The Vatican Information Service reports on an address given
today by Benedict XVI to participants "in a meeting being promoted by
the Christian
Democrat International". The Pope's remarks address many of the same
problems and challenges facing Catholics in the United States,
especially the role of Christians in the public square, the need to
pursue the common good ("correctly understood", Benedict emphasizes),
upholding the dignity and value of every human life, the defense of the
family as the "the basic cell of society" and the responsibility of the
State and civic leaders to uphold marriage and life:
"The involvement of Christians in
society", the Holy Father said, "must not lessen or decrease; rather, it
must be proffered with renewed vitality, in view of the persistence
and, in some cases, the worsening of the problems we are facing".
Among
these problems the Pope mentioned the economic crisis, the "complexity
and gravity" of which "rightly arouse concern. Yet, in the face of this
situation, Christians are called to act and express themselves with a
prophetic spirit - that is, a spirit capable of seeing in these
transformations the incessant and mysterious presence of God in history -
and thus to shoulder their newly emerging responsibilities with
realism, faith and hope".
"Your political and institutional
commitment must not", he told his listeners, "be limited to responding
to the requirements of market logic. Rather, its central and
indispensable goal must remain the search for the common good, correctly
understood, and the promotion and protection of the inalienable dignity
of the human person. The teaching of Vatican Council II that 'the order
of things must be subordinate to the order of persons, and not the
other way around' is today more valid than ever. This order of persons
'is founded on truth, built up in justice, and animated by love', and it
cannot be discerned without constant attention to the Word of God and
the Magisterium of the Church".
"The areas in which this decisive
discernment is to be exercised are those touching the most vital and
delicate interests of the person, the place where the fundamental
choices regarding the meaning of life and the search for happiness are
made. These areas are not separate from one another but profoundly
interconnected; they possess a manifest continuum which is constituted
by respect for the transcendent dignity of human beings, rooted in the
fact that they were made in the image of the Creator and are the
ultimate goal of any authentically human social justice.
"The
commitment to respecting life in all its phases from conception to
natural end - and the consequent rejection of abortion, euthanasia and
any form of eugenics - is, in fact, interwoven with respecting marriage
as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman and, in its turn, as
the foundation for the community of family life. ... Thus the family,
the basic cell of society, is the root which nourishes not only the
individual human being, but the very foundations of social coexistence".
The
Holy Father went on: "The authentic progress of human society cannot
forgo policies aimed at protecting and promoting marriage, and the
community that derives therefrom. Adopting such policies is the duty not
only of States but of the International Community as a whole, in order
to invert the tendency towards the growing isolation of the person,
which is a source of suffering and corrosion for both individuals and
for society.
"If it is true that the defence and promotion of
human dignity 'have been entrusted to us by the Creator, and to whom the
men and women at every moment of history are strictly and responsibly
in debt', it is equally true that this responsibility particularly
concerns people called to positions of responsibility. They, especially
if animated by Christian faith, must be 'strong enough to provide coming
generations with reasons for living and hoping'".