By Sandro Magister
The Chiesa
December 20, 2010
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1346005?eng=y
In his pre-Christmas address to the curia, Benedict XVI is actually speaking to the whole world. Sexual abuse by the clergy, he says, is the effect of the inability to distinguish between good and evil. And he recalls the lesson of Newman: conscience is made to obey the truth
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Wishing a happy Christmas to the Roman curia this morning, Benedict XVI in reality addressed the entire Church and the world. As in previous years, this time as well in the pre-Christmas address which he himself wrote in its entirety he wanted to emphasize the main outlines of his pontificate.
In 2005, the focus of his address was the interpretation and implementation of Vatican Council II, and the relationship between continuity and renewal in the Church:
> Pope Ratzinger Certifies the Council The Real One
In 2006, the pope placed the question of God at the center. Moreover, taking his cue from his trip to Istanbul, he formulated in the clearest way possible his vision of relations with Islam, proposing to the Muslim world the journey already undertaken by Christianity under the challenge of the Enlightenment:
> A Summary Account of Four Voyages And a Years Pontificate
In 2007, Benedict XVI focused on the urgency for the Church to take a missionary approach to all the peoples of the earth:
> Surprise: The Pope Takes the Curia to Brazil
In 2008, he called attention back to the most "forgotten" of the persons of the divine Trinity, the "creator" Holy Spirit, whose mark is found in the ordered structure of the cosmos and of man, to be admired and respected:
> "Veni Creator Spiritus." For an Ecology of Man
In 2009, taking his cue from his voyage to the Czech Republic, a country where the majority is agnostic or atheist, Benedict XVI launched a new evangelization aimed precisely at those who are far from God. As in the ancient temple of Jerusalem, the pope proposed that the Church open for them "a court of the gentiles," where the search and the thirst for him can be kept alive:
> "I think that the Church should also open today a court of the gentiles"
This year Benedict XVI placed the question of the truth at the center of his reflection: because "only the truth saves" the Church and the world. Sexual abuse of children by the clergy is also the product of a blinding of the conscience, which becomes incapable of distinguishing between good and evil.
And on the meaning of conscience not as pure subjective will, but as obedience to the truth the pope revisited a lesson from Cardinal John Henry Newman, whom he beatified during his voyage to the United Kingdom.
The following are the salient passages from the pre-Christmas address given by Benedict XVI to the Roman curia on the morning of Monday, December 20, 2010.
__________
"ROUSE YOUR POWER, LORD, AND COME"
by Benedict XVI
[...] "Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni": with these and with similar words the liturgy of the Church prays repeatedly in the days of Advent. [...] The prayer recalls the cry lifted up to the Lord, who was sleeping in the boat of the disciples buffeted by the storm and close to sinking. When his powerful word had calmed the storm, he reproached the disciples for their lack of faith (cf. Mt. 8:26). What he meant was: in you yourselves, faith was asleep. He means the same thing for us as well. In us as well, very often faith is asleep. So let us pray to him to awaken us from the sleep of a faith that has become tired, and to restore to faith the power to move mountains: meaning to give the right order to the things of the world.
"Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni": in the great distress to which we have been subjected this year, this prayer of Advent has always come back to my mind and my lips. We began the Year for Priests with great joy, and, thanks to God, we were able to conclude it as well with great gratitude, in spite of the fact that it went so differently from what we had expected.
In us priests and in the laity, even in the young, there was a renewal of the awareness of what a gift is represented by the priesthood of the Catholic Church, which has been entrusted to us by the Lord. We were again made aware of how wonderful it is that human beings should be authorized to pronounce in the name of the Lord and with full power the word of forgiveness, and in this way be able to change the world, life; how wonderful it is that human beings should be authorized to pronounce the words of consecration, with which the Lord draws within himself a piece of the world, and so in a certain place transforms it into his substance; how wonderful it is to be able to be, with the power of the Lord, near to men in their joys and sufferings, in important hours as in those dark hours of existence; how wonderful it is to have no other task in life than the very being of man: to help open this to God and allow it to be lived starting from God.
We were all the more stunned when, precisely this year and to an extent unimaginable to us, we became aware of abuse against minors committed by priests, who contort the Sacrament into its opposite: under the mantle of the sacred, they deeply wound the human person in his infancy and damage him for life.
In this context, I was reminded of a vision of St. Hildegard of Bingen, who gives a harrowing description of what we have experienced this year. [...]
In the vision of St. Hildegard, the face of the Church is covered with dust, and this is how we have seen it. Its clothing is torn, through the fault of priests. Just as she saw and expressed it, we have experienced it this year. We must accept this humiliation as an exhortation to the truth, and a call to renewal.
Only the truth saves. We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has been done. We must ask ourselves what was mistaken in our proclamation, in our entire way of configuring the Christian existence, so that such a thing could happen. We must find a new resoluteness in faith and in goodness. We must be capable of penance. We must force ourselves to do as much as possible, in training for the priesthood, so that such a thing can never happen again.
This is also the place to give heartfelt thanks to all those working to help the victims and restore their trust in the Church, their capacity to believe in its message. In my encounters with the victims of this sin, I have also always found people who, with great dedication, stand beside those who suffer and have undergone harm. This is also the opportunity to thank the many good priests who in humility and fidelity transmit the goodness of the Lord, and, in the midst of the devastation, are witnesses to the beauty of the priesthood that has not been lost.
We are aware of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests, and of our corresponding responsibility. But we also cannot remain silent about the context of our time in which these events have come to light.
There exists a market of pornography involving children, which in some ways seems to be considered more and more as a normal thing by society. The psychological devastation of children, in which human persons are reduced to commercial products, is a frightening sign of the times. From bishops of Third World countries, I hear again and again how sex tourism is threatening an entire generation and harming its freedom and human dignity. The Revelation of St. John numbers among the great sins of Babylon - symbol of the great irreligious cities of the world - the fact of trading in bodies and souls and turning them into merchandise (cf. Rev. 18:13). This context also poses the problem of drugs, which are extending their tentacles with growing force over the entire globe, an eloquent expression of the dictatorship of Mammon that perverts man. Every pleasure becomes insufficient, and excess in the deception of intoxication becomes a form of violence that is ravaging entire regions, and this in the name of a fatal misunderstanding of freedom, in which man's freedom itself is undermined and in the end completely annihilated.
In order to oppose these forces, we must look at their ideological foundations. During the 1970's, pedophilia was theorized as something entirely in keeping with the nature of man, and even of the child. But this was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was asserted - even in the realm of Catholic theology - that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only "better than" and "worse than." Nothing is good or evil in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end that is sought. According to the purposes and the circumstances, anything could be good or evil. Morality was replaced by a calculation of consequences, and with this it ceased to exist.
The effects of these theories are evident today. Against them, Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical "Veritatis Splendor" of 1993, indicated with prophetic power the essential and permanent foundations of moral action in the great rational tradition of the Christian ethos. This text must be placed at the center again today, as a path for the formation of the conscience. It is our responsibility to make these criteria again audible and comprehensible among men as ways of true humanity, in the context of concern for man, in which we are immersed. [...]
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I would also like to recall the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman. Why was he beatified? What does he have to tell us? Many answers can be given to these questions, and were elaborated in the context of the beatification. I would like to highlight just two aspects that go together, and, in the final account, express the same thing.
The first is that we must learn from the three conversions of Newman, because they are steps in a spiritual journey that concerns all of us. Here I would like to bring up only the first conversion: to faith in the living God.
Until that moment, Newman thought like most men of his time, and like most men today, who do not simply exclude the existence of God, but consider it something unsure, which has no essential role in their own lives. What truly appeared real to him, as to the men of his and our time, was the empirical, what can be materially perceived. This is the "reality" according to which one orients oneself. The "real" is that which is perceivable, the things that can be calculated and taken in hand.
In his conversion, Newman recognized that things are exactly the opposite: that God and the soul, man's being himself on the spiritual level, constitute what is truly real, what counts. They are much more real than tangible objects. This conversion signifies a Copernican revolution. What until now had appeared unreal and secondary is revealed as the truly decisive thing. When such a conversion takes place, what changes is not simply a theory, the fundamental form of life changes. All of us need this conversion again and again: then we are on the right path.
The driving force that led to the path of conversion was, for Newman, conscience. But what does this mean? In modern thought, the word "conscience" signifies that in matters of morality and religion, the subjective dimension, the individual, has the last word. [...]
The conception that Newman has of conscience is diametrically opposed. For him, "conscience" means man's capacity for truth: the capacity to recognize precisely in the decisive areas of his existence - religion and morality - a truth, "the" truth. Conscience, man's capacity to recognize the truth, at the same time imposes on him the duty to set out toward the truth, to seek it and submit to it wherever he encounters it. Conscience is the capacity for truth and obedience to the truth, which are shown to the man who seeks with an open heart. The path of Newman's conversions is a path of conscience: a path not of subjectivity that asserts itself, but precisely the opposite, of obedience to the truth that gradually opens itself to him. [...]
In order to be able to assert the identity between the concept that Newman had of conscience and the modern subjective understanding of conscience, it is common to refer to the saying according to which he - if he had to make a toast - would toast to conscience first and then to the pope. But in this affirmation, "conscience" does not signify the ultimate authority of subjective intuition. It is an expression of the accessibility and of the binding force of the truth: this is the basis of its primacy. The second toast can be dedicated to the pope, because it is his task to demand obedience to the truth. [...]
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