with the autonomous province of Trent, assumes special importance with the participation of Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz who will meet young Agora participants and young people of the region of Trent. The pilgrimage represents the highlight of three days of formation, which completes training for volunteer group leaders who will offer their services at Loreto. Reflection will focus in the organization of major events and the importance of voluntary work on these occasions, but also on Creation and the figure of John Paul II.
On July 5, the exhibition was opened by Archbishop Giuseppe Betori, the Italian bishops' conference secretary-general, Archbishop Luigi Bressan of Trent, Dr. Vincenzo Grienti of the bishops' conference national office for communications, Professor Tiziano Salvaterra, assessor for education and youth policies of the autonomous province of Trent, and Proffesor Giovanni Morello, who organized the exhibition.
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Sydney 2008
The meeting in Loreto anticipates that of World Youth Day in Sydney Australia 2008. "And now, as the living presence of the risen Christ in our midst nourishes our faith and hope," Benedict XVI said before leading the recitation of the Angelus with one million young people at Marienfeld in Cologne on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2005, "I am pleased to announce that the next World Youth Day will take place in Sydney, Australia, in 2008. We entrust to the maternal guidance of Mary Most Holy, the future course of the young people of the whole world. Let us now recite the Angelus."
Sydney will host from July 15 - 20, 2008, thousands of young people from all over the world including young Italians for whom Sidney 2008 will be the second lap of the pastoral journey of the Youth Agora.
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Events 2009
The pastoral year 2008-2009 is dedicated to the cultural and social dimension of evangelization and the theme "To the Ends of the Earth" stresses the necessity to proclaim the Gospel in the languages and cultures of the young people of today, often very distant from those of previous generations.
The objective is to continue the extrovert dynamism proposed in the first two years, treating especially the question of Christian witness (personal, but above all community) exercised on the frontiers of great cultural and social issues.
The itinerary of the Agora will conclude with an event lived simultaneously in every Italian diocese in the squares or diocesan shrines or some "new shrine" of our times such as, for example, shopping malls, railway stations, cinemas, sports grounds and places of marginalization.
[Text adapted]
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