Benedict XVI will beatify John Paul II on Sunday, the day that JPII himself wanted to call the Day of Divine Mercy and that will be marked by a large celebration of the faith. “I think that Wojtyla was the Pope of freedom and the Saint of freedom” said Angelo Scola, the Patriarch of Venice about John Paul II. “A freedom that, however, continuously needs to be freed”. And only faith in Christ can free it. This faith, Scola explains in this interview with ilsussidiario.net, “became, in the arc of his life, his primary factor of knowledge of himself, others and God”.

Your eminence, what personal memories do you have of John Paul II?

The first time I went up on the altar with him, in 1979, I was struck by the way he celebrated. John Paul II was a “mystic” Pope. He lived a relationship of extraordinary immediacy with God. It is not surprising that people called for his sainthood starting the day he died. It was enough to see him pray. When we went to lunch with him, we went first to the chapel to say the Angelus. All of us thought that it would take about thirty seconds. Instead, sometimes it took so long that we could no longer remain on our knees on the floor. The Pope was truly immersed in prayer, and for him space and time no longer existed. You could see it by the movement of his lips. In his prayers I perceived—I could see—a profound dialogue with God, uninterrupted. Like a breath, the Pope let out sounds like the gurgles of a river that never ends. It was amazing. 

“They try to understand me from the outside, but I can only be understood from within”, Karol Wojtyla said. What unifies the philosopher, the poet, the priest and the man, in one of the richest personalities of the 20th century, the Pope?

Certainly his faith. His intense, in the fullest sense, faith, as the total reliance on Christ Jesus that opened him up to a full understanding of the human person. John Paul II’s personality, his various life experiences, and his versatility (he was in fact a poet, philosopher, theologian) fed him from his infancy through liturgy, prayer, his passionate sense for relationships, his openness and curiosity about reality, and his total gift of self. This faith, which he breathed from his parents, became, in the arc of his life, his primary factor of knowledge of himself, others and God. Everything began within for him and, after passing through basically all of reality, returned, strengthened, to his heart.

How did you draw near the personality of Karol Wojtyla, and how did your encounter with the teachings of John Paul II deepen over time?

I had the opportunity to meet Karol Wojtyla briefly in the international editing circle for Communio, but our relationship deepened after his election to the papacy. As I told you earlier, the first time I met him as Pope was when I concelebrated mass with him, as well as with Monsignor Giussani and Monsignor Camisasca in February 1979 in his private chapel, followed by breakfast. We later collaborated mostly because I was teaching in the John Paul II Institute for the Study of Matrimony and Family, as a Consultant to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and as the Rector of the Pontifical Lateran University, known as the University of the Pope. I was thus able to deepen his teaching in the celebrated catechism on man-woman and the human body, in Mulieris Dignitatem, and more generally about the problems of matrimony and the family. This led me to study Wojtyla’s philosophical and anthropological works (especially Persona e atto) and to compare them to the masterpiece Love and Responsibility and with the celebrated volume Alle fonti del Rinnovamento. My work on Wojtyla’s thought continued with the encyclicals on the Trinity, with his moral and social teachings. I concentrated my debt to him, which is human before being doctrinal, in the work Elementary Experience, published a few years ago.

One of the most diffuse clichés about John Paul II is that he was the “Great Communicator” (just as Benedict XVI is thought of as the theologian, the guardian of orthodoxy, as if Wojtyla was not). Do you think that behind the partial truth of that hasty simplification there is sometimes an ideology working?

Every man falls into ideology, whether he wants to or not. Because of this, we  need to free ourselves by turning to self-criticism, in the same way that we need to free ourselves from inevitable prejudices. The simplification you referred to is, as a simplification, ideological. We must get rid of it. It is true that there is a difference between the personalities and carisms of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, but on the other hand, there is the profound unity and continuity in their exercise of the ministry of Peter. A point of view that is free and purified of ideology, cannot but recognize this unity and greet the originalities of these two Popes as a great gift for the Church.

Experience plays a fundamental role in the philosophical and pastoral method and teachings of Wojtyla, as well as in his writings. Can you explain what the centrality of experience consists in? 

It consists in the fact that every man in every time and place, culture and religion participates in a “common experience” the same as everyone else. Wojtyla deeply reflected on this common experience. There is a decisive passage in Persona e atto, from which all of his actions were inspired. In this passage, he strongly affirms that beyond the great diversity that characterizes men and beyond the opposing philosophical and cultural visions that characterize thought, there is a common experience that every person has upon which one can build both a method for a good life and adequate philosophical and religious reflection. In fact, theology is nothing more than the systematic and critical reflection on the experience of faith in the Christian community. Obviously the history of thought shows that the category of experience is very delicate and should be treated with particular care. 

“Man’s redeemer, Jesus Christ, is the center of the cosmos and of history”. What did this announcement, which opened the first encyclical of John Paul II in 1979, mean for the Church and for contemporary man?

I will talk about what it meant for the world starting from the situation in Italy at the time. We were just coming out from the distressing year of 1978, with the tragedy of Moro and the death of Paul VI. With that decisive affirmation “Jesus Christ in the center of the cosmos and of history”, John Paul II gave content to the extraordinary cry which opened humanity up to hope on the first day of his papacy: “Do not be afraid”.

John Paul II bet a lot on the lay faithful, the baptized, to make Christ contemporary for today’s man. In fact, in 1998 he spoke of the coessentiality of movements and institutions to the mission of the Church. What did this directive mean for life in the Church?

Certainly the Pope, who had been a student, worker, actor, ardent friend to Jews, energetic and intelligent objector both to the Nazi and Marxist utopias, as well as extraordinary teacher and priest, lived a fullness of humanity. Meeting him, one immediately perceived that he was first of all a man and this highlighted even more the priestly dimension of his person. This kind of Pope was, therefore, able to perceive the decisiveness of vocation and mission in the lay faithful.  It must be underlined that, in Christifideles laici, the Pope does not speak about just “lay” people, but “lay faithful”. This means a Christian who is called, in every area of human existence, to make the renewing beauty of the encounter with Christ visible in his face.

And the movements?

The question of movements and institutions needs much more space to reach a conclusion. One thing I can say is that the two essential things in the Church are the institutional gifts and the charismatic gifts. The first (the Eucharist illuminated by the Word of God, the teachings of the Apostles, Communion) are those that Jesus established as indispensable foundations for the existence of the Church. The second expresses the fantasy with which the Holy Spirit “persuades” man in every era to cling to the Church as the place for the fullness of human life. Obviously both are gifts of grace. Any opposition between the institutional gifts and the charismatic gifts is without foundation.

John Paul II was devoted to Mary. What does this devotion teach the Church of our time?

It is a font of beneficial humility for every Christian. In fact, Mary is the most powerful expression of the Immaculate Church and teaches all of the faithful, men and women, that Christ the Bridegroom is the incomparable gift for the Church Bride. With Him, everyone is first and foremost “passive”, in that we receive. Also, Mary, the paradigm of maternity, is the one who, in every circumstance, even the most unfortunate, walks with Jesus. She is virgin and mother. Because of this, I love to define Mary as “the woman”.

The last part of the papacy of John Paul II was marked by a difficult, inwardly hard-fought, relationship with the truth (and with the leadership of the Church), especially because of his sickness. The giant who so deeply left his mark on the history of the world was not afraid to show himself in all his limits. What can the Blessed Wojtyla teach us as a man and as the successor of Peter?

In the last phase of the life of John Paul II, he incarnated the great Pauline affirmation “When I am weak, then I am strong”. “Your grace is enough”, says Paul in the Second Letter to the Corinthians. The way that John Paul II wore his suffering exalted the Petrine ministry because it showed that the power of governing the Church—but not only for the Church—is never at the mercy of the one who possesses it. It comes only and always from God.  We must pray every day that those who are responsible for leading the Church live this way.

How is John Paul II a contemporary saint? To what profound human question does his sanctity of life respond?

In my opinion, his sanctity is visible in a luminous way in his passionate commitment to freedom. I think Wojtyla was the Pope of freedom and the Saint of freedom. A freedom that, however, continuously needs to be freed. As the Gospel of John says, those who follow Jesus “will be truly free”.

(Federico Ferraù)

march, 30th 2011

At the Angelus yesterday, Benedict XVI made an appeal “to those who have political and military responsibilities for the immediate initiation of a dialogue, which suspends the use of weapons.” “May peace return as soon as possible for these people and further tragedies be stopped”,  Cardinal Angelo Scola, Patriarch of Venice, tells ilsussidiario.net , “means to object strongly that every death is one too many. But peace is not an automatic utopia, it is necessary to build it every day in reality.” “We in Europe,” Scola explains, “are victims of a strong presumption. We think we know how to evaluate and solve problems without taking into account the testimony of those who live in these situations.” Starting with the Christians in those lands. And there is not only the important issue of participation and democracy, but also of the transformation of Islam.  This is a challenge which involves the spiritual contours of European identity, and of Italy in particular, the hinge between north and south.

“I ask God to obtain that a horizon of peace and concord may dawn as soon as possible on Libya and on the entire region of North Africa,” Benedict XVI said at the Angelus on Sunday, March 20. In what sense can one speak of peace when the policy is to take direct action to save the people from tyranny?

To speak of peace in these circumstances means, of course, to demand that armed violence, even in this case, would end and give way to negotiation, that peace return as soon as possible for these people and to halt further tragedies; to object strongly means that every death is one too many. But peace is not an automatic utopia;  it is necessary to build it every day in reality. Therefore, to obtain peace, prayer arises, against all skepticism, as an effective tool.

On closer inspection, the gears of realpolitik never seem to respond well to commands.  Why is this?  Is it a lack of “strategy” or a cultural deficit or lacking foresight of some kind?

I am not an expert.  What I can observe is that we Europeans are often victims of a strong presumption. We think we know how to evaluate and solve problems without taking account of the testimony of those who live in these situations. This often prevents us from considering all the factors in play. Many collaborators of Oasis who live in these places these days invite us to make a careful distinction:  the situation in North Africa is different from that of the Middle East, although both of the areas are in turmoil. What is happening is largely an unexpected phenomenon or not foreseen in this way, but it has very different connotations from country to country:  Libya is not Egypt, we know very little about Libya, just as this is radically different from what has happened in Tunisia.  Also what is happening in Syria is different.

And what do you think about Libya, specifically, Your Eminence?

As to the current war in Libya, I would like to recall the opinion of Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, who speaks for all of us Italian bishops.  This seems a realistic assessment: you cannot stand still when so many lives are at stake and the civil society itself. What then becomes complex is to determine what this intervention should consist in.   So it becomes essential to listen very carefully to the voice of people like the bishop of Tripoli who has been there for years and knows the situation from the inside.

If we step back for a moment from the events related to the Libyan crisis, we see that across the Mediterranean–since the attacks on Christians at the end of last year, then by the Egyptian crisis, etc. — we are going through a phase of unprecedented instability. What is changing?

I believe that, as always in human affairs, it is only in time that a process, especially one so explosive and complex, can be understood. We must have the patience to let all the factors come to the surface. Certainly one cannot underestimate the strong demand for freedom, for the dignity of life, for democracy, and for work that emerges from these movements, but there are other aspects that we cannot see yet and that we must, however, try to understand  carefully.  For example:  what evolution may occur within the diversity of Islam starting from these events?  At the same time, there is the advance in the process that I call the “hybridization of cultures and civilizations”, an historical process, which is partly violent, partly unpredictable and also hopeful, and which does not ask permission to happen, but which we can at least try to accompany, and to govern.

How concerned should we be about the plight of Christians in the Middle East?  Can we still speak–given the paucity of their presence– of a particular “task” they have in the face of these circumstances?

The situation of our fellow Christians in the Middle and Far East is very painful. We cannot afford to remain passive, to not to listen to their voices and their cry for help. The Church of Venice, on the path of the pastoral visit that has involved the entire diocese, has been able to work with two remarkable people: Bishop Luigi Padovese, murdered in Turkey, and Shahbaz Bhatti, the  Pakistani Christian Minister who was the victim of a recent attack. Their testimony is forcing us to act for the freedom of the Church, which is threatened in some predominantly Muslim countries. Their martyrdom documents that what it means to live authentically as Christians is to live the desire to follow Jesus, to find a place–as Bhatti wrote in his spiritual testament –at the foot of his cross to participate in his resurrection.

Almost all agree in recognizing that a major humanitarian crisis is upon us. What must the government and the society do to rise to the task? 

One thing is the impetus to welcome, which must be immediate toward those who find themselves in a difficult situation which is so burdensome. Another thing is that the policy must be orderly and organic, even in a case of a grave emergency like this.  The problem is that everybody should assume responsibility: the whole of Europe is called upon to respond to this situation. Our country must prepare itself to face realistically the fact that tens of thousands of people will present themselves at our doors. Of course, we need to have a vigilant eye and a far-sighted vision: the tragedies that mark North Africa and more generally the beginning of the third millennium are a formidable challenge from Providence toward the man of the future. What kind of man do we want to be? An “I-in-relationship”? Or a man who, of course, can have amazing techno-scientific means available, but who tends to fossilize into an individual identity and thus deteriorates?

Do you think the crisis at hand is also a “yardstick” of European unity?

This uneasiness demonstrates that Europe cannot be held together only by the cement of the euro, but needs a clear identity, a sound economic and foreign policy, and with ample breadth. But this is impossible, I repeat, unless Europeans as individuals and nations respond to a huge question: “Who will be the man of the third millennium?” Perhaps the tragedy of the migration of large numbers of men and women from Africa, if we are all more generous, can be the glue for the construction of a peaceful Europe because it is capable of opening itself, with an intelligent availability, to those in need. A Europe that becomes a tangible expression of that sharing between people which is essential for the present and the future and that we Europeans, who are a bit comfortable and sedentary, have not been able to make the stable project of the good life.

From the very beginning of  your mandate, you have focused your mission as pastor on the status of the Church of Venice as a bridge of dialogue between East and West. Is there is a particular task that it can play in this historic moment?

At this very time, when throughout the Northeast we are preparing to welcome the Holy Father on his imminent visit to Aquileia and Venice, we are opening our eyes to a new challenge for Venice and the entire Northeast: to find the original function of the link between peoples and cultures again, and not only between East and West, but also between North and South. Looking at a map of the area, what catches the eye is how the Adriatic is the vertex of the Mediterranean which, here in our area, opens to the heart of old Europe. The circumstances are inviting us to ask ourselves what this “new” and needed Northeast will be, which, as in the days of the splendor of Aquileia, from which 57 churches were born, could cover Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Bavaria, Hungary. In a word, the Adria Alps region.

(interview by Federico Ferraù, translation by Sharon Mollerus)

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.

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.

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/05/17/ratzinger-realism-the-lesson-of-the-eight-days-of-benedict-xvi-in-the-holy-land-an-article-by-the-patriarch-of-venice/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2008/06/23/the-freedom-to-convert-the-serious-case-of-religious-freedom/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2008/06/23/the-freedom-to-convert-the-serious-case-of-religious-freedom/#comments Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:21:20 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=70 The nexus between truth and freedom is for man one of the always resurgent questions because in the ultimate analysis it cannot be mastered or deduced in purely conceptual terms. The journey of Oasis, which on more than one occasion in recent years was near to touching upon this subject, by then suggested dedication to a broader and more precise approach. However, the characteristic attention to the data of reality that constitutes the inescapable method of our common project led us to privilege in this edition an approach to the question that would contextualise in today’s world both reflection on the intrinsic direction of freedom towards truth and reflection on the truth of freedom. These arguments, indeed, find in the burning question of the freedom to convert, as a culminating expression of the freedom of religion and conscience, a decisive terrain of examination.

Two Opposing Difficulties
At the meeting of the scientific committee that was held in Amman on 21-25 June 2008 we had already observed that from the point of view of Western societies, religious freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom to convert cohabit with a paradox. They are certain recognised by juridical systems and the common mentality. However, two facts point to the frailty of this recognition. On the one hand, conscience is conceived in terms that we may define as ‘creative’ in an equivocal sense [cf. Veritatis splendor, n.54], whereas conscience does not have the power to ‘actively’ establish of its own accord what is good and evil. On the other hand, these freedoms are substantially thought of as a mere prerogative of the individual: ‘something’ that refers to the sphere of the private and thus that cannot seek to have public relevance. The risk is that these two declinations of religious freedom (and freedom of conscience) become emptied of real contents in their practical exercise. In this way, indeed, one neither recognises the intrinsic dimension of truth of the religious experience nor admits that the religious experience expresses itself as a fact of a community and a people.

If we now turn our attention to the experience of countries that have Muslim majorities, we are faced with a situation that is completely different. Both the dimension of truth of the religious experience and the popular dimension belong to the DNA of these peoples. They demonstrate great attachment to their own tradition. And yet one cannot deny the existence of a grave deficit in the sphere of religious freedom: one may think here of restrictions on worship in some countries and on citizenship for non-Muslims in others, and one may think above all else of the decisive question of the possibility of changing one’s religion. In some situations it would appear that whereas one can tolerate a certain level of diversity for those already born to another faith, the request for religious freedom becomes intolerable if the person who asks to convert is a Muslim. The way out that not rarely is implicitly imposed on these people is illuminating here: if you want to leave Islam you have to abandon the country in order to avoid the ‘scandal’ of a public gesture.

The ‘Serious Case’ of the Relationship between Truth and Freedom
The gravity and urgent importance of the questions raised in the short and necessarily incomplete picture that I have outlined indicate how much the question of religious freedom touches upon the heart of man. Without any doubt, access to the ‘foundation’ or better to the desire to enter into a relationship with it constitutes one of the most powerful stimuli that animate man’s heart. As the famous phrase of St. Augustine observes: ‘quid enim fortius desiderat anima quam veritatem?’. Man is made for truth, he is directed towards it, as in various forms the religions of the world never cease to remind us and as the Muslim faith in a particularly insistent and positive way stresses. In it, so perceived is the decisiveness of the nexus between man and truth that the German orientalist Franz Rosenthal was able to describe the whole Arab-Islamic civilisation beginning with the category of ‘knowledge’.

Here I was very struck to learn that in Arabic one word alone (haqq) means at the same time ‘true’ and ‘real’. If one adds that the same term in the Jewish Bible designates law (hoqq, ‘ordinance’, ‘precept’), one cannot but be amazed by the vastness of the reflections that are thrown open beginning with this evocative polysemy. The life of mankind is truly an incessant return to the great questions connected with the Truth.

However, the equation ‘true’ and ‘real’ that the etymology of this Arabic term would suggest, if interpreted in a rationalistic fashion, betrays a possible risk, that of deducing truth in a conceptualistic way, understanding it as a complete and formally consistent system of conceptual propositions. The act by which conscience relates to reality, that is to say the affirmation of truth, is thus ‘the fruit, of a representative character, of a mere conceptual operation’. And as a consequence an action is said to be ‘the carrying out of this previously known ideal’.

A practical variant of this approach, which is well described in the Gospel story of the young rich man, is the legalism that ‘has it that freedom is possessed before being expressed in an act, arguing that its meaning has already been given once and for ever in the norm’. This vision of truth in the ultimate analysis is a form of idolatrous gnosis, because it conceals the claim that man possesses through his limited outlook the complete physiognomy of God. But as we read in the last edition of Oasis, ‘praise be to He who had given to his creatures no other way of knowing Him than their inability to know Him’. These are the words of Abû Bakr, the first successor to the Prophet of Islam, which the author of the article rightly puts side by side with the si comprehendis, non est Deus of St. Augustine. A relationship of possession with truth, almost as though we could dispose of it as just one thing amongst others, is not possible; in essential terms it is not even thinkable. Both Islam and Christianity well know why this is: truth is not a packet of notions but a living and personal reality which continually calls freedom into play. Its manifestation cannot be inserted a priori into the narrow boxes of a reason understood geometrically.

In other words, the Truth itself, which is transcendent and absolute, requires, in order to be attested to man, the act of his decision. Reflecting in the past on this subject, I emphasised that ‘truth places man in the need for a free decision not only because it opens up to him the area of the answer but because it requires it because man by his origins is destined for truth’.
There thus emerges in evident fashion the importance of modern reflection on freedom, not only in a political sense (the freedom of peoples and nations) but first of all in relation to its intrinsic relationship with truth. The truth of freedom implies freedom to adhere to truth. If this is true for our Western history, one can equally say the same of the Arab-Islamic world.

The Community Dimension
Benedict XVI in his recent address to the United Nations stated that ‘The rights associated with religion are all the more in need of protection if they are considered to clash with a prevailing secular ideology or with majority religious positions of an exclusive nature. The full guarantee of religious liberty cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion, and hence to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order’.
These words of the Holy Father oblige us to bear in mind the community dimension of religious freedom. Objectively, this is a critical point: indeed, what happens to the identity of a community if a sizeable number of people begin to call it into question either because they come from another religion or because they convert to another religion? It is not difficult to understand that this fact is potentially a source of tensions.

The teaching of the protagonists of the Catholic orientalism of the twentieth century demonstrates that the Catholic Church does not have as its goal that of placing at risk the bases of shared social life in countries with Muslim majorities. It does not identify with an aggressive proselytising approach that demonises non-Christian cultures and religions. Father Anawati, a great Egyptian Dominican, a theologian and a philosopher, confessed at the end of his life: ‘I do not study Muslim culture in order to destroy it. What should I destroy it? It is something that is beautiful in itself. It should be appreciated’.

At the same time, however, respect for the identity of the community cannot be pushed to the point of violating the human freedom of the individual. Today this should be borne witness to in a decisive way in relation to our Muslim interlocutors. Catholic doctrine on the subject certainly does not think of religious freedom as an option in an imaginary ‘supermarket of religions’. It stresses that religious freedom is a consequence of the absolute and incumbent duty of everyone to adhere to the Truth, but with an objective and suitable conscience. It is this obedience mediated by the conscience that is the foundation of religious freedom, which should not be limited to the mere possibility of engaging in worship but which also includes the right to change one’s religion. Here as well a clarification is required: in doing this the Church does not state that every choice in this sphere is good. Error in itself does not have rights but a person with an upright conscience who falls into error possesses this freedom. Certainly not before God but before other people, society and the State. Only God is the judge of the choices of the individual in this field. Only He can know what is to be found in the heart of man and why he decides to abandon one religion to join another.

One could object that the State, even though it is evidently not able to enter the hearts of men, is nonetheless interested in maintaining the cohesion of the community. In this critical reservation truth is to be found and to such an extent that the fathers of the Second Vatican Council chose to add to the declaration on religious freedom contained in Dignitatis Humanae the restrictive clause ‘Provided the just demands of public order are observed’ (n. 4). However, granted this clarification, one cannot but ask oneself what good can follow for the truth from keeping people in a religion in which they no longer believe. Is it really more deleterious for a community to have an explicit abandonment of a religion than a profession of that religion which is only a façade? One of the fathers of modern Islamic reformism, the Egyptian Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905), answered in the negative, inviting people to distinguish between the very early moments of Islam – where in his view the embryonic nature of that movement justified the use of coercion – and its subsequent epochs where such a need declined.

The Primacy of Witness
In presenting these questions for the reflection of our readers, I would like to end by recalling the short analysis (to which I referred at the beginning of this paper) of the opposing difficulties that the West and the world of a Muslim majority encounter in engaging in a correct approach to religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and the freedom to convert. These difficulties, in fact, well demonstrate that a due assent to truth is always dramatic because freedom must decide always and once again in every individual act.

How?
By the at times impervious pathway of witness understood as an approach that is both practical and speculative, and from which nobody, and even less Christians, can withdraw. Witness understood in these terms for us obliges us to present to our Muslim interlocutors what we believe to be the authentic cultural interpretation of Christian faith. And this is possible only through mutual involvement.

H.E. Card. Angelo Scola

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2008/06/23/the-freedom-to-convert-the-serious-case-of-religious-freedom/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/06/22/catholics-ponder-muslim-coexistence/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2007/06/22/catholics-ponder-muslim-coexistence/#comments Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:31:56 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=75 While summer tourists floated through Venice’s timeless splendor this week, the city was also hosting some visitors with little time to waste. Among them was the bishop from Jerusalem warning of the “hemorrhaging” of Christians from the Holy Land. Another prelate told of a letter sent last month by pro-Taliban elements to 50 Pakistani Christian families in the Afghan border town of Charsadda, offering them the choice between converting to Islam or being killed. And, amidst the mass exodus of Iraqi Christians and the recent killing of two priests by Muslim radicals, the Archbishop of Kirkuk had to cancel his trip to Venice, although his RSVP email was read aloud: “We don’t have Christian militias to defend ourselves,” wrote Archbishop Louis Sako. “The situation is getting worse, and I must stay with the faithful during these bad times.”

It was the challenge of Christian coexistence with Muslims that formed the focus of this week’s gathering of 15 Catholic leaders and scholars from Islamic-majority countries who made it to Venice this week. And nowhere is that challenge more acute than among Christians living in Muslim countries. Says Fouad Twal, Coadjutor Archbishop of Jerusalem: “We ask that when Western leaders make decisions concerning the Middle East, they also consider the presence of Christians there. Rarely does anyone ask our opinion, for we can be of great help,” says Twal. “We are rooted in the region. The Muslim world is our world.”
One Western leader who has made a point of listening to the concerns of the Christians of the Muslim world is Venice’s Cardinal Angelo Scola, host of the two-day encounter at the 17th century Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. Scola is rapidly becoming Catholicism’s most influential voice beyond the Pope himself on matters related to the Muslim world. From Venice, which for centuries has served as a bridge betweeen civilizations, the Cardinal founded Oasis, a cultural and study center and twice-annual journal that gathers perspectives from Catholics in Muslim countries. The initiative is both as a way to safeguard the rights of Christian minorities, and to promote mutual understanding between the Church and Islam.

“We gain knowledge about the different forms of Islam by starting with what the Christians living in these various realities suggest to us,” Scola said. In the past, many in the Vatican hierarchy believed it was too risky to raise the issues of religious liberty and violence in Islamic countries. “Sometimes we have been too timid,” Scola said. “We can’t stay quiet. We want the encounter. It is vital to distinguish fundamentalism not just from the so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims, which can be an ambiguous term, but from the masses in the Islamic world.”
Scola hopes that working with Christians in Islamic countries will also help Europe better face the challenges post by its growing Muslim immigrant population. Focused on what he calls the “hybridization” of cultures that comes with mass migration, Scola says the challenge is finding a balance between integrating new populations and maintaining the identity of the native culture.

The current level of political tension in a number of different Muslim countries placed much of the event’s attention on issues of security and violence. Several of the prelates asked not to be identified by name or country, fearing reprisal. One bishop said: “Extremists are very much still in the minority, but the situation is deteriorating, and there is more and more intolerance. Being here and listening to others, a similar picture emerges. The fundamentalists are networking.”
Though controversial, Pope Benedict XVI’s speech last September in Regensberg about faith, reason and violence continues to be cited as a turning point in the Muslim-Christian debate. Scola, who has known the Pope since 1971, expands on the ideas in the Regensberg address. “Violence is not in itself a sign of the absence of religion. It occurs when the worst poisons of the surrounding culture have infested religion,” says Scola. “You need a strong link between faith and reason in order to purify religion.”

Cairo-born, Beirut-based Professor Samir Khalil Samir, a Jesuit expert on Islam, says that Benedict is “going farther(and) deeper” in his approach toward the Muslim world than Pope John Paul II. “He does not want to reduce or to chill the dialogue,” Samir says of Benedict. “But he is looking for a dialogue that is real, rather than diplomatic. We are not looking for conflict, but we’re also not going to avoid the hot points.”
byJeff Israely

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1636286,00.html

On the occasion of his encounter with representatives of Muslim communities in Germany on 20 August 2005, Pope Benedict XVI re-emphasised that “interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an occasional option. It is in fact a vital necessity, and our future depends to a great extent upon it”.
Here the Pope was re-stating a personal conviction about interreligious dialogue which he had espoused some years before in his celebrated volume entitled Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (The new people of God). In this work the theologian Joseph Ratzinger had maintained: “[] it has become an integral part of our faith today that Christianity should have relations with the religions of the world: this is far from being a matter of a mere curiosity that is solely interested in constructing some theory of its own about the destiny of others this destiny is decided by God alone, who does not need our theories (…) But today there is more at stake: the sense of our being able and obliged to believe. The religions of the world have become a question mark for Christianity; faced with them it must start to think afresh about its claims, [] how it can understand them as playing a necessary role in the history of salvation”1.

Having acknowledged the centrality of interreligious dialogue, we next need to determine the few basic criteria to which Benedict XVI refers. They can then be the object of discussion and study in our dialogue. It is not possible in this brief introduction to offer a systematic presentation of these criteria. I will limit myself therefore to stating two; I cannot even hope to be able to offer an organic analysis of them.

a) Religions and good life
The first of these criteria – not in order of importance but because it is the most pacific was particularly and significantly emphasised by the Holy Father in his addresses to Muslim believers. This asserts that dialogue is proper to every believer as a member of the people of God or of the Muslim communities. It derives above all from the fact that every person is de facto a member of a society, and is thereby called to contribute to the good life of the society in which he or she lives. Here the Pope strongly emphasises the need for adhérents of religions to take the same path: “Certainly, recognition of the positive role of religions at the heart of the social body can and must impel our societies to explore more and more deeply their knowledge of the human person and to respect human dignity by placing the person at the centre of political, economic, cultural, and social activity. Our world must come to realise more and more that all peoples are linked by profound solidarity with one another, and they must be encouraged to assert their historical and cultural differences not for the sake of confrontation but in order to foster mutual respect.” (Pope’s speech to the diplomatic corps in the Apostolic Nunciature at Ankara, 28 november 2006).

b) Faith, reason, and religions
The second and more demanding criterion is the one emphasised particularly in the celebrated lecture at the University of Regensburg. It deals with the nexus of faith, reason, and religion and the capacity of human reason to grasp this nexus. In this connection the Holy Father affirmed at Regensburg: “theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences (…) precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith. Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. (…) A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. (…) For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity (…) is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. (…) The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.” [Official translation from Vatican website]
This long quotation from the Regensburg lecture can help us to determine a few essential elements which can be the object of our dialogue.
The correct relationship between faith, reason, and religions, perfectly comprehensible to human reason when not enslaved to reductionisms, involves a recognition of the two inseparable sides to dialogue, neither of which can be dispensed with.

c) The principle of integration
The first of the above criteria can be identified as the principle of integration. What does it consist in? It can best be described in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Basle theologian acknowledges the necessity of a comparison of the actual contents of religions at all levels. In this way “something like a scale of recognisable truths will be born, which can be co-ordinated according to the principle: “The one who has more truth is more right and has more rights on his side” (…) The one who turns out to be in a position to integrate the maximum of truth into his vision would have the presumption of a maximally true truth”2. From this point of view it is possible to grasp why the Holy Father proposes to understand interreligious and intercultural dialogue in a unitary fashion. A definition of culture which does not take into consideration the religious dimension constitutive of the ultimate requirements of reason is reductive (Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?)

d) Truth and freedom
The second indispensable aspect of dialogue concerns the truth-freedom nexus. While it is true that the principle of integration is essential, because required by the quest for truth proper to religions, at the same time it does not manage to encompass all of the horizon of truth on its own. By its very nature truth requires the act of a freedom which is ready to give active assent.
The principle of integration cannot but bow to the “freedom of God in His Self-revelation”3, proposing a kind of absolute knowledge of hegelian stamp. The same principle must also respect the truth of the finite freedom of man, which is called actively to welcome the statement of truth rather than merely enduring it! That is why Balthasar himself speaks of truth in terms of “love that gives itself in freedom (“only love is credible”)”4. Pope Benedict also fully took on board this crucial aspect of interreligious dialogue when, in his Message on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Interreligious Encounter of Prayer for Peace (the second of September 2006), he opted to speak expressly of the «language of testimony».Christians and Muslims in particular must bear testimony, in reciprocal dialogue, to their faith in the one God and in the ineradicable distance constantly present in the Islamic faith between Creator and creatures. They must not however undervalue the differences – beginning with the trinitarian monotheism central to Christianity. Defending in continuous open dialogue the freedom of religion in every civil society, Christianity and Islam are then called to testify that every form of violence is by its nature alien to the authentic raison d’être of religion as such.

————-

1. J. RATZINGER, Il nuovo popolo di Dio, Queriniana, Brescia 1971, 391-392. [Das neue Volk Gottes. Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie, 1972]

2. H. U. VON BALTHASAR, La mia opera ed epilogo, Jaca Book, Milano 1994, 97-98. [My Work: in Retrospect, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993]

3. Ibid., 98.

4. Ibidem.

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