Robert George, Public Morality, Public Reason

Public Morality, Public Reason
by Robert P. George

Copyright (c) 2006 First Things (November 2006).

A contest of worldviews in our time pits devout Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and other believers against secularist liberals and those who, while remaining within the religious denominations, have adopted essentially secularist liberal ideas about personal and political morality. The contest manifests itself in disputes over abortion, embryo-destructive research, and euthanasia, as well as in issues of sex, marriage, and family life. Underlying these specific conflicts are profound differences about the nature of morality and the proper relation of moral judgment to law and public policy.

I am hardly the first to recognize the existence of this conflict of worldviews. People on both sides have noticed it, commented on it, and proposed ideas about how an essentially democratically constituted polity ought to come to terms with it. The trouble is that the issues dividing the two camps are of such profound moral significance—on either side’s account—that merely procedural solutions are not good enough. Neither side will be happy to agree on decision procedures for resolving the key differences of opinion at the level of public policy where the procedures do not guarantee victory for the substantive policies they favor. This is not a matter of people being irrationally stubborn; rather, it reflects the considered judgment of people on both sides that fundamental and therefore nonnegotiable issues of justice are at stake.

Jurgen Habermas in Europe and the late John Rawls in the United States are perhaps the premier examples of secular thinkers who have taken the measure of the problem and proposed terms of engagement that, they believe, can be affirmed by reasonable people across the spectrum of opinion. Both single out Catholicism as an example of a non-liberal “comprehensive doctrine” that may nevertheless affirm essentially liberal terms of engagement with competing comprehensive doctrines. Indeed, they argue, one needn’t be a secular person, much less a secularist, to endorse their teachings. There is plenty of room, they say, for religious people of various stripes to affirm the secular principles and norms that should govern political life in contemporary pluralistic democratic societies. Indeed, their goal is to identify principles and norms that can reasonably be accepted by believers and unbelievers alike, and affirmed by people irrespective of their convictions about human nature, dignity, and destiny.

From a Catholic vantage point, there is nothing startling or troubling about the quest to identify moral and political principles that can reasonably be affirmed without appeal to theological claims or religious authority. That’s one description, accurate so far as it goes, of the enterprise known as natural law theory. But there is something deeply alien to Catholic thought about separating inquiry into moral and political principles from questions pertaining to human nature, dignity, and destiny. According to the Catholic understanding, moral and political philosophy is, in significant measure, an inquiry into human nature, dignity, and destiny.

Inasmuch as Habermas and Rawls propose theories of political morality that purport to prescind from such basic questions, there appears to be a fundamental incompatibility between their proposals and the Catholic approach to moral and political theory. This is a problem for Habermas and Rawls. Both men offer theories that reasonable people of diverse faiths, including Catholics, are supposed to be able to endorse without compromising their faith.

Moreover, for both Habermas and Rawls it is important that Catholics in particular be able to endorse their theories—in part because Catholicism is the world’s largest religion, and in part because contemporary Catholicism affirms and even promotes liberal democracy as a political ideal. Pope John Paul II repeatedly praised democracy, describing it as the political system most consistent with both man’s nature as a rational creature and the principle of the equality in dignity of all human beings. Since the Second Vatican Council, popes and other Catholic officials have regularly preached the obligation of governments to respect and protect human rights, including the freedom of religion. While the Church does not rule out state-established religions (such as exist in Great Britain and Israel), it does not promote them, even where Catholicism is the dominant faith, and it strictly demands respect for religious liberty, even where established religions exist.

Given these and other “liberal” dimensions of Catholic social and political teaching, it would be particularly awkward for Rawls or Habermas if Catholics could not, in good conscience, affirm their political theories. Indeed, the inability of these theories to accommodate Catholics, if proven, would invite the suspicion that there is something distinctly sectarian about them. It would suggest that the theories are not merely secular but fully secularist.

In his influential 1971 book A Theory of Justice, Rawls defended what he called “justice as fairness,” in which basic principles for a well-ordered society are identified as those that would be chosen by free and equal persons in what he called “the original position.” Parties in “the original position” select principles in a state of ignorance regarding their personal moral and religious convictions, social and economic status, and related factors that will distinguish them from many of their fellow citizens when they emerge from behind “the veil of ignorance” to live in a society governed in accordance with the principles they had selected.

In 1993, Rawls published a new book, Political Liberalism, which amends certain features of the theory he had advanced in 1971. Most important, Rawls conceded that the argument for “justice as fairness” in A Theory of Justice relied on a premise that was inconsistent with the theory itself: the belief that “in the well-ordered society of justice as fairness, citizens hold the same comprehensive doctrine, and this includes aspects of Kant’s comprehensive liberalism, to which the principles of justice as fairness might belong.”

By a “comprehensive doctrine,” Rawls means something like a worldview—an integrated set of moral beliefs and commitments reflecting a still more fundamental understanding of human nature, dignity, and destiny. Rawls’ problem with the position he had adopted in A Theory of Justice is that liberalism (considered a “comprehensive,” as opposed to a merely “political,” doctrine) is not held by citizens generally in contemporary pluralistic societies. Liberalism considered as such—plainly a secularist view—competes in such societies with Catholicism, as well as with various forms of Protestantism and Judaism, and with other religious and secular comprehensive doctrines. Indeed, liberalism considered as a comprehensive doctrine is plainly a minority view in the United States. Most Americans reject secularism of any type, including secularist liberalism. In any event, Rawls’ revised understanding is that a plurality of comprehensive views, religious and secularist, is natural and unavoidable in the circumstances of political freedom that characterize constitutional democratic regimes. Political theorizing that accepts the legitimacy of such regimes must begin, therefore, by acknowledging what Rawls calls “the fact of reasonable pluralism.”

To appeal to comprehensive liberalism, Rawls concedes, would be no less sectarian than to appeal to Catholicism or Judaism. Some alternative must, therefore, be found or the social stability of such regimes would be in constant jeopardy. Everything would depend on the capacity and willingness of people with fundamentally different moral views—including radically different conceptions of justice and human rights—to reach and preserve a modus vivendi.

The alternative Rawls proposes is “political liberalism.” Its ideal is that “citizens are to conduct their public political discussions of constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice within the framework of what each sincerely regards as a reasonable political conception of justice, a conception that expresses political values that others as free and equal also might reasonably be expected to endorse.”

The core of this political liberalism is the idea that, whenever constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice are at stake, political actors must refrain from acting on the basis of principles drawn from their comprehensive views except to the extent that “public reasons, given by a reasonable political conception, are presented sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are introduced to support.” Thus, citizens are constrained from appealing to and acting on beliefs drawn from their most fundamental moral understandings and commitments precisely at the most fundamental political level.

Rawls’ political liberalism aspires, then, to be impartial with respect to the viewpoints represented by the various reasonable comprehensive doctrines that compete for the allegiance of citizens. It “does not attack or criticize any reasonable [comprehensive] view,” Rawls claims. “Rather than confronting religious and nonliberal doctrines with a comprehensive liberal philosophical doctrine, the thought is to formulate a liberal political conception that those nonliberal doctrines might be able to endorse.”

Rawls maintains that terms of cooperation offered by citizens to their fellow citizens are fair only insofar as citizens offering them “reasonably think that those citizens to whom such terms are offered might also reasonably accept them.” This “criterion of reciprocity” is the core of what Rawls labels “the liberal principle of legitimacy”—the notion that “our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason.” When, and only when, political power is exercised in accordance with such a constitution do political actors—including voters—maintain fidelity to the ideal of “public reason.”

The “liberal principle of legitimacy” and ideal of “public reason” exclude as illegitimate any appeal to principles and propositions drawn from comprehensive doctrines. At first glance, the scope of “public reason” seems to be wide. It would, to be sure, rule out as illegitimate any claim based on the allegedly “secret knowledge” of a gnostic elite or the putative truths revealed only to a select few and not accessible to reasonable persons as such. But it would not exclude any principle or proposition, however controversial, that is put forward for acceptance on the basis of rational argumentation.

Now, Rawls himself cannot accept this wide conception of public reason. His goal, after all, is to limit the range of morally acceptable doctrines of political morality in circumstances of moral pluralism to the single doctrine of “political liberalism.” The wide conception of public reason will not rule out propositions drawn from comprehensive forms of liberalism. More important, it will not exclude propositions drawn from non-liberal comprehensive doctrines that content themselves with appeals to “our common human reason.”

Notable among such doctrines is the broad tradition of natural law thinking about morality, justice, and human rights. This tradition poses an especially interesting problem for Rawls’ theory of public reason because of its integration into Catholic teaching. So it is, at once, a non-liberal comprehensive philosophical doctrine and part of a larger religious tradition that, in effect, proposes its own principle of public reason.

If Rawls is to defend a conception of “public reason” narrow enough to exclude appeals to natural law, he must show that there is something unfair about such appeals. And he must demonstrate this unfairness without appeal to comprehensive liberalism or any other comprehensive conception of justice that competes with the natural law conception. In other words, he must avoid smuggling in principles that are themselves in dispute among adherents to reasonable comprehensive doctrines.

This, it seems to me, he has not done and, I believe, cannot do. Rawls does not explicitly address the claims of natural law theorists. He seems, however, to have their beliefs in mind in his critique of what he calls “rationalist believers who contend that [their] beliefs are open to and can be fully established by reason.” Rawls’ argument rests entirely on the claim that these “rationalist believers” unreasonably deny “the fact of reasonable pluralism.”

But do they? Rawls’ own methodological commitments mean that he cannot rule out the views of natural law theorists or rationalist believers on such issues as homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, and drugs on the grounds that their views are unsound, unreasonable, or false—or else his political liberalism would have collapsed again into a comprehensive liberalism. He thus limits himself to a simple denial that the claims of the rationalist believers “can be publicly and fully established by reason.”

But how can this denial be sustained independently of some engagement with the specific arguments they advance—arguments that Rawls’ idea of public reason is meant to exclude without an appeal to their soundness and reasonableness or the truth or falsity of the principles and propositions in support of which they are offered? It will not do for Rawls to claim that he is not denying the truth of rationalist believers’ claims but merely their assertion that these claims can be publicly and fully established by reason. What makes rationalist believers “rationalist” is precisely the belief that their principles can be justified by rational argument and their willingness to provide just such rational argumentation.

Catholics and other natural law theorists maintain that on certain issues, including certain fundamental moral and political issues, there are uniquely correct answers. The question whether there is a human right against being enslaved, for example, or being punished for one’s religious beliefs admits of a uniquely correct answer that is available in principle to every rational person. Pro-life advocates assert that there is similarly a human right against deliberate feticide and other forms of direct killing of innocent human beings, irrespective of race, ethnicity, and sex, but also irrespective of disability, age, size, location, stage of development, or condition of dependency. Differences over such issues as slavery, religious freedom, abortion, and euthanasia may be “reasonable” in the sense that reasonable persons can err in their judgments and arrive at morally incorrect positions. But, assuming there is a truth of these matters—something Rawls cannot deny and, one would think, has no desire to deny—errors of reason must be responsible for anyone’s failure to arrive at the morally correct positions.

Rawls certainly cannot declare such views unreasonable because they maintain that on certain morally charged and highly disputed political questions—including questions of human rights—there are uniquely morally correct answers. The fact that reasonable people can be found on competing sides of such questions in no way implies that the competing views are equally reasonable. Reasonable people can be wrong, as Rawls himself implicitly acknowledges in his claims against the rationalist believers who are, after all, reasonable people even if their claim that their beliefs can be fully and publicly justified by reason is unreasonable. There is simply no unreasonableness in maintaining that otherwise reasonable people can be less than fully reasonable (sometimes culpably, other times not) in their judgments of particular issues.

In fairness to Rawls, we should acknowledge his treatment of the sources of moral disagreement in connection with what he calls “the burdens of judgment.” To preserve the integrity of his political liberalism, however, we must read his account of the sources of disagreement in such a way as to avoid its collapse into relativism. If we do, then Rawls’ idea of “fully reasonable” views—and even “perfectly reasonable” though erroneous views—refers to false beliefs that are formed without subjective fault. I think that this is what people generally have in mind when, though fully persuaded of the truth of a certain view, they allow nevertheless that “reasonable people” can disagree with them. The fact of “reasonable disagreement” in this sense is not a valid warrant for ruling out argument as to the truth of matters in dispute on the ground that reasons adduced in any argument “on the merits” cannot qualify as “public reasons.”

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls identified the basic principles of “justice as fairness” by the method of “political constructivism,” which asked what substantive principles would be chosen by parties in the “original position” behind the “veil of ignorance.” In a key passage of Political Liberalism, he says that the “liberal principle of legitimacy” and the ideal of “public reason” have “the same basis as the substantive principles of justice.” This basis remains insecure. Over more than thirty years, Rawls failed to provide any reason to suppose the injustice of principles of justice not selected under conditions of artificial ignorance by the unnaturally risk-averse parties in the “original position.” Rawlsians seem to suppose that from the proposition that principles that would be selected by such parties under such conditions are just, it follows that other principles—which might well be chosen by reasonable and well-informed persons outside the original position—are unjust. But that does not follow at all.

Central to J?rgen Habermas’ political thought is a distinction between “morality” and “ethics.” As John Finnis has observed, in Habermas’ work, this distinction “has much the same role as Rawls’ untenable distinction between ?comprehensive doctrines’ and ?public reasons.’” The distinction, in Habermas’ case, is part of what he calls an “ethics of discourse” that “adopts the intersubjective approach of pragmatism and conceives of practical discourse as a public practice of shared reciprocal perspective taking: each individual finds himself compelled to adopt the perspective of everyone else in order to test whether a proposed regulation is also acceptable from the perspective of every other person’s understanding of himself and the world.” “Ethics,” on this account, has to do with “how one sees oneself and who one would like to become,” while “morality” has to do with the proper concern for “the interests of all.” Political theory is fundamentally concerned, then, with “morality,” not “ethics.” And fundamental questions of the nature, dignity, and destiny of the human person are putatively excluded from the realm of political theory precisely because they are “ethical,” not “moral.”

According to Habermas, “Ethical questions point in a different direction from moral questions: the regulation of interpersonal conflicts of action resulting from opposed interests is not yet an issue. Whether I would like to be someone who in case of acute need would be willing to defraud an anonymous insurance company just this one time is not a moral question, for it concerns my self-respect and possibly the respect that others show me, but not equal respect for all, and hence not the symmetrical respect that everyone should accord the integrity of all other persons.”

Finnis has put his finger on the problem here: “The compatibility of self-respect with this dealing with the insurance company cannot . . . be rationally assessed without making ?moral’ judgments about the conditions on which property rights are justly respected and justly overridden, and about the injustice of fraud, and so forth.” But if that is true, the distinction itself begins to collapse.

Worse still, Habermas employs the distinction in a way that implicitly answers the question much disputed in our culture of who is to count as within the “all” whose interests must be taken into account in making moral judgments, while purporting to lay aside the evaluation of certain types of homicide as merely ethical. Writing in a law-review symposium devoted to his work in legal and political theory, Habermas raised the questions of abortion and euthanasia as cases involving “ethical” judgment and not “morality.”

Of course, the claim of pro-life citizens is that a just law will protect the lives of the unborn and the frail or disabled precisely because justice requires respect for the fundamental interests of “all.” No human being may be excluded from the community of the commonly protected on the basis of age, size, stage of development, disability, condition of dependency, or any other of the grounds on which supporters of abortion and euthanasia seek to exclude some human beings in order to justify these practices. The discourse into which pro-life people invite their fellow citizens is precisely a discourse about the reasonableness or unreasonableness of such exclusion. People on the pro-life side offer rational grounds—public reasons—for protecting the unborn and the disabled from being killed. They offer to show that the exclusion of the unborn and the disabled from the protections of the law is arbitrary and, as such, unjust.

Habermas, however, expressly speaking of Catholics, suggests that pro-life citizens are bound to accept legal abortion and euthanasia precisely because these are ethical questions, concerned with what is the best way to live, and not moral questions, concerned with the interests of all. Indeed, he implies that morality requires pro-life citizens to refrain from acting on the basis of their ethical judgments, not because these judgments are in any way unsound, untrue, or unreasonable, but because they are ethical. The abstention is required, in other words, by a due regard for “the interests of all.”

Yet, on what ground are the interests of the unborn or the severely disabled to be excluded from consideration? If the question of who is to count as within the all whose interests must be taken into consideration is an ethical one, then it is clear that moral questions depend on ethical judgments—judgments regarding the nature and dignity of the human person—that cannot be avoided or relegated to the domain of the private.

There is in John Rawls’ later work an almost exact parallel to J?rgen Habermas’ error on this point. In Political Liberalism, Rawls raises the issue of abortion in a footnote—the one concrete contemporary political issue Rawls uses to illustrate the application of his doctrine of public reason. He asserts, “as an illustration,” that “any reasonable balancing” of the political values of respect for human life, “the ordered reproduction of political society over time,” and women’s equality would “give a woman a duly qualified right to decide whether or not to end her pregnancy during the first trimester” and perhaps beyond. For the law to protect the life of the human being in the early stages of development would be to impose, according to Rawls, a “comprehensive doctrine” in defiance of the strictures of political liberalism.

Like Habermas, Rawls offers no argument as to why the developing human being should be excluded from the law’s protection. He does not offer reasons to rebut those scientific and philosophical arguments and fully public reasons offered in defense of the rights of the unborn by pro-life citizens. (In the end, as Rawls himself later acknowledged, he merely expressed an opinion, not an argument. )

Also, like Habermas, he eventually gets around to addressing “Catholics” as such on the issue:

Some may, of course, reject a decision, as Catholics may reject a decision to grant a right to abortion. They may present an argument in public reason for denying it and fail to win a majority. But they need not exercise the right of abortion in their own case. They can recognize the right as belonging to legitimate law and therefore do not resist it with force. To do that would be unreasonable: It would mean their attempting to impose their own comprehensive doctrine, which a majority of their fellow citizens who follow public reason do not accept. Certainly Catholics may, in line with public reason, continue to argue against the right of abortion. That the Church’s nonpublic reason requires its members to follow its doctrine is perfectly consistent with their honoring public reason.

Even if interpreted generously as granting that advocacy of the strict prohibition of abortion can be consistent with public reason, Rawls’ admonition to Catholics here is awkward. Plenty of American Catholics and others, most of whom reject resort to violence to protect the unborn from the injustice of abortion, reasonably refuse to recognize the right to abortion as “belonging to legitimate law.”

Rather, they believe that any law recognizing a right to abortion is so gravely unjust as to be illegitimate in principle. As such, any law of this type should be opposed resolutely by people who understand its grave injustice.

As Finnis observes,

[T]he argument of [pro-life] citizens is that the killings whose legalization Rawls and Habermas defend are a radical basic injustice imposed on people deprived or to be deprived of the protections of citizenship. The responses suggested by the argumentation of Rawls and Habermas would run something like: “You free citizens need not exercise the right to [own slaves] [abort your children] in your own case, so you can and must recognize our law as legitimate as it applies to the rest of us (and as we will enforce it against you if you interfere).” “You people need not do any of this [slave owning] [killing] yourselves, so your integrity is undamaged and so you ought (and will be compelled) to stand aside to allow us, in the exercise of our prior right of coexistence with you, to [coexist’ with our slaves->?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/coexist%26%238217%3B_with_our_slaves] [terminate our coexistence with these unborn children/fetuses and with people whose lives are not worth living].”

In fact, advocacy of the right to life against the forces advancing abortion and euthanasia is an example of how the Catholic tradition of thought about justice and political morality honors public reason (though not Rawls’ artificial and unreasonably restricted conception of it) and promotes an “ethics of discourse” (though not Habermas’ artificial and biased version of it). Natural law, as Catholics and those of a similar mind understand it, truly demands that “the interests of all” be taken into account.

This is the implication of the principle that each and every human being is fashioned in the image and likeness of the divine creator and ruler of the universe and, as such, shares a fundamental dignity that others, including those exercising the highest worldly authority, are bound in reason to respect and protect.

Moreover, natural law is nothing other than a doctrine of public reasons that, as Finnis puts it, “would command a universal consensus under ideal conditions of discourse and meanwhile are available to, and could be accepted by, anyone who is willing and able to give them fair and adequate attention.” These reasons, embraced and proclaimed by the Catholic Church, can be, and have been, affirmed by people who know nothing of, or do not accept, Jewish or Christian revelation or the authority of the Church or any other institution. Respect for these reasons as reasons accounts for the honored place of dialectic in the tradition of natural law theory and the emphasis of contemporary natural law theorists on full and fair debate in the forums of democracy on such issues as abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning, and marriage.

That is why, from the Catholic vantage point, there is something scandalous in the effort of theorists such as Rawls and Habermas to remove such issues from public debate by arbitrarily restricting reasons on one side of the debate over the nature, dignity, and destiny of the human person. There is nothing “liberal,” “democratic,” “reasonable,” “moral,” or “ethical” about that.

Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and a member of the First Things editorial board.

Robert George, God's Reasons: The role of religious authority in debates on public policy

God's Reasons: The role of religious authority in debates on public policy
Robert P. George

Remarks at the 1998 American Political Science Association Convention (revised and expanded)

Appeals to religious authority have their place. That place is plainly not, however, in philosophical debates, including philosophical debates about public policy.

Do such appeals have a legitimate place in political advocacy? I think they do, but at the same time, I have some sympathy with Professor John Rawls's proposition that such appeals are legitimate only where they are offered to buttress and motivate people to act on positions that are defensible without such appeals. Like Rawls, I believe that public policy should be based on "public reasons." And while I believe that Rawls's own particular conception of what qualifies as a "public reason" is unreasonably narrow--its narrowness in effect stacking the deck in favor of legal abortion, "same-sex marriage," and other positions held by liberals in contemporary debates over morally charged issues of public policy--the idea that public policy ought to be based on public reasons strikes me as, well, reasonable.

(For a fuller development of my critique of Rawls's position, see Robert P. George, "Public Reason and Political Conflict: Abortion and Homosexuality," Yale Law Journal, Vol. 106 (1997), pp. 2475-2504. This article also develops much of the scientific material, which I will discuss subsequently herein.)

It is not, however, unproblematic. Anyone who believes that God has revealed that the public policy of a certain polity must be settled in a certain way has, so far as he can tell, an absolute, indefeasible reason for supporting that way of settling public policy irrespective of whether there are any grounds apart from revelation for the policy. My scruples, or Rawls's, would--and should--simply cut no ice for a person in this position. And if I happen to be the person in that position, or if Rawls happens to be that person, then I, or he, would be irrational in declining to lay aside our scruples. I suppose that when push comes to shove, those of us who hold these scruples believe that it just isn't the case that God sometimes reveals that public policy ought to be settled in a certain way irrespective of whether there are any grounds apart from revelation for settling policy in this way. Such people either don't believe in God, or (and this is my view) don't believe that God operates this way (at least we don't believe that He operates this way anymore). It seems to me, then, that our differences with those who don't hold these scruples implicate in this way certain theological judgments.

People who do not hold these scruples may believe either that God (at least sometimes) has no reason for the public policies He commands or (at least sometimes) has no reason He chooses to make available to human understanding. As they see it, God's reasons, if He has any, are (at least sometimes) opaque to us. "Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die."

But of course, this understanding of how God operates is one possible theological understanding among others. Many, perhaps most, serious religious believers in our society have a different understanding. To be sure, they believe--we believe--that God is a God of justice, who cares what the public policy of our society is on morally significant questions--e.g., abortion, euthanasia, and marriage and sexuality, not to mention capital punishment, civil and human rights, military policy, economic justice, etc. And a great many believers, though not all, believe, as I do, that God wills that the unborn, handicapped, and frail elderly be protected by law, and that the institution of marriage as a permanent and exclusive union of one man and one woman be preserved against what we believe are the corrupting influences of sexual immorality.

But we also believe not only that there are reasons (apart from revelation) for these policy positions, but also that these reasons are (or, at least, are among) God's reasons for willing what He wills. Indeed, it is our view that often the identification of these reasons by philosophical inquiry and analysis, supplemented sometimes by knowledge derived from the natural and/or social sciences, is critical to an accurate understanding of the content of revelation in, say, the Bible or Jewish or Christian tradition.

Perhaps the best example is in the area of marriage and sexual morality. Philosophical inquiry is indispensable to the project of fully understanding the meaning and implications of the proposition revealed in chapter two of Genesis and in the Gospels that marriage is a "one-flesh union" of a man and a woman. (See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus: Volume Two: Living a Christian Life (Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Press, 1992), ch. 9.)

Another example is that of abortion, where both philosophical analysis and knowledge obtainable only by scientific inquiry were essential to settling, and continue to be essential to understanding, the precise content of the authoritative teaching of the magisterium of the Catholic Church declaring direct abortion to be intrinsically immoral and a violation of human rights. (See John Connery, S.J., Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1997).)

In short, many religious people--most informed Catholics and many Protestants and observant Jews--understand reason not only as a truth-attaining power, but as a power by and through which God directs us as individuals and communities in the way of just and upright living. In his formal account of natural law as a participation in what he called the "eternal law," Aquinas says that although God directs brute animals to their proper ends by instinct, God directs man--made in God's image and likeness and thus possessing reason and freedom--to his proper ends by practical reason through which men grasp the intelligible point of certain possible actions for the sake of ends (goods, values, purposes) which, qua intelligible, provide reasons for choice and action. (See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 91, a. 2.)

Where these reasons have their intelligibility not, or not merely, by virtue of their utility in enabling us to realize our other valuable or desirable ends, but also by virtue of their intrinsic value and choice-worthiness, they constitute the referents of the most fundamental principles of practical reason and precepts of natural law. (For a fuller explanation, see Robert P. George, "Recent Criticism of Natural Law Theory," University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 55 (1988), pp.1371-1429.) Aquinas gives an expressly non-exhaustive list of examples: human life itself, marriage and the transmission of life to new human beings, and knowledge, particularly of religious truth. (See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 94., a. 2. For an effort by contemporary natural law thinkers to provide a more complete account, see Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., Germain Grisez, and John Finnis, "Practical Principles, Moral Truth, and Ultimate Ends," American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 32 (1987), pp. 99-151.) The integral directiveness of these principles, when specified, constitutes the body of moral norms available to guide human choosing reasonably, viz., in conformity with a good will--a will toward integral human fulfillment. (For a fuller explanation, see Robert P. George, "Natural Law Ethics" in Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro, eds., A Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 460-465.)

In his contributions to the February 1996 issue of First Things magazine--contributions in which what he has to say (particularly in his critique of liberalism) is far more often right than wrong--Professor Stanley Fish of Duke University cites the dispute over abortion as an example of a case in which "incompatible first assumptions--articles of opposing faiths" make the resolution of the dispute (other than by sheer political power) impossible. Here is how Professor Fish presented the pro-life and pro-choice positions and the shape of the dispute between their respective defenders:

A pro-life advocate sees abortion as a sin against God who infuses life at the moment of conception; a pro-choice advocate sees abortion as a decision to be made in accordance with the best scientific opinion as to when the beginning of life, as we know it, occurs. No conversation between them can ever get started because each of them starts from a different place and they could never agree as to what they were conversing about. A pro-lifer starts from a belief in the direct agency of a personal God and this belief, this religious conviction, is not incidental to his position; it is his position, and determines its features in all their detail. The "content of a belief" is a function of its source, and the critiques of one will always be the critique of the other.

It is certainly true that the overwhelming majority of pro-life Americans are religious believers and that a great many pro-choice Americans are either unbelievers or less observant or less traditional in their beliefs and practice than their fellow citizens. Indeed, although most Americans believe in God, polling data consistently show that Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who do not regularly attend church or synagogue are less likely than their more observant coreligionists to oppose abortion. (See James Davison Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture War (New York: Free Press, 1994), pp. 104-105.) And religion is plainly salient politically when it comes to the issue of abortion. The more secularized a community, the more likely that community is to elect pro-choice politicians to legislative and executive offices.

Still, I don't think that Professor Fish's presentation of the pro-life and pro-choice positions, or of the shape of the dispute over abortion, is accurate. True, inasmuch as most pro-life advocates are traditional religious believers who, as such, see gravely unjust or otherwise immoral acts as sins--and understand sins precisely as offenses against God--"a pro-life advocate sees abortion as a sin against God." But most pro-life advocates see abortion as a sin against God precisely because it is the unjust taking of innocent human life. That is their reason for opposing abortion; and that is God's reason, as they see it, for opposing abortion and requiring that human communities protect their unborn members against it. And, they believe, as I do, that this reason can be identified and acted on even independently of God's revealing it. Indeed, they typically believe, as I do, that the precise content of what God reveals on the subject ("in thy mother's womb I formed thee") cannot be known without the application of human intelligence, by way of philosophical and scientific inquiry, to the question.

Professor Fish is mistaken, then, in contrasting the pro-life advocate with the pro-choice advocate by depicting (only) the latter as viewing abortion as "a decision to be made in accordance with the best scientific opinion as to when the beginning of life . . . occurs." First of all, supporters of the pro-choice position are increasingly willing to sanction the practice of abortion even where they concede that it constitutes the taking of innocent human life. Pro-choice writers from Naomi Wolfe ("Our Bodies, Our Souls," The New Republic (1995), reprinted with commentaries by pro-life writers in The Human Life Review (Winter, 1996)) to Judith Jarvis Thomson ("A Defense of Abortion," in Marshall Cohen (ed.), The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion (Princeton University Press, 1974)) have advanced theories of abortion as "justifiable homicide." But, more to the point, people on the pro-life side insist that the central issue in the debate is the question "as to when the beginning of life occurs." And they insist with equal vigor that this question is not a "religious" or even "metaphysical" one: it is rather, as Professor Fish says, "scientific."

In response to this insistence, it is pro-choice advocates who typically want to transform the question into a "metaphysical" or "religious" one. It was Justice Harry Blackmun who claimed in his opinion for the Court legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973) that "at this point in man's knowledge" the scientific evidence was inconclusive and therefore cold not determine the outcome of the case. And twenty years later, the influential pro-choice writer Ronald Dworkin went on record claiming that the question of abortion is inherently "religious." (See Ronald Dworkin, Life's Dominion (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).) It is pro-choice advocates, such as Dworkin, who want to distinguish between when a human being comes into existence "in the biological sense" and when a human being comes into existence "in the moral sense." It is they who want to distinguish a class of human beings "with rights" from pre-(or post-) conscious human beings who "don't have rights." And the reason for this, I submit, is that, short of defending abortion as "justifiable homicide," the pro-choice position collapses if the issue is to be settled purely on the basis of scientific inquiry into the question of when a new member of homo sapiens sapiens comes into existence as a self-integrating organism whose unity, distinctiveness, and identity remain intact as it develops without substantial change from the point of its beginning through the various stages of its development and into adulthood. (I explain this point more fully below. Also see Patrick Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, I995) and Dianne Nutwell Irving, "Scientific and Philosophical Expertise: An Evaluation of the Arguments on 'Personhood'," Linacre Quarterly, Vol. 60 (1993), pp. 18-46.)

All this was, I believe, made wonderfully clear at a debate at last year's meeting of the American Political Science Association between Jeffrey Reiman of American University, defending the pro-choice position, and John Finnis of Oxford and Notre Dame, defending the pro-life view. That debate was remarkable for the skill, intellectual honesty, and candor of the interlocutors. What is most relevant to our deliberations, however, is the fact that it truly was a debate. Reiman and Finnis did not talk past each other. They did not proceed from "incompatible first assumptions." They did manage to agree as to what they were talking about--and it was not about whether or when life was infused by God. It was precisely about the rational (i.e., scientific and philosophical) grounds, if any, available for distinguishing a class of human beings "in the moral sense" (with rights) from a class of human beings "in the (merely) biological sense" (without rights). Finnis did not claim any special revelation to the effect that no such grounds existed. Nor did Reiman claim that Finnis's arguments against his view appealed implicitly (and illicitly) to some such putative revelation. Although Finnis is a Christian and, as such, believes that the new human life that begins at conception is in each and every case created by God in His image and likeness, his argument never invoked, much less did it "start from a belief in the direct agency of a personal God." It proceeded, rather, by way of post-by-point philosophical challenge to Reiman's philosophical arguments. Finnis marshaled the scientific facts of embryogenesis and intrauterine human development and defied Reiman to identify grounds, compatible with those facts, for denying a right to life to human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages of development. (Finnis's paper, "Abortion, Natural Law, and Public Reason," and Roman's paper, "Abortion, Natural Law, and Liberal Discourse," have been published in Robert P. George and Christopher Wolfe (eds.), Natural Law and Public Reason (Georgetown University Press, 2000).)

Interestingly, Reiman began his remarks with a statement that would seem to support what Professor Fish said in First Things. While allowing that debates over abortion were useful in clarifying people's thinking about the issue, Reiman remarked that they "never actually cause people to change their minds." It is true, I suppose, that people who are deeply committed emotionally to one side or the other are unlikely to have a road-to-Damascus type conversion after listening to a formal philosophical debate. Still, any open-minded person who sincerely wishes to settle his mind on the question of abortion--and there continue to be many such people, I believe--would find debates such as the one between Reiman and Finnis to be extremely helpful toward that end. Anyone willing to consider the reasons for and against abortion and its legal prohibition or permission would benefit from reading or hearing the accounts of these reasons proposed by capable and honest thinkers on both sides. Of course, when it comes to an issue like abortion, people can have powerful motives for clinging to a particular position even if they are presented with conclusive reasons for changing their minds. But that doesn't mean that such reasons do not exist. And the reason the pro-life position is superior to the pro-choice position is precisely because the scientific evidence, considered honestly and dispassionately, supports that position.*

A human being is conceived when a human sperm containing twenty-three chromosomes fuses with a human egg also containing twenty-three chromosomes (albeit of a different kind) producing a single-cell human zygote containing, in the normal case, forty-six chromosomes that are mixed differently from the forty-six chromosomes as found in the mother or father. Unlike the gametes (that is, the sperm and egg), the zygote is generically unique and distinct from its parents. Biologically, it is a separate organism. It produces, as the gametes do not, specifically human enzymes and proteins. It possesses, as they do not, the active capacity or potency to develop itself into a human embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent, and adult.

Assuming that it is not conceived in vitro, the zygote is, of course, in a state of dependence on its mother. But independence should not be confused with distinctness. From the beginning, the newly conceived human being, not its mother, directs its integral organic functioning. It takes in nourishment and converts it to energy. Given an hospitable environment, it will, as Dianne Nutwell Irving says, "develop continuously without any biological interruptions, or gaps, throughout the embryonic, fetal, neo-natal, childhood, and adulthood stages--until the death of the organism."

Some claim to find the logical implication of these facts--i.e., that life begins at conception--to be "virtually unintelligible." A leading exponent of that point of view in the legal academy is Jed Rubenfeld of Yale Law School, author of an influential article entitled "On the Legal Status of the Proposition that 'Life Begins at Conception,' " 43 Stanford Law Review 599 (1991). Rubenfeld argues that, like the zygote, every cell in the human body is "genetically complete"; yet nobody supposes that every human cell is a distinct human being with a right to life. However, Rubenfeld misses the point that there comes into being at conception, not a mere clump of human cells but a distinct, unified, self-integrating organism, which develops itself, truly himself or herself, in accord with its own genetic "blueprint." The significance of genetic completeness for the status of newly conceived human beings is that no outside generic material is required to enable the zygote to mature into an embryo, the embryo into a fetus, the fetus into an infant, the infant into a child, the child into an adolescent, the adolescent into an adult. What the zygote needs to function as a distinct self-integrating human organism, a human being, it already possesses.

At no point in embryogenesis, therefore, does the distinct organism that came into being when it was conceived undergo what is technically called "substantial change" (or a change of natures). It is human and will remain human. This is the point of Justice Bryon White's remark in his dissenting opinion in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747 (1986), that "there is no non-arbitrary line separating a fetus from a child." Rubenfeld attacks White's point, which he calls "[t]he argument based on the gradualness of gestation," by pointing out that, "[n]o non-arbitrary line separates the hues of green and red. Shall we conclude that green is red?"

White's point, however, was not that fetal development is "gradual," but that it is continuous and is the (continuous) development of a single lasting (fully human) being. The human zygote that actively develops itself is, as I have pointed out, a genetically complete organism directing its own integral organic functioning. As it matures, in utero and ex utero, it does not "become" a human being, for it is a human being already, albeit an immature human being, just as a newborn infant is an immature human being who will undergo quite dramatic growth and development over time.**

These considerations undermine the familiar argument, recited by Rubenfeld, that "the potential" of an unfertilized ovum to develop into a whole human being does not make it into "a person." The fact is, though, that an ovum is not a whole human being. It is, rather, a part of another human being (the woman whose ovum it is) with merely the potential to give rise to, in interaction with a part of yet another human being (a man's sperm cell), a new and whole human being. Unlike the zygote, it lacks both genetic distinctness and completeness, as well as the active capacity to develop itself into an adult member of the human species. It is living human cellular material, but left to itself, it will never become a human being, however hospitable its environment may be. It will "die" as a human ovum, just as countless skin cells "die" daily as nothing more than skin cells. If successfully fertilized by a human sperm, which, like the ovum (but dramatically unlike the zygote), lacks the active potential to develop into an adult member of the human species, then substantial change (that is, a change of natures) will occur. There will no longer be merely an egg, which was part of the mother, sharing her genetic composition, and a sperm, which was part of the father, sharing his genetic composition; instead, there will be a genetically complete, distinct, unified, self-integrating human organism whose nature differs from that of the gametes--not mere human material but a human being.

These considerations also make clear that it is incorrect to argue (as some pro-choice advocates have argued) that, just as "I" was never a week-old sperm or ovum, "I" was likewise never a week-old embryo. It truly makes no sense to say that "I" was once a sperm (or an unfertilized egg) that matured into an adult. Conception was the occasion of substantial change (that is, change from one complete individual entity to another) that brought into being a distinct self-integrating organism with a specifically human nature. By contrast, it makes every bit as much sense to say that I was once a week-old embryo as to say that I was once a week-old infant or a ten-year-old child. It was the new organism created at conception that, without itself undergoing any change of substance, matured into a week-old embryo, a fetus, an infant, a child, an adolescent, and, finally, an adult.

But Rubenfeld has another argument: "Cloning processes give to non-zygotic cells the potential for development into distinct, self-integrating human beings; thus to recognize the zygote as a human being is to recognize all human cells as human beings, which is absurd."

It is true that a distinct, self-integrating human organism which came into being by a process of cloning would be, like a human organism that comes into being as a mono-zygotic twin, a human being. That being, no less than human beings conceived by the union of sperm and egg, would possess a human nature and the active potential to mature as a human being. However, even assuming the possibility of cloning human beings from non-zygotic human cells, the non-zygotic cell must be activated by a process which effects substantial change and not mere development or maturation. Left to itself apart from an activation process capable of effecting a change of substance or natures, the cell will mature and die as a human cell, not as a human being.

The scientific evidence establishes the fact that each of us was, from conception, a human being. Science, not religion, vindicates this crucial premise of the pro-life claim. From it, there is no avoiding the conclusion that deliberate feticide is a form of homicide. The only real questions remaining are moral and political, not scientific. Although I will not go into the matter here, I do not see how abortion can ever be considered a matter of "justified homicide." (The efforts of Judith Jarvis Thomson and other philosophers to defend abortion as "justified homicide" are very ably criticized by Patrick Lee in Abortion and Unborn Human Life.) It is important to recognize, however, as traditional moralists always have recognized, that not all procedures which foreseeably result in fetal death are, properly speaking, abortions. Although any procedure whose precise objective is the destruction of fetal life is certainly an abortion, and cannot be justified, some procedures result in fetal death as an unintended, albeit foreseen and accepted, side effect. Where procedures of the latter sort are done for very grave reasons, they may be justifiable. (See John Finnis, "Abortion and Health Care Ethics II," in Raanan Gillon and Ann Lloyd (eds.), Principles of Health Care Ethics, 1994, pp. 547-557.) For example, traditional morality recognizes that a surgical operation to remove a life-threateningly cancerous uterus, even in a woman whose pregnancy is not far enough along to enable the child to be removed from her womb and sustained by a life support system, is ordinarily morally permissible. (See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus: Vol. II: Living a Christian Life, p. 502.) Of course, there are in this area of moral reflection, as in others, "borderline" cases that are difficult to classify and evaluate. Mercifully, modern medical technology has made such cases exceptionally rare in real life. Only in the most extraordinary circumstances today do women and their families and physicians find it necessary to consider a procedure which will result in fetal death as the only way of preserving maternal life. In any event, the political debate about abortion is not, in reality, about cases of this sort; it is about "elective" or "social indication" abortions, viz., the deliberate destruction of unborn human life for non-therapeutic reasons.

A final point: In my own experience, conversion from the pro-choice to the pro-life cause is often (though certainly not always) a partial cause of religious conversion rather than an effect. Frequently, people who are not religious, or who are only weakly so, begin to have doubts about the moral defensibility of deliberate feticide. Although most of their friends are pro-choice, they find that potion increasingly difficult to defend or live with. They perceive practical inconsistencies in their, and their friends', attitudes toward the unborn depending on whether the child is "wanted" or not. Perhaps they find themselves arrested by sonographic (or other even more sophisticated) images of the child's life in the womb. So the doubts begin creeping in. For the first time, they are really prepared to listen to the pro-life argument (often despite their negative attitude toward people--or "the kind of people"--who are pro-life); and somehow, it sounds more compelling than it did before. Gradually, as they become firmly pro-life, they find themselves questioning the whole philosophy of life--in a word, the secularism--associated with their former view. They begin to understand the reasons that led them out of the pro-choice and into the pro-life camp as God's reasons, too.

Notes

* The following nine paragraphs are reprinted with minor revisions, from my Yale Law Journal article "Public Reason and Political Conflict: Abortion and Homosexuality."

** Once one recognizes that the scientific evidence establishes that the fetus, no less than the newborn, is a human being, one must logically treat the two the same in assessing the question of their rights and our duties towards them. And so Peter Singer, a leading advocate of abortion and a recent appointee to a distinguished professorial chair of bio-ethics in my own university, argues that infanticide is sometimes morally justifiable and ought, up to a certain point, to be legally permissible. While Singer's views have caused outrage and made his appointment at Princeton controversial, the truth is that he is merely following the logic of a pro-choice position in light of an honest assessment of the scientific facts. He recognizes that "birth" is an arbitrary dividing line when it comes to the humanity and rights of human beings in the early stages of their development. Hence, if abortion is morally justifiable, so is infanticide. Of course, I believe that Singer is tragically wrong in supposing that abortion and infanticide are morally justifiable; but he is right in claiming that either both of these practices are justifiable, or neither can be justified.

Benedict XVI on Organ Donation

Benedict XVI on Organ Donation

"A Unique Testimony of Charity"

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 7, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the address Benedict XVI gave upon receiving in audience participants in the international congress "A Gift for Life. Considerations on Organ Donation."

The congress, under way in Rome through Saturday, is sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Life, the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, and the Italian National Transplant Center.

* * *

Venerated brothers in the episcopate,
Bothers and sisters:

Organ donation is a unique testimony of charity. In a time such as ours, frequently marked by various forms of egotism, it is more and more urgent to understand how it is necessary to enter into the logic of gratitude to correctly understand life. There exists, in fact, a responsibility of love and charity that commits oneself to make one's own life a gift for others, if one truly seeks one's own fulfillment. As Lord Jesus taught us, only by given one's life, can you save it (cf. Luke 9:24).

Greetings to all those present, in particular to Senator Maurizio Sacconi, Italy's labor minister; and I thank Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Academy for Life, for the words he addressed to me, illustrating the deep significance of this encounter and presenting the synthesis of the work of the congress.

Together with him, I also thank the president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, and the director of the Italian National Transplant Center, underlining with appreciation the value of the collaboration of these organizations in the area of organ transplants, which has been debated in your days of work and study.

The history of medicine shows evidence of the great advances that have been made in giving more dignity each day to people who suffer. Tissue and organ transplants represent a great conquest of medical science, and are certainly signs of hope for those suffering serious, and often grave, illnesses.

If we turn our gaze to the entire world, it is easy to confirm the numerous and complex cases in which, thanks to the technique of organ transplantation, many people have overcome extremely grave illnesses, and in them the joy of life has been restored. This would never have happened if the commitment of the doctors and the competence of the researchers had not been able to count upon the generosity and altruism of those who have donated organs.

Unfortunately, the problem of the lack of available vital organs is not a theoretical one, but a considerably practical one; one can see this in the long waiting list of those whose only hope for survival is linked to the small number of non-useful donations.

It is useful, above all in this context, to reflect on this advancement of science so that the multiplication of transplant petitions don't change around the ethical principles upon which it rests. As I said in my first encyclical, the body can never be considered as a mere object (cf. "Deus Caritas Est," No. 5); to do otherwise would impose on it the logic of the market. The body of each person, together with the spirit that is given to each one individually, constitutes an inseparable unity upon which is impressed the image of God himself. To prescind from this dimension brings to mind points of view that are incapable of understanding the totality of the mystery present in each person. It is necessary, then, that priority must be given to respect for the dignity of the human person and the protection of individual identity.

Regarding the technique of organ transplants, this means that one can only donate if this act doesn't put one's own health and identity in serious danger, and if it is done for a valid moral and proportionate reason. Any reasons for the buying and selling of organs, or the adoption of utilitarian and discriminatory criteria, would clash in such a way with the meaning of gift that they would be invalidated, qualifying them as illicit moral acts. Abuses in transplants and organ trafficking, which frequently affect innocent persons, such as children, must find the scientific and medical community united in a joint refusal. They should be decidedly condemned as abominable.

The same ethical principle must be reiterated in the case of the creation and destruction of human embryos destined for therapeutic objectives. The very idea of considering the embryo as "therapeutic material" contradicts the cultural, civil and ethical foundations on which the dignity of the person rests.

With frequency, organ transplantation takes place as a completely gratuitous gesture on the part of the family member who has been certifiably pronounced dead. In these cases, informed consent is a precondition of freedom so that the transplant can be characterized as being a gift and not interpreted as a coercive or abusive act. In any case, it is useful to remember that the various vital organs can only be extracted "ex cadavere" [from a dead body], which posses it's own dignity and should be respected. Over recent years science has made further progress in ascertaining the death of a patient. It is good, then, that the achieved results receive the consensus of the entire scientific community in favor of looking for solutions that give everyone certainty. In an environment such as this, the minimum suspicion of arbitrariness is not allowed, and where total certainty has not been reached, the principle of caution should prevail.

For this it is useful to increment interdisciplinary research and study in such a way that the public is presented with the most transparent truth on the anthropologic, social, ethical and legal implications of a transplant. In these cases respect for the life of the donor should be assumed as the primary criterion, in such a way so that the extraction of the organs only take place after having ascertained the patient's true death (cf. Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 476).

The act of love, which is expressed with the gift of one's own vital organs, is a genuine testament of charity that knows how to look beyond death so that life always wins. The recipient should be aware of the value of this gesture that one receives, of a gift that goes beyond the therapeutic benefit. What they receive is a testament of love, and it should give rise to a response equally generous, and in this way grows the culture of gift and gratitude.

The path that must be followed, until science discovers new and more advanced possible therapies, needs to be that of the formation and diffusion of a culture characterized by solidarity and that opens itself to others without excluding anyone. Organ transplants that are in line with ethic of giving require the commitment of all sides to invest every possible effort in formation and information, so as to increasingly awaken consciences to a problem that directly affects the lives of so many.

It would be necessary, then, to overcome prejudices and misunderstanding, dispel suspicions and fears and substitute them with certainties and guarantees, so as to create in all people an awareness, ever more widespread, of the great gift of life.

Wishing that each one of you continues your own commitment with due competence and professionalism, I invoke the help of God over the working sessions of the congress and impart to all of you, from the heart, my blessing.

[Translation by ZENIT]

Sandro Magister, In the "Opera Omnia" of Ratzinger the Theologian, the Overture Is All about the Liturgy

Archbishop Migliore on Human Rights

Archbishop Migliore on Human Rights

"We Must Not Lose Sight of Those Who Live With Little Hope"

NEW YORK, OCT. 29, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the message Archbishop Celestino Migliore, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, delivered Tuesday before the Third Committee of the 63rd session of the U.N. General Assembly on the promotion and protection of human rights.

* * *

Mr Chairman,

The upcoming 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls us, especially within this Third Committee, to continue the work of the framers of this Declaration to find means for improving the effective enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all peoples.

Over the past sixty years, notable progress has been achieved in a number of areas. Yet, still today, individuals are unable to exercise even some of their most basic rights. At the center of these rights is the fundamental right to life, from the moment of conception to natural death. It continues to be violated under various pretexts and in all corners of the globe. Last year this Committee, for the first time, called for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. This resolution marks a welcome step towards a fuller respect of the right to life, however, it is only the beginning of the necessary efforts which must be undertaken to create a society in which life is respected at all stages of development.

It is incumbent upon States to protect the lives of their citizens, however, greater renewal at all levels is needed to form a society in which the recognition of human dignity and human rights are at the core rather than a consequence of our policy decisions.

In this era of greater economic interconnectedness, effort must be made to ensure consistent focus on a human-centered approach to development. Around the world, millions of children lack access to the very ways and means which will assist them in shaping a better future for themselves and their community. The lack of access to basic healthcare, education, food, water and development prevents people from exercising their fundamental human rights.

The current global economic collapse highlights and will surely exacerbate the plight of the so-called “bottom billion”, a figure which due to the present aggravating conjuncture is on a constant rise. These persons will have their right to food impinged by the global food crisis. With the governmental spending focused upon fixing the financial meltdown, social sectors such as education and healthcare will be further downsized and underfinanced. While the economic crisis is presenting a number of challenges for the entire global community, as we begin to create measures to fix the economic collapse, we must not lose sight of those who live with little hope for a decent future. To this end, the report of the independent expert on human rights and extreme poverty rightly recognizes that in addressing the plight of the bottom billion, the realization of human rights and the elimination of extreme poverty are mutually reinforcing endeavors.

Finally, Mr Chairman, we take this opportunity to welcome the entry into force of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities inasmuch as it will enhance the dignity and rights of disabled people. It is my delegation’s hope that as States accede to this instrument, the fundamental right to life which stands at the heart of this Convention be respected and promoted for all people with disabilities at every stage of life. It is only then that this Convention can serve not only to promote greater respect for persons with disabilities but more importantly, to foster greater respect for all people regardless of their physical or mental ability.

Thank you Mr Chairman.

Zenit: Synod Presents 55 Propositions to Pope

Normally the propositions are not made public, but Benedict XVI has asked the secretariat of the synod to publish a provisional, non-official Italian translation.

From De Unione Ecclesiarum: St. Basil the Economist

Final Message of Word of God Synod

Final Message of Word of God Synod

"Let Us Approach the Table of the Word of God"

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 24, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the concluding message of the 12th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which was approved today at the 21st general congregation.

The theme of the assembly was "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church."

* * *

Brothers and sisters,

"May God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ grant peace, love and faith to all the brothers. May grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, in life imperishable". With this intense and passionate greeting, Saint Paul concluded his letter to the Christians of Ephesus (6:23-24). With these same words we, the Synod Fathers, gathered in Rome for the XII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, under the guidance of the Holy Father Benedict XVI, open our message addressed to the vast horizon of all those who, in the various regions of the world, follow Christ as disciples, and continue to love him with an imperishable love.

We will again propose to them the voice and the light of the word of God, repeating the ancient call: "the word is very near to you, it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to put into practice" (Dt 30:14). And God himself will say to each one: "Son of man, take to heart everything I say to you, listen carefully" (Ezk 3:10). We are about to propose a spiritual journey consisting of four phases and that will carry us from all eternity and the infinite nature of God to our homes and the streets of our cities.

I. THE VOICE OF THE WORD: THE REVELATION

1. "Then the Lord spoke to you from the heart of the fire; you heard the sound of words but saw no shape; there was only a voice!" (Dt 4:12). It is Moses who speaks, evoking the experience lived by Israel in the bitter solitude of the Sinai desert. The Lord presented himself not as an image or an effigy or a statue similar to a golden calf, but with "a voice of words". It is a voice which entered the scene at the very beginning of creation, when it tore through the silence of nothingness: "In the beginning...God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light...In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God...Through him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through him" (Gn 1:1.3; Jn 1:1.3).

Creation is not born of a battle of divinities, as taught by ancient Mesopotamian myths, but of a word which defeats nothingness and creates being. The Psalmist sings: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, by the breath of his mouth all their array...for, the moment he spoke, it was so, no sooner had he commanded, than there it stood" (Ps 33:6.9). And Saint Paul will repeat: God "brings the dead to life and calls into existence what does not yet exist" (Rm 4:17). Thus, a first "cosmic" revelation is found which makes creation similar to an immense page opened up before all of humanity, in which a message from the Creator can be read : "The heavens declare the glory of God, the vault of heaven proclaims his handiwork, day unto day makes known his message; night unto night hands on the knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their message goes out into all the earth" (Ps 19:2-5).

2. The divine word is, however, also at the origin of human history. Man and woman, whom God created "in the image of himself" (Gn 1:27), and who bear within themselves the divine imprint, can enter into dialogue with their Creator or can wander far from him and reject him away by sinning. The word of God, then, saves and judges, penetrating the woven fabric of history with its tales and events: "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying ... I am well aware of their sufferings. And I have come down to rescue them from the clutches of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that country, to a country rich and broad" (Ex 3:7-8). The divine is therefore present in human events which, through the action of the Lord of history, are inserted in the greater plan of salvation for "everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the truth" (1 Tm 2:4).

3. Consequently, the effective, creative and salvific divine word is source of being and of history, of creation and redemption. The Lord encounters humanity declaring: "I, the Lord, have spoken and done this" (Ezk 37:14). The voice of God then passes into the written word, the Graphé or the Graphaí, the Sacred Scriptures, as it is said in the New Testament. Moses had already descended from the mount of Sinai, "with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, tablets inscribed on both sides, inscribed on the front and on the back. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing on them was God's writing" (Ex 32:15-16). Moses himself obliged Israel to preserve and rewrite these "tablets of the commandments": "On these stones you must write all the words of this Law very plainly" (Dt 27:8).

The Sacred Scriptures "bear witness" to the divine word in written form. They memorialize the creative and saving event of revelation by way of canonical, historical and literary means. Therefore, the word of God precedes and goes beyond the Bible which itself is "inspired by God" and contains the efficacious divine word (cf. 2 Tm 3:16). This is why our faith is not only centered on a book, but on a history of salvation and, as we will see, on a person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, man and history. Precisely because the capacity of the divine word embraces and extends beyond the Scripture, the constant presence of the Holy Spirit that "will lead you to the complete truth" (Jn 16:13) is necessary for those who read the Bible. This is the great Tradition: the effective presence of the "Spirit of truth" in the Church, guardian of Sacred Scripture, which are authentically interpreted by the Church's Magisterium. This Tradition enables the Church to understand, interpret, communicate and bear witness to the word of God. Saint Paul himself, proclaiming the first Christian creed, will recognize the need to "transmit" what he "had received" from Tradition (1 Cor
15:3-5).

II. THE FACE OF THE WORD: JESUS CHRIST

4. In the original Greek, there are only three fundamental words: Lógos sarx eghéneto, "the Word was made flesh". And yet, this is the summit not only of that poetic and theological jewel which is the prologue to John's Gospel (Jn 1:14), but it is the actual heart of the Christian faith. The eternal and divine Word enters into space and time and takes on a human face and identity, so much so that it is possible to approach him directly asking, as did the group of Greeks present in Jerusalem: "We should like to see Jesus" (Jn 12:20-21). Words without a face are not perfect, they do not fully complete the encounter, as Job recalled, reaching the end of his dramatic itinerary of searching: "Before, I knew you only by hearsay but now"... I have "seen you with my own eyes" (Jb 42:5).

Christ is "the Word [that] was with God and the Word was God" (Jn 1:1). "He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation" (Col 1:15); but he is also Jesus of Nazareth who walks the roads of a marginal province of the Roman Empire, who speaks the local language, who reveals the traits of a people, the Jews, and its culture. Therefore the real Jesus Christ is fragile and mortal flesh; he is history and humanity, but he is also glory, divinity, mystery: he who revealed God to us, the God no one has ever seen (cf. Jn 1:18). The Son of God continues to be so even in the dead body placed in the sepulcher and the resurrection is the living and clear proof to this fact.

5. Christian tradition has often placed the Divine Word made flesh on a parallel with the same word made book. This is what emerges already in the creed when one professes that the Son of God "was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man", but also a profession of faith in the same "Holy Spirit, who spoke through the Prophets". The Second Vatican Council gathers this ancient tradition according to which "the body of the Son is the Scripture transmitted to us" - as Saint Ambrose affirms (In Lucam VI, 33) - and clearly declares: "For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took to himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men" (DV 13).

Indeed, the Bible is also "flesh", "letter"; it expresses itself in particular languages, in literary and historical forms, in concepts tied to an ancient culture, it preserves the memories of events, often tragic; its pages not infrequently are marked by blood and violence, within it resounds the laughter of humanity and the flowing tears, as well as the cry of the distressed and the joy of those in love. For this, its "bodily" dimension requires an historical and literary analysis, which occurs through various methods and approaches offered by Biblical exegesis. Every reader of Sacred Scripture, even the most simple, must have a proportionate knowledge of the sacred text, recalling that the word is enveloped in concrete words, which is shaped and adapted to make it heard and understood by all of humanity.

This is a necessary commitment. If it is excluded, one could fall into fundamentalism which in practice denies the Incarnation of the divine Word in history, does not recognize that this word expresses itself in the Bible according to a human language, that must be decoded, studied and understood. Such an attitude ignores that divine inspiration did not erase the historical identities and personalities of its human authors. The Bible, however, is also the eternal and divine Word and for this reason requires another understanding, given by the Holy Spirit who unveils the transcendent dimension of the divine word, present in human words.

6. Here, thus, lies the necessity of the "living Tradition of all the Church" (DV 12) and of the faith to understand Sacred Scripture in a full and unified way. Should one focus only on the "letter", the Bible is only a solemn document of the past, a noble, ethical and cultural witness. If, however, the Incarnation is excluded, it could fall into a fundamentalist equivocation or a vague spiritualism or pop-psychology. Exegetical knowledge must, therefore, weave itself indissolubly with spiritual and theological tradition so that the divine and human unity of Jesus Christ and Scripture is not broken.

In this rediscovered harmony, the face of Christ will shine in its fullness and will help us to discover another unity, that profound and intimate unity of Sacred Scriptures. There are, indeed, 73 books, but they form only one "Canon", in one dialogue between God and humanity, in one plan of salvation. "At many moments in the past and by many means, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our time, the final days, he has spoken to us in the person of his Son" (Hb 1:1-2). Christ thus retrospectively sheds his light on the entire development of salvation history and reveals its coherence, meaning, and direction.

He is the seal, "the Alpha and the Omega" (Rev 1:8) of a dialogue between God and his creatures distributed over time and attested to in the Bible. It is in the light of this final seal that the words of Moses and the prophets acquire their "full sense". Jesus himself had indicated this on that spring afternoon, while he made his way from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus, dialoguing with Cleopas and his friend, explaining "to them the passages in the Scriptures that were about himself" (Lk 24:27).

That the divine Word has put on a face is at the center of Revelation. That is precisely why the ultimate finality of biblical knowledge is "not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction" (Deus caritas est, 1).

III. THE HOUSE OF THE WORD: THE CHURCH

Just as divine wisdom in the Old Testament made her house in the cities of men and women, supporting it with seven pillars (cf. Pr 9:1), thus also the word of God made its house in the New Testament. The Church has as her model the mother community of Jerusalem. The Church is founded on Peter and the apostles and today, through the bishops in communion with the Successor of Peter, continues to keep, announce and interpret the word of God (cf. LG 13). In the Acts of the Apostles (2:42), Luke traces its architecture based on four ideal pillars which today are still witnessed to by the different forms of ecclesial communities: "These remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers".

7. Here, first of all, is the apostolic didaché, that is to say the preaching of the word of God. The Apostle Paul, in fact, warns us that "faith comes from hearing, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ" (Rm 10:17). The voice of the herald comes from the Church, which proposes kérygma, that is to say, the primary and fundamental announcement that Jesus himself had proclaimed at the beginning of his public ministry: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the gospel" (Mk 1:15). The apostles, proclaiming the death and resurrection of Christ, announce the unveiling of the kingdom of God, that is to say, the decisive divine intervention in the history of man: "Only in him is there salvation; for of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved" (Ac 4:12). The Christian bears witness to this hope "with courtesy and respect and with a clear conscience", ready, however, to be involved and, perhaps, to be overwhelmed by the storms of refusal and persecution, knowing that "it is better to suffer doing right then for doing wrong" (1 P 3:16-17).

The catechesis, then, resounds in the Church: this is destined to deepen in the Christian "the understanding of the mystery of Christ in the light of God's word, so that the whole of a person's humanity is impregnated by that word" in Christianity (John Paul II, Catechesi tradendae, 20). But the high point of preaching is in the homily which, for many Christians, is still today the central moment of encounter with the word of God. In this act, the minister should be transformed into a prophet as well. He, in fact, with a clear, incisive and substantial language must not only proclaim with authority "God's wonderful works in the history of salvation" (SC 35) - offered first by a clear and vivid reading of the biblical text proposed in the liturgy - but he must also act upon it in the times and moments lived by the hearers and make the question of conversion and vital commitment blossom in their hearts: "What are we to do, brothers?" (Ac 2:37).

Preaching, catechesis and the homily therefore presuppose a reading and understanding, an explaining and interpreting, an involvement of the mind and of the heart. Thus in preaching a dual movement is achieved. With the first, one goes back to the roots of the sacred texts, the events, the first words of the history of salvation, to understand them in their meaning and in their message. With the second movement, one returns to the present, to the today lived by those who hear and read, always with Christ in mind, who is the guiding light destined to unite the Scriptures. This is what Jesus himself did - as has already been said - in his journey to Jerusalem in Emmaus with two of his disciples. This is what the deacon Phillip would do on the way from Jerusalem to Gaza, when he spoke this emblematic dialogue with the Ethiopian official: "Do you understand what you are reading? ... How could I, unless I have someone to guide me?" (Ac 8:30-31). And the finality will be the full encounter with Christ in the sacrament. This is how the second pillar that supports the Church, the house of the divine word, presents itself.

8. It is the breaking of the bread. The scene at Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13-35) is once again exemplary, and reproduces what happens every day in our churches: the homily by Jesus about Moses and the prophets gives way to the breaking of the Eucharistic Bread at the table. This is the moment of God's personal dialogue with His people. It is the act of the new covenant sealed in the blood of Christ (cf. Lk 22:20). It is the supreme work of the Word who offers himself as food in his immolated body, it is the source and summit of the life and mission of the Church. The Gospel account of the Last Supper, the memorial of Christ's sacrifice, when proclaimed in the eucharistic celebration, through the invocation of the Holy Spirit, becomes event and sacrament. This is why the Second Vatican Council, in a very intense passage, declared: "The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God's word and of Christ's body" (DV 21). Therefore, "the liturgy of the word and the eucharistic liturgy, are so closely connected with each other that they form but one single act of worship" (SC 56), and this must be brought back to the center of Christian life.

9. The third pillar of the spiritual building of the Church, the house of the word, is made up of prayers, woven from - as recalled by Saint Paul - "psalms and hymns and inspired songs" (Col 3: 16). A privileged place is naturally taken by the Liturgy of the Hours, the prayer of the Church par excellence, destined to give rhythm to the days and times of the Christian year, offering, above all with the Psalmody, the daily spiritual food of the faithful. Alongside this and the community celebrations of the word, tradition has introduced the practice of Lectio divina, the prayerful reading in the Holy Spirit that is able to open to the faithful the treasure of the word of God, and also to create the encounter with Christ, the living divine Word.

This begins with the reading (lectio) of the text, which provokes the question of true knowledge of its real content: what does the biblical text say in itself? Then follows meditation (meditatio) where the question is: what does the Biblical text say to us? In this manner, one arrives at prayer (oratio), which presupposes this other question: what do we say to the Lord in answer to his word? And one ends with contemplation (contemplatio) during which we assume, as God's gift, the same gaze in judging reality and ask ourselves: what conversion of the mind, the heart and life does the Lord ask of us?

Before the prayerful reader of the word of God rises ideally the figure of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, who "treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Lk 2:19; cf. 2:51), that is - as the original Greek says - finding the profound knot that unites apparently distinct events, acts and things in the great divine plan. The attitude of Mary, the sister of Martha can also be proposed to the faithful, when they read the Bible, because she sits at the feet of the Lord listening to his word, not allowing external concerns to absorb her soul completely, allowing even the free time for "the better part" which must not be taken away (cf. Lk 10:38-42).

10. Finally, we reach the last pillar that supports the Church, the house of the word: the koinonía, brotherly love, another name for the agápe, that is to say, Christian love. As Jesus mentioned, to become his brothers and his sisters one must be like "those who hear the word of God and put it into practice" (Lk 8:21). Authentic hearing is obeying and acting. It means making justice and love blossom in life. It is offering, in life and in society, a witness like the call of the prophets, which continuously united the word of God and life, faith and rectitude, worship and social commitment. This is what Jesus stated many times, beginning with the famous warning in the Sermon on the Mount: "It is not anyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord', who will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven" (Mt 7:21). This phrase seems to echo the divine word proposed by Isaiah: "this people approaches me only in words, honors me only with lip-service, while their hearts are far from me" (29:13). These warnings also concern the churches when they are not faithful to the obedient hearing of the word of God.

Therefore this must already be visible and legible on the face and in the hands of the faithful, as suggested by Saint Gregory the Great who saw in Saint Benedict, and in other great men of God, witnesses of communion with God and with the sisters and brothers, the word of God come to life. The just and faithful man not only "explains" the Scriptures, but also "unfolds" them before all as a living and practiced reality. This is why viva lectio, vita bonorum, the life of the good is a living lecture/lesson of the word of God. Saint John Chrysostom had already observed that the apostles came down from the mount in Galilee, where they had met the risen Lord, without any written stone tablets as Moses had: their lives would become the living gospel, from that moment on.

In the house of the word we also encounter brothers and sisters from other Churches and ecclesial communities who, even with the still existing separations, find themselves with us in the veneration and love for the word of God, the principle and source of a first and real unity, even if not a full unity. This bond must always be reinforced through the common biblical translations, the spreading of the sacred text, ecumenical biblical prayer, exegetical dialogue, the study and the comparison between the various interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, the exchange of values inherent in the various spiritual traditions and the announcement and the common witness of the word of God in a secularized world.

IV. THE ROADS OF THE WORD: THE MISSION

"For the Law will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem" (Is 2:3). The embodied Word of God "issues from" his house, the temple, and walks along the roads of the world to encounter the great pilgrimage that the people of earth have taken up in search of truth, justice and peace. In fact, even in the modern secularized city, in its squares and in its streets - where disbelief and indifference seem to reign, where evil seems to prevail over good, creating the impression of a victory of Babylon over Jerusalem - one can find a hidden yearning, a germinating hope, a quiver of expectation. As can be read in the book of the prophet Amos, "The days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I shall send a famine on the country: not hunger for food, not thirst for water, but famine for hearing the word of the Lord" (8:11). The evangelizing mission of the Church wants to answer this hunger.

Even the risen Christ makes an appeal to the hesitant apostles, to go forth from their protected horizon: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations…and teach them to observe the commands I gave you" (Mt 28:19-20). The Bible is fraught with appeals "not to be silent", to "speak out", to "proclaim the word at the right and at the wrong time", to be the sentinels that tear away the silence of indifference. The roads that open before us are not only the ones upon which Saint Paul and the first evangelizers traveled but are also the ones of all the missionaries who, after them, go towards the people in faraway lands.

11. Communication now casts a network that envelops the entire globe and the call of Christ gains a new meaning: "What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight, what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops" (Mt 10:27). Of course, the sacred word must have its primary transparency and diffusion through the printed text, with translations made according to the multiplicity of languages on our planet. But the voice of the divine word must echo even through the radio, the information highway of the internet, the channels of "on line" virtual circulation, CDs, DVDs, podcasts, etc. It must appear on all television and movie screens, in the press, and in cultural and social events.

This new communication, in relationship to the traditional one, has created its own specific and expressive grammar and, therefore, makes it necessary not only to be technically prepared, but also culturally prepared for this task. In an age dominated by images put forward, in particular, by hegemonic means of communication such as television, the privileged model of Christ is still meaningful and evocative today. He would turn to the sign, the story, the example, the daily experience, the parable: "He told them many things in parables ... indeed, he would never speak to them except in parables" (Mt 13:3.34). In proclaiming the kingdom of God, Jesus never spoke over the heads of the people with a vague, abstract or ethereal language. Rather, he would conquer them by starting there where their feet were placed, in order to lead them, through daily events, to the revelation of the kingdom of heaven. Thus, the scene evoked by John becomes significant: "Some wanted to arrest him, but no one actually laid a hand on him. The guards went back to the chief priests and Pharisees who said to them, 'Why haven't you brought him?' The guards replied, 'No one has ever spoken like this man'"(7:44-46).

12. Christ proceeds along the streets of our cities and stops at the doorstep of our homes: "Look, I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share a meal at that person's side" (Rev 3:20). The family, enclosed between the domestic walls with its joys and sufferings, is a fundamental space where the word of God is to be allowed to enter. The Bible is full of small and great family stories, and the Psalmist depicts with liveliness the serene picture of a father sitting at the table, surrounded by his wife, like a fruitful vine, and by his children, "shoots of an olive tree" (Ps 128). In the same way, Christianity itself, from its origins, celebrated the liturgy in the daily home life, just as Israel entrusted the Passover celebration to the family (cf. Ex 12:21-27). The spreading of the word of God is passed on through the generations so that parents become "the first preachers of the faith" (LG 11). Once more the Psalmist recalled that: "What we have heard and know, what our ancestors have told us, we shall not conceal from their descendants, but will tell to a generation still to come: the praises of the Lord, his power, the wonderful deeds he has done ... They should be sure to tell their own children" (Ps 78:3-4.6).

Therefore, every home should have its own Bible and safeguard it in a visible and dignified way, to read it and to pray with it, while, at the same time, the family should propose forms and models of a prayerful, catechetical and didactic education on how to use the Scriptures, so that "young men and women, old people and children together" (Ps 148:12) may hear, understand, glorify and live the word of God. In particular, the new generations, children and youth, should be the ones receiving an appropriate and specific pedagogy that leads them to experience the fascination of the figure of Christ, opening the door of their mind and their heart, as well as through the encounter with and authentic witness of adults, the positive influence of friends and the great company of the ecclesial community.

13. Jesus, in his parable of the sower, reminds us that there are arid lands, full of rocks, choked by thorns (cf. Mt 13:3-7). He who goes forth into the streets of the world also discovers the slums where suffering and poverty, humiliation and oppression, marginalization and misery, physical and psychological ills and loneliness can be found. Often the stones on the road are bloody because of wars and violence; in the palaces of power, corruption meets injustice. The voices of the persecuted rise on behalf of faithfulness to their conscience and fidelity to their faith.

There is the one who is swept away by the crises of life, or whose soul is devoid of any meaning that would give sense and value to life itself. Like "phantoms who go their way, mere vapor their pursuits" (Ps 39:7), many feel the silence of God, his apparent absence and indifference, hanging over them: "How long, Lord, will you forget me? For ever? How long will you turn away your face from me?" (Ps 13:1). And, in the end, there arises for everyone, the mystery of death.

This immense sigh of suffering that rises from the earth to heaven is continuously represented by the Bible, which proposes an historical and incarnated faith. It is enough to think only of the pages marked by violence and oppression, of the harsh and continuous cry of Job, of the vehement pleas of the Psalms, of the subtle internal crisis that passes through the soul of Qoheleth, of the vigorous prophetic denunciations against social injustice. Without extenuating circumstances, then, is the sentence of the radical sin that appears in all its devastating force, from the beginning of humanity in a fundamental text of the Genesis (chapter 3). In fact, the "mystery of iniquity" is present and acts in history, but it is revealed by the word of God that assures the victory of good over evil, in Christ.

But above all in the Scriptures, the figure of Christ, who begins his public ministry with a proclamation of hope for the last persons of the earth, dominates: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord" (Lk 4:18-19). He repeatedly places his hands on ill and diseased flesh. His words proclaim justice, instill courage to the disheartened and offer forgiveness to sinners. Finally, he himself approaches the lowest level, "he emptied himself" of his glory , "taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross" (Phil 2:7-8).

In this way he feels the fear of death ("‛Father', he said, ‛if you are willing, take this cup away from me'"), He experiences loneliness because of the abandonment and betrayal by friends, he penetrates the darkness of the cruelest physical pain through his crucifixion and even the darkness of the Father's silence ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") (Mk 15:34) and reaches the last abyss of any man, that of death ("he gave a loud cry and breathed his last"). To him, the definition that Isaiah gave to the servant of the Lord truly can be applied: "the lowest of men, a man of sorrows" (53:3).

Even so, he also in that extreme moment, does not cease being the Son of God: in his solidarity of love and with the sacrifice of himself, He sows a seed of divinity in the limit and frailty of humanity, in other words, a principle of freedom and salvation. With his offering of himself to us he pours out redemption on pain and death, assumed and lived by him, and also opens to us the dawn of resurrection. Therefore the Christian has the mission to announce this divine word of hope, by sharing with the poor and the suffering, through the witness of his faith in the kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, of love and peace, through the loving closeness that neither judges nor condemns, but that sustains, illuminates, comforts and forgives, following the words of Christ: "Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest" (Mt 11:28).

14. Along the roads of the world, the divine word generates for us Christians an equally intense encounter with the Jewish people, who are intimately bound through the common recognition and love for the Scripture of the Old Testament and because from Israel "so far as physical descent is concerned, came Christ" (Rm 9:5). Every page of the Jewish Scriptures enlighten the mystery of God and of man. They are treasures of reflection and morality, an outline of the long itinerary of the history of salvation to its integral fulfillment, and illustrate with vigor the incarnation of the divine word in human events. They allow us to fully understand the figure of Christ, who declared "Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill them" (Mt 5:17).

These are a way of dialogue with the chosen people, "who were adopted as children, the glory was theirs and the covenants; to them were given the Law and the worship of God and the promises" (Rm 9:4), and they allow us to enrich our interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures with the fruitful resources of the Hebrew exegetical tradition.

"Blessed be my people Egypt, Assyria my creation, and Israel my heritage" (Is 19:25). The Lord, then, spreads the protective mantle of his blessing all over the peoples of the earth: "he wants everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the truth" (1 Tm 2:4). We, also as Christians are invited, along the roads of the world - without falling into a syncretism that confuses and humiliates our own spiritual identity, to enter into dialogue with respect towards men and women of the other religions, who faithfully hear and practice the directives of their sacred books, starting with Islam, which welcomes many biblical figures, symbols and themes in its tradition, and which offers the witness of sincere faith in the One, compassionate and merciful God, the Creator of all beings and Judge of humanity.
The Christian also finds common harmony with the great religious traditions of the Orient that teach us, in their Scriptures, respect for life, contemplation, silence, simplicity, renunciation, as occurs in Buddhism. Or, like in Hinduism, they exalt the sense of the sacred, sacrifice, pilgrimage, fasting, and sacred symbols. Or, as in Confucianism, they teach wisdom and family and social values. Even to the traditional religions with their spiritual values expressed in the rites and oral cultures, we would like to pay our cordial attention and engage in a respectful dialogue with them. Also to those who do not believe in God but who endeavour to "do what is right, to love goodness and to walk humbly" (Mi 6:8), we must work with them for a more just and peaceful world, and offer in dialogue our genuine witness to the Word of God that can reveal to them new and higher horizons of truth and love.

15. In his Letter to the Artists (1999), John Paul II recalled that "Sacred Scripture has thus become a sort of ‛immense vocabulary' (Paul Claudel) and ‛iconographic atlas' (Marc Chagall), from which both Christian culture and art have drawn" (No. 5). Goethe was convinced that the Gospel was the "mother tongue of Europe". The Bible, as it is commonly said, is "the great code" of universal culture: artists ideally dipped their paintbrush in that alphabet coloured by stories, symbols, and figures which are the biblical pages. Musicians composed their harmonies around the sacred texts, especially the Psalms. For centuries authors went back to those old stories that became existential parables; poets asked themselves about the mystery of the spirit, infinity, evil, love, death and life, frequently collecting poetical quivers that enlivened the biblical pages. Thinkers, men of learning and society itself frequently used the spiritual and ethical concepts (for example the Decalogue) of the word of God as a reference, even if merely in contrast. Even when the figure or the idea present in the Scriptures was deformed, it was recognized as being an essential and constitutive element of our civilization.
Because of this, the Bible - which teaches us also the via pulchritudinis, that is to say, the path of beauty to understand and reach God (as Ps 47:7 invites us: "learn the music, let it sound for God!") - is necessary not only for the believer, but for all to rediscover the authentic meanings of various cultural expressions and above all to find our historical, civil, human and spiritual identity once again. This is the origin of our greatness and through it we can present ourselves with our noble heritage to other civilizations and cultures, without any inferiority complex. The Bible should, therefore, be known and studied by all, under this extraordinary profile of beauty and human and cultural fruitfulness.

Nevertheless, the word of God - using a meaningful Pauline image – "cannot be chained up" (2 Tm 2:9) to a culture; on the contrary, it aspires to cross borders and the Apostle himself was an exceptional craftsman of inculturation of the biblical message into new cultural references. This is what the Church is called upon to perform even today through a delicate but necessary process, which received a strong impulse from the Magisterium of Pope Benedict XVI. She should make the word of God penetrate into the many cultures and express it according to their languages, their concepts, their symbols and their religious traditions. But she should always be able to maintain the genuine substance of its contents, watching over and controlling the risks of degeneration.

Therefore the Church must make the values that the word of God offers to all cultures shine, so they may be purified and fruitful. As John Paul II said to the Bishops of Kenya during his trip to Africa in 1980, "inculturation will truly be a reflection of the Incarnation of the Word, when a culture, transformed and regenerated by the gospel, brings forth from its own living tradition original expressions of Christian life, celebration and thought".

CONCLUSION

"Then I heard the voice I had heard from heaven speaking to me again. ‛Go', it said, ‛and take that open scroll from the hand of the angel standing on sea and land'. I went to the angel and asked him to give me the small scroll, and he said, ‛Take it and eat it; it will turn your stomach sour, but it will taste as sweet as honey'. So I took it out of the angel's hand, and I ate it and it tasted sweet as honey, but when I had eaten it my stomach turned sour" (Rev 10:8-11).

Brothers and sisters of the whole world, let us receive this invitation; let us approach the table of the word of God, so as to be nourished and live "not on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Dt 8:3; Mt 4:4). Sacred Scripture - as affirmed by a great figure of the Christian culture – "has provided passages of consolation and of warning for all conditions" (B. Pascal, Pensées, no. 532 ed. Brunschvicg).

The word of God, in fact, is "sweeter than honey, that drips from the comb" (Ps 19:10), "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path" (Ps 119:105), but is also: "like fire, says the Lord, like a hammer shattering a rock" (Jer 23:29). It is like the rain that irrigates the earth, fertilizes it and makes it spring forth, and in doing this he makes the aridity of our spiritual deserts flourish (cf. Is 55:10-11). But it is also: "something alive and active: it cuts more incisively than any two-edged sword: it can seek out the place where soul is divided from spirit, or joints from marrow; it can pass judgment on secret emotions and thoughts" (Heb 4:12).

Our gaze is turned lovingly towards all those engaged in study, catechists and the other servants of the word of God to express our most intense and cordial gratitude for their precious and important ministry. We also address our persecuted brothers and sisters or those who are put to death because of the word of God and because of the witness they render to the Lord Jesus (cf. Rev 6:9): as witnesses and martyrs they tell us of "the power of the word" (Rm 1:16), origin of their faith, of their hope and of their love for God and for men.
Let us now remain silent, to hear the word of God with effectiveness and let us maintain this silence after hearing, so that it may continue to dwell in us, to live in us, and to speak to us. Let it resonate at the beginning of our day so that God has the first word and let it echo in us in the evening so that God has the last word.
Dear brothers and sisters, "All those who are with me send their greetings. Greetings to those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all!" (Tt 3:15).

[Original text: Italian]

Zenit: Archbishop Migliore on Rule of Law

Archbishop Migliore on Rule of Law

"Insufficient by Itself to Defend the Dignity of the Human Person"

NEW YORK, OCT. 21, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the address delivered Oct. 14 by Archbishop Celestino Migliore, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, at the 63rd U.N. General Assembly.

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Mr. Chairman,

At the outset, I would like to thank the Secretary-General for his comprehensive inventory of rule of law initiatives being undertaken at the United Nations. Clearly, the rule of law has grown in importance as a vital pillar for greater international development.

At its core, the rule of law is the mechanism by which the international organizations and national governments are called to provide effective recognition of the dignity of all persons regardless of their social, economic, or political status.

In the present cultural context, in which law is often perceived as respect for formal procedures and not in more substantive terms, the rule of law could become insufficient by itself to defend the dignity of the human person. The rights of persons are not simply a set of legal norms but represent, above all, fundamental values. Such values must be fostered by society, otherwise they risk disappearing even from legislative texts. The dignity of persons must be safeguarded in culture, in the public mentality and in the conduct of society, as a precondition and in order to be protected by law.

Although the rule of law is not in itself sufficient, it remains nevertheless an indispensable instrument for the protection of human dignity. The notion of the rule of law is implied as a demand of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and assigns to States the task of allowing and facilitating the realization of those transcendent ends to which people are destined. In this regard, the UDHR, which is currently in its sixtieth year, is a reference point that calls all nations to organize the relationship of persons and society with the State based on the fundamental human rights.

The rule of law is a vital component for assisting States in their responsibility to protect. While this responsibility entails the States' primary and legal obligation to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, it also provides for the international community to intervene when a State is unable or unwilling to exercise this fundamental responsibility. This capacity to intervene should not be seen, however, only in the form of actions taken by the Security Council or use of force. It is also the cooperation of the international community to help States with the necessary capacity and legal expertise in the field of protection. The building up of national legal structures will help States to avert atrocities by establishing mechanisms that promote justice and peace, ensure accountability and recourse under the law, provide for the foundation of a stable economy and protect the dignity of every person.

Too often the concept of the rule of law is applied solely to political or legal matters in the context of post-conflict settings. The current economic crisis, however, shows that a strong rule of law could be very helpful in the promotion of fair and stable economic development. The interconnected nature of the global market has increased the need for debate on and implementation of the rule of law, so as to establish a more just global economic system. In the developing world, the rule of law can provide social and economic growth while in the developed world, through just regulations, it can ensure greater economic stability and fairness.

Through the work of the Rule of Law Coordination and Resource Group and the Rule of Law Unit, the United Nations has been given the responsibility for assisting States needing technical and logistical expertise. We look forward to their capacities being enhanced in this respect. In addition, this very Committee offers a platform for setting normative frameworks, means for arbitration of legal disputes and mechanisms of accountability.

One area in which the United Nations serves as a forum for enhancing the rule of law is in the making of international treaties and conventions. Indeed, it has been the ability of the United Nations to bring people together and give greater attention to international norms. Hence, it is of great importance that when implementing and enforcing these norms, the United Nations' agencies and monitoring bodies respect the intent and desire of States. A treaty body system which moves away from the original intent of the parties and expands its mandates beyond the power given by States, risks undermining its own credibility and legitimacy and can discourage States from joining conventions.

The United Nations will be appreciated in its own right whenever the rule of law is translated from discussions of norms and values into tangible results for those who seek justice.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.