july, 1th 2010

The French National Assembly begins debating a complete ban on Muslim full face veils in public next week and could outlaw them by the autumn. Belgium’s lower house of parliament has passed a draft ban and could banish them from its streets in the coming months if its Senate agrees. The Spanish Senate has passed a motion to ban them after a few towns introduced their own prohibitions.

Calls to ban “burqas” — the word most widely in Europe used for full veils, even if most full veils seen are niqabs — have also been heard in the Netherlands and Denmark. According to a  Financial Times poll,  the ban proposal also “wins enthusiastic backing in the UK, Italy, Spain and Germany”.

Only a tiny minority of Muslim women in these countries actually cover their faces, but that doesn’t seem to matter. That Switzerland has only four minarets didn’t stop Swiss voters from banning them in a referendum last November (and maybe banning veils next). There seems to be a movement to ban religious symbols that Europeans either reject or fear.

Is this the best way for Europe to deal with the veil? Should governments just introduce ever tougher policies and Muslims counter with increasing opposition?  Is there another approach that could offer a more harmonious outcome?

Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Roman Catholic Patriarch of Venice, thinks there is. His beautiful city of canals and gondolas might not be the first one would think of when discussing Muslim integration in Europe, but his Oasis Foundation there has been working with Christians and Muslims in the Middle East since 2004. His extensive contacts in the region have led to some ideas he thinks could be relevant for Europe.

First of all, Scola thinks bans are not the way forward.  “One risks radicalising the problem rather than resolving it,” he told Reuters. “The problem would be more adequately dealt with in the normal workings of civil society rather than by a law… One must obviously separate religion and politics, church and state. But one must recognise that religions have a public dimension.”

Muslim countries in the Middle East have seen a resurgence of Islam in recent decades, he said, with increased emphasis on the unity of the Ummah (Islamic world) and importance of visible markers of Muslim faith such as headscarves.

This has led some European Muslims to stress Islamic values and traditions over common European concepts such as the separation of church and state. “In pluralist societies, if this distinction between the religious and civil dimensions is not upheld, the universality of the Ummah can become a problem” he said.

“I think we Christians have tools that come from our history and traditions that one can use to approach this question. Christianity is universal, but the split between the spiritual and social dimensions was clear in principle since the beginning. Especially since the Second Vatican Council, we have been able to live out this universality while respecting the civil, cultural and social dimensions of different countries. We live like citizens among other citizens in loyalty to the pluralist society like in Europe. I think this is the problem of Islam today. It plays out a lot in Europe, where their presence now is massive. There is a  continual confrontation. “

Apart from “burqa bans” Scola also thinks Europeans miss the point when they say Muslims in Europe have to develop a so-called “moderate Islam” which many Muslims see as an outside effort to shape their faith to conform to western norms. Rather than trying to influence the religion from the top down, he thinks Europeans should start with Islam as it is lived by the majority of Muslims day to day. With their centuries of experience living side by side with Muslims, Middle Eastern Christians could teach Europeans an important lesson.

“For example, we should stop talking about “moderate Islam,” which is an empty term. In reality, there are only a few individuals or little groups of  intellectuals who interpret their faith in a way that is called ‘moderate Islam.’  But this is not the expression of the people’s faith.  As the Christian churches there see it, one can operate a dialogue with the Islam of the people. In this sense, our strength is that we know these situations well and see what we can apply here to build a democratic society  in which Muslims can really integrate while respecting their religious affiliation.”

The Enlightenment and the modern era forced the Catholic Church to radically rethink its approach to freedom, Scola said. At the Second Vatican Council, it found ways to help Catholics “live a pluralist society as citizens among others, working for the common material and spiritual good without entering into conflict. Muslims in Europe should now make this transition. The fact of being in Europe could help them make this passage. Until about 10 years ago, I thought the crucial point for the development of Islam was the Middle East, especially Lebanon.  That remains very important, obviously, but I think a lot of the challenge will play out in Europe.”

Scola said what is needed is what he calls a metissage or crossbreeding of civilisations that is a continuing process, not a set goal. “I’m not arguing for syncretism” he said. “We have to conceive of laïcité in a new way, as a civil society in which all people  offer their ideals of life and ways of conceiving the material and spiritual good and try to find common ground. In this sense, one should avoid the abstract idea of multiculturalism, which hasn’t worked either in Britain or in France.”

The cardinal said Muslims should be active citizens in Europe and not try to keep a distance from society around them. “This is the way Christians (in the Middle East) do it. They have churches ant their communities, but when they enter into the life of the city of man, they enter as citizens.”

“The strength of religion is to propose a concrete universal ideal, in contrast to the formal conception of laïcité that only refers to a charter of human rights that is often reduced just to formal principles. It leaves problems unsolved … it neutralizes all public experience of religion so that, in the words of the German Idealists, it creates ‘a night in which all cows are black’.”

Many Europeans are tempted to see laïcité, as the French call the strict separation of  church and state, as “a neutral and empty place and pretend that religious people behave like atheists,” Scola said. “That’s an abstraction that in the end will not bring much luck to Europe.”

June 7, 2010

The murder of Bishop Padovese shocked the Christian world, especially in the Middle East. Do you believe this was the act of an isolated madman, or was there something more behind it?

Personally, I don’t know anything beyond what’s been in the newspapers about whether this was the act of an isolated madman (something, however, that the episcopal conference of Turkey, and above all the Archbishop of Smyrna, Archbishop Ruggero Franceschini, now the Apostolic Administrator of Anatolia, seems to rule out), or whether it was an organized act and, if so, at what level.

But from what Bishop Padovese said to us in Venice some months ago, during a meeting at the Cathedral of San Marco, I can deduce that he knew very well the risks to which he was exposing himself every day, and he faced those risks with an attitude of crystalline witness. Speaking of the church in Turkey, Padovese said: “If, as has happened in decades past, we as Christians accept being invisible, remaining an insignificant presence in the fabric of the country, there won’t be any problems. But we recognize, as is happening now in Palestine, in Lebanon, and above all in Iraq, that this is a dead-end street which doesn’t do justice to the Christian history of these countries, in which Christianity was born and flowered, and which would not do justice to the thousands of martys in these lands who have passed down to us the witness of their blood.” (Second Ecclesial Assembly, October 11, 2009).

In any case, however banal the material cause of a martyr’s death may be, the offering of their life is still radical and glorious. The episode of Saint John Baptist makes the point: a man of his stature was put to death because of the capricousness of Salome.

The Synod for the Middle East will be held in October, for which Benedict XVI presented the Instrumentum Laboris during his recent trip to Cyprus. What might we expect the synod to accomplish?

The importance and the expectations of the Synod are enclosed in its title: “Communion and Witness.” These truly are the two decisive questions for Christians in the Middle East – as they are, in a sense, for the whole church. The churches of the ‘first evangelization’ need to rediscover the freshness of their beginnings. To that end, they’re called to radically simplify their Christian proposal. The ideas of communion and witness respond to that urgency, which simply can’t be delayed.

The bishops of the Middle East, however, are well aware that given the situation facing many of them, if I can use a slightly rude expression, this is almost a “last call.” This obviously means the event will be freighted with a lot of expectations, but it will also help it go directly to what’s essential.

Pope Benedict recently visited Cyprus. Was there an impulse from that visit which is important for Christianity in the Middle East?

The trip to Cypus was striking, not only for the great value of that land which is linked to the mission of St. Paul, and not only for the richness of the pope’s reflections and declarations. It was also important for the pope’s witness to a faith that’s clearly rooted in the history of our time: his warning about the possible ‘shedding of blood’ in the Middle East, his meeting with Chrysostomos II, his embrace with the local Catholic community and the presentation of the Instrumentum Laboris to the bishops, and his declaration about the necessity of dialogue with our Muslim brothers. He added an immediate clarification, so typical of this pope, of the meaning of the term ‘brother’ – demonstrating that this was a deliberate choice of words, precisely in a moment in which the world was deeply on edge because of the killing of Bishop Padovese.

Recently the attention of the mass media with regard to the Catholic Church has been focused almost exclusively on the sexual abuse crisis. Do you believe this has created a media environment in which it’s difficult to raise awareness about the struggles of Christians in the Middle East?

The trip to Cyprus demonstrated that the Christian faith responds to the questions and the daily needs of the women and men of today, and at the same time it takes to heart the travails of a people (it’s enough to think about the obvious sorrow of the pope over the division of the island.) In that sense, it was a healthy thing for a church that’s been beat up quite a bit over the scandal of pedophilia.

The pope, with his charism, his personal example and his rigorous judgment, has devoted himself completely to addressing the crisis, and has accomplished a major step forward for us bishops, priests and laity: Now it’s up to us to follow his example, taking the necessary measures to ensure that the tragedy of sexual abuse of minors isn’t repeated, while at the same time also demonstrating the supreme ‘suitability’ of being Christian today.

The way in which the pope handled himself in Cyprus, on a Middle Eastern chessboard which has laid waste to the intelligence of the best diplomats in the world, was an eloquent demonstration that the faith still possess a strong cultural dignity, even on the human level, and in terms of the construction of the common good. If our terrible responsibility for the abuse of minors demands penance and renewed witness from all Christians, that’s also the best way to take up the truly radical question facing us today: ‘Can the post-modern person reasonably believe in Christ, and, above all, believe in the church?’

For years, experts have talked about the ‘disappearance’ of Christianity from the Holy Land and the entire Middle East. Do you see any indication that the situation is improving? Is there basis for hope … hope that’s not simply theological, but also empirical and demographic?

I think that we can’t underestimate the importance of the presence of ‘new Christians,’ meaning immigrants, mostly of Asian origins. In Cyprus, for example, the pope was welcomed not just by the Maronite community, but also by many immigrants from the Philippines, from India and from Sri Lanka. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the Gulf, and despite the absence of a full and true climate of religious freedom, it’s a presence that could continue to evolve.

That said, the loss of the presence of the most antique churches would be disastrous, because they’re a spring for our tradition, meaning a way of connecting with the Christian experience itself; moreover, they have an incredibly rich liturgical and theological patrimony, and a unique experience of contact with the Islamic world.

Today in the Middle East, everything is polarized around numerous unresolved conflicts, but, without forgetting a healthy sense of realism, we also need to be able to read all the signs of the times. Recently Fr. Samir Khalil, in commenting on the Instrumentum Laboris, made reference to certain developments in Egypt and Lebanon, affirming that “in small steps, something is moving forward.” In order for things to progress, however, we need a perspective with which to face the third millenium. Facing these new times, we’re all like babies – fascinating, but fragile. This is where the theme of education enters the picture.

[Note: In a June 6 essay, Jesuit Fr. Samir Khalil, a Lebanese Catholic theologian, pointed to declining interest among Lebanese Shi’ites in an Iranian-style theocracy, and to the fact that Muslim converts to Christianity in Egypt may still be marginalzed but they’re no longer murdered, as signs that “things are evolving in the right direction.”]

At the upcoming meeting of Oasis in Lebanon, you’re going to speak on education as ‘a proposal for our time.’ Why did you select this these? What do you have in mind?

The choice of theme was born in the journey taken by Oasis from its foundation to today, which has been a journey of understanding and exchange of experiences at the international level. The most grave problem in the Middle East is violence: violence against Christians, the permanent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but also violence among Muslims. We tend to see only the terrorism that strikes the West, but the biggest atrocities actually fall upon Mulsims themselves. Let’s not forget that in Algeria, the civil war during the 1990s left more than 200,000 people dead.

Normally, they say that to avoid violence you’ve got to promote education. Naturally that’s true, as long as it’s clear what kind of education you’re promoting. There’s a kind of education that closes someone and makes them violent, and there’s a kind that dissolves one’s personality altogether, cutting ties with the people who generated you. Certainly we need education, but not just any education. We need educational practices that know how to connect truth and freedom. In Lebanon, this necessity is very clear: the schools of that country have produced both militia members and people of peace. Now we’re trying to understand how to favor the latter. That’s a precondition to any conversation about dialogue.

Can you say something about the present situation in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims? What are the important recent developments?

There’s a theological dialogue, which in the Catholic church is entrusted to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dilaogue. The presence of Cardinal Tauran with us in Beirut represents a significant gift, and a great opportunity. Then there’s a dialogue of life, which touches all the faithful, not just in the Middle East but also in the churches of Europe. I think about my diocese, Venice, and in the Veneto, where the presence of Muslims is growing all the time.

There’s also a dialogue which takes as its theme the inevitable ‘cultural interpretations of every religious faith,’ and their implications for the human person and for the society of today. The Oasis Foundation locates its activity above all at this level. In this sense, it seems decisive to me that Muslims learn how to open themselves to the experience of Christians in the West. In the West, Christians passed through an era of Caesaropapism and theocracy, but today they understand how to celebrate the public importance of their faith in full respect for the pluralistic secular society in which they live. Muslims can profit from this experience, just as we can learn from them in other areas.

The Scientific Committee of the Oasis International Foundation

FOYER NOTRE DAME DU MONT, THE LEBANON, 21-22 JUNE 2009

EDUCATION BETWEEN FAITH AND CULTURE: CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM EXPERIENCES IN DIALOGUE

EDUCATION AS PAIDEIA.

A PROPOSAL FOR OUR TIME

+ Card. Angelo Scola,

Patriarch of Venice

At the beginning of the deliberations of the Scientific Committee of the Oasis International Foundation I believe that it is necessary to take an overall look at the pathway that has been followed over the last seven years in order to assess the importance of the initial insight that brought some of us together in Venice in 2004 and at the same time to reflect in a critical way on the steps that await us. In this way, in addition to making the numerous Lebanese invitees who are amongst us today (whom I would like to thank in a heartfelt way for their presence and my gratitude goes in a particular way to His Most Eminent Beatitude the Patriarch Sfeir, His Excellency Minister Tareq Mitri, the Nuncio, the kind speakers, the large number of Bishops, the rectors and the professors) informed about the origins and the goals of the Oasis Foundation, we will be able to renew our shared commitment to an undertaking that is not without complexity

However, in engaging in an assessment of our work in this glorious land of the Lebanon, we cannot but start, to be realistic, from a bitter observation: rarely as much as over the last year, and I would say above all over the last month, have we feared that we were coming very close to a point of no return. The Holy Father said this forcefully in Cyprus when he feared that in the Middle East there would be ‘greater bloodshed’ if an ‘urgent and concerted international effort to resolve the ongoing tensions in the Middle East, especially in the Holy Land’, was not rapidly engaged in. Such a conflict – in the Lebanon this is well understood – would have disastrous consequences, first of all in terms of human lives but also because of its destabilising effects well beyond the boundaries of the States that might be involved. As is known, the bishops of the Middle East recently stated with painful severity in the Instrumentum laboris that was published prior to the imminent Synod: ‘For decades, the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, disregard for international law, the selfishness of great powers and the lack of respect for human rights have disrupted the stability of the region and subjected entire populations to a level of violence that tempts them to despair’. In the deliberations of this committee we cannot but take these words into account, unless, that is, we want to indulge in a deleterious abstraction which is, unfortunately, often characteristic of men of culture, to which category, indeed, many of us belong.

Faced with a challenge of such dimensions, and – to return to the overall activity of Oasis – faced with the enormous questions that the unprecedented mixing of peoples raises in every part of the world, what was the original insight from which we began? In extreme summarising form: the need to create a place of communion. The Foundation and its various tools (from its journal to the newsletter, and on to events, publications and the web site) exist for this purpose. The word ‘communion’, which was rediscovered and explored by the Second Vatican Council, has become rather widely used. And, as such, it runs the risk of being worn out. However, it is the very cloth of Christian existence and for this reason communion amongst us is an inescapable task that is still ahead of us. It is useless to add that this is not a general cause for inspiration but the principle and the method by which all the activities of the Oasis Foundation should be engaged in.

To explain the reasons for this belief of mine I can do no better than refer to a tale which in its simplicity bears within it the power of an archetype: the Tower of Babel. The event narrated by the Book of Genesis in its eleventh chapter says that the need/wish for unity (for communion) represents the constitutive element of the experience of every man and exercises upon man a permanent appeal. However it also tells us that man cannot achieve it on his own. It is precisely for this reason that each one of us, when we encounter experiences of authentic communion, albeit incipien, is easily, although not automatically, conquered by them. We also well know that the figure of Babel is matched in the New Testament by the event of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:5-12), that is to say of the Church, and for we Christians communion is – mysterious but real – participation in the Body itself of the Lord. But because of the unstoppable internal dynamic specific to objective love, communion opens up to involve, in concentric circles according to due distinctions, all men, and, for Oasis, Muslims in particular. Again in Cyprus Benedict XVI called Muslims ‘brothers and sisters’, adding, almost to clarify that for him this was not a mere figure of speech, ‘brothers and sisters despite the differences’. Brothers and sisters, we are convinced, not only as men but also and in a specific way as believers, albeit in the variety and at times irreducibility of theological perspectives. The task of Oasis, which obviously should be declined in various fields of work, is to end everything here: to foster the dynamic of Christian communio which because of its very internal logic tends, to the extent that it finds acceptance, to expand ad extra as well. How does it do this? I can only refer briefly to this here because the analysis would lead us far away: through witness, understood in its fullest sense. Witness, therefore, not only as good example but more specifically as a method and communication of truth. This is what Jesus, the ‘faithful witness’ (Ap 3:14) taught us when in front of Pilate ‘I was born and came into this world for this purpose, to speak about the truth’ (Jn 18:37). Here I invite everyone to read the text that His Excellency Msgr. Luigi Padovese gave to us, just a few months ago, during the Second Church Assembly of the Patriarchate of Venice, which has the significant title ‘Christians in Turkey: the Value of Witness’. It is striking to re-read today his words which amongst other things demonstrate how well aware he was of the dangers to which he exposed himself: ‘If, as has happened in past decades, we accepted as Christians not to appear, remaining an insignificant presence within the fabric of the country, there would be no difficulties, but we are realising that, as is happening in Palestine, in the Lebanon and above all in Iraq, this is a road of no return which does not do justice to the Christian history of these countries in which Christianity was born and flourished, and which would not do justice to the thousands of martyrs who in these lands left to us as a heritage the witness of their blood’ (11 October 2009).

1. Tradition and Education

Please forgive me if in order to commence today’s deliberations I have moved from apparently far off, stressing again the proprium of our shared journey. This has led us over the years to speak about unity and diversity (Venice 2005); fundamental rights and democracies (Cairo 2006); the mestizaje of civilisations (Venice 2007); religious freedom (Amman 2008); and lastly the role of traditions (Venice 2009) in contemporary plural society. They emerged, amongst other things, as a concrete setting for the inevitable cultural interpretation of every religious faith. This is a central interest of Oasis. From tradition – to which we addressed ourselves last year – to education, to which this year’s meeting is dedicated, is but a short step, even though it is not one to be taken for granted. Education, as a first approximation, is specifically that process made up first and foremost of good relations and virtuous practices, of the transmission (traditio) of an overall interpretation of reality, offered to an assessment of the freedom of the person being educated. To speak about this in the Lebanon is an extraordinary opportunity for Oasis because this is a country – I believe I am not mistaken – that has chosen to link its destiny to the success or failure of the undertaking of education. Here education emerges as a serious case par excellence: where it succeeds it assures a ‘being-together’ – ‘coexistence’ seems to me to be a reductive and worn out term – which has gained the admiration of the whole of the world; but when it fails, it leaves the field open to the worst forms of violence.

And yet – and we should not conceal this fact – the undertaking of education is in difficulty in almost all latitudes. This is certainly the case in the West where by now reference is openly made to an ‘educational emergency’ and where not rarely the very idea of education seems to have been lost. But it is also the case in the rest of the globe. As the Algerian intellectual Mustapha Cherif, formerly the Minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research, wrote with critical lucidity in an article being published in Oasis: ‘In the Muslim world…Society falls between the anvil and the hammer: there are the ignorant who censor society and level it downwards and there are groups that practise a mimetic approach based on immoral modernism’. In many post-colonial societies the system of state and non-state schools has still not managed to assure mass quality education. And yet, Cherif goes on, ‘as regards the defence of its own sovereignty a country depends on its capacity to produce and assimilate knowledge’. In many cases it is the linguistic question that becomes a mirror of the difficult relationship with modernity. What does it mean for a student to receive a humanistic and religious formation in his or her own national language and a scientific education in English or French? Does one not insinuate the idea that the two areas of knowledge are incommunicable, opening thereby the road to schizophrenic attitudes that facile artificial concordances between science and faith cannot hope to heal? Let us not forget, for that matter, that it is specifically the linguistic question that led us to decide to publish the journal Oasis in its singular editorial formula.

However, our goal is not to indulge in critical aspects nor to formulate dubious classifications as regards the respective gravity of the educational emergencies of the East and of the West but, rather, to offer some lines of approach.

2. Rediscovering the Breadth of Reason

To educate we need an idea of man and above all practice of the humanum. Not an abstract idea, therefore, but an idea inevitably linked to the integral and elementary experience of every individual. Redemptor hominis states with conviction: ‘We are not dealing with the “abstract” man, but the real, “concrete”, “historical” man’. Unfortunately, however, the idea of man implicit in large part in current educational practice, certainly in the West but also at a global level, with respect, at least, to the formation of transnational elites, is increasingly that of a divided subject: on the one hand, it is said to be rational objectivism, and, on the other, in a complementary way, emotional subjectivism. Only the first sphere is said to pertain to education, which is thus said to consist in a correct transmission of information, techniques, abilities and skills. Education in this approach would thus become a synonym for training in the use of reason, for that matter reduced to its instrumental component. Outside the field of reason, and in the final analysis also of education, is said to lie, instead, the world of the affections, the exclusive dominion of a subject who constructs and invents himself or herself in an autonomy that tends to be self-referential and dangerously fragile. In addition, one should at the least refer to the fact that this dualistic conception of the human is increasingly giving way to an absolute positivism. That which, above all as a result of the amazing discoveries of the neurosciences and bio-convergences, refer back all the expressions of the emotional, affective and moral sphere to pure cerebral activities, which in the future could, according to some, even become artificial. We are thus confronted with a conception of reason limited to the empirical-instrumental sphere that does not take into account the detailed modalities by which the human logos is exercised but which must be at the base of an adequate idea of education.

I usually refer to this by using the classical term ‘paideia’ which was made famous by the studies of Werner Jaeger but which is here taken up in a broad sense suggested by Maritain. The notion of paideia, for our daily encounter of Christians and Muslims, has the great advantage of directing us back to one of the two traditions which in different ways we share: the classical heritage and more specifically the heritage of late antiquity, when, that is to say, the dialogue between Hellenic thought and the Biblical message began to take form.

In the famous ethical tract composed in Persia in the tenth century by Miskawayh, ‘The Refinement of Character’, one can read: ‘The perfection which is particular to man is twofold, for he possesses two faculties, one of which is the cognitive and the other the practical. With the one he desires knowledge and the sciences and with the other the organization of things and their arrangement in order. These two perfections are the ones which were indicated by the philosophers. They said: Philosophy is divided into the theoretical part and the practical part. When a man masters both parts, he gains complete happiness’. This quotation could be equally at home in Athens, Alexandria or Rome, not to mention medieval Latin. It well illustrates that ‘Agreement of Two Wisdoms’ – both Christian and Muslim – which in this, as in so many other fields, is not difficult to document.

However, to come to our time and taking advantage of the ineluctable acquisitions of modern and contemporary thought about original structure (foundation), we can state that always and in all cases ‘something gives itself to someone’. This formulation acts only to cut to the bare essentials the classical belief about the intelligibility of the real and the ability of man to host it.

If such is really the case, the task of the educator is that of introducing the person who is being educated to an integral experience of reality. He or she will guide him or her in deciphering its meaning because in offering itself to my freedom reality shows that it already possesses its own unity and thus a logos to be discovered.

3. An Encounter of Freedom

One could well illustrate the wealth included in this vision of paideia compared to an education reduced to mere training, that is closed because of an acritical reduction of the broad spectrum of reason to that question about ultimate things which, in line with the famous phrase of Comte, one should no longer pose.

Of great interest, instead, even though it is not possible to do this, would be to explore what it implies for Christians and Muslims to believe that not only does reality give itself to the subject that hosts it but that it itself is given (or to use a more precise terminological term, ‘created’) and therefore refers back beyond itself to a First Giver. Another line of shared research could be the process of research in which is manifested a certain unification of the multiple which in the view of some refers back to an antecedent Unity which is not of a so-to-speak merely gnoseological character. It would be advisable to discuss the possible role of knowledge about God (I do not dare to say of theology because of the known difficulties of translating that term into the technical language of Islam) as an overall interpretative hypothesis of the real. Furthermore, we could explore what is the meaning of the fact that our being in the world is located for the subject in the chain of generations: within, therefore, tradition. It is evident that one is dealing here with ineluctable questions for the work that awaits us.

But as I have just observed, the emphasis on the capacity of a subject to receive the intelligible real represents only one dimension of paideia. The other equally important dimension is its calling onto the stage the freedom, indeed the freedoms, of the educator and the educated who are always located within a fabric of social relationships. And here it is appropriate to speak about the educational risk. Introduction to a unitary existential hypothesis about the real does not take place without a dual risk. The risk first of all of the person being educated who cannot call any truth ‘his’ or ‘hers’ if he or she does not do this with his or her freedom, as indeed Goethe brilliantly observed: ‘What you have inherited from your fathers, make it your own, so as to be able to possess it’ (‘Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, erwirb es, um es zu besitzen’).

On the other hand the educator as well cannot get out of a self-exposition. The person who says ‘do that’ does not educate. He who invites the student with the words ‘do that with me’ does educate. Indeed, he or she communicates what is dearest to him or her and in doing this makes himself or herself, after a certain fashion, naked. Education – the Church has always taught – is a form of charity, an act of love where the educator offers the whole of himself or herself in witness to that truth that he or she lives as an adequate interpretative key of the real.

In the final analysis education is thus generation and constitutes in all cultures an experience of paternity and sonship.

For we Christians it has its roots in the intra-Trinitarian relationships – relationships that have the face of the singular experience of the relationship of Jesus with the Father and the Spirit.

When reflecting on this ‘encounter of freedom’ which constitutes the second dimension of paideia, we should recognise with great realism that religions, above all when they have acquired or have had imposed upon them the function of being a social glue, have not always known how to defend themselves from the temptation of seeing themselves as the bearers of a truth that is ‘so evident’ as to make completely extrinsic and thus superfluous the absent of freedom on the part of the freedom of the interlocutor. Thus today it happens that whereas, at least at the level of transnational elites, the tendency is spreading to celebrate a freedom detached from any reference to truth-good, there is manifested, as an equal and contrary reaction, the impetus to uphold a truth that is said not to require the involvement of the freedom of the subject in affirming itself as truth. Truth would not be vital gift but only a formal teaching. This is fundamentalism, a pathology of education as grave as forgoing a recognition of the objective ‘claim’ of truth. It can even come to use violence where a partisan spirit lacerates a community by destroying the political good of being together: that practical social good on which the Lebanon has wagered its own existence as a nation.

It is often repeated, and not without good grounds, that the best antidote to fundamentalism and violence is education. We should, however, add: not any kind of education but an education that knows how to keep truth and freedom together. And this last in its personal dimension and communal dimension (including therefore freedom of expression and criticism, even when this is painful, where necessary, and as regards religious freedom, conversion as well). Only an adequate anthropology, based upon I-in relation to God, with other people and with ourselves, will thus allow us to avoid a violent negative tendency, without giving way to an unsatisfactory agnosticism.

And it is at this level, in my view, very much prior to the question of the exegesis of Holy Scriptures, which is so often evoked and yet central, that the decisive future of religions will be played out.

4. The ‘Craft of Living’

In this paper of mine I have not been able to refer to fundamental issues that will be addressed at this morning’s and this afternoon’s sessions: indeed, we will hear religious education and the formation of religious discussed, we will allow ourselves to be guided by the great experience that the Catholic Church and the other Christian communities, as well as the Muslim communities, of the Lebanon have developed in this field, and we will discuss the relationship between education and the creation of national identity. All of these are central aspects for our subject which because of their importance go well beyond the horizons of the Lebanon.

Allow me, however, to end my paper by inviting you to fix your gaze on the fascination of the undertaking of education. A great Italian writer of the twentieth century, Cesare Pavese, gave his diaries the title ‘The Craft of Living’. To teach the craft of living, to teach man to be man, freely able to adhere to truth, is the unfinished task of education. It presents itself afresh to every generation because, as Benedict XVI acutely observed, ‘Unlike what takes place in the field of technology and economics, where the progress of today can build on that of the past, in the ambit of the moral formation and growth of persons such an accumulative possibility does not exist, because human freedom is always new and therefore each person and generation must make their own decisions in their own name’.

And it is once again the philosopher Miskawayh who teaches us, with the whole of the authentically humanistic tradition, the supreme dignity that is inherent in this attempt: ‘Man is the nobles of [the] existents, but, when he does not perform the actions distinctive of his substance he resembles […] the horse which, if it ceases to perform completely the actions distinctive of a horse, is uses as a donkey for carrying loads or as cattle for slaughtering and is better dead than alive. In view of this, it must follow that the art which is concerned with the betterment of man’s actions so that he may perform them completely and perfectly in accordance with his substance […] is the noblest and the most honorable of all the arts.’.

April 29, 2010. G. Fäldt, translation from the Italian for the Nordic Catholic Family Congress May 14-16, 2010, Jönköping, Sweden

Nordische Katholiche Familienkongress

Amore e Vita (Love & Life)

Jönköping, Freitag, 14 Mai 2010

+ Angelo Cardinal Scola

Patriarch of Venice

Before approaching the theme that the conference organizers have given me, which concerns God’s plan regarding the relation between man and woman in the sacrament of marriage, I would like to greet each one of you most warmly and thank His Excellence Monsignor Anders Arborelius who invited me at the end of June 2008 to take part in this meeting for families.

I would also like to thank the permanent deacon Göran Fäldt who has been in contact with me throughout the period leading up to the conference and Mrs Antonella Larsson who has done her utmost to make my trip to Sweden go as smoothly as possible.

My presence here can be traced back to two reasons on a personal level.

The first reason is related to the beauty and the necessity that an exchange of communion within the Churches be sought with ever-increasing tenacity. The communion of the baptized is a telling sign of the unity that is necessary so that “the world may believe” (Jn 17, 21).

The second reason is a conviction which was strongly underscored by Benedict XVI during the ad limina Visit of the Bishops of the Scandinavian countries, in which he referred to this Congress. The Pope spoke of the “centrality of the family for the life of a healthy society” which implies a deepening and a broadening of “the institution of marriage and the Christian understanding of human sexuality”[1]. Man today – the so-called post-modern man – is, at the same time, confused and thirsting. That is why modern man needs to meet men and women who are able to witness to their enthusiasm originated by the unique beauty of the sacrament of matrimony.

I now need to make another brief premise to the question we are about to approach. My lecture will, as I think the title shows, provide an anthropological framework that is intended as a foundation. For that reason it will not address individual ethical and legal problems in detail, which will be addressed in other talks or during the study groups. Also, it would actually not make sense to go into issues that sometimes present themselves very differently in the countries of northern Europe compared with Italy.

There is a third preliminary point to be made. There are some difficulties linked to the theme in my lecture. I sincerely hope that you will work on these difficulties in the study groups, and subsequently, perhaps in groups back home in your parishes, on the text.

1. Love, marriage and family put to the test.

To begin with we should start from the reality of the Euro-Atlantic society we find ourselves in. The current cultural climate is now often classified as post-modern. Obviously, this concept includes a variety of meanings and we cannot summarize them all here. But I believe that some of its features are quite easily observable.

First we find ourselves in a situation of advanced secularization. Clearly, secularization is not the same in all countries. You cannot establish immediate parallels between your countries and, for example, Italy. Or even between Italy and France and Germany. I think, however, that a common core of the secularization of all Euro-Atlantic societies lies in what the Canadian philosopher Taylor defines the third sense of secularization. This consists in considering faith in God as one option among others. In other words, we have gone from a society in which it was “virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer this is one human possibility among others”[2].

The second characteristic of post-modernity, linked to the first, is that man today risks emphasizing individual freedom of choice so far as to consider it as constituting the whole of freedom. In this way, it has no link with any objective good.

The third aspect is the unique combination that has been achieved over the past two centuries between science and technology, especially in biology and increasingly in the neurosciences. This has brought about a major change in the vision of reality. Truth is no longer given by the correspondence between the intellect and the “thing” (adaequatio rei et intellectus), sometimes not even by what is empirically observable. Truth is reduced to what is technically feasible. This ends up by establishing a dangerous equation: “you can, so you must”[3] (technological imperative).

The interweaving of these factors has also radically changed the way in which man sees himself, giving rise to new situations and changes also within the ambit of love and the family. Divorce, unmarried couples, same-sex unions, the reality of living single, contraception, abortion, medically assisted reproduction, the possibility of pre-natal or pre-implantation diagnosis, cloning, as well as homosexuality, have produced a series of separations in the sphere of love, marriage and the family: between the couple and being parents, between parenting and procreation, between the couple-family and sexual difference[4]. These mutations do not stop at the private sphere, but invade civilian life in the same way. In fact, the legislature, in varying degrees in the different countries of the Euro-Atlantic area, is increasingly open to ensuring the rule of law to any “desire” of the citizen-subject, which, moreover, can be extended through the undefined possibilities of technoscience.

From this context we derive a series of questions: should sexual difference, love and fertility be considered contingent facts that can be overcome nowadays – or perhaps already have been – or do they have an absolute value? Are these three factors, taken together, really essential for the experience of marriage and the family? Does their unity deserve to be maintained and consciously pursued as something that calls for the freedom of every person to choose what is good in view of his own good? Is the family founded on a man and a woman’s marriage that is faithful, public and open to life really the appropriate way to develop the whole person? Coming to your countries and considering the plurality of worldviews in them, starting from the difference between believers and non-believers, and considering the various ecclesial and religious affiliations that give rise to a large number of mixed and interreligious marriages, one might ask: how can this plurality of visions be lived in a positive way within the family itself?

Do not all these burning questions urgently propose another question, which summarizes all the previous ones, and which each of us is now called upon to answer, at least implicitly: who or what does the man of the third millennium want to be? Until the fall of the walls between political systems and ideologies, we witnessed a dispute over being human (John Paul II). At the time, the question in dispute – man himself – was somehow identifiable. Today, on the other hand, so much has been lost in the understanding of who man really is.

There are two roads along which post-modern man seeks an answer. Travelling along the first road he wants to be “only his own experiment”, an expression used by a German philosopher of science. Enough of the talk about the person and personal dignity understood as absolute and universal principles!

The second road leads instead to reconsidering these fundamentals from the perspective of the relational nature of the person and of his faculty to be in communion with other human beings.

If man in today’s world is at this crossroads, we need to emphasize, as our meeting will confirm, that the Church is called to a new evangelization. The new proclamation of the Gospel must let Jesus Christ, the Lumen gentium, Light of the peoples, shine through its face. Evangelization must by its very nature show how the event of Jesus Christ is contemporary with man of all times in His unity of soul and body (corpore et anima unus, GS 14.) Then all the human aspects associated with the nuptial experience, such as affection, love, marriage, family, motherhood, fatherhood, brotherhood, friendship, but also consecrated virginity and celibacy, are channels through which the Church, mother and teacher devotes herself at the present historical juncture, to care for men and women, communities and peoples.

But there is also another reason, perhaps less obvious at first glance, but equally decisive, which indicates that nuptiality is rooted in the essence of the Church. The proof is in the nuptial language used in Scripture, by the Fathers, by Holy Doctors of the Church and more generally by the whole tradition of Christian thought when it describes, varying in terms of intensity and emphasis, the highest mysteries of our faith. Starting from the Sacrament of the Eucharist, in which Christ’s Body is given and his Blood poured out, we are redeemed and made fully brothers and sisters; to Baptism in which we are incorporated into Christ in the Church (the theme of the body emerges again) and made children of God in the Son (here the unbreakable bond between nuptiality and the parental relation emerges); and finally to Christ’s relationship with His Church as expressed in the letter to the Ephesians, where he uses the imagery of marriage.

If we just scroll through the list of these themes we can easily realize that what is at stake here is not only the substance of our everyday life, even in its more intimate aspects, but also, at the same time, the understanding of our faith and our belonging to the Church.

2. The nuptial mystery of sexual difference, self-giving, fecundity

The most appropriate way to deal with the problems described above is to read through the lens of the nuptial mystery in its three inextricably linked dimensions: sexual difference, self-giving, fecundity. Indeed, the expression nuptial mystery reveals the profound nature of love because by showing how the self, others and the unity of the two act together, it leads to the heart of elementary human experience[5], common to all persons, in every time and place. The fact that it is a mystery does not indicate that we are unable to know anything about it. It only suggests that since it is one of the dimensions through which every man’s personal freedom enters into a relationship with the infinite, it cannot be totally defined within one definition. In this regard, Evdokimov writes: “None of the poets and thinkers has found the answer to the question:”What is love? “[...] Do you want to trap light? It will escape through your fingers”[6].

Let us therefore briefly examine the three components constituting the nuptial mystery but never forget that they can never be separated. Each one always puts the other two into play.

a) Sexual Difference

The theme of sexual difference, the first dimension of the nuptial mystery, was developed by the Magisterium of John Paul II to deepen the prophetic strength of Humanae Vitae starting from his Catechesis on Human Love[7]. This theme was recently taken up again by Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est[8].

Taking as his starting point the two stories of Genesis on the creation of man (Gen 1:27 and Gen 2:18-25), Pope Wojtyla identifies the gendered nature of human beings as a constitutive dimension of anthropology. The individual exists always and only as male or female. What does this fact suggest? It suggests that no human being can constitute the whole of man by him or herself, because he or she will always be faced with the other way to be human. Man cannot exist “alone” (Gen 2:18), but is always in a relation. In this way, he is aware of his or her finite nature, and discovers at the same time the vocation to be open to another. It is important to emphasize that sexual difference is not accidental in nature. It is an integral part of man’s image and likeness of God. Indeed, Pope John Paul II says that “man has become the image and likeness of God, not only by his humanity, but also through the communion of persons that man and woman form right from the start[9].”

The relation between male and female therefore requires consideration simultaneously through the categories of identity and difference. While the former can be easily led back to the personal nature of human beings and the resulting equal dignity between man and woman (both equally human beings), the latter is not without problems, as one can clearly understand from the obvious difficulties of contemporary culture to think in terms of sexual difference.

Difference does not refer to a simple question of roles, nor can it be reduced to a complementarity in view of the recovery of a lost identity (lost because of a jealous god: through the merging of the two halves, as imagined by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium). On the other hand, it does not concern only the relationship between husband and wife, but all the relations in which the self is immersed, those between brother and sister, between mother and child, father and daughter and so on. Sexual difference, fully understood, is revealed as the primary mode by which the individual, one in body and soul, comes into contact with reality. Awareness of one’s being which is always situated in sexual difference creates a constant openness to others and shows a path to self-knowledge. From here you can see that the difference[10] (differre – to take the same or something elsewhere) can never be abolished. It is an unrivalled dimension of the personal self.

b) Being open to the other as gift of self

It is precisely in sexual difference adequately lived that opening oneself to another can take the form of self-giving. Starting from this fact we can better understand the link between the nuptial mystery and the sacrament of marriage, whose ultimate justification builds on the nuptial language of the Bible[11].

The theological tradition offers us a way of thinking within the framework of the text of Ephesians 5:21-33. In this text the human experience of love between spouses, based on sexual difference, is illuminated by the analogy with the spousal love of Jesus Christ for the Church, which by virtue of the sacrament of marriage involves the Christian spouses. Let me be clear: the sacrament is not an addition to the natural fact, but it is what explains it in depth. That is why St. Paul invites the spouses to know that love must be total, personal, redemptive and fecund. And this is a fact that also applies to spouses who are baptized members of different Christian traditions, because, ” by means of baptism, man and woman are definitively placed within the new and eternal covenant, in the spousal covenant of Christ with the Church […]and by their right intention, they have accepted God’s plan regarding marriage[12].”

To live its vocation fully, the union between man and woman, which is rooted in sexual difference, must be faithful and open to life. This is shown in the Catechism of the Catholic Church when it speaks of the goods and requirements of marriage[13]. In this matter it is of decisive importance to overcome a serious misunderstanding. These goods and requirements are not properties that are added to the love between man and woman. They are part of the essence of love. Where there is no faithfulness and fruitfulness there never has actually been love, in its proper sense[14]. They are not precepts of the Church which have been added, almost to put a certain restraint on the free expression of love. They are the goods – assets – which emerge from the profound nature of human love. Since they are essential to love, even though they are radically challenged by contemporary culture and customs, they are always able to show their relevance to the present day.

Let us see briefly how.

In one of his last books, the great Catholic philosopher Jean Guitton describes with much self-irony his death, his funeral and God’s judgement on his life. He imagines his soul, separated from the body, conversing with philosophers, poets, popes, politicians. In the dialogue about love, where Guitton speaks with his wife and the poet Dante, we find this brilliant statement: “Some get married because they love each other, others end up loving each other because they have married. It is a good thing that there should be both the one and the other in a marriage. – “Why do people end up loving each other, once married?” – “Perhaps because we needed to keep the direction we had taken?” Guitton suggested. His wife replied: “‘There must be something else, if it is love.” – “Marie-Louise, what is this other thing?” – “It must relate to time and eternity”[15]. There is no love that does not mean the desire of “forever”. The phenomenon of falling in love, when heard in all its seriousness, tells us the same thing. Part of the experience of those who love, is to want to give all of themselves without time limits. And it is precisely the experience of those who are loved that they want the love that embraces them to never end. In my task as a pastor, I always say to young people: “If you are truly in love, I challenge you to say it without adding “forever” ”. The “forever” is an essential part of love. Shakespeare’s genius expressed it as he angrily bursts out in a verse of a sonnet: “Love is not love/ which alters when it alteration finds/, or bends with the remover to remove./ O no, it is an ever fixed mark”[16].

If this is true for every experience of sincere falling in love, forever should be all the more present in the love of those who marry, and of Christian spouses. The call of the Epistle to the Ephesians, “as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed Himself for her to make her holy by washing her in cleansing water with a form of words, so that when he took the Church to himself she would be glorious with no spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless” (Eph. 5: 25-27, Jerusalem Bible). This call makes love “for a time” unthinkable. Not only because the gift of Christ leads as far as the sacrifice of himself on Golgotha, but also primarily because the duty that “husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself” (Eph 5:28, Jerusalem Bible) is based on the fact that “a man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it” (Eph 5:29, ibid). Within the sphere of love, time loses its disintegrating power and becomes an anticipation of eternity. The fidelity of spouses is a wonderful example of Jesus’ call to lose one’s own life in order to find it. Life is given to us to be given in turn. The cross-check of this is that if you don’t give your life, time steals it from you.

From the above we understand better what is meant when the Church repeats the Lord’s injunction “what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Mt 19:6). The verse points out that the human decision to love enacts the will to continue the work of God who created us male and female. In contrast to what contemporary culture seems to suggest, the union forever is not a burden imposed on our freedom, but a condition for being able to implement it. The indissolubility represents the possibility that freedom can be fulfilled and similarly that the desire to be loved and to love actually helps to make the original plan of the Father on the marriage transparent. This is not the result of a higher ethical capacity in the spouses. This fullness is only possible if husband and wife live their daily relationship as a sacrament, as a concrete form of their being a domestic Church. At this level we understand the importance of the spouses living an intense sacramental life which will be a continuing revival of the awareness of their baptism and of belonging to Christ. And around this centre, a great opportunity of mutual commitment is freely given through the experience of forgiveness[17].

c) Fecundity (Fruitfulness)

To find out where love ultimately leads us, seen in all its aspects, we shall have to return to its origin. To understand the third factor of the nuptial mystery, fertility – which is the outcome following the gift of self – we must start from the first factor: sexual difference.

We first remember that the person “I” is structurally related to the person “you”. Openness to the other is constitutive of the identity of the person. In giving themselves to one another by virtue of sexual difference, the bride and groom become one flesh and thereby open themselves completely to the procreation of a child. Precisely because even within the marital union the two do not merge into a unity that encompasses them, but continue to be different people in pure and full communion, they make place for a third person.

Considering the conception of a third person, the great Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar quite ingeniously said that “the act of union of two persons in the one flesh and the fruit of this union should be considered together, skipping over the factor of distance in time.[18] This statement is an argument for the prophetic power of Humanae Vitae. The procreation of children, which involves the fascinating adventure of education, expresses the full meaning of marriage[19].

I would add, incidentally, that a deep experience of conjugal love can be established even in interfaith marriages, if the spouses are made aware of the difficulties and fully respect the canon.

3. The nuptial mystery is an answer to the question of man’s love in the post-modern age.

When we meditate on marriage through the category of the nuptial mystery we can fully grasp God’s plan for man and woman. It reveals the correspondence between the three dimensions of sexual difference, self-giving and fruitfulness with the desire for happiness, which properly belongs to every human being.

In this light we can clearly see how the objections of contemporary thinking to the Christian vision and to Church teaching on the theme of human love in fact seek a reduction of man’s asking for fulfilment (“if you wish to be perfect “, Matthew 19:21), which lies in every human being’s heart. The objections stem from separating the desire from the task which is inevitably implied in every desire. What suffers as a consequence is human freedom which is no longer lived as a way to realize man’s stretching out to the infinite, but as the illusion that one can respond to this by satisfying momentarily an indefinite series of finite desires. The result of this for love is what the genius of Albert Camus had already understood: “men and women either tear each other apart in what is called the act of love or force themselves into an enduring habit for both of them” (La Peste, 1947). A union between man and woman which renounces even just one of love’s constitutive dimensions is likely to end up reducing the other person to a mere instrument of pleasure. The outcome cannot but be boredom. Only where love is recognized in its entirety, that is, as participation in God’s free plan which calls human freedom, can the Christian response to the dominant objections of today show that it has good reasons to offer. It is only on the strength of full love that we can affirm the beauty of chastity, as well as the illicitness of contraception; or the fact that life from conception cannot be disposed of, even when the life was not wanted, or is affected by malformations which do not correspond to the parents’ expectations; or the dignity of human life even when struck by serious illnesses or marked by extreme old age.

But the labour that we are living through in the present historical moment also tells us something else. At first sight, and in every way, human frailty seems to contradict the possibility of a “forever”. It seems to deny sacrifices as something good, and leads one to think of a child in terms of a “product” rather than as fruit. But seen in its depth, human frailty certifies the very truth of love. As is shown in the teaching of John Paul II, if one recognizes its own disproportion to living fidelity and exclusive love, but one remains open forever, open to sacrifice to the point of forgiveness, and open to children, then one is led to discover that desire achieves its aim only through the exercise of a task. That moves one to want love to be definitive through a duty. It is the wanting of love that leads one to decide in favour of the duty of fidelity. It is the gap between the greatness of the vocation to which one is called, and one’s incapacity to fulfil it with one’s own strength which convinces spouses – through the oath they exchange to love until death separates them – to lean their mutual fidelity on God, who is faithful love (cf 1 Jn 4: 16, Jerusalem Bible).

4. The family, a privileged place of the nuptial mystery

What we have said so far on the nuptial mystery and its dimensions is brought about and becomes understandable in family life. Family life is based on the intertwining of two kinds of relationships – one between spouses and one between generations, each with a specific way of expressing love. A person’s identity is directly related to each of these, and it is through these two types of relations that the person can live the relationship between the ‘I’ and a ‘you’ which encourages balanced growth.

The strength of the family lies in its being a privileged way for every person to develop their personal identity. Benedict XVI recently said so on the occasion of the visit ad Limina of the Bishops of the Episcopal Conference of the Scandinavian countries: “Children have the right to be conceived and carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up within marriage: it is through the secure and recognized relationship to their own parents that they can discover their identity and achieve their proper human development”.[20]

Who we are and what we think of ourselves, the trust we have in our selves, in a word the value of our individual person is rooted largely in our experience of belonging to a family body, which is inserted in the chain of generations. The basic trust of a child towards life, his awareness of being a subject worthy of love and capable of love, is born and grows within the family context. It is within the family relationships that the child can experience the promise of what is good and the happiness that his coming into the world brings. It was strongly sensed by Friedrich Hölderlin in his famous poem “The Rhine”: “It all depends on birth, on the ray of light the newborn meets”[21].

The truth of these claims becomes evident in extreme situations which give rise to a child’s question about his or her origin. Let’s think of a critical situation that involves an increasing number of children throughout Europe: the separation or divorce of parents. What is hardest to accept for their children, apart from the difficulty to adapt personally to the new situation in which their parents are also involved, is the loss of the sense of the pair bonding from which they originated. The most rigorous and thorough analyses of this phenomenon indicate that the strongest obstacle to children’s education is not so much the level of conflict to which they may have been exposed in the process of the separation of parents, as by the loss of a fundamental certainty tied to the original union of the parents. A child is aware of the fact that his existence came about through his parents and cannot adapt to the idea that this union may fail at some point without great suffering.

In the family, man discovers and sees his nature as a relational being exalted: this is why families are the place where generations care for each other. They are the first school where the person has the experience of good relationships and virtuous practices which can be extended to the Christian community and civil life. So for children, the family is the basic environment of education, and for the elderly, an irreplaceable environment of solidarity.

As the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church affirms (number 238): “The family is a community of love and solidarity that is uniquely suited to teach and transmit cultural, ethical, social, spiritual and religious values, essential for the development and well-being of its members and of society”. The family in fact transmits almost by osmosis the elementary moral experience. It is the society in which everyone, through the basic good constituted by loving relationships is “recognized” as a person, with an openness to a future “promising happiness” which also demands a task to be undertaken in relationships with other people. Before coming into contact with the other primary social institutions (community, neighbourhood, school, city) the person is raised in a family who has seen him or her being born to life. Indeed, it is through the family that man makes contact with society. From the existential point of view, and also from the purely temporal view, man is first a father, a mother, a son, a brother or a sister, and only later a citizen.

But the family, particularly by virtue of the increased longevity of people living in the northern hemisphere, is increasingly called upon to take care of older members of the family and of those who are no longer self-sufficient due to specific illnesses. Taking care of these people finds its raison d’être in the cycle of life that goes through generations, which represents another form of gratuitous love which cannot be easily replaced by other institutions, which are called to rediscover the exceptional value of the family. In the following words, Benedict XVI emphasized: “Since the family is the first and indispensable teacher of peace, the most reliable promoter of social cohesion and the best school of the virtues of good citizenship, it is in everyone’s interest, particularly that of governments, to defend and promote a stable family life”[22].

5. Bearing witness

In marriage and the family, men and women experience the nuptial mystery whose source is that splendour of love of the living God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The nuptial mystery, however, is not comprehensible as long as it is abstract. To understand and communicate the meaning of the nuptial mystery, it is necessary to show how “advantageous” the encounter with the Risen Lord is for human existence. This event of Jesus Christ needs to be announced by individual Christians in families, and by families as a whole. To have an answer to the questions raised by the practices of post-modernity, even declarations of sound doctrine made with conviction will not be sufficient. Communicating that doctrine can be put into practice will require personal experience.

For a Christian, bearing witness consists in following Jesus with the courage to acknowledge him before the world, as he did. When called to trial by Pilate, he said: “I was born for this, I came into the world for this, to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice “(Jn 18:37, Jerusalem Bible).

Only testimony that is worthy of faith can actually move the freedom of other people, inviting them strongly to make decisions. As Benedict XVI pointed out “We become witnesses when, through our actions, words and way of being, Another makes himself present.

When we bear witness, “the truth of God’s love comes to men and women in history, inviting them to accept freely this radical newness.” Through witness, God lays himself open, one might say, to the risk of human freedom.” (Sacramentum caritatis, 85).

Easter Vigil

 Gn1:1-22; Gn22:1-18; Ex14,15-15,1; Is 55:1-11; Ba 3:9-15.32-4.4;

Ez 36,16-28; Rm 6: 3-11; Lk 24: 1-12

Easter Sunday

Acts 10, 34.37-43; Ps 117; 1Cor 5: 6-8; Jn 20: 1-9

1. «I am Christ who have destroyed death, who have won the enemy and put the Hades under my feet, who have restrained the powerful and have lifted up man to the sublimity of heavens», an ancient Easter homily states. In two splendid mosaics – one present in our basilica and the other in that of Torcello which is much older – we can contemplate the powerful scene of the Anastatis (Resurrection). The Risen, with a vigorous arm, frees Adam and in him all men, from the chains of death trampling on the devil who vainly tempts to keep his victim. However, the victim manages to escape from his hands to enter in the new heavens and on a new earth. Christ is the undeniable protagonist of the scene.

Easter is the feast of Christ’s centrality in the life of man.

He is the centre of the cosmos and of history, the reading key of all the events of the existence of each one of us, of the whole human family and of the entire world.

2. «Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen» (Lk 24; 5-6). The New Testament does not describe directly the moment of the Resurrection, the central event of history. It is expressed through signs and apparitions. First of all it reports the declaration of the Angel to the women who were looking for Christ in the tomb. The announcement was so extraordinary that at the beginning it seemed to be incredible. «but this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them» (Lk 24;11). Infact that which associates the versions of the account of the resurrection given by the four Evangelists is, first of all, dismay, total surprise with which the disciples, women and men, have lived the event: «Terrified, the women bowed their heads to the ground… Peter, however, went off to the tomb, running. He bent down and looked in and saw the linen cloths but nothing else; he then went back home, amazed at what had happened» (Lk 24: 5&12). The Gospels report objectivity these first reactions of the disciples in recognizing the fact of the resurrection. For this reason they are more credible and they render reasonable our faith.

The Risen could have chosen to return along the streets, under the arcades of the Temple and to make himself recognized by the crowds who had seen him hanging on the cross. Instead he has singled out another method to attest himself as the eternal Living. «God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people but only by certain witnesses that God had chosen beforehand» (Acts 10: 40-41). Jesus did not manifest himself to the world, but to the disciples, in order to heal them, in the first place, their incredulity which was making them blind, full of fear and paralysed.

Mary of Magdala is the first – according to the account of John – to verify the empty tomb, but she thinks that someone had taken away and hid the body of Jesus. Peter enters into the tomb, he sees the linen cloths lying on the ground and also the shroud rolled up apart and he remains astonished. The other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, after having entered with Peter «saw and believed» (Jn 20:9). In order to “see” the fact in all its entity it is necessary to dispose and open the heart to embrace God’s design. The choice of the Risen to pass through witnesses to reach the whole humanity teaches us, who follow Him along the course of history, that Easter demands our personal and free adhesion. It is based upon precise historical dates indicated by the direct witnesses. Only because they have met Him “saw Him again” Risen they have passed from fear which was imprisoning them to announce Him in the public square to the point of giving their own life.

3. Faith in Christ, dead and risen is first of all a gift, the most precious gift [«This dear joy upon which every virtue is founded» as the poetical genius of Dante states (Dante, Paradise XXIV, 89-90)] which we cannot produce by ourselves, as we cannot confer life to ourselves. We can only receive it. For this reason the Church collocates the baptismal liturgy in the heart of the paschal Vigil. «You cannot have forgotten that all of us, when we were baptised into Christ Jesus, were baptised into his death. But we believe that, if we died with Christ, then we shall live with him too. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead and will never die again. Death has no power over him any more» (Rm 6: 3.8-9). Imitating in Baptism the death and the resurrection of Jesus which indicates that change of life which is a gift of the Risen and anticipation of our personal resurrection. The gift of faith is for all men. Therefore, we are challenged to accept, custody and love this precious gift. Grace and liberty. Gladness for the greatest gift and an appeal to actualise it in our daily life; in this way the deep needs of our heart can be accomplished and our brother man including the sophisticated post-modern man, can encounter He who expects.

4. «Throw out the old yeast so that you can be the fresh dough, unleavened as you are. For our Passover has been sacrificed, that is, Christ; let us keep the feast, then, with none of the old yeast and no leavening of evil and wickedness, but only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth» (1Cor 5: 7-8). The resurrection of the Lord is, therefore, first fruit and a pledge of our resurrection. What we will be, infact, has not been completely manifested, but the resurrected Jesus will open our minds and hearts to a sure and reliable hope. «This present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into the future» (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 7).

5. The sign that our present, as that of the first disciples who met Him resurrected, is touched by the future reality is called witness. «He has ordered us to proclaim this to his people and to bear witness that God has appointed him to judge everyone, alive or dead. It is to him that the prophets bear this witness: that all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven through his name» (Acts 10, 42-43). No one manages to keep for himself such a powerful gift which – as the Virgin, the Apostles and the Saints show us – overflows gratuitously from every fibre of the christian. However, to be a witness does not only, nor mainly mean to give good example, but rather to know and to communicate through our life the true news of the Resurrection.

In our days the witness (martyrion) of an increasing number of christians (in Iraq, in India and in other Eastern Counties, in Africa …) arrives to the spreading of blood. With regards to this Tertullian affirms: «We multiply ourselves every time we are reaped by you: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of new Christians [Plures efficimur quoties metimur a vobis: sanguis martyrum semen christianorum]» (Apol., 50,13: CCL 1,17). Easter intensifies the bond of communion with the martyrs and make us their humble disciples. The grace of the Risen helps us not to forget them. It urges us to proclaim in front of the whole world the power of their defenceless martyrdom and to denounce publicly the unacceptable abuse of power.

Even in the euro-Atlantic societies, willing to be plural, it has become urgent for the faithful christians to expose themselves in communicating, with humility, that the encounter with the ‘Pass’ Lord, dead and risen, appeared and ascended into heaven, is the full sense of life. The Church, our loving mother, helps us to pursue this daily.

Inevitably, from the practice of an authentic faith derives also the beneficial contribution of the christian citizens to common life. With humble frankness they should propose, not imposing, good relations at every level, and proof in every daily life virtuous practices in the sphere of affections, of work and rest. This is a contribution that, in the respect of the procedures agreed on, the christian can give to democratic life. It is a need closely connected to the faith in the Risen.

Reborn during this Easter, let us walk joyfully along the ways of the world following the Beloved Saviour of the human family. The christian, willing or not, is destined – whatever the cost, in every circumstance and in every relationship, according to the ways and the times established by the Spirit – to give witness of the universal character, valid for all men brothers, of the Easter announcement: «Surrexit Christus spes mea».

What do men and women of today long for if not such a trustful hope? Amen.

The gaze of the Redeemer imparts from the cross, with the melody of Mozart, this singular invitation: «Give me your heart». That is to say give me all of yourself. In fact, what is the heart, if not the centre of my self? The space of need-desire that constitutes me is continually stimulated by reality; does it urge to a continuous involvement? The heart is the impulse of every act of my liberty. The whisper of the crucified “Face” (your voice whispers to me) surprises us this evening during the veneration of the ancient and holy relics of the Passion.

But, is not the crucified a defeated person? How can he ask me such an audacious request?

Much more that my heart, as the heart of every man, is traversed by the insuppressible restlessness mentioned by St Agustin. Moreover, the heart is challenged by the contradictory complexity of the socio-cultural context in which today we are called to face “the task of living” which at times is demanding. A Crucified turns to an restless heart… is this not the encounter of two problems, the sum of two negatives? What good can come out?

And yet, as far as man can be alienated by his heart – that is from the centre of his true self – he has always to deal with the question of the questions which is like the wild grass in spring coming out also from thick heaps of detritus. It is remarkably expressed by the poet Leopardi in the Nocturnal canto of the Asian wandering shepherd “And what am I?” (v. 89).

Thus, why not accepting the loving invitation which for two thousand years irresistibly emanates from that singular Man who let himself be put on the shameful pole of the cross. Since two thousand years crowds and most of all, entire generations of our fathers have answered positively to the whisper of the Man of the cross.

Which is the way to recognize and see Jesus? «In order to see Jesus it is necessary to let oneself be gazed by Him». In this way we are introduced into the “overturn” that the christian faith has brought in this world: no longer our searching the face of God, but His gaze upon our face! «You gaze at me from the cross, this evening my Lord».

Allowing ourselves to be gazed by Jesus is the unique possibility to satiate the thirst of our heart so that the desire which constitutes us can be accomplished. Therefore, through the Face of Jesus looking at us also our face takes its form. Every man, infact, takes its form by the gaze of that Man who calls his liberty – vocation – to involve himself with him.

The Face of the Crucifix is the Face of He who has taken upon himself all the evil of men. Of all sin. He took it upon himself. Of my evil, of my sin. Of your evil, of your sin. Of our evil, of our sin. Of the evil of all, of the sin of all. This is why in His face is inscribed the face of every man that suffers. It is the Face of He who accepted to be treated as sin even if he did not experience sin because we, the miserable, become “justice of God” (2Cor 2,21).

«Afflicted Mother, sad days I have endured in error». This evening we stand, like His Mother, under the cross. «Stabat Mater dolorosa, iuxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius»: for centuries the christians pray with these words at the feet of the redemptive cross. We are under His gaze and, like Mary, we drink his last words.

If «this evening You gaze at me from the cross, my Lord» , if «Your voice whispers to me: “Give me your heart”». What is more reasonable for me: to resist You or to abandon myself to you?

Translation by ZENIT

VENICE, Italy, APRIL 1, 2010 – Here is a translation of the statement on sexual abuse in the Church made today Cardinal Angelo Scola, patriarch of Venice, at the end of the Chrism Mass held in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. 

The solemn occasion of the Holy Chrism Mass which sees all the presbyterate gathered here, with the deacons, women and men religious and not a few lay faithful, impels me to say a rightful word in regard to the question of the sin and crime of pedophilia committed by priests and consecrated persons. This topic, also in our country, has been for some days on the front page. 

With a calm and objective judgment I intend to manifest to you all, to all the Christian people and to all the inhabitants of the patriarchate, what in this regard I have had in my heart for days.

 1. As Benedict XVI affirmed, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco and the recent final communiqué of the permanent council of the Italian episcopal conference confirmed, pedophilia “is an odious crime, but also a scandalously grave sin which betrays the pact of trust inscribed in the educational relationship. If committed by a consecrated person, it acquires an even greater gravity.”

Hence our dismay, sense of betrayal and remorse for violated childhood and even greater our closeness to the victims and their families. Hence also, without hesitation and minimizing, the renewed commitment to render an account of every one of these crimes, determined not to hide anything. Mercy and forgiveness toward those who have erred implies on their part submitting themselves to the exigencies of full justice and hence to answer “before God Almighty as well as before the courts duly constituted.” The Italian bishops are determined to follow the directives confirmed by the Holy Father whether through the canonical procedures or through a loyal collaboration with the state authorities. Moreover, they will multiply their efforts to prevent similar situations. Even one sole case “is always too much, above all if the one who carries it out is a priest.”

Part of an objective attitude is to highlight the fact, stressed even by many non-Catholic sides, that the phenomenon of pedophilia concerns different environments and various categories of persons. This notation does not intend to diminish the gravity of the facts pointed out in the ecclesiastical ambit, but invites “not to engage — in case this should happen — in strategies of generalized discredit.”

2. In this context I am pressed to thank you all, very dear priests of the Patriarchate, for your indefatigable and long-standing action in the educational field. The very grave episodes pointed out in some dioceses must not darken your luminous commitment and throw discredit on the precious action that from immemorial time you carry out in our parishes, our schools, as well as in groups of faithful. Educational action that in the churches of the Northeast and in the Diocese of Venice today is more attentive than ever to all the pedagogical implications.

I  invite you all to continue serenely and even more energetically in the precious task of transmitting to the new generations the Christian meaning of life that, if adequately proposed, is able to make the balanced and mature personality grow at all levels, including the affective and sexual. Because of this I am certain that very many parents who normally entrust their children to parishes, to Catholic schools, to charitable institutions, to GREST, to Catholic associations, will intensify their trust and will be even more aware of the decisive importance of the family to introduce and accompany children, boys and girls and pre-adolescents to the encounter with Christ in the Christian community.

3. It is misleading and unacceptable to question, from cases of pedophilia in the ecclesiastical environment, the holy celibacy that the Latin Church asks for, in full liberty, of the candidates to the priesthood in the light of a very long tradition. We are rediscovering its beauty in this Year for Priests. Celibacy, when it is lived with one’s gaze fixed on Jesus priest and with an undivided heart for the good of the people of God that is entrusted to us, is a beautiful experience of love which makes our humanity flower. To accept freely the gift of celibacy and to follow that way does not imply some psychic and spiritual mutilation. For those who are called, the grace of celibacy is the path for a singular but fulfilled expression of one’s affectivity and sexuality. Of course we are earthenware vessels and we carry in them a great treasure but, with the help of God and the support of the Christian community, we carry it with responsibility and joy.

4. Finally in this extraordinary day of Holy Thursday, expression of the peculiar “Catholic genius” because in it shines the power of the Eucharist and the full meaning of the ordained priesthood, we intend to express again and forcefully our affection and our impassioned following of the Holy Father Benedict XVI. To him who has done so much and does so much to remove “every filth” from the whole structure of the men of the Church are addressed false accusations. But the “humble laborer of the vine” — that is how he described himself when introducing himself to the world now five years ago on the occasion of his election to the Papacy — will receive from the Spirit the grace to offer this iniquitous humiliation transforming it into renewed energy for his indispensable ministry of Successor of Peter.

We, Venetian priests and people, entrust him today, in an all together special way, to the Most Holy Virgin Nicopeja.

Beloved, receive with an open heart these words of your Patriarch. And be certain of his full confidence and his esteem. They are founded on the knowledge now of many years of your love for Christ and for the Church which is transformed in daily gift, often silent and not understood, of your life in favor of every man brother of ours.

May the progress of the pastoral visit continue to strengthen our unity so that, as Jesus has asked us, the world will believe and discover in this way the fullness of living.

I invite you to find the appropriate ways to make this statement known as widely as possible to all the faithful and to all men and women who live in our patriarchate.

With heartfelt affection of communion in the Lord I bless you and all the faithful wishing you a Holy Easter.

Here some pictures of the procession:

Procession from Santa Maria Formosa to the Basilica, Scripture Reading: Lk 19: 28-40

Holy Mass, Scripture Readings: Is 50:4-7; Psalm 22 (21), 17-18.19-20.23-24; Phil 2:6-11; Lk 22, 14-23.56

1. «As he moved off, people spread their cloaks in the road, and now, as he was approaching the downward slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole group of the disciples joyfully began to praise God at the top of their voices for all the miracles they had seen» (Lk 19:36-37).

Dear brothers and sisters. This commemoration is not a mere participation to a sacred representation nor a human deed to celebrate the beginning of the great events of the Holy Week; it is a liturgical action, an act of God. Its final meaning is given by the Opening Prayer we have said at the beginning of the procession carrying palm branches: “Almighty God, we pray you bless these branches and make them holy. Today we joyfully acclaim Jesus our Messiah and King. May we reach one day to the new and everlasting Jerusalem by faithfully following him”.

Like his disciples, we have accompanied the Lord who, determined, has entered into the Jerusalem of his passion in order to get to the Jerusalem of his glory. But the method (path) of this passage (Easter) is humiliation, suffering and death, as we have listened to in the whole Passion Reading according to St. Luke. “Regnavit lingo Deus” an ancient hymn declares.

2. The “world” was, and still is, full of mockery regarding this type of royalty: “If you are the king of the Jews save yourself! “ (Lk 23:37). The Crucified has never ceased to be a scandal and a folly.

Where was the crowd, when Jesus was agonizing on the cross, and those who had acclaimed him Messiah when he was entering Jerusalem? Weakness is man (also the power of the Roman Procurator Pilate is intrinsic deep weakness and manifests a repulsive cowardliness). Man is absolutely weak, full of incoherence and frailty, easy to doubt and still more to scandal. Powerful is Christ, powerful is his obedience, unshakable his decision, without limits his fidelity. Against Him the world can do nothing. He does not draw back but, as the First Reading states, He goes towards the extreme sacrifice with sovereign liberty: “I have not turned away. I have offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; I have not turned my face away from insult and spitting” (Is 50:5-6). The insults of the soldiers, the flight of the disciples, the wickedness of the high priests and the accomplice alliance of the powerful do not bent him. [“And though Herod and Pilate had been enemies, they were reconciled that same day”] (Lk 23:12).

Nothing shows God’s omnipotence as the power of Christ during his passion.

3. “…He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death” (Phil 2:7-8), the Second Reading proclaimed. In obedience to God’s plan Christ assumed human flesh with all its components, except sin (precisely disobedience). The secret of his strenght is his obedience, that is his powerful relationship with the Father.

Definitively, every “power” is based on the primary acknowledgement proper of the constitutive relationships. A mother that smiles to her child, “recognizes” him as such, and she exercises power over him. Each one of us, actually, exercises a power and is an object of power. It is a bond between subjects, which in no way could be avoided, because it is constitutive of the vital dynamism in which the human person is inserted. Not only, but according to the measure in which the human person is placed in the condition of exercising a power of acknowledgment, the person exercises also a power of authority. Therefore, authority, very often in our days considered to be an outward yoke, is instead required as an inward bond to the dynamism of liberty itself which for this reason does not lose its sovereignty. The logic of a correct power can only be the logic of love. In this context the word “service”, which often evokes an unpleasant perception of submission, receives its true meaning: “But he said to them, ‘Among the Gentiles it is the kings who lord it over them, and those who have authority over them are given the title Benefactor. With you this must not happen. No; the greatest among you must behave as if he were the youngest, the leader as if he were the one who serves” (Lk 22,25-27).

4. In the account of the Passion according to St. Luke the loving power of the relationship of Jesus with the Father remains in the first place also during the dramatic and dark hours of the crucifixion and of death. The terrible cry of abandonment given by Matthew and Mark in Luke it reaches the highest degree of confident entrust: “ Jesus cried out in a loud voice saying, ’Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ “ (Lk 23: 46). An indefinable something of the grace pouring from the extreme consignment of His love pervades the prayer of the Good Thief.[“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23: 42)]. And, after his death, it penetrates the Centurion and the crowd present at the Calvary: “When the Centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, ‘Certainly this man was innocent. And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts” (Lk 23, 47-48).

5. Let us live the development of the Holy week, that the Church proposes to us as a figure of the journey of our life, in spirit of prayer, in imitation of the Faithful witness, the Lord Jesus who intensely lived the experience of the Holy Week in his own person and during those dramatic hours has several times invited his disciples to do the same: ”Pray not to be put to the test” (Lk 22:40); “He knelt down and prayed” (Lk 22:41); “In his anguish he prayed more earnestly” (Lk 22:44). Prayer, infact, keeps intact and enduring the bond which spares us the great temptation. [There is an abyss between knowing and doing, between understanding death (our death) and going through… See what our flesh and our temptation is. Be alert and pray” (C. Péguy, Gethsemane)]. Prayer is the chain which does not allow us to separate ourselves from Him, because He is the Faithful.

We will also experience mercy, so impossible and so much longed for by our heart. As Peter: “The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, when he had sad to him, ‘Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times. And he went our and wept bitterly” (Lk 22: 61-62); or like the Good Thief: “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom. He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23, 42-43).

This is the source where Christians draw their passion to meet all men in every part of the earth and to share their life.