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

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Is 52: 7-10; Salm 97; Heb 1: 1-6; Jn 1; 1-18

1. “The people who walked in darkness … upon those who dwelt in the land of deep shadow …” (Is 9: 1). These words of the prophet Isaiah concern us. Proceeding – or maybe living – in the darkness is hard and we are tired. Wearied and devastated is the world states with an acute realism Chesterton. More or less aware, this is the reason why we have gathered here on this Holy Night: here we search light because: “of the world the desire this is” Chesterton continues.

The light is this “child born for us” (Is 9: 5). In the stable of Bethlehem, as here now, in our resplendent basilica, the light shines. In the stable of Bethlehem as in every church in the world, thousands of years after creation rises the first dawn of the world. With the birth of Jesus the virtue of hope in its infancy grows anew for every man. Christmas is the inexhaustible source of revival – and God knows how much this word is precious today for each one of us -.

2. “And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David” (Lk 2: 3-4). In the meticulous account of the fact that has changed the sense of history the Evangelist Luke records a decisive datum: Joseph belongs to the house and family of David. He describes the origin. Today this information seems irrelevant, because birth is reduced to the mere biological beginning. Instead, it is mainly a genealogical question as John Paul II brilliantly acclaimed. It is, above all, origin and not only a beginning. Each one of us is rooted in the history of his o her generation. And not only, because the origin owns a further vertical dimension: we are created by God. Obscuring this fact means breaking the generation chain. The educational emergency which troubles us today is the result of this interruption.

3. “Mary … gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2: 7). The Greek word used here is found only in one other quotation in the New Testament to designate the room in which the Last Supper was to take place. In the following verses, the proclamation to the shepherds, some facts are repeated: “And this will be the sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2: 12). The description of St. Luke is not an idyllic account, on the contrary it overshadows a deep reflection upon the sense of this birth. In these words there is already a reference to the mystery of the Passion and of the Eucharist.

The Fathers of the Church arrive at saying: “God has reduced himself” to the point of becoming “visible to the eyes, palpable to the hands, portable on the shoulders”. Actually some Fathers use a Greek verb in which the “reducing himself” is connected to his “being impoverished”: God has impoverished himself, he lowered himself, he emptied himself, in order to talk to us the language we speak. Jesus did not only learn Aramaic, as all the children of his country did; Jesus was willing to learn the language through which human creatures could recognize Him.

4. “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son”(Heb 1:1). The Old Testament offers us the letters of the alphabet through which God has revealed himself to men, but only Christ is the Word in whom the old alphabet finds sense and meaning.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us …” (Jn 2: 14). “He gave himself for us”(Titus 2: 14), up to point of “make himself eatable” in the Eucharistic banquet, involving us in the movement of His self giving.

This is the good news of Christmas: God makes himself familiar to us. And if God is familiar to us, we can surely recognize Him in one way or in another. Through grace the convinced believers are apt to recognize that Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnated Son of God. But, observing attentively we can deduce that every man can recognize Him through the primary experience possible to everyone, that is: being open towards reality and to love our fellow creatures, because as St. Irenaeus declared: “Man is the glory of God”.

And if we recognize him our life changes. In today’s culture signed by trial, His humility becomes a question of simplicity. We all perceive the urgent need of simplifying our life. A simplification which goes from the overcoming of an ill-omened consumerism (we could use the word obscene because it has the same meaning), to the overcoming of complicated and equivocal affective styles, often false. All this causes suffering to the partner and transforms the beauty of love in exploitation and this does not help to experiment a rescuing love, on the contrary it tends to induce the partner in a tying love.

5. Christmas is God’s endlessness charity towards us and through this gift we become charity subjects: “As the objects of God’s love, men and women become subjects of charity” ( Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, 5). As a matter of fact, the horizon of charity is at 360 degrees which goes from all those who live in poverty (and the number of these is in continual increase and preoccupies) to the engaging-passion in the edification of the common good. We must be tireless in wide spreading the reasons of ‘philia’(civic friendship) over all the conflicts even in the ambit of direct political involvement. Moreover, we should not forget that politics – as Paul VI used to say – is the highest form of charity.

6. “The true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world” (Jn 1:9). It is necessary that the light we receive transforms us in sons of the light. The great need which comes to us from this Holy Christmas is to persevere in every relationship without taking anything fore granted and avoiding every never ending prejudice.

His nativity purified ours/ His life taught our life/ His death destroyed our death” (St. Bernard, Sententiae). Baby Jesus, beyond our merits, realizes the deepest desire of our heart. Let us ask the simplicity of the shepherds, the first testimonies of Christmas, that we may prepare an adequate space for Him and go, as they did, to proclaim Him to our fellow brothers: “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God” (Is 52: 10). Amen!

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Péguy hits the target: where there is no adequate life nothing can be communicated, it is not possible to educate. The Report-proposal has been built and written based on the well-documented conviction that “the current crisis of education does not concern only single problems, but rather the idea we have of man and of his future. Hence, it is absolutely necessary not to limit ourselves to a sector-by-sector perspective on education, nor is it enough to reflect on pedagogical methods, but what is necessary is an anthropological and essential vision of the educational event as such.” In other words, education is a work that affects all the aspects and interests in a person’s life: family, school, the Christian community, work, business, consumption, the media, entertainment, sport… Nothing in man is left out of this work, because it radically concerns the elementary human experience which is made of work, affections, rest.

We have come to the point of talking about an educational emergency because something has gotten stuck, especially in “stuffed” Europe. In some sense the care between generations has been interrupted, the chain of transmission of a style of good life has broken, a style able to answer that desire for happiness and freedom that bites the heart of today’s men and women.

This fact pushes us to change. The first step is simple, even though certainly hard: the person of the educator has to be there. The adult is he who must give witness to the truth he is proposing. It is on the adult that befalls the responsibility to educate.

But once the subject is in place, to what should he educate? To values, is the habitual answer.

Perhaps there has never been a time when there as been as much talk about values as today. But the point is that it is not possible to educate to values by talking about values, but rather by making one have an experience of values. I cannot educate to friendship by stubbornly explaining the concept of friendship, but by making one have concretely the experience of friendship.

Many post-modern thinkers regard the cathegory of value as compromised. Not only do they cast doubt on the values that are typical of modernity, but they even deny the validity of the concept of value and reject the idea itself of a personal subject. It follows that a real educational enterprise (paideia) is no longer possible, but only instruction. The misunderstanding about the nature of values can be overcome by clarifying that they are not a “compilation of asbtract concepts” that have to be applied to life, but rather they are part of man’s indestructible elementary experience, of his/her constitutive relationship with people, things and circumstances. If value is what makes it possible to give meaning to human existence, values do not exist outside man.

Hence, education is impossible if it is separated from the relationship between the person and the community – and the one between both of them and the “ungraspable reality,” as Buber used to say – which is the relationship within which experience takes place, because a value can give life direction and meaning only inasmuch it is effectively communicated.

We understand, then, why the proprium of any educational experience lies, as pointed out before, in the “care of generations,” to be provided in the name of “a heritage to be passed on for new enrichment, on the basis of belonging to a common origin (genealogy),” as written in the Report-proposal. The chain of generations (nowadays stretching more and more often from gran-grandparents to gran-grandchildren) is where the person experiences the primary good of having a relationship. The promise of goodness that a child encounters since birth and in the initial relationships with his/her loved ones — “a basic relational experience which is affective and moral at the same time” — will be later called to fulfillment in the task of communicating and grasping the full meaning of life. Our children do not become men and women unless they are helped to discover this origin. Teenagers and young people, to whom are dedicated torrents of words (as scandalized as they are ineffective) whenever their uneasiness explodes in irrational and violent ways, need to live good relationships in order to learn to do good. In the family as well as at school or in places of shared social life, they must be able to rely on adults who are personally engaged with the truth, the beauty and the goodness that they propose.

To affirm experience as the essential factor for authentic education implies necessarily accepting and re-emphasizing the cathegories of risk and witness.

Education succeeds not when one applies correctly some fixed models, but when he who educates and the one being educated risk themselves in a free personal co-involvement. In encountering reality the one being educated experiences a risk because, even though he perceives the intrinsic positivity of reality itself, he may be hindered in his adhesion to the point of falling into skepticism. But the educator also is not spared a risk, since by communicating to the one who is educated he is called to expose himself, to witness in his own person the beauty of the values he is proposing. One educates– as St. Augustine said – only if he is able to reawaken the “teacher inside.” But in order to do that it is necessary to recognize that we ourselves are children of a teacher and a father, as Gilles Deleuze pointed out: “A teacher is not one who says “do this way,” but one who says “do with me,” in a relationship which is first of all of witness, and then of trust, of freedom between freedom and discipline.”

And again the spotlight falls on the adults: parents and educators are those who, in their concrete way of loving and working, witness to children the truth of life.

convert this post to pdf.]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/12/18/the-difficult-and-fascinating-challenge-of-education-patriarch-scolas-contribution-for-the-international-meeting-of-the-italian-cultural-project/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/12/18/patriarchs-christmas-wishes-to-the-young-basket-player-of-reyer-venezia/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/12/18/patriarchs-christmas-wishes-to-the-young-basket-player-of-reyer-venezia/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:10:07 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=229 On the 16 of December cardinal Scola has took part to the annual Christmas wish-party of Reyer Venezia Basketball Society.

In the fully crowed stadium, among the young players, the official teams and team’s managers, and the relatives of the player, he said: “you will achieve more goals if you know where you are going in your life, staing closed to Jesus”.

Here you will find the immages of the meeting.

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Here  you can read the Cardinal Scola’s declaration.

“Mr President of the Venetian Institute of Sciences, Arts and Letters, Directors of the Department of Astronomy of the University of Padua; of INAF, the Astronomy Observatory of Padua; of INSAP, the International Executive Committee; of the Vatican Observatory, honoured Conference participants, it is an honour for me to address you on the occasion of the Sixth International Conference on the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena, at which you intend to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of the first astronomical use of Galileo’s telescope.

Your important gathering has prompted the Holy Father to send you a message through the Patriarch of Venice, which I now have the pleasure of reading to you.

I take the liberty to add my personal best wishes to those of the Holy Father.

The presence of so many scientists at this Conference, many of whom explicitly refer to the Catholic faith, represents an unmistakable sign that the dialogue between faith and reason and science and religion – to which the Holy Father’s Message refers – is in existence.

To me this seems a decisive step towards turning the current anthropological torment created by rapid transition on our planet in the direction of that good life to which the whole human family aspires.

An interesting confirmation of the fruitfulness of your efforts is your intent within this Conference to seek dialogue with other important disciplines such as art, music and literature. Tending towards the unity of knowledge, which is too fragmented in our modern age, is a necessity which requires going beyond pure inter-disciplinarity.

Your choice of Venice as the seat of your Conference is more than an act of homage to Galileo, who presented his telescope to the Doge, because Venice, the city of humanity, is a place where the multiple manifestations of the human spirit in artistic, literary, musical and scientific works are called to exchange and thus enrich their views. Venice’s heritage and traditions bear witness to this, as does her present vocation as the crossroads of cultures.

I thank you all and apologize for the fact that other commitments oblige me to leave this assembly. I am certain that your time here will be spent in good work.

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The construction of this political universal in a plural society asks of every subject a narration directed towards a recognition that is shared as much as possible. A triple aspect must be contemplated by the subject. Every subject with identity must narrate himself/itself, narrate others, and accept being narrated.

In a plural society, the unitary ecclesial subject is inevitably seen from an internal perspective and from an external perspective which are often discordant: ‘He who sees people dance does not hear the music, does not understand the movements that he observes. Thus it is also that he who does not share the Christian faith is inclined to explain it with reference to something that is different from the truth of its object’. On the other hand, ‘a Christian who is unable to immerse himself in the external perspective…becomes a sectarian or a fanatic who closes himself before the universality of reason’ (Spaemann). The Christian proposal must therefore take into account, with coherence, both these profiles, without forgoing its truthful core which postulates – and we do well to remember this – the very ‘claim’ to universality that is specific to reason.

A valuable contribution that Christianity offers to the construction of the political universal can be read by anyone, beginning from its external profile alone as well. It is the practice of elementary moral experience that makes it reasonable for everyone to refer to a common morality.

To understand the authentic nature of this common morality one must begin from the elementary experience of good that every man has. If we look at the genesis of the moral experience of the (child) subject, we realise that it is rooted in a wish for self-completion which takes form in original inclinations and affections, beginning with the primary relationships of recognition, in which, in circular fashion, this wish acquires practical self-awareness and becomes capable of communion with others. The original form by which man learns and actuates good consists, therefore, in the relationship with the origin of good. And the decision in favour of the good things that should be done derives from the practice of good relationships. Elementary moral experience, which is common to all men, does not originate from an idea of good that is contained in the cosmos or the bios, nor is it deduced from the rational nature of man: it is formed beginning with the primary benefit of the relationship.

On this basis, the person perceives a de-ontic tie (ob-ligation) with the possibilities of good itself. He realises their character of not being optional or hypothetical.

The belief in the absoluteness of moral Good leads Christians, who are aware of the value of living together as a primary political good, to propose this common morality. It is the basis on which one can, from time to time, look for a noble com-promise on specific goods of an ethical, social, cultural, economic and political character with all the other inhabitants of a plural society. When this com-promise is technically impossible at the level of substantial principles, Christians should resort to conscientious objection.

Looking now at Christianity from the internal profile in order to clarify fully the contribution of Catholics to the growth of the good life of a country, it is important to observe that its incarnation in history postulates an insuperable circularity between faith and culture.

Faith, in offering man an interpretative hypothesis of the real, produces culture/s; and culture(s) interpreting itself/themselves, interpret(s) faith itself. In historical time such a dynamic is insuperable.

A pathway suitable to the correct interpretation of the circle of faith/culture(s) should be looked for in the proposal of all the Christian Mysteries in their structured unity, as they spring forth from the event of Jesus Christ. Incarnated in the history of the individual and community subjects that live them, they bear upon the way in which men conceive of themselves and as a society, upon the relationship with the creation, and there are exposed in their turn to the inevitable cultural interpretations that the subject practises. The commitment of a Christian to the person, to society, and to the cosmos is not a consequence of the Mysteries that he lives. And yet it is not immediately coincident with the Christian Mysteries as such: it is implied in them. Indeed, the Christian Mysteries are not given once and for ever in the form of a package of dogmas from which suitable consequences should be drawn; they are dimensions of the event of Jesus Christ who continuously proposes himself anew to the always historically situated freedom of man. They do not require mechanical applications, nor extrinsic juxtapositions, but dynamic implications.

To announce the event of Christ in all its entirety, coming, therefore, to demonstrate all its implications, is what today is required of Christians. And this is the case above all in Italy where the phenomenon of secularisation reveals, when subjected to an attentive analysis, characteristics which are completely special and at times rather different from those to be found in other Euro-Atlantic countries. It is no accident that the Italian Church is spoken of as an ‘exceptional case’.

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On September 5, Cardinal Scola opened in Venice an international conference entitled “The pluralist society,” with lectures by Italian and foreign scholars from different disciplines, Catholics and non-Catholics, from Massimo Cacciari to David Novak, from Ottfried Höffe to Cesare Mirabelli, from Ignazio Musu to Steve Schneck.

The conference marked the opening in Venice of a new study center called the “Alta Scuola Società Economia Teologia,” ASSET, which has the purpose of promoting interaction among the various disciplines, including theology, in confronting the crucial questions of a culturally “pluralist” world.

In introducing the conference, Scola invited Christians to identify and propose “common ground” on which to enact “noble compromises” among different positions. But this does not change the duty of these same Christians, whenever compromise is not possible, as in the case of abortion or of the family, to make use of conscientious objection and otherwise continue their “proclamation” in society at full voice, in the hope of a positive change.

The new Alta Scuola is the latest of a constellation of initiatives organized over the past five years by Cardinal Scola and collected under the banner of the Studium Marcianum, named after the holy patron of Venice, the evangelist Mark, including the international magazine “Oasis.” It will operate with seminars, cultural laboratories, summer courses, publications, annual lectures. The inaugural lecture, next December 17, will be delivered by the philosopher Robert Spaemann, of the University of Munich.

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Areas of study

• Philosophy and theology

• Social sciences and philosophy

• Canon law, constitutional law, philosophy of law

• Economy and social doctrine of the Church

Lecturers and members of the International Scientific Committee

Prof. Robert Spaemann (Universität zu München, Germany); Prof. Margaret Archer, (University of Warwick, UK); Prof. Angelika Nussberger, (Universität zu Köln, Germany); Prof. Guy Bédouelle OP, (Université Catholique de l’Ouest, Angers, France); Prof. Rubio de Urquia (Universidad CEU San Pablo Madrid, Spain); Prof. Juan Manuel Blanch Nougués (Universidad CEU San Pablo Madrid, Spain); (Prof. Roberto Gatti (Università di Urbino); Prof. Giuliano Segre (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice); Prof. Simona Beretta (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan)

Activities

The research project offers seminars, interdisciplinary workshops, and a summer school.

To whom is the initiative addressed?

• PhDs (incl. doctoral candidates) and researchers working in university or research institutions, interested in this cultural training opportunity

• Professors and researchers of the Studium Generale Marcianum

• Members of associations working on the topic of pluralism in society

• Staff of NGOs

• Public officers at regional, national and European level
• 
  

Further information

See the pages dedicated to ASSET at www.marcianum.it

Studium Generale Marcianum Foundation, Dorsoduro, 1, 30123 Venezia

tel: 39 (0)41 27.43.911 f :39 (0)41 27.43.998. Email: altascuola@marcianum.it

UK contact : Stratford Caldecott (Centre for Faith & Culture, Oxford) : s_caldecott@yahoo.co.uk

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From the 2009 Redeemer Address by Patriarch Card. A. Scola

1. Personally, I was provoked to choose pain and suffering as the topic for the Redeemer Address during the Pastoral Visitation, as I met in their homes people who were seriously sick or very ill. This issue has become more urgent to me, I would say unpostponable, because of the faces, the looks and the few but radical words that were addressed to me by them and by their loved ones. In the history of the human family, it seems that the aggression of pain and suffering never stops. Like all elementary realities that are part of universal human experience (knowledge, love and so on), also pain and suffering are difficult to explain. Here, we just want to reflect a little on the immense travail of pain and suffering that mankind as a whole — but always in the flesh of individuals — has to bear. If –- as St. Augustine said – every man is, as such, a great question, at the heart of the man-question lies the question on pain and suffering.

2. “The shelves of the human pharmacy:” with this colorful expression Balthasar describes the main human attempts to face the agonized question of pain and suffering. In his analysis he examines first of all two categories that are apparently opposed, but that in reality share the same attitude of resignation: “defeatism” and “rebellion.” “Defeatism” is objectively the foundation of the temptation to commit suicide, either carried out directly or “assisted.” This is a true “surrender in front of too much suffering, thinking that in this way one can free oneself from it” (Balthasar). The second position, “rebellion,” is self-contradictory: even if it can blame, in turn, God, mankind or radical evil, in reality it boils down to rebellion for the sake of rebellion, a challenge against suffering which is extreme as it is powerless, in the delusion of keeping it quiet. Nowadays, however, there is an ever more prevalent attitude which wants to mount a frontal attack on pain and suffering in the attempt to eliminate them. It is born out of scientific and technological power which, especially in the field of medicine, seems to make man the master of his own health and life, in the conviction that pain and suffering will be defeated, even in a not too distant future. From this perspective, tragedies like those in L’Aquila or Viareggio become a stumbling stone (scandal), because they reveal starkly that we remain powerless in front of the violence of some evils. In fact, the current obsession with health, which pursues only indefinite physical well-being, clashes with the elementary human experience of being “one in soul and body” (Gaudium et Spes 14). It then becomes abstract, if not unrealistic, to talk about health (and disease)if one does not identify a center to the I, a point of connection between the psyco-physical and spiritual dimensions. Health and disease always concern all of the I.

3. In the development of history pain and suffering keep rising again from their ashes in new forms, like a tragic phoenix. So much so that man is tempted to call God to task for the existence of pain in the world. Christian tradition, but also western thought, record repeated attempts to “justify” God in this regard. In order not to attribute evil to God himself, or in order not to regard it as an original principle independent of God, the traditional doctrine has stated that God allows evil for the sake of good. It does so in order to put man to the test, to purify him or even to make the beauty of good more evident and to express the whole richness of the cosmos. But, is the thesis that God allows evil enough for a man who experiences radical evil (Kant), unjustifiable evil (Nabert), innocent evil (Fr. Gnocchi)? Jesus Christ did not elaborate any theory to explain the existence of pain and suffering in the world. He learned “obedience from what he suffered, and made perfect” (Heb 5:8-9) he carried out a work of redemption by whose power every suffering receives light. In the opus Dei of Jesus Christ, the Son made man for us by dying nailed all evil, taking it directly upon himself. Not only did he experience terrible physical suffering, but he also went through an unrepeatable experience of moral pain: abandonment by the Father. Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul uses extremely strong words: “He who had not known sin, God treated him as sin for our sake” ( 2Cor 5:21). What does this mean? It can only mean that Jesus experienced the most radical pain and suffering: the loss of Love. Sin indeed separates, destroys every relationship. We glimpse the abyss of the mysterious dialogue between the agonized question by the Son abandoned on the cross and the Father’s answer, made of silence. Now, “in the father’s silence on front of the question by the son is found the proper place of suffering.” Of every human suffering. Jesus lived this experience freely. His mission was not only the choice of God’s solidarity with suffering humanity, but also a choice made in our place. Not only with us, but for us (vicarious substitution). The suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus have the power to expiate all the sins of the world. We face the unfathomable mystery of the human sorrow of the Son of God, sorrow embraced by the human freedom of the divine Person of the Word. A few elements from experience help us understand it: for man it is impossible to accomplish worthy enterprises of any kind without a high dose of suffering; in every man’s life there is no genuine fecundity without pain; above all, a man who has committed injustice is restored to his dignity though expiation leading him back into the truth. The redeemer, by dying on the cross in our place, reveals all the fecundity of sorrow.

4. The work accomplished by the love of Christ is not confined to his individual person. It has the power to touch every human suffering in order to turn it into a work of love and hope. Human suffering, embraced by the love of the crucified one, also becomes fruitful. For those who adhere to Christ, explicitly or implicitly, the possibility of full (eternal) life is already realized. Here, in history, not only in the next life. Suffering is able to change the fortunes of personal and social history (see the little shepherds of Fatima) because it shares in the Redemption of Jesus. “Why have you abandoned me?”: a son’s question that receives as an answer the father’s silence. Not a question without answer, because also silence is an answer. Is this not the dominant experience that all of us have when we face somebody else’s suffering? To be quiet, not to know what to say. Well, such silence, in a seemingly paradoxical fashion, (as always in Christianity) brings us closer to God instead pushing us farther away.

The Redeemer did not try to erase pain through a more brilliant theory, but accomplished a work of total self-identification with suffering, shedding light on its deep meaning: collaboration to His redemption of the world. Even though speaking of expiation for the sins of the world may bother our post-modern sensitivity, we cannot deny this reality. Thus, the suffering of Christ is inclusive, that is it opens the way to other sufferings, which can expiate vicariously in union with his suffering. This awareness does not give up on the tireless effort to fight human suffering, but gives rise to a creativity which is not utopian.

5. Now I would like to let the logic of incarnation, which is proper to the Christian faith, lead me to consider our behavior in front of certain situations of extreme suffering, patients in a vegetative state and those terminally ill. They raise very delicate questions which, incidentally are being debated in parliament in these very days. Viewed in the context of the previous reflections, the experience of people tested by sickness and disability, together with the unavoidable burden of pain and suffering, sheds light also on medicine’s therapeutic action. The latter is authentic only if the intervention to alleviate suffering is offered within an integral image of the human being. It seems impossible to refute the conclusion reached by many experts that what is commonly called “vegetative state” is not a disease, but rather the most serious form of disability. Vegetative state does not require extraordinary devices to support the vital functions, but only action on the patient’s behalf to satisfy the needs he/she cannot fulfill independently any longer: hygiene, movement, nutrition (that is, food and water).

This is perhaps the most mysterious situation, very hard to diagnose, and it raises deep questions about the dignity of the human person and the mystery of our being. Care of somebody in this state means, then, simply taking care, with minimal technological content but a very intense human and nursing engagement. Even if aware of the very low likelihood of recovery, one can keep accompanying the patient, without falling into the opposite extremes of obstinacy or abandonment. According to the experts the case of so-called “terminal patients” is very different. It is precisely in this context that questions arise regarding putative therapeutic excesses and forms of euthanasia. When I was visiting some of these sick people, a question came to me: is it not us, the healthy ones, who ask for a “dignified death,” whereas those who are sick ask for a dignified life even with disease, a dignified life to the last instant, made of what characterizes man: the ability to love and to be loved? A precious and concrete example of what it means to take care of these sick people is given us by palliative treatments. The modern definition of such treatments, as given by the European Association for Palliative Care, says: “Palliative treatments respect life and regard dying as a natural process. Their goal is not to accelerate or postpone death, but rather to preserve the best possible quality of life till the end.” This definition shows great realism. It must be especially kept in mind by the care-givers, since quite a few studies have shown that requests for euthanasia or assisted suicide by terminal patients depend to a significant extent on the attitude that health workers and relatives have towards life, disease and especially the patient.

6. Among the factors that truly affect a person’s choices — both by forbidding practices and granting rights, and by helping shape a mentality –one must include a country’s laws. This why the legislator must be very careful to produce “objectively just laws.” Regarding the Dichiarazione anticipata di trattamento (DAT, a kind of living will), I feel the responsibility to invite the legislator to guarantee the essential principles that have been recalled several times by the Italian Bishops’ Conference. At the same time, the law promoting palliative treatments must be implemented as soon as possible and given all the necessary funding so that these treatments may be practiced everywhere in our country. Adequate funds must also be spent on conventional pain therapy.

7. The mystery of pain and suffering stands inexorable in front of each one of us, but its value is already kept safe in the burning core of trinitarian love. Thus, we have been given a light-filled road to face them. Under the condition that the freedom of each one of us must raise them up daily into the horizon of true love of God, of others and of oneself.

convert this post to pdf.]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/09/14/human-pain-and-redeemers-work/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/09/10/multiculturalism-religions-and-bioethics-a-contribution-to-our-pluralistic-society/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/09/10/multiculturalism-religions-and-bioethics-a-contribution-to-our-pluralistic-society/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:10:00 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=192 Today’s pluralistic society, in which democracies are founded on procedures agreed upon, urges us to reflect carefully on the ethical, juridical and economic praxis common to all humanity.

It is by now a commonly shared idea that it is necessary to translate the concepts deriving from one’s various religious and cultural traditions into public argumentation. In other words, it is vital that the foundations, which cannot be relinquished in any substantiated view, be translated into a series of axioms. Similarly to mathematical logic, they must be understood as a formal system of properties that implicitly define their expression (which is, in this case, a vision of the world), quite apart from a priori recognition or negation of their absoluteness by everyone concerned. On this basis the subjects living in a pluralistic society are called to work at continuous dialogue, and to tell others tirelessly of their own identity within a spirit of reciprocal recognition, allowing orientations and directions in the interest of the common good to emerge. On this subject, as Benedict XVI wrote in his lecture for the university “La Sapienza” (Rome 17th January, 2008), the very experience of democracy shows that numerical majorities and their relations of strength are not enough to guarantee and maintain it; democracy needs to be characterized also by «a process of argumentation that is sensitive to the truth».

A civil society conceived in this way has no need to neutralize religions, nor need it hurl itself against universal absolutes of which the various social subjects may be convinced. Its only must is to accept dialogue between equals, leaving to the state institutions which promulgate and interpret laws the task of recognizing which opinion is the most advantageous, and which tradition the prevailing or dominant one which the sovereign people, either directly or indirectly through its representatives, indicates as the one to which their society wishes to adhere. This does not imply the dictatorship of a majority that claims to establish the truth, nor the negation of the fundamental rights of any minority or individual (including objections on grounds of conscience). It is merely a question of not making the necessarily secular nature of the State coincide with an impossible neutrality.

The Christian community also wants to contribute to building good life in society. In society, the Christian faithful, sustained and guided by the authentic Magisterium of the Church, learn to get to know Jesus Christ, the living fulfilment of moral law. By adopting Jesus’ action, Word, and precepts as their moral law, Christians find the adequate reason for the moral sense of existence. Indeed, Christ proposes himself as the essential and original principle of Christian morality. But, in so far as he is the principle of universal morality, he carries within himself and gives value to the path of human moral experience as such (common morality), which Revelation reveals, rather than denies. Within the framework of common morality, the legal and economic dimension of common praxis can be worked out.

On these bases, Christians can contribute to the building of a good life, even within areas full of pressing issues, like bioethics, on which you will be reflecting in your meeting.

I am certain that your exchange of views on multiculturalism, religions and bioethics, conducted with scientific rigour, will be able to show how the Truth – towards which mankind yearns – always promotes freedom that is adequately understood.

I wish you all that your work may be fruitful and send you heartfelt greetings.

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