Rome, Italy, Mar 16, 2017 / 02:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- This week Cardinal George Pell sat down with some 20 students from Harvard visiting Rome, with the goal of challenging them to both set firm ideals and to work hard to achieve them – something the Church can help with by providing a basic framework for moral leadership.
In a March 14 interview with CNA ahead of his speech, Cardinal Pell said the main point he would make to the students is “that they need a cause. They need a set of principles that they accept and follow and that they will be prepared to make sacrifices for.”
He stressed the importance of conveying the message that as future leaders “they need to be courageous and they need to be persevering. And if they can be strategists, take a long-term view, so much the better.”
Cardinal Pell, prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, spoke just before giving his speech on Principled Leadership to a group of 20 people who are among Harvard University’s graduating class of 2017 and who traveled to Rome for a four-day “Harvard Vatican Leadership Summit.”
A student-led initiative, the event was held at the Pontifical Lateran University and hosted students from various backgrounds at Harvard, including the business, law, divinity, medical, and dental schools.
In addition to Cardinal Pell, other key figures participants have met with during the summit include Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin; Vatican Secretary for Relations with the States, Archbishop Paul Gallagher; Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Integral Human Development; and Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education.
In his comments to CNA, Cardinal Pell outlined the key principles that ought to guide business and economic decisions, saying that no matter what, “you must be aware of the common good.”
“Think of the whole of society, not just the shareholders, not just the workers in the small group,” he said. “Have some real understanding of what justice is. Have a special sensitivity for those who are less fortunate, those who are poor.”
One of the most important things to have a constant awareness of is our responsibility toward future generations, he said, cautioning that one modern danger is that “people know more and more about less and less.”
An advantage of the Catholic Church in this regard, he said, is that it can help provide “a general scheme” into which specific principles, causes, and points of view can fit.
However, he stressed that despite the Church’s role in providing this scheme for various fields, particularly economics and business, it is above all a religious institution, and as such doesn’t embrace any one system in particular.
Reflecting on criticisms Pope Francis has at times voiced in reference to the current global market system, the cardinal stressed that the Pope “is a religious leader, he is not an economist.”
The Church, he said, “does not espouse socialism, much less communism or Nazism or the free market. It announces general principles and says this fits or that doesn’t fit.”
“We should listen very seriously to everything the Pope says on economics,” he said, but emphasized that as Christians, we listen to him because “he is the successor of Peter, he teaches us things religious.”
In this sense the Pope is applying Gospel standards to the economic situation, Cardinal Pell said, adding that if he himself were to speak out on the topic, people wouldn’t necessarily need to take notes on the economic aspect, “but if I preach the Gospel, I hope people listen.”
Since not all of the students participating in the summit are Catholic, the cardinal voiced his hope that they would walk away with at least a better idea of the Church’s social doctrine.
He brought a compendium of the social doctrine of the Church for each of the participants, because it is “a coherent exposition on many, many important topics,” including “right and wrong, natural law, subsidiarity, the common good and different types of justice.”
The Catholic Church is “one of the few organizations that has an over-arching system of thought to make people think,” he said, explaining that “it is logical and coherent, it’s an impressive piece of work.”
Cardinal Pell praised the idea of summit as unique, and “exactly what a Catholic university needs to be doing.”
“I think the Christian perspective brings flourishing, brings life, makes good societies, brings happiness, development,” he said. So to have a group of students from a university such as Harvard is “a wonderful thing. I think it’ll be good for them and it’ll be good for us.”
Okendo Lewis, a student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government who spent part of his childhood in Milan, was the one who initially thought of the summit and made it happen with the help of Mary Ann Glendon, who was a US Ambassador to the Holy See during the George W. Bush administration and who now teaches at Harvard Law School.
In comments to CNA, Lewis said part of why he wanted to offer students a Vatican perspective on leadership is because “there seems to be a crisis in leadership” throughout the world, “and Pope Francis very much speaks to many who are trying to figure out how to lead in these difficult times.”
“I definitely wanted this next generation of leaders, whether they’re in business or in medicine or in law, to learn from the wisdom of the Pope, but also the city and the Church, which has had two thousand years of experience,” he said.
Lewis said he initially had doubts about whether or not people would come, since it was already late when they started to advertise the trip. However, they received over 180 applications, and had to narrow it down to 20 spots.
“I think that speaks to the power of the Catholic Church and the interest there is in Pope Francis. So people were actually very enthusiastic to be here,” he said.
Lewis voiced his hope that the summit would become an annual event. This year’s theme of “How to Answer the Call to Serve” fits into what most of the university’s students hope to accomplish, he said, explaining that “they’re trying to figure out how to leverage their education and their studies to help meet the needs of society, how can they be student leaders.”
“So my hope is that this will become an annual tradition so that students across Harvard and hopefully across the United States, can come to Rome and learn from so many of the institutions here where there’s the pontifical universities, there are dicasteries, and certainly the Pope himself.”
Kiernan Schmidt, a student at Harvard Business School, told CNA he wanted to participate not only because of his Irish and Catholic background, but also because the idea of “how morality plays into the decisions we make” as leaders in various fields.
“The idea of examining how morality guides our leadership styles was really the main impetus,” he said, adding that Pope Francis’ challenge for global leaders “to reexamine what we’re doing for each other and how we think of ourselves as leaders” was also a key factor.
What had impacted Schmidt so far in the meetings they had with Vatican officials was “hearing humility from almost every level of leadership that we’ve met with.”
Another point of particular interest was gaining “a profound understanding that traditions and conditions in local Churches can be very different from what you hear in Rome.”
“I think that that adjusting of leadership and tactics in how we approach problems can be very different in the cultural context,” he said, noting that in their meeting with Archbishop Gallagher, the prelate told them that he not only explains Rome to the local Churches of where he goes, but he also “explains the local Churches to Rome.”
This “two-way dialogue” in the Church, Schmidt said, “was something that felt very new, very refreshing and very modern and also very true to the words we hear from Pope Francis, you know, approaching problems with humility and seeking to talk one to one.”
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Of course a headliner announcement, made in the likeness of a papal pronouncement. Card Hollerich’s premise that a happy medium will be found to appease those with their knives out is, rather than amelioration, the mistake that permanent truth, intrinsic evil, the revealed nature of the good acts necessary for salvation can be essentially adjusted.
We may, out of good will, empathize with Card Grech’s rejoicing over the joy in the eyes perceived in Synod participants. Sentiment, though a necessary feature of our humanness, does not determine good or evil, nor in itself the rationale. That belongs to the apprehensive capacity of intellect. While there is an attractiveness to an ordained women’s diaconate – for one I would not be blown away should it occur, whereas approval of adult homosexual relations, Hollerich’s pet proposal is intrinsic evil in any form of behavior – it does not find evidence in Christ’s institution of the laying of hands by Him, and transfer to the Apostles. After Vat II Catholic professors argued the ludicrousness of the ‘pipeline’ doctrine, the unbroken lineage of laying of hands. Although they offered zero argument for the validity of simply wishing to be an ordained minister of the Gospels. The truth is, revealed truth cannot be mitigated to make us all feel jolly. The truth of Christ requires effort, sacrifice, obedience, and the sine qua non of humility.
We read: “Grech said one bishop told him he saw ‘ice melt’ in people during the gathering.”
Not to throw cold water on the festivities and even the possibilities, but simply to notice that as a band continued to play, ice fragments also melted for a short while on the deck of the “unsinkable” Titanic.
RE: the vote on women deacons. I think so many voted FOR reviewing the issue in the future because an overwhelming number of lefties, lay and cleric, were invited to the synod by Pope Francis. He was packing the vote. We don’t need women deacons- we need more men to be encouraged to serve as deacons. Women do ENOUGH already. Move over and make room for the men (fathers).
Three men in our diocese applied to be permanent deacons. All three were rejected. Why? Well I don’t know about two of the men, because I have never met them (different parish, far away), but I am aquatinted with one of them. He leans toward “traditional”.
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Something tells me that has something to do with it.
Obviously, all are no aware that apostate Bishops and Cardinals are completely public in their open rejection of the commands of Jesus and The Holy Spirit’s revelation / commands against fornication and sodomy.
That apostasy is a given.
On the prospect of ordaining women as deacons, this is the more subtle form of manipulation. One convert Jennifer Ferrara, noted in her conversion story (in the book “There We Stood, Here We Stand”), that when she, as an orthodox-believing Lutheran pastor, read in 1996 that the ELCA had decided to cover the cost of all abortions in its health care plan for Church employees, she was stunned, in reading this response by a fellow-orthodox Lutheran pastor: “Resl Churches Don’t Kill Babies.”
Ferrara noted that though she was orthodox, that is, believed in the commands against fornication, sodomy and abortion, she was an oddity among ordained women in the ELCA, who were in the vast majority what she called “liberals,” particularly regarding sexual morality.
Within 2 years of accepting abortion, the ELCA entered into an “altar and pulpit fellowship” with the United Church of Christ, “which ordained practicing homosexuals.”
So, the result on display is that the women’s ordination thing is just a stalking horse for the sanctification of fornication, sodomy and abortion.
Chris, I should add to your last sentence: “abortion.”…all of which will tend to future sanctioning of ‘lawful’ transhuman promulgating and propagating, pedophilia, polyamory, trafficking and slavery and euthanasia of ‘recalcitrant’ persons or their offspring, etc. Venial sins tend to mortal when left unchecked.
-Sponsored and approved by the powerful lacking without soul, heart, or head.
The vote by this group proves nothing except how many of them lack a spine. That would be the majority. Too afraid to buck the very clear sentiments of the current Pope. Too afraid to be castigated by the press as being anti- woman and anti-woke. So, if these women are ordained deacons, where do they go from there? That’s assuming there is a “there” left, after disaffected Catholics take their wallets and leave over such a travesty. Or is this just a slippery slope down the hill to ordained women priests?? My opinion of this synod remains unchanged. Disgusting and unneeded.
There will be no change in doctrine or organization. Just cosmetic change whereby we are friendlier to gays and women. So what?
Francis is a pastor, not a cop. No real change, but less confrontation.
“Just cosmetic change whereby we are friendlier to gays and women.”
Ah, that explains the endless documents, constant meetings, month-long meeting in Rome (with another in a year). Makes perfect sense.
“Francis is a pastor, not a cop.”
Especially if you prefer traditional liturgy, think doctrine is important, uphold moral teachings, and think the constant chatter and bloviating about sexual devianc—er, diversity, women priests, women deacons, etc., is both confusing and counter-productive to authentic witness.
Less sarcastically: anyone paying attention to the Rupnik situation (as well as a host of others over the past decade) knows that Francis’s handling of it has been an abomination and is about as anti-pastoral as can be.
Yes, Rupnik was mishandled. Remember Marcial Maciel and so many others that were also mishandled by other Popes.
You seem to worry so much about Synods doing damage, but the clerical sexual abuse of minors scandals have done much more damage. A lot of people have just walked away in disgust. As that great American philosopher Yogi Berra said: “If people don’t come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them.” Substitute Church for ballpark and I think it covers the situation.
“the clerical sexual abuse of minors” – translated = homosexual lifestyle of clergy.
I was told in a follow up comment to my recent lament that I was being “nonsensical” to hold the view I will now repeat whether it was well received or not the way I awkwardly expressed it when I was half asleep. (CWR might consider an edit option) When our Church orchestrates a performance for the whole world to take notice and advertise to the whole world that this is what the Holy Spirit is endorsing because our Pope says it is, and we blasphemously presume to dictate our ruminations to the Holy Spirit, yet we claim to have a Deposit of Faith that has been formed historically by a blood, sweat, and tears struggle of saints responding to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and today we put on a buffoonish display before the world of committees “rethinking” that maybe God got it tragically wrong in the truth He endowed in the past to His Church and His people to give witness to the world, then it does not matter that no doctrines have been changed.
The integrity of God’s people giving witness, including our mission to witness such things like the sacredness of unborn life, now mystically divorced from sexuality at the behest of the morally bankrupt, has been made a laughingstock to the entire world. And consequences of mass murderous proportions are no laughing matter.
A renewed commentary well worth posting Edward.
IMO, Cdl. Hollerich has had his fifteen minutes of fame.
His Eminence Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich is blessed with a prophetic voice. Evangelization and conversion are ongoing and never ending opportunities. The Synod on Synodality has been an exercise in examination of conscience and discernment. Good things are bound to come from those who participated in the month long retreat and their supporters who have been praying ceaselessly for the success of the Synod. Tidings of comfort and joy are awaiting pilgrims here, there, and everywhere.
Dr. Coelho, that’s really effective satire. I couldn’t stop laughing. Keep it coming.
His Eminence Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich a “prophetic voice”? If pigs could fly…
The “success of the Synod” can come either through the synod, OR around it. One embedded agenda item about the “fly” (and endorsed by Hollerich) has been to “walk together” past the sexual abuse scandal to now abuse the Holy Spirit.
Well, bypassing or moving around this and other embedded agendas, things might be looking up, after all. Here’s a link to a critique by Cardinal Muller of the DRAFT synodal report, together with a later link covering changes in the FINAL report which, of course, is not final…
https://www.ncregister.com/interview/cardinal-mueller-says-synod-on-synodality-is-being-used-by-some-to-prepare-the-church-to-accept-false-teaching
https://www.ncregister.com/news/synod-on-synodality-what-changed