Papal Address to Academy for Life Conference

Papal Address to Academy for Life Conference

"Confidence in Science Cannot Forget the Primacy of Ethics"


VATICAN CITY, FEB. 22, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered Saturday to participants in a conference sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Life on the theme "New Frontiers of Genetics and the Danger of Eugenics." The conference coincided with the Pontifical Academy for Life's 15th general assembly.

* * *

Lord Cardinals,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood,
Illustrious Academicians,
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen!

I am especially pleased to receive you on the occasion of the 15th ordinary assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life. In 1994 my venerable predecessor, Pope John Paul II, instituted this body under the presidency of a scientist, Professor Jerôme Lejeune, understanding with foresight the delicate work that it would have to undertake over the course of years. I thank the president, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, for the words with which he wished to introduce this meeting, confirming the Academy's great dedication to the promotion and defense of human life.

From the time that the laws of heredity were discovered in the middle of the 19th century by the Augustinian abbot Gregor Mendel, who has been considered the founder of genetics, this science has truly taken giant steps in understanding the language at the basis of biological information, which determines the development of a living being. It is for this reason that modern genetics occupies a place of special prominence in the biological disciplines, which have contributed to the prodigious development of the knowledge of the invisible architecture of the human body and the cellular and molecular processes that preside over its multiple activities. Today science has arrived at revealing the recondite mechanisms of human physiology as well as the processes that are linked to the appearance of certain defects that are inheritable from parents along with processes that make some persons more susceptible to contract an illness. This knowledge, the fruit of the genius and toil of countless scholars, make it possible to more easily arrive at not only a more effective and early diagnosis of genetic maladies, but also to create therapies to alleviate the contraction of illnesses and, in some cases, to restore, in the end, the hope of regaining health. Moreover, from the time that the whole sequence of the human genome became available, the differences between one person and another and between different human populations have also become the object of genetic investigations, which allowed a glimpse of the possibility of new conquests.

Today the area of research still remains open and every day new horizons, in a large part unexplored, are disclosed. The work of researchers in such enigmatic and precious areas requires a special support; the cooperation between different sciences is a support that can never be lacking if results are to be arrived at that are effective and productive of authentic progress for the whole of humanity. This complementarity makes it possible to avoid the danger of a genetic reductionism that would identify the person exclusively with his genetic information and his interaction with his environment. It is again necessary to emphasize that man is greater than all of that which makes up his body; in fact, he carries with him the power of thought, which is always drawn to the truth about himself and the world. The words of Blaise Pascal, who was a great thinker as well as a gifted scientist, return: "Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he is able to know that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe, however, knows nothing of this" ("Pensées," 347).

Every human being, then, is much more than a singular combination of genetic information that is transmitted to him by his parents. The generation of man can never be reduced to the mere reproduction of a new individual of the human species, as is the case with all other animals. Every appearance of a person in the world is always a new creation. The words Psalm 139 recall this with deep wisdom: "You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb ... My very self you knew; my bones were not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret" (13, 15). If we want to enter into the mystery of human life, then it is necessary that no science isolate itself, pretending to have the last word. Rather, the common vocation to arrive at the truth -- according to the different methodologies and contents proper to each science -- must be shared.

Your conference, in any case, does not only analyze the great challenges that genetics is held to face; but it also extends to the dangers of eugenics, which is certainly not a new practice and which in the past has been the cause of real forms of discrimination and violence. The disapproval of eugenics used with violence by a regime, as the fruit of the hatred of a race or group, is so rooted in consciences that it found a formal expression in the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Despite this, there are appearing in our days troubling manifestations of this hateful practice, which present themselves with different traits. Certainly ideological and racist eugenics, which in the past humiliated man and provoked untold suffering, are not again being proposed. But a new mentality is insinuating itself that tends to justify a different consideration of life and personal dignity based on individual desire and individual rights. There is thus a tendency to privilege the capacities for work, efficiency, perfection and physical beauty to the detriment of other dimensions of existence that are not held to be valuable.

In this way the respect that is due to every human being -- even in the presence of a defect in his development or a genetic illness that could manifest itself in the course of his life -- is weakened, and those children whose life is judged unworthy of being lived are punished from the moment of conception.

It is necessary to reemphasize that every discrimination exercised by any power in regard to persons, peoples or ethnic groups on the basis of differences that stem from real or presumed genetic factors is an act of violence against all of humanity. What must be forcefully reemphasized is the equal dignity of every human being according to the fact itself of having life. Biological, psychological or cultural development or state of health can never become an element of discrimination. It is necessary, on the contrary, to consolidate a culture of hospitality and love that concretely testifies to solidarity with those who suffer, razing the barriers that society often erects, discriminating against those who are disabled and affected by pathologies, or worse - selecting and rejecting in the name of an abstract ideal of health and physical perfection. If man is reduced to an object of experimental manipulation from the first stage of development, that would mean that biotechnologies would surrender to the will of the stronger. Confidence in science cannot forget the primacy of ethics when human life is at stake.

I hope that your research in this sector, dear friends, will continue with due scientific care and the attention that ethical principles require in matters that are so important and decisive for the fitting development of personal existence. This is the wish with which I would like to conclude this meeting. As I invoke copious heavenly light upon your work, I affectionately impart to all of you a special apostolic blessing.

[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]

© Copyright 2009 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

St. Anthony of Padua Institute

Living Tradition: Some Rationalist Presuppositions of the Historical-Critical Method Part II. The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant In The Background John F. McCarthy

(Part 1)

It appears that the first 3 volumes of The Way of the Lord Jesus by Germain Grisez are online. (Thanks to a comment left at this thread at Mark Shea's blog.)

Germain Grisez
Germain Grisez's natural law theory: A Thomistic critique
Mt. St. Mary's

Thomistic.net: Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas at Toulouse


And there are these posts, Brian Mullady’s website, and Albert the Great news: Alberti magni e-corpus . (Fr. Mullady's website. Alberti Magni e-corpus.)

Pertinacious Papist: Aquinas Institute in the Year of St. Paul. Website for the institute.

Uniting Faith and Culture: Hans Urs von BalthasarJohn-Peter Pham (from Modern Age 42:2, Spring 2000)

There are a number of reasons why it could be said, albeit from different perspectives, that the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) occupies a unique place among the great thinkers of the twentieth century. From the point of view of sheer literary volume, he is almost alone in the sheer monumental proportions of his written corpus. . . .

Thought experiments

Just a quick note on the problem of using thought experiments in philosophy: there is a danger of using the imagination without understanding. One is often held captive to the reality present in the thinker's mind, as it is elaborated in the thought experiment, not to actual reality. Without a grasp of the natures involved, one could imagine all sorts of causal relationships.

SEP: Thought Experiments

Fulvio Di Blasi has set up blogs for three recently published books (in Italian): Conoscenza pratica, teoria dell'azione e bene politico, a book on John Finnis ,and a collection of essays, La vitalità del diritto naturale, which was co-edited with Paolo Heritier.

HDS - Events Online - 2007-08 Dudleian Lecture - Paul Rorem

"Negative Theologies and the Cross"

Edward Feser, The Newspeak of the moderns

T. David Curp, A Necessary Bondage? When the Church Endorsed Slavery (via Mark Shea)

A good companion for this post over at Per Caritatem: Augustine and Scotus on Slavery

Ms. Nielsen writes:

I often hear the claim made that convictions such as (1) human beings should not be considered the “property” of another human being and (2) slavery per se is morally reprehensible are simply modern/postmodern sensibilities created and propagated by political liberalism (which is not a jab at political liberalism). I have to admit that I am deeply suspicious of this claim and find it rather unconvincing. After all, there were at least two premoderns (Augustine and Scotus and imagine many others of which I am unaware) who claimed that slavery was un-natural (contra Aristotle) and that it violated natural law. (Augustine does, however, seem to offer more of a justification for the institution that might not be in the end very helpful for seeking to abolish slavery. Scotus’s position, in contrast, might provide a stronger argument for the injustice and moral wrongness of all forms of slavery wherein one human “owns” another as property).

Do the ancients and medievals speak of slaves being "property"? Is the concept of property equivalent to that of dominion?

Paul Gottfried, Understanding Nietzsche

Just Thomism: Belief in its proper sense

A formulation of the Incommensurability Thesis

From Morality and the Human Goods, by Alfonso Gómez-Lobo:

Incommensurability and Hierarchy of Goods

The good life is a conceptual ideal (there is nothing of basic value excluded from it), but our lives are far from perfect. Yet we can lead better or worse lives, depending fundamentally on our choices. Is there a fixed hierarchy of goods such that if A is higher than B, and if we always choose A, then our lives will be better than if we choose B? As far as I know, none of the philosophical efforts to set up a fixed hierarchy of basic goods has been successful. Aristotle, for example, argues that excellence in the exercise of theoretical knowledge is the main ingredient in the best life, but it also is clear that in many particular circumstances exclusive pursuit of theoretical knowledge--at the cost, say, of neglecting or harming friends, family and one's communities--is foolish and wrong. Someone who does that surely is not a good person in the Aristotelian sense of being a virtuous or excellent man.

We often have to choose among competing goods. What we do in such cases is engage in broad prudential comparisons about what goods are more important in general as well as in particular circumstances. It is less important to lose one's job than to lose one's life, but in a given case keeping a risky job to support one's family could be the prudent thing to do.

Prudential weighing of goods according to their importance is quite different, however, from the model of quantitative calculation of goods. Basic goods cannot be reduced to units that it would then make sense to maximize. Are there more units of friendship in having fifty relatively distant friends than in having a few close friends? How many units of work are balanced by how many units of inner harmony? I trust you will agree that the quantitative approach (which is perfectly clear--e.g., for the maximization of yearly profits of a manufacturing company) hardly makes sense for basic human goods.

Even if one grants the Aristotelian doctrine that theoretical knowledge should be valued highly, one can still see that a "lower" good (by comparison) may be the good worth pursuing. In light of my talents (or lack thereof), and given what might follow from a purely theoretical pursuit (I may not find a job as a pure theoretician!), it would be best for me to choose a less glamorous profession.

At times it might seem as if the grounding good--life itself--shoudl always take precedence over everything else. Indeed, it is so basic that in most cases it is clear that aiming at other goods at the cost of life would be irrational. Yet there may be circumstances inw hich not even life should be preserved at all costs. It may be rational to give up one's life (which is not the same as taking one's life) so that others may live.

No human good is absolute in the sense that, regardless of circumstances, its pursuit and protection should always and everywhere take precedence over other basic goods. There is no overriding good. Because the order of precedence is not fixed and therefore is far from being obvious to human agents before they face particular choices, we are well advised to develop certain strategies for the pursuit of the human goods.

But does not God take precedence over everything else? Is He not an 'absolute' good in that way? Could the martyrs protect both their lives and the love of God? It seems not.

iirc, this problem with the New Natural Law Theory was brought to the fore when Germain Grisez argued that God could not be the object of human happiness--his paper, and various responses to it, were published in volume 46 of The American Journal of Jurisprudence. Can it be shown that his position is heretical? Or at least contrary to sound reason? (Can one show that God is not only the ultimate end for all creation, but also the object of love as well? I would think so.)

Fr. Brian Harrison: Explicit Faith Necessary for Salvation [pdf] (via Cornell Society for a Good Time)

Zenit: Awaiting Benedict XVI's 3rd Encyclical

Awaiting Benedict XVI's 3rd Encyclical

Comments of Bishop Crepaldi on Church

VERONA, Italy, FEB. 1, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a statement written by Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and president of the Cardinal Van Thuân International Observatory, ahead of the publication of Benedict XVI's third encyclical, to be titled "Caritas in Veritate." The encyclical will likely be published in April.

The statement was published this week on the observatory's Web site.

* * *

What does it mean to say the social doctrine of the Church is timely?

We all await the heralded third encyclical of Benedict XVI, which will evoke the publication of "Populorum Progressio" by Paul VI 20 years ago, and will be entitled "Caritas in Veritate."

Our time is therefore a propitious time for us to ponder the sense of the "timeliness" of the social doctrine of the Church (SDC). The Holy Father is going to publish a new social encyclical precisely in order for a teaching dating back centuries to continue to be ever timely, alive and at work in history. What, therefore, is the source of this "timeliness"? On what basis can we say the social doctrine is "timely"?

We know the social doctrine of the Church has a permanent value and a changing value at one and the same time. In paragraphs 2, 3 and 5 of "Centesimus Annus" John Paul II asserted his wish to "re-read" "Rerum Novarum" by looking "back," looking "around" and looking "to the future." These three expressions indicate the historicity of the Church's social doctrine, which is always an updating of tradition in order to render it once again fecund and hence timely and present.

The three moments of yesterday, today and tomorrow indicate the change and the simultaneous permanence of the selfsame truth in the sense that the SDC is historical, and not just "history," insofar as it is the announcement of Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever. The "permanent" features of the social doctrine of the Church also stem from apostolic tradition as an essential component of the "depositum fidei" and as a point of observation -- or "theological place" as theologians say -- to look upon the world and history.

Not only does SDC have its own tradition, which began back in 1891 with "Rerum Novarum," but it also falls within the mainstream of the living tradition of the Church from which it draws nourishment. One of the reasons explaining a certain degree of slowness or even delays in the awareness of Christians with respect to assuming personal and collective responsibility for SDC may be seen in that fact it is not considered part of ecclesial tradition.

On the basis of what has been said above it could be surmised that the updating of SDC stems from changes and developments in the course of history, which constitute challenges for humanity. This is undoubtedly true. Since "the Church's social teaching is born of the encounter of the Gospel message and of its demands […]with the problems emanating from the life of society" ("Libertatis Conscientia," 72) it may be argued that it "develops in accordance with the changing circumstances of history" (ibid) and "is subject to the necessary and opportune adaptations suggested by the unceasing flow of the events which are the setting of the life of people and society" ("Sollicitudo Rei Socialis," 3). This is true, as I said, but it has to be understood in a theological sense, not a sociological one. The "timeliness" of an encyclical does not merely depend on the new social problems or issues it addresses. Were this the case, establishing the timeliness of Benedict XVI's upcoming social encyclical would merely be a question of listing the social issues it tackles and then checking which and how many of them were not touched upon in previous encyclicals. That, however, is not the way it is, for the simple reason that a social encyclical is not a sociological investigation.

It therefore becomes clear that the "timeliness" of SDC stems not only from the new facts humanity has to deal with, but from the Gospel itself, which, insofar as Word incarnate, is always new. New facts and developments in history can act as a stimulus for a re-reading of everlasting truth, because everlasting truth is essentially open to such an endeavor. Were this not true, each encyclical would speak only to the men and women of its time.

Present in the Church's social doctrine is an inexhaustible and irreducible element of prophecy bestowed upon it by the Gospel. Christ is ever timely, and let us not forget that the social doctrine of the Church is "announcement of Christ."

Rt. Rev. Giampaolo Crepaldi
President of the Observatory

Just Thomism: What is unique to and distinctive of man in St. Thomas’s ethics

Some notes:

Dominion sets man apart from brute beasts. Dominion is exercised through (the tools) of reason and will. Aquinas does use Aristotle's definition of man as rational animal. "Rationality" does not exclude rational appetite, or the will, but includes it. Both reason and will set men apart from animals, but it is the distinct form of agency proper to man, dominion, that is of interest in ethics, since ethics is concerned with human action. (With respect to Aquinas' (and Aristotle's) understanding of voluntary, 'voluntariness' is not enough to distinguish human agency from that of animals, even though "the voluntary in its perfection belongs to none but the rational nature."

What would the personalists add to this understanding of the distinctiveness of man? Does Aquinas's definition of person really satisfy them? Does personalism fail to pay sufficient attention to man's animality? Can an ethics be founded solely upon persons being relational beings by definition?

Zenit: Ratzinger Foundation on Key Aspects of Pope's Theology

Ratzinger Foundation on Key Aspects of Pope's Theology

"Not a Theology for All Times ... But Rather a Theology for This Time"



MUNICH, Germany, JAN. 29, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the introduction Siegfried Wiedenhofer, one of Benedict XVI's former assistants, gave Nov. 12 at the launch in Munich of the Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI Foundation. The foundation is the project of a group of Joseph Ratzinger's former doctoral and postdoctoral students, known as the Schülerkreis (Circle of Students).

His address was titled "Key Aspects of the Theology of Professor Joseph Ratzinger."

* * *

In seeking to give a brief overview of the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, one is of course first confronted by the problem of its range. Joseph Ratzinger is among the most prolific theologians of our time, and probably of the history of theology as a whole. His published work to date is contained in the bibliography that has been produced by the Schülerkreis, and in particular by Vinzenz Pfnür, and which will soon be published: 130 books and writings, numerous of which have been translated into many languages, and over 1300 articles, many of which are also available in translation.

But the breadth of the themes is also stunning. Most of these writings are from the field of dogmatic theology and take up the exposition of the main tenets of the Christian faith. However, he began as a fundamental theologian and has continually dealt with particular foundational questions, such as the question of faith and reason, questions of theological method, and especially questions of ecumenical theology. But this is also a theology that understands itself to be particularly in the service of the ecclesial praxis of the faith.

Thus there are also many writings such as homilies and meditations that emerged directly from pastoral tasks, and writings that pertain to ecclesial praxis and would ordinarily be considered to belong to the field of practical theology: writings about spirituality, about the liturgy, but also about ethics, particularly political ethics. In addition, his interpretations of dogma almost always have a strong exegetical dimension, and he has also contributed several recognized works of theological and dogmatic history. A final characteristic that makes an overview of Joseph Ratzinger's theology difficult is the fact that his theology is a dialogical theology through and through -- a theology that develops not only through a listening to what the sources have to say, but also through a critical conversation with other perspectives, a conversation that is not afraid to identify errors and sometimes to argue quite polemically. What Joseph Ratzinger said in his first book, his dissertation on Augustine, surely applies to his own work as well: "Like every great theology, Augustine's grew out of polemics against error, which here too showed itself to be the fruitful power without which living intellectual movement is hardly imaginable."

On the other hand, like probably every other great theology, Joseph Ratzinger's is marked by a great inner unity. By this I mean not only a deep integration of thought and belief, reflection and meditation, but also the unity of his fundamental theological vision. It is true that the theology of Joseph Ratzinger has in fact been read, criticized, and taken up in quite different ways, but the decisive aspect of this basic vision can be fairly clearly identified, in my opinion.

1. The theology of Joseph Ratzinger is not a theology for all times or a theology about history, but rather a theology for this time, and this time is for him above all the time of a fundamental crisis.

In the first place, there is the crisis of the Catholic Church, out of which the Second Vatican Council --prepared for and accompanied by a broad stream of Catholic reform theology -- sought to lead us. The theology of Joseph Ratzinger is a part of this theology of reform. Nonetheless, it differs from the work of the other theologians of reform, in the main, in that the question of the identity of faith and Church soon found its way to the fore in his theology. This came about because for Joseph Ratzinger after the Council, the ecclesial and theological situation in the Catholic Church increasingly emerged as a crisis such as had not been seen since the 13th century, as he once said. In addition to this first diagnosis of crisis, there is -- in connection with the great departure from tradition in the last third of the 20th century, and also in connection with the collapse of communism -- his diagnosis of a fundamental crisis in morality and meaning in modern culture and society, which finds increasingly decisive expression in the charge of relativism. Finally, toward the end of the second millennium and in the beginning of the third, in light of the new sense of globalization, he also diagnoses and reflects upon a fundamental crisis of Christianity and its truth-claim.

2. A theology in such a time of crisis and transition must concentrate upon what is essential in Christian faith, its identity and specificity, as these are recognizable in the basic structure and constitution of the faith.

This essence of the faith can be summarized in three decisive aspects of Ratzinger's understanding of Christian faith: the rationality of faith, faith's historicity as centered in the revelation of Jesus Christ, and the personal nature of faith as summed up in love.

The rationality of faith as a claim to truth, a claim of knowledge

The theology of Joseph Ratzinger had developed above all in conversation with the Fathers of the Church and with the theology of the High Middle Ages, especially in conversation with Augustine, then also in conversation with Bonaventure -- thus on the whole much more strongly in dialogue with the tradition of Christian Platonism than with Christian Aristotelianism. It is from the ancient Church's constitution of Christian theology, to which he continually makes reference, that 1) the epistemological claim of Christian faith, its truth claim, and 2) a dialectical relationship of faith to reason, philosophy, and science, come to be a dominant strain of his own theology.

On the one hand, the truth of God has, according to the witness of Christian faith, entered history definitively with the final revelation in Jesus Christ. But this knowledge of faith necessarily requires thought, requires philosophy, because it claims to be a knowledge of all of reality, and because, in any case, it has to make its witness to the truth comprehensible. On the other hand, thinking needs the challenge of faith's recognition of truth, so that it can remain on the right path in the search for the real, one, whole truth, amid the intensifying Western dichotomization of faith and reason, theology and philosophy.

In his conversation with Jürgen Habermas on April 19, 2004, here in the Katholische Akademie Bayern in Munich, Cardinal Ratzinger could speak, in the face of dangerous pathologies of both religion and reason that cannot be ignored today, “of a necessary correlationality of reason and faith, reason and religion, which are called to mutual purification and healing, and which need one another and must each acknowledge this” (Habermas/Ratzinger 2005, 57). It is only through a prolonged struggle with the present intellectual situation that it became evident to him that the question of truth must become a basic question for theology and philosophy: as he says, we do not dispose over truth -- rather, only in acknowledging ourselves to be claimed together by the truth can we escape the dictatorship of arbitrariness and relativism and rescue the true humanity and human dignity.

Against this backdrop, the doctrine of creation, for instance, which J. Ratzinger has continually taken up since his early lectures in dogmatics, acquires an elevated theological significance. Ethical questions, too (regarding education, culture, politics, the state, democracy, and so on) are increasingly discussed. On the other hand, the thought of modernity finds itself the object of a radical critique (explicit for the first time in Introduction to Christianity): While in the metaphysics of antiquity and the Middle Ages the world, as an expression of the (creative) divine reason, was meaningful, comprehensible, reasonable, and transparent to its finality, the dominant modern notion of reason restricts itself to the knowledge of phenomena and the bare facts of history and to the cultural and technical production of goods in the service of man's self-realization. In this reconfiguration of values, according to Ratzinger, reason becomes blind not only with respect to the truth of God, but also -- and in connection with this -- with respect to the difference between bare human existence and truly being human, a distinction essential for man's humanity.

The historicity of faith and its christological center

According to the Christian confession of faith, the truth of God, the subject matter of theology, has appeared definitively in history in the person and history of Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, the decisive sign of God's revelation and salvation in the world -- a revelation which, by the power of the Holy Spirit in the Church, is ever made newly present and effective. God has really bridged the abyss of infinity and has become approachable in a wholly human way, in Jesus Christ and in the witness of the ecclesial community of faith immersed in history. And here we find not only that Christian faith bears a certain claim to absoluteness, but also the importance of the Church as a theme in the theology of J. Ratzinger. The significance of this historical positivity of Christian faith can be seen also in J. Ratzinger's important historical works, in his lectures on dogma, which interpreted faith as a living path through history, and in his dogmatics, which, like few others, rests upon an intensive personal exegetical study of the biblical sources.

The personal nature of faith

According to the logic of Christian faith, the question of truth is, in the final analysis, the quest for a truth that is really humane, that is, the truth of love, which permits the person to realize himself precisely in what most fully characterizes him: his being a person. In this emphasis on personhood as entailed in being human and in faith, we certainly see resonances of the personalist thinking of the period between the World Wars (Scheler, Guardini), which greatly influenced the theological development of Joseph Ratzinger in his early years. For it was possible to show, from this perspective, that the Christian message of the truth of God does not reach man as a foreign message that imposes itself from the outside, but rather that it is a message of life that permits him to live in the full and proper sense. And it is this precisely because it is a message of love. For man lives, finally, from the love that he receives and passes on, first and finally from the love that God is and that has become visible in the history of Jesus Christ. No one can live if he is not able to accept himself. But no one is able to accept himself if he has not already been accepted and loved by another. Truly being human is dependent upon being loved -- but of course what we mean here is true love. For love, in its own concrete expression, is no less multifarious and ambivalent than faith and hope. Thus it is only where love is identical with truth that love is able to offer the salvation of man. And, of course, the inverse is also true: Only where truth is connected with love does truth become a possibility that does not need to be forced upon a person, but rather one that he can take up in freedom. Love is thus the true center of Christianity.

* * *

Naturally one might ask in closing, in light of all this: Why establish a foundation? Do we not have before us a very attractive understanding of Christian faith without the need for such a thing? And don't the unbelievable book sales ("Jesus of Nazareth" alone, for instance, began by selling 200,000 copies just in the first edition of the German) show that this message has in many ways arrived -- that this theology has already generated a strong response?

But in order to remain alive and effective, every great intellectual impulse needs cultivation, elaboration, interpretation, application, concretization, defense against misunderstanding and false criticism, but also expansion, debate, and critique. It was never the goal of Joseph Ratzinger, the theology teacher, to found a school in which every member would be bound to his own theological conceptions. His purpose was always, in the first place, to understand and articulate for the present day the liberating and redeeming claim of the truth of faith -- most often through dialogue but also not infrequently through quite polemical disputation for the sake of this truth.

A foundation that wishes not only to promote the study of his theology but also to foster a theology in his spirit might be aided by a word of guidance from the Council. The Second Vatican Council's constitution on revelation summarizes its fidelity to the previous councils in the expression "vestigiis inhaerens": cleaving to the paths of these councils. To which, however, we ought to add Karl Barth's suggested translation (which, incidentally, Joseph Ratzinger affirmed in his commentary): “going forward along the paths of these councils.” For this foundation is not merely dedicated to the study and cultivation of the powerful theological work that we find before us, but is still more committed to its living future -- in the various modes of reception, continuance, debate, and also criticism -- as an effective orientation along the path of faith.

[Translation by Lesley Rice]

Links:
Ratzinger Foundation - wiki
Insight Scoop The Ignatius Press Blog: Establishment of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI Foundation

Ratzinger Schülerkreis
Maior autem his est caritas: Der Ratzinger-Schülerkreis
Ratzinger the Professor, as Recounted by His Former Students
ZENIT - Der Joseph-Ratzinger-Schülerkreis: P. Vincent Twomey SVD
Vatikan: Ratzinger-Schülerkreis in Castel Gandolfo
PAPA RATZINGER FORUM - Vatikan: Ratzinger-Schülerkreis
Ratzinger Schülerkreis Dal mondo Rassegna stampa cattolica
Ratzinger-Schülerkreis-Publikationen

Calling Science's Bluff: A Review of 'The Devil's Delusion' by David Berlinsky

via Stephen Hand

A thought on the incommensurability thesis

of the New Natural Law Theory.

To support the incommensurability thesis, the proponents of the New Natural Law theory (John Finnis, Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, William May, Robert George, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo and others) point out that "good" is not used univocally. In order to be commensurable, the various goods with which ethics (or politics) is concerned must share the same ratio.

I don't have access to an introductory logic text to clean this part up--but would the NNLT defenders agree that good is not being used randomly and therefore purely equivocally? That there is a reason why the same word is being used? That good is being used analogically? And therefore there is some sort of order that grounds the analogy? (Moreover, if they make a distinction between a logical order and a moral order, would the logical order grounding the use of the name "good" in ethics/politics be either identical to or dependent upon the ordering of the goods within ethics/politics?) And would not the relation of before and after between the various goods permit a comparison of them to be made?

If this reasoning is sound, would something in the analytic philosophy background of some of the proponents prevent them from admitting this point?

"Good" is said of both ends and means, but in different ways, and it is said of the different ends analogously as well. If there is an order among ends, then is there not, as a result, an order among 'goods' as well?

Miscellaneous:
Alfonso Gomez-Lobo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The President's Council on Bioethics: Alfonso Gómez-Lobo, Ph.D.

Mary, Mystery of Mercy, by Marie-Dominique Philippe, O.P.

Google Books: Retracing Reality: A Philosophical Itinerary, by Marie-Dominique Philippe, O.P.

Ralph McInerny, Implicit Philosophy

His articles at The Catholic Thing.

Ralph McInerny, Pietas

Pietas
By Ralph McInerny

It is an affectation of modern thought that one should have no predecessors, since the past is only a muddle. Kant, in What is Enlightenment?, elevated what had become common practice into a ethical imperative. It is immoral to accept anything on anyone else's say-so. To have a master in philosophy is a mark of intellectual weakness. For all that, there are Cartesians and Kantians, as there are Wittgensteinians and Heideggerians and Husserlians. It is impossible not to be guided by others, at least in the learning of a language, but of course it goes much deeper than that. Needless to say, if one relied at the end as well as at the beginning on ipse dixit, one would rightly be thought to be parroting, rather than philosophizing.


An obvious casualty of the modern turn is common sense; what can the unwashed know, really know, not having learned the Method? Your grandma lived in a world of confusion. Well, not mine. As the sun goes west and eastward shadows lengthen, I have come to be more and more grateful for having had the mentors that I have had. Chief among them is a man, alas little known now, Charles DeKoninck, olim dean of the Faculte de philosophie at Laval University.


Some years ago I moved and my books got rearranged and I kept discovering old favorites and coming upon books I had never read but owned for years. One day I took down a book of DeKoninck's, and began to reread. Some hours later I sat back and said aloud, “Thank God I studied with this man.” Now DeKoninck had a master, Thomas Aquinas, who in turn had his, Aristotle. Under the tutelage of DeKoninck I became what I realized later was an Aristotelian-Thomist. There are types of Thomist, kinds of Christian thinker, but, to adapt a phrase, the fullness of Christian wisdom subsists in Thomas Aquinas.


All this as fanfare to mentioning a project I have been engaged in for a few years and will be engaged in for a few more, Deo volente, gathering and translating the works of Charles DeKoninck. A first volume has appeared from the University of Notre Dame Press, the second is in production and I have pretty well finished the third. There will be four in all. A few weeks ago, I finished translating La piete du fils, DeKoninck's magnificent work on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. He was both philosopher and theologian, as the great Thomists of his generation – Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Cornelio Fabro, etc. – tended perforce to be. To translate a text is to enter into it more fully than one does merely reading it. DeKoninck has been more my master of late than previously. Often I have had the unnerving experience of finding him saying things I thought I had coined. Perhaps most originality is a function of forgetfulness.


One begins by mimicking a master, then assimilating his thought and making it one's own, and then pressing on into what is new yet related to what one already knows. That is why the great Thomists, although they have a common master, differ so strikingly from one another. We have also been engaged for some time at Notre Dame producing the Collected Works of Jacques Maritain, It is important that the golden years of the Thomistic Revival not fall into oblivion. I have no fear of that. A new generation of thinkers, Catholic and non-Catholic, have turned to Thomas Aquinas for their inspiration.


And of course one grows curious about what earlier readers made of his texts. The writings of Thomists can seem at first to be written in a kind of Esperanto. To the degree that is so, it is a flaw in his followers. The great basis of Thomistic philosophy is common sense, the truths everyone already knows, at least in principle. A sign of this is that when they are enunciated one thinks, “I already knew that.” It is those non-gainsayable truths in the public domain that are the principles of Thomism, and indeed of any good philosophy. What's in a name?

Father Cantalamessa's Address at Family Meeting

Father Cantalamessa's Address at Family Meeting

"Human Sexuality Is the First School of Religion"



MEXICO CITY, JAN. 22, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Jan. 14 address from Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, at the 6th World Meeting of Families.

The World Meeting was held Jan. 14-18 in Mexico City.

Father Cantalamessa's address was titled "Family Relationships and Values According to the Bible."

* * *

I divide my address into three parts. In the first part I will focus on God's initial plan for marriage and the family and how it came about throughout the history of Israel. In the second part I will speak about the renewal brought by Christ and how it was interpreted and lived in the Christian community of the New Testament. In the third part I will try to consider what biblical revelation can contribute to the solution of the challenges that marriage and family life are facing today.

I will focus on the foundation of the family, and therefore marriage and the relationship within the couple, because I believe the Bible always has a very opportune message in this regard; it is more apropos than in relation to the family as a social reality and the relationships within a family. In this context the Bible reflects a culture that is very different from today's culture. In addition, we know that a good relationship between the parents is the basic requirement for a family to be able to develop an educational role with their children. Many of the dramatic situations young people suffer today are the consequence of broken or dysfunctional families.


Part I

Marriage and Family: the Divine Project
And Human Achievements in the Old Testament

1. The Divine Project

We know that the Book of Genesis has two different accounts of the creation of the first human couple, which go back to two different traditions: the yahwehist (10th century B.C.) and the more recent (6th century B.C.) called the "priestly" tradition.

In the priestly tradition (Genesis 1:26-28) man and woman are created at the same time, not one from the other. Being man and woman are related to being an image of God: "God created mankind in his image, in his image he created them, man and woman he created them." The primary purpose of the union between man and woman is found in being fruitful and filling the earth.

In the yahwehist tradition (Genesis 2:18-25) the woman is taken from the man; the creation of the two sexes is seen as a remedy for solitude: "It is not good that man be alone; I will make him an adequate helper;" The unitive factor is highlighted more than the procreative: "The man will cling to his wife and the two will be one flesh;" Each one is free with regard to their own sexuality and to the other: "Both were naked, the man and his wife, but they were not embarrassed by each other."

Neither of the two accounts references any subordination of the woman to the man, before sin: The two are on a level of absolute equality, although it is the man who takes the initiative at least in the yahwehist account.

I've found the most convincing explanation for this divine "invention" of the difference between the sexes not from a biblical scholar, but from a poet, Paul Claudel:

"Man is a proud being; there was no other way to make him understand his neighbor except introducing him in the flesh. There was no other way to make him understand dependence and need other than through the law of another distinct being (woman) over him, due to the simple fact that she exists."[1]

Opening oneself to the opposite sex is the first step toward opening oneself to others, our neighbors, and to the Other with a capital O, which is God. Marriage is born under the sign of humility; it is the recognition of dependence and therefore of one's condition of being a creature. Falling in love with a woman or a man is the completion of the most radical act of humility. It is becoming a beggar and telling the other person, "I'm not enough for myself, I need your being." If, as Schleiermacher said, the essence of religion is the "sense of dependence" ("Abhaengigheitsgefuehl") on God, then human sexuality is the first school of religion.

Thus far we have examined God's plan. Nevertheless, the rest of the Bible's text cannot be explained without also including the account of the fall in addition to creation, above all what was said to the woman: "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Genesis 3:16). The rule of the man over the woman is part of man's sin, not of God's plan; with those words God predicts it, he does not approve it.

2. Historic accomplishments

The Bible is a human and a divine book, not just because its authors are both God and man, but also because it describes, weaved throughout the text, both God's fidelity and man's infidelity. This is especially evident when we compare God's plan over marriage and family with the way it was put into practice in the history of the Chosen People.

It is useful to be aware of the human deficiencies and aberrations so that we're not too surprised by what happens around us and also because it shows that marriage and family are institutions that, at least in practice, evolve over time, as any other aspect of social and religious life. Following the book of Genesis, the son of Cain, Lemek, violates the law of monogamy taking two wives. Noah, with his family appears as an exception in the middle of the general corruption of his time. The very Patriarchs, Abraham and Jacob have children with a number of women. Moses authorizes the practice of divorce; David and Solomon keep a veritable harem of women.

Nevertheless the deviations appear, as always, more present at the higher levels of society, among the leaders, than at the level of the people, where the initial idea of monogamous marriage was likely the norm, not the exception. In order to form an idea of the relationships and family values that are held and lived in Israel we can turn to the wisdom books: Psalms, Proverbs and Sirach. These help us more than the historical books (which deal precisely with the leaders). They highlight marital fidelity, education of offspring and respect for parents. This last value is one of the Ten Commandments: "Honor your father and mother."

The deviation from the initial idea can be seen in the underlying idea of marriage in Israel, even more than in particular individual transgressions. The principal involution is related to two basic points. The first is that marriage changes from being an end to being a means. Overall, the Old Testament considers marriage to be "a patriarchal structure of authority, primarily driven to the perpetuation of the clan. In this sense we must understand the institutions of the levirate (Deuteronomy 25:5-10), concubine (Genesis 16), and provisional polygamy."[2] The ideal of a communion of life between man and woman, founded on a reciprocal and personal relationship, is not forgotten, but becomes less important than the good of the offspring.

The second great deviation refers to the condition of women: She goes from being a companion of man, gifted with equal dignity, to appearing more and more subordinated to man and serving a function for man. This can be seen even in the famous eulogy of a woman in the Book of Proverbs: "Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies ..." (Proverbs 31:10) It is a eulogy of woman made completely in terms of man's needs. Its conclusion is: Happy the man that possesses such a woman! She weaves him beautiful clothes, honors his house, she allows him to walk with his head held high among his friends. I don't thing that women today would be very excited about this eulogy.

The prophets played an important role by shedding light on God's initial plan for marriage, especially Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah. They posited the union of man and woman as a symbol of the covenant between God and his people. As a result of this, they once again shed light on the values of mutual love, fidelity and indissolubility that characterize God's love for Israel. All the phases and sufferings of spousal love are described and used in this regard: the beauty of love in the early stage of courtship (cf. Jeremiah 2:2), the fullness of joy on the wedding day (cf. Isaiah 62:5), the drama of separation (cf. Hosea 2:4) and finally the rebirth, full of hope, of the old bond (cf. Hosea 2:16, Isaiah 54:8).

Malachi shows the positive effect that the prophetic message could have on human marriage, and especially, on the condition of women. He writes:

"The Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth" (Malachi 2:14-15).

We have to read the Song of Songs in the light of this prophetic tradition. This represents a rebirth of the vision of marriage as eros, as attraction of the man to the woman (in this case, also of the woman to the man); it presents the oldest account of creation.

On the other hand, certain modern exegesis is mistaken when it tries to interpret the Song of Songs exclusively in terms of human love between a man and a woman. The author of Songs writes from within the religious history of his people, where human love was assumed by the prophets to be a metaphor for the covenant between God and his people. Hosea turned his own marital situation into a metaphor for the relations between God and Israel. How could we imagine that the author of Songs would leave all of that behind? The mystical interpretation of Songs, beloved in the tradition of Israel and the Church, is not a later imposition, but rather it is in some way implicit in the text. Far from detracting from human love, it confers upon it new beauty and splendor.

Part II

Marriage and Family in the New Testament

I. Christ's renewal of marriage

St. Irenaeus explains the "recapitulation ('anakephalaiosis') of all things" performed by Christ (Ephesians 1:10) as a "taking things from the beginning to lead them to their fulfillment." The concept implies continuity and novelty at the same time and in this sense it is fulfilled in an exemplary way in Christ's work with regards to marriage.

a. The continuity

Chapter 19 of the Gospel of St. Matthew alone is enough to illustrate the two aspects of renewal. Let us see first of all how Jesus takes things anew from the beginning.

"Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?' ‘Haven't you read,' he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator "made them male and female," (Genesis 1:27) and said, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate'" (Matthew 19:3-6).

The adversaries move in the restricted confines of the case-based reasoning proper to different schools (is it licit to divorce the woman for any motive or is a specific and serious motive required); Jesus responds by tackling the problem at the root, going to the beginning. In his response, Jesus refers to the two accounts of the institution of marriage; he takes elements from both, but above all he highlights the aspects of the communion of persons present in both accounts.

What follows in the text, regarding the problem of divorce, also follows this same direction; in fact he confirms the fidelity and indissolubility of the marital bond above even the good of offspring, on the basis of which polygamy, levirate and divorce had been justified in the past.

"'Then why did Moses command that a writ of dismissal should be given in cases of divorce?' He said to them, 'It was because you were so hard-hearted, that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but it was not like this from the beginning. Now I say this to you: anyone who divorces his wife -- I am not speaking of an illicit marriage -- and marries another, is guilty of adultery'" (Matthew 19:7-9).

The parallel text of Mark shows how also in the case of divorce, man and woman are on a level of absolute equality according to Jesus: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she is guilty of adultery too" (Mark 10:11-12).

I will not spend time on the "illicit marriage" clause ("porneia"), which is absent in Mark's text and could be a later addition of Matthew to adapt the saying of Jesus to the situation of his community. Instead I want to emphasize the "implicit sacramental foundation of marriage" present in Jesus' response.[3] The words "What God has joined" say that marriage is not a purely secular reality, fruit of human will; there is a sacred aspect to marriage that is rooted in divine will.

The elevation of marriage to a "sacrament" therefore is not based solely on the weak argument of Jesus' presence at the wedding of Cana, nor in the text of Ephesians 5 alone. In a certain way it begins with the earthly Jesus and is part of his leading all things to the beginning. John Paul II is also right when he defines marriage as the "oldest sacrament."[4]

b. The novelty

Thus far we have focused on the continuity. What is the novelty? Paradoxically it consists in making marriage relative. Let's listen to the following text from Matthew:

"The disciples said to him, 'If that is how things are between husband and wife, it is advisable not to marry. But he replied, 'It is not everyone who can accept what I have said, but only those to whom it is granted. There are eunuchs born so from their mother's womb, there are eunuchs made so by human agency and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone accept this who can'" (Matthew 19:10-12).

With these words Jesus institutes a second state of life, justifying it by the coming to earth of the Kingdom of Heaven. It does not eliminate the other possibility, marriage, but it makes it relative. What happens to it is similar to the idea of the state in the political sphere: It is not abolished, but rather radically limited by the revelation of the contemporary presence, within history, of the Kingdom of God.

Therefore, voluntary continence does not need to deny or despise marriage so that its own validity can be recognized. (Some ancient authors made this mistake in some of their writings on virginity). What's more, it derives its meaning from none other than contemporary affirmation of the goodness of marriage. The institution of celibacy and virginity for the Kingdom ennobles marriage in the sense that it becomes a choice, a vocation, and not just simply a moral duty to which it was impossible not to submit oneself in Israel without exposure to the accusation of trespassing God's commandment.

It's important to remember something which is easily forgotten. Celibacy and virginity mean renouncing marriage, not sexuality, which retains all the richness of its meaning, even though it is lived in a different way. The celibate person and the virgin also feel attraction, and therefore dependence on people of the opposite sex, and it is precisely this which gives meaning to their choice for chastity.

c. Jesus, an enemy of family?

Among the many theses posited in recent years in the so-called "Third Quest on the historical Jesus"; we find the idea that Jesus rejected the natural family and all parental bonds in the name of belonging to a different community, in which God is the father and the disciples are all brothers and sisters, proposing an itinerant life, as was lived in that time outside of Israel by the cynic philosophers.[5]

In effect, in the Gospels, Christ uses words that at first glance cause bewilderment. Jesus says: "Anyone who comes to me without hating father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). Certainly harsh words, but the evangelist Matthew hurries to explain the sense of the word "hate" in this case: "No one who prefers father or mother to me is worthy of me. No one who prefers son or daughter to me is worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37). So Jesus does not ask us to hate our parents or children, but rather that we not love them to the point to which we refuse to follow him because of them.

Another episode causes confusion. "Another to whom he said, 'Follow me,' replied, 'Let me go and bury my father first.' But he answered, 'Leave the dead to bury their dead; your duty is to go and spread the news of the Kingdom of God'" (Luke 9:59). For some critics this is a scandalous request, among them the American rabbi Jacob Neusner, with whom Benedict XVI has a conversation in his book about Jesus of Nazareth.[6] It is disobedience to God, who orders that we take care of parents, a flagrant violation of filial duties.

What we have to give to Rabbi Neusner is that Christ's words, such as these, cannot be explained while we consider Christ a mere man, as exceptional as may be. Only God can ask that he be loved more than a parent, and to follow that up, to give up attending a burial. For the believers this is further proof that Jesus is God. For Neusner, it is the reason why he cannot be followed.

The confusion caused by these requests from Jesus also come from not keeping in mind the difference between what he asks all without distinction and what he asks of only some that are called to share in his life entirely dedicated to the Kingdom, as continues to happen today in the Church. The same should be said about the renunciation of marriage: He does not impose it, nor does he propose it to all without distinction, but rather only to those who accept to put themselves at the complete service of the Kingdom as he does (cf. Matthew 19:10-12).

All these doubts about the attitude of Jesus toward family and marriage fall apart if we keep in mind the other passages of the Gospel. Jesus is most rigorous regarding the indissolubility of marriage; he heavily stresses the commandment to honor father and mother, to the point of condemning the practice of excusing oneself from the duty to assist them under religious pretexts (Mark 7:11-13). How many miracles Jesus works precisely to step forward to meet parents in their suffering (Jairo, the father of the epileptic), mothers (the Canaanite, the widow of Naim), or of relatives (the sisters of Lazarus), therefore, to honor the family bonds. On more than one occasion he shares the pain of the relatives up to the point of crying with them.

In a moment such as the present, in which everything seems to be conspiring to weaken the bonds and values of the family, we would only need to oppose Jesus and the Gospel to them! Jesus has come to give marriage back its original beauty, to reinforce it, not to weaken it.

2. Marriage and family in the Apostolic Church

Just as we have done with God's original project, also concerning the renewal worked by Christ we intend to see how it was received and lived in the life and catechesis of the Church, limiting ourselves to the reality of the apostolic Church for the moment. Paul is our primary source of information, having had to dedicate himself to the problem in some of his letters, above all in the First Letter to the Corinthians.

The Apostle distinguishes between what comes directly from the Lord and the particular applications that he himself makes when required by the context in which he preaches the Gospel. The confirmation of the indissolubility of marriage is part of the first type: "To the married I give this ruling, and this is not mine but the Lord's: a wife must not be separated from her husband or if she has already left him, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband -- and a husband must not divorce his wife" (1 Corinthians 7:10-11); the guidance regarding marriage between believers and nonbelievers and the provisions regarding celibates and virgins is part of the second type of the Apostle's teaching: "I have no directions from the Lord, but I give my own opinion" (1 Corinthians 7:10;7:25).

The Church has received from Jesus also the element of novelty which consists, as we have seen, in the institution of a second state of life: celibacy and virginity for the Kingdom. To them, Paul, he himself not married, dedicates the final part of Chapter 7 of his letter. Based on the verse: "I should still like everyone to be as I am myself; but everyone has his own gift from God, one this kind and the next something different" (1 Corinthians 7:7), some think that the Apostle considers marriage and virginity as two charisms. But that is not accurate; virgins have received the charism of virginity, married people have other charisms (understood not that of virginity). It's meaningful that the Church's theology has always considered virginity a charism and not a sacrament, and marriage a sacrament and not a charism.

The text of the Letter to the Ephesians will have a noteworthy effect in the process that will bring about the recognition of the sacramentality of marriage: "This is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh. This mystery (in Latin, "sacramentum") has great significance, but I am applying it to Christ and the Church" (Ephesians 5:31-32). This is not an isolated occasional assertion, based on a loose translation of the word "mystery" ("mysterion") with the Latin "sacramentum." Marriage as a symbol of the relationship between Christ and the Church is based on a series of statements and parables in which Jesus applied the title of spouse to himself, attributed to God by the prophets.

As the apostolic community grows and consolidates, we see how an entire familial pastoral practice and spirituality flower. The most meaningful texts in this regard are the letters to the Colossians and to the Ephesians. Both of them show the two fundamental relationships that constitute family: the relationship between husband and wife and the relationship between parents and children. With regard to the first relationship, the Apostle writes:

"Submit to each other in the fear of Christ. Women to their husbands, as to the Lord ... As the Church is submissive to Christ, so also should wives submit to their husbands in all. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her."

Paul recommended that husbands "love" their wives (and this seems normal to us), but then he recommends that wives be "submissive" to their husbands, and this, in a society that is strongly (and rightfully) conscious of the equality of the sexes, seems unacceptable. On this point St. Paul is, at least in part, conditioned by the customs of his time. The difficulty, on the other hand, changes if we keep in mind the phrase from the beginning of the text: "Be submissive to one another in the fear of Christ," which establishes reciprocity in submission and in love.

With regard to the relationship between parents and children, Paul emphasizes the traditional advice of the wisdom books:

"Children, be obedient to your parents in the Lord -- that is what uprightness demands. The first commandment that has a promise attached to it is: Honor your father and your mother; and the promise is: so that you may have long life and prosper in the land. And parents, never drive your children to resentment but bring them up with correction and advice inspired by the Lord" (Ephesians 6:1-4).

The pastoral letters, especially the Letter to Titus, offer detailed rules for every category of person: women, spouses, bishops and priests, old people, young people, widows, owners and slaves (cf. Titus 2:1-9). In fact slaves were also part of the family in the broad understanding of the time.

In the early Church as well, the ideal of marriage that Jesus proposes will not be put into practice without shadows and resistance. In addition to the case of incest of Corinth (1 Corinthians 8:1), this is borne out by the need the apostles feel of insisting on this aspect of the early Christian life. But overall, the Christians presented the world a new family model that became one of the principal factors in evangelization.

The author of the letter to Diognetus, in the second century, says that the Christians "marry as every one else does and have children, but they do not abandon the newborns; they have a common table, but not a common bed" (V:6-7). In his Apology, Justin constructs an argument that we Christians of today should be able to make our own in dialogue with political authorities. In essence he says the following: You, Roman emperors, multiply the laws about family, which have proven to be incapable of stopping its dissolution. Come to see our families and you will be convinced Christians are your better allies in the reform of society, not your enemies. In the end, as is known, after three centuries of persecution, the Empire accepted the Christian family model in its own legislation.

Part III

What the Bible Teaches Us Today

Rereading the Bible in a conference like this one, which is not of biblical scholars, but rather of pastoral workers in the field of family care, cannot be limited to a simple reminder of revealed knowledge, but rather it should be able to enlighten current problems. "Scriptures, as St. Gregory the Great said, grow with the one that reads them" ("cum legentibus crescit"); they reveal new implications to the measure in which new questions are posed to them. And today there are many new and provocative questions.

1. Objection to the biblical ideal

We are confronted by a seemingly global objection to the biblical plan for sexuality, marriage and family. Monsignor Tony Anatrella's research, which was given to the speakers in preparation for this congress, provides a well-thought and highly useful summary of this subject.[7] How should we react in the face of this phenomenon?

The first error we should avoid, in my opinion, is spending the whole time fighting contrary theories, in the end giving them more importance than they deserve. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagita noted a long time ago that the exposition of one's truth is always more successful than rebutting the errors of others (Letter VI, in PG 3, 1077A). Another error is to focus all efforts on the laws of country to defend Christian values. The first Christians, as we have seen, changed the laws of the state through their lifestyle. We cannot do the contrary today, hoping to change lifestyles with the laws of the state.

The Council opened a new method, that of dialogue, not confrontation with the world: a method which does not even exclude self criticism. One of the Council documents said that the Church can benefit even from the criticism of those that attack it. I believe that we should apply this method also in discussing the problems of marriage and the family, as "Gaudium et Spes" did in its own time.

Applying this method of dialogue means trying to see if even behind the most radical attacks there is a positive request that we should welcome. It is the old Pauline method of examining everything and keeping the good (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:21). This is what happened with Marxism, which motivated the Church to develop its own social doctrine, and it could also happen with the gender revolution which, as Monsignor Anatrella observes in his research, presents more than a few similarities to Marxism and is probably destined to the same end.

The criticism of the traditional model of marriage and family, which have led to the current, unacceptable, proposals of deconstructionism, began with the Enlightenment and Romanticism. With different intentions, these two movements objected to traditional marriage, seen exclusively as its objective "ends" -- offspring, society, Church; and to little in itself -- in its subjective and interpersonal value. Everything was asked of the future spouses, except that they love each other and choose each other freely. Marriage as a pact (Enlightenment) and as a communion of love (Romanticism) between the spouses was proposed to contradict such a model.

But this criticism follows the original meaning of the Bible, it does not contradict it! The Second Vatican Council took in this request when it recognized as equally central to marriage both mutual love and support of the spouses. John Paul II, in a Wednesday catechesis said:

"The human body, with its sex, and its masculinity and femininity seen in the very mystery of creation, is not only a source of fruitfulness and procreation, as in the whole natural order. It includes right from the beginning the nuptial attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift and -- by means of this gift -- fulfills the meaning of his being and existence."[8]

In his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est," Pope Benedict XVI has gone even farther, writing deep and new things with regards to eros in marriage and in the very relationship between God and man. "This close relationship between eros and marriage that the Bible presents has practically no parallel in literature outside itself."[9]

The unusually positive reaction to this papal encyclical shows to what degree a peaceful presentation of the Christian truth is more productive than rebutting the error of others, even though we should find room for this as well, at the proper time and place. We are far from agreeing with the consequences that some today draw from this premise: for example, that any type of eros is enough to constitute a marriage, even that between persons of the same sex; but this rejection gains greater strength and credibility if it is connected to the recognition of the underlying goodness of the request and as well with a healthy self criticism.

We cannot in effect silence the contribution that Christians made to the formation of that purely objectivist view of marriage. The authority of Augustine, reinforced on this point by Thomas Aquinas, ended up shedding a negative light on the carnal union of the spouses, considered the means of transmitting original sin and in itself sinful "at least venially." According to the doctor of Hippo, spouses should engage in the conjugal act with disgust and only because there was no other way of giving citizens to the state and members to the Church.

Another request we can make our own is that of the dignity of women in marriage. As we can see, it is at the very heart of God's original plan and Christ's thought, but it has almost always been neglected. God's word to Eve: "You will be drawn to you spouse and he will dominate you" has been tragically played out throughout history.

Among the representatives of the so-called gender revolution, this idea has led to crazy proposals, such as that of abolishing the distinction between sexes and substituting it with the more elastic and subjective distinction of "genders" (masculine, feminine, variable) or that of freeing women from the slavery of maternity, providing other means, invented by man, for the production of children. (It is not clear who would continue to have interest or desire at this point in having children.)

It is precisely through choosing to dialogue and engage in self criticism that we have the right to denounce these projects as "inhuman," in other words, contrary to not only God's will, but also to the good of humanity. If they were to become common practice on a large scale, they would lead to unforeseeable damages. The book and the movie "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H. G. Wells could prove to be tragically prophetic, this time not only among animals but also among human beings.

Our only hope is that people's common sense, together with the "desire" for the other sex, with the need for maternity and paternity that God has written in human nature, resist these attempts to substitute God. They are inspired more by belated feelings of guilt in men than by genuine respect and love for women. (Those who propose these theories are almost all men!)

2. An ideal that must be rediscovered

Christians' task of rediscovering and fully living the biblical ideal of marriage and family is no less important than defending it. In this way it can be proposed again to the world with facts, more so than with words.

Let's read today the account of the creation of man and woman in the light of the revelation of the Trinity. Under this light, the phrase: "God created mankind in his image, in his image he created him, male and female he created them" finally reveals its meaning, which was mysterious and uncertain before Christ. What relation could there be between being "in the image of God" and being "male and female?" The God of the Bible does not have sexual connotations; he is neither male nor female.

The similarity is this: God is love and love demands communion, interpersonal exchange; it needs to have an "I" and a "you." There is no love that is not love for someone. Where there is only one subject there can be no love, only egotism and narcissism. Where God is thought of as Law and as absolute Power, there is no need for a plurality of persons. (Power can be exercised alone!). The God revealed by Jesus Christ, being love, is one and only, but he is not solitary; he is one and triune. In him coexist unity and distinction: unity of nature, of will, of intention, and distinction of characteristics and persons.

Two people that love each other, and the case of man and woman in marriage is the strongest, reproduce something that happens in the Trinity. There two persons, the Father and the Son, loving each other, produce ("breathe") the Spirit that is the love the joins them. Someone once defined the Holy Spirit as the divine "Us," that is, not the "third person of the Trinity," but rather the first person plural.[10]

Precisely in this way the human couple is an image of God. Husband and wife are in effect a single flesh, a single heart, a single soul, even in the diversity of sex and personality. In the couple, unity and diversity reconcile themselves. The spouses face each other as an "I" and a "you", and face the rest of the world, beginning with their own children, as a "we," almost as if it was a single person, no longer singular but rather plural. "We," in other words, "your mother and I," "your father and I."

In light of this we discover the profound meaning of the prophets' message regarding human marriage, which is therefore a symbol and reflection of another love, God's love for his people. This doesn't involve overburdening a purely human reality with mystical meaning. It is not a question simply of symbolism; rather it involves revealing the true face and final purpose of the creation of man and woman: leaving one's own isolation and "egotism," opening up to the other, and through the temporal ecstasy of carnal union, elevating oneself to the desire for love and for happiness without end.

What's the reason for the incompleteness and dissatisfaction that sexual union leaves within and outside of marriage? Why does this impulse always fall over itself and why does this promise of infinity and eternity always end up disappointed? The ancients coined a phrase that paints this reality: "Post coitum animal triste": just like any other animal, man is sad after carnal union.

The pagan poet Lucretius left us a raw description of this frustration that accompanies each copulation, which should not be scandalous for us to hear at a congress for spouses and families:

"And mingle the slaver of their mouths, and breathe
Into each other, pressing teeth on mouths -
Yet to no purpose, since they're powerless
To rub off aught, or penetrate and pass
With body entire into body"[11]

The search for remedy to this frustration only increases it. Instead of modifying the quality of the act, the quantity is increased, moving from one partner to another. This is how God's gift of sexuality is ruined, in the trend of culture and society today.

As Christians, do we want to find an explanation once and for all for this devastating dysfunction? The explanation is that sexual union is not lived in the way and with the purpose in which God intended it. The purpose was, through this ecstasy and fusion of love, that man and woman would be elevated to the desire and have a certain taste for infinite love. They would remember from whence they came and where they were going.

Sin, beginning with the biblical sin of Adam and Eve, has gutted this plan; it has "profaned" this gesture, in other words, it has stripped it of its religious value. It has turned it into a gesture that is an end in itself, which finishes with itself, and is therefore "unsatisfactory." The symbol has been separated from the reality it symbolizes, bereft of its intrinsic dynamism and therefore mutilated. Never as much as in this case is St. Augustine's saying true: "You made us, Lord, for you and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

Even couples that are believers, sometimes more than others, don't come to find this richness of the initial meaning of sexual union due to the idea of concupiscence and original sin associated with the act for so many centuries. Only in the witness of some couples that have had a renewing experience of the Holy Spirit and that live Christian life charismatically do we find something of that original meaning of the conjugal act. They have confided with wonder, to friends or a priest, that they unite praising God out loud, and even singing in tongues. It was a real experience of God's presence.

It is understandable why it is only possible to find this fullness of the marital vocation in the Holy Spirit. The constitutive act of marriage is reciprocal self-giving, making a gift of one's own body to the spouse (or, in the words of the Bible, of one's whole self). In being the sacrament of the gift, marriage is, by its nature, a sacrament that is open to the action of the Holy Spirit, who is the Gift par excellence, or better said, the reciprocal self-giving of the Father and the Son. It is the sanctifying presence of the Spirit that makes marriage not only a celebrated sacrament, but a lived sacrament.

The secret to getting access to these splendors of Christian love is to give Christ space within the life of the couple. In fact, the Holy Spirit that makes all things new, comes from him. A book by Fulton Sheen, popular in the 50s, reiterated this with its title: "Three to Get Married."[12]

We should not be afraid of proposing a very high goal to some especially prepared couples, who will be future Christian spouses: that of praying a while the wedding night, as Tobias and Sarah, and afterward giving God the Father the joy of seeing his initial plan realized anew, thanks to Christ, when Adam and Eve were nude in front of each other and both in front of God and they were not ashamed.

I end with some words taken once again from "The Satin Slipper" by Claudel. It is a dialogue between the woman of the drama and her guardian angel. The woman struggles between her fear and the desire to surrender herself to love:

- So, is this love of the creatures, one for another, allowed? Isn't God jealous?
- How could He be jealous of what He Himself made?
- But man, in the arms of the woman, forgets God...
- Can they forget Him when they are with Him, participating in the mystery of his creation?[13]

--- --- ---

[1] P. Claudel, Le soulier de satin, a.III. sc.8 (éd. La Pléiade, II, Paris 1956, p. 804) : «Cet orgueilleux, il n'y avait pas d'autre moyen de lui faire comprendre le prochain, de le lui entres dans la chair.
Il n'y avait pas d'autre moyen de lui faire comprendre la dépendance, la nécessité et le besoin, un autre sur lui,
La loi sur lui de cet être différent pour aucune autre raison si ce n'est qu'il existe».
[2] B. Wannenwetsch, Mariage, in Dictionnaire Critique de Théologie, a cura di J.-Y. Lacoste, Parigi 1998, p. 700.
[3] Cf. G. Campanini, Matrimonio, in Dizionario di Teologia, Ed. San Paolo 2002, pp. 964 s.

[4] Giovanni Paolo II, Uomo e donna lo creò. Catechesi sull'amore umano, Rome 1985, p. 365.
[5] Cf. B. Griffin, Was Jesus a Philosophical Cynic? [http://www-oxford.op.org/allen/html/acts.htm]; C. Augias e M. Pesce, Inchiesta su Gesú, Mondadori, 2006, pp. 121 ss.
[6] E.P. Sanders, Gesù e il giudaismo, Marietti, 1992, pp.324 ss.; J. Neusner, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000, pp. 53-72.

[7] T. Anatrella, Définitions des termes du Néo-langage de la philosophie du Constructivisme et du genre, a cura del Pontificium Consilium pro Familia, Città del Vaticano Novembre 2008.
[8] John Paul II, Discourse at the general audience of 16 January 1980 (Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1980, p. 148).
[9] Benedict XVI, Enc. Deus caritas est, 11.

[10] Cf. Cf. H. Mühlen, Der Heilige Geist als Person. Ich -Du -Wir, Muenster, in W. 1966.
[11] Lucretius, De rerum natura, IV,2 vv. 1104-1107.
[12] F. Sheen, Three to Get Married, Appleton-Century-Crofts 1951.

[13] P. Claudel, Le soulier de satin, a.III. sc.8 (éd. La Pléiade, II, Paris 1956, pp. 804):
- Dona Prouhèze. - -Eh quoi! Ainsi c'était permis? cet amour des créatures l'une pour l'autre, il est donc vrai que Dieu n'est pas jaloux ?
- L'Ange Gardien.- Comment serait-il jaloux de ce qu'il a fait ?...
- Dona Prouhèze. - L'homme entre les bras de la femme oublie Dieu.
- L'Ange Gardien.- Est-ce l'oublier que d'être avec lui ? est-ce ailleurs qu'avec lui d'être associé au mystère da sa création ?

[Translation by Thomas Daly]

As I have noted before, Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S. has written on the question of torture in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.

Fr. Harrison surveys various authorities, including St. Thomas Aquinas:

A7. St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century). The Angelic Doctor never treats of torture in secular judicial inquiries. However, without mentioning the word, he does justify the contemporary Inquisition’s use of torture (recently introduced in 1252 by Pope Innocent IV – cf. B4 below). Like Augustine eight centuries earlier justifying imperial force used against the Donatist schismatics, Thomas appeals in his sed contra to the Gospel itself: the compelle intrare of Lk 14: 23 (parable of the king and wedding guests). In considering whether unbelievers may be "compelled" to the faith, he first acknowledges that those who have never been Christians (i.e., Jews, pagans and Muslims) may not be forced to embrace the faith, but then continues: "On the other hand, there are unbelievers who at some time have accepted the faith, and professed it, such as heretics and all apostates: such should be submitted even to bodily compulsion, that they may fulfil what they have promised, and hold what they, at one time, received".22

Consistently with the fundamental idea of forcing a man to confess an offence, St. Thomas does not recognize for the accused a right corresponding to the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. In considering whether one may lie to a judge in order to protect oneself, Aquinas teaches that while the accused is not bound to answer every possible question that might incriminate him, he may never lie, and indeed, is bound to answer the judge truthfully, revealing his own guilt, "under the laws of evidence" (secundum ordinem juris), as for instance when there are well-founded rumors, or clear indications, or semi-complete proof [of his guilt]".23

A8. St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century). He also discusses bodily mutilation (ST, IIa IIae 65, 1) and the thrashing of children by parents and slaves by their masters (65, 2). His justification of these practices as punishments for proven offences essentially just throws the ball back into a couple of other courts: (a) as regards authority, into that of Sacred Scripture, with the sed contra appealing in the case of mutilation to the lex talionis (Ex. 21: 24, Lv 24: 19-20), and to the books of Proverbs and Sirach in the case of flogging (cf. references A10-A15 in Part I of this study); and (b) as regards inherent reasoning, into that of capital punishment, using a simple a fortiori argument (i.e., if competent authority may legitimately take life itself as punishment, then all the more may it inflict lesser bodily penalties).

It is notable that St. Thomas himself does not expicitly hold that the use of torture to get a confession (or other information) is licit. At most, he maintains that those who once had the virtue of faith may be compelled through the use of force. But this seems inconsistent with the position that the virtue of faith is given through grace, and cannot be elicited by human effort alone. Is pain likely to move someone to open himself up to the movement of the Holy Spirit and away from his own beliefs? (How is it possible for a human judge to distinguish between a true apostate and heretic from someone who sincerely, or in accordance with his conscience, changes his mind about divine matters?)

Some may hold that torture is wrong because it offends against charity. But their argument, like the argument against capital punishment, fails because it does not distinguish punishment or 'rightful harm' from injury or wrongful harm. It needs to be shown that torture is wrong because it is against justice and is a form of injury. I think this can be done if we remember the definition of justice. Unless it is a form of retribution, the deliberate inflicting of some harm upon another is unjust and wrong.

Can someone be punished for disobedience? Or failing to comply with an order to give information when it has been determined by a competent authority that this information is vital to the common good, and that the subject possesses this knowledge? I think the answer to both questions is yes. But punishment for disobedience is not the same as inflicting pain or bodily harm in order to elicit information. The ratio of the moral act is different in each case, even though the object of the external act--producing pain or bodiliy harm, is the same.

I note that Fr. Harrison would seem to agree with the above assessment (see his conclusion for part 2). But he thinks that the question of whether torture may be used to extract information has not been answered by the Magisterium:

Thirdly, there remains the question – nowadays a very practical and much-discussed one – of torture inflicted not for any of the above purposes, but for extracting life-saving information from, say, a captured terrorist known to be participating in an attack that may take thousands of lives (the now-famous ‘ticking bomb’ scenario). As we have noted above, this possible use of torture is not mentioned in the Catechism. If, as I have argued, the infliction of severe pain is not intrinsically evil, its use in that type of scenario would not seem to be excluded by the arguments and authorities we have considered so far. (John Paul II’s statement about the "intrinsic evil" of a list of ugly things including torture in VS #80 does not seem to me decisive, even at the level of authentic, non-infallible, magisterium, for the reasons I have already given in commenting above on that text.) My understanding would be that, given the present status questionis, the moral legitimacy of torture under the aforesaid desperate circumstances, while certainly not affirmed by the magisterium, remains open at present to legitimate discussion by Catholic theologians.

Here is what I believe to be the problem -- the "infliction of severe pain" is not intrinsically evil if it has the character of punishment, in which case it is just. If it does not have the character of punishment, then it is always unjust. I cannot see how it could be otherwise. Hence, we are not dealing with a 'morally neutral' external act, but one which has already been determined to be unjust and therefore immoral. Using it for the sake of getting information would therefore be an instance of using an evil means in order to procure a perceived good end.

I think because of our relative ease in grasping justice, even if we cannot explain what justice is precisely, we have an natural or instinctive aversion to torture, which is worn away once we begin to accept consequentialism.

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