"Educate Yourselves Henceforth in the Liberty of Fidelity"
- Here is a translation of the address to engaged couples that Benedict XVI gave Sunday during his visit to Ancona. He made a one-day trip to the Italian port city for the close of the 25th Italian National Eucharistic Congress.
* * *
Dear engaged couples,
I am happy to conclude this intense day, the culmination of the National Eucharistic Congress, by meeting with you, almost as though wishing to entrust the legacy of this event of grace to your young lives. Moreover, the Eucharist, Christ's gift for the salvation of the world, points to and contains the truest dimension of the experience you are living: the love of Christ as the plenitude of human love. I thank the archbishop of Ancona-Osimo, Archbishop Edoardo Menichelli, for his cordial greeting, and all of you for your lively participation; thank you also for the words you addressed to me and which I receive trusting in the Lord Jesus' presence in our midst: He alone has words of eternal life, words of life for you and for your future!
The questions you pose, in the present social context, take on an even greater weight. I would like to give you just one guideline as an answer. For these aspects, ours is not an easy time, above all for you young people. The table is full of many delicious things, but, as in the Gospel episode of the Wedding of Cana, it seems that wine is lacking from the celebration. Above all, the difficulty of finding stable work spreads a veil of uncertainty over the future. This condition contributes to [people choosing to] leave definitive commitments for later, and influences the growth of society in a negative way. Society is not able to appreciate fully the wealth of energies, competencies and creativity of your generation.
The wine of celebration is also lacking from a culture that tends to put aside clear moral criteria: In this disorientation, everyone is seen striving to move in an individual and autonomous way, often only within the perimeter of the present. The fragmentation of the communal fabric is reflected in a relativism that hides essential values; a consonance in sensations, states of mind and emotions seems more important than sharing a plan of life. Also fundamental decisions become vulnerable, exposed to a perennial revocability, which often is considered an expression of liberty, though actually, it points rather to a lack of liberty. The apparent exaltation of the body belongs also to a culture deprived of the wine of celebration, [an apparent exaltation] which in reality trivializes sexuality and tends to make it exist outside a context of communion of life and love.
Dear young people, do not be afraid to face these challenges! Never lose hope. Have courage, also in difficulties, remaining firm in the faith. Be sure that, in every circumstance, you are loved and protected by the love of God, which is our strength. Because of this, it is important that an encounter with him, above all in personal and community prayer, be constant, faithful -- precisely as the path for your love: to love God and to feel that he loves me. Nothing can separate us from the love of God!
Be sure, moreover, that the Church is also close to you, supports you, and does not fail to regard you with great confidence. She knows that you are thirsty for values, the true values upon which it is worthwhile to build your home. The value of faith, of the person, of the family, of human relations, of justice. Do not lose courage in face of the needs that seem to extinguish joy at the table of life. At the Wedding of Cana, when wine was lacking, Mary invited the servants to go to Jesus and she gave them a precise indication: "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:5). Treasure these words, the last of Mary's taken up in the Gospels -- virtually a spiritual testament -- and you will always have the joy of the celebration: Jesus is the wine of the celebration!
As engaged couples you are living a unique stage, which opens to the wonder of encounter and which makes one discover the beauty of existing and of being precious to someone, of being able to say to one another: You are important to me. Live this path with intensity, gradualness and truth. Do not give up on pursuing the lofty ideal of love, which is a reflection and testimony of the love of God!
But, how should this phase of your life be lived? How can you give a witness of love in the community? I would like to suggest to you first of all that you avoid enclosing yourselves in intimate relations, which are falsely tranquilizing; instead, make your relationship become leaven in an active and responsible presence in the community. Moreover, do not forget that to be genuine, love also requires a journey of maturing: beginning from the initial attraction and "feeling well" with the other, educate yourselves to "love well," to "want the good" of the other. Love lives from gratuitousness, self-sacrifice, forgiveness and respect for the other.
Dear friends, all human love is a sign of the eternal Love that has created us, and whose grace sanctifies the decision of a man and a woman to give themselves reciprocally to the life of matrimony. Live this time of engagement in confident waiting for this gift, which must be received by following a path of knowledge, respect, and attentions that you must never neglect. Only under this condition will the language of love become meaningful also with the passing of the years. Hence, educate yourselves henceforth in the liberty of fidelity, which leads to protecting one another, to the point of the one living for the other. Prepare yourselves to choose with conviction the "for ever" that distinguishes love: indissolubility, more than a condition, is a gift that must be desired, requested and lived, beyond any changing human situation. And do not think, along with the widespread mentality, that living together is a guarantee for the future. If you skip the steps of intimacy, which require respect for time and a gradual progression of expressions, you will “get burned” in love; love needs room for Christ, who is capable of making a human love faithful, happy and indissoluble. The fidelity and enduring nature of your love will also make you capable of being open to life, of being parents: The stability of your union in the sacrament of matrimony will enable the children that God wishes to give you to grow confident in the goodness of life. Fidelity, indissolubility and transmission of life are the pillars of every family, a true common good, a precious patrimony for the whole society. Henceforth, found on them your path to matrimony and give witness of this to your contemporaries: This is a precious service! Be grateful to those who with commitment, competence and willingness accompany you in formation: They are the sign of the attention and care that the Christian community reserves for you. You are not alone: Seek and receive in the first place the company of the Church.
I would like to return again to an essential point: the experience of love has within itself a tension toward God. True love promises the infinite! Hence, make of this time of preparation for matrimony an itinerary of faith: Rediscover for your life as a couple the centrality of Jesus Christ and of walking with the Church. Mary teaches us that the good of each one depends on listening with docility to the word of the Son. In those who trust in him, the water of daily life is transformed into the wine of a love that makes life good, beautiful and fruitful. Cana, in fact, is a proclamation and anticipation of the gift of the new wine of the Eucharist, the sacrifice and banquet in which the Lord reaches us, renews us and transforms us. Do not neglect the vital importance of this encounter; may the Sunday liturgical assembly find you active participants: From the Eucharist springs the Christian meaning of existence and a new way of living (cf. postsynodal apostolic exhortation "Sacramentum Caritatis," 72-73). Hence, do not be afraid to take on the committed responsibility of the conjugal choice; do not fear to enter into this "great mystery," in which two persons become one flesh (cf. Ephesians 5:31-32).
Very dear young people, I entrust you to the protection of St. Joseph and Mary Most Holy; following the invitation of the Virgin Mother "Do whatever he tells you," you will not lack the pleasure of the real celebration and you will be able to take the best "wine," the one that Christ gives for the Church and for the world.
I would like to tell you that I am also close to you and to those, like you, who live this wonderful journey of love. I bless you with all my heart!
Showing posts with label John Paul II Institute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Paul II Institute. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Papal Address to Marriage and Family Institute
"In Love Man Is 'Re-created'"
- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave Friday to mark the 30th anniversary of the foundation of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family.
* * *
Lord Cardinals,
venerable brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood,
dear brothers and sisters,
With joy I receive you today, several days after the beatification of Pope John Paul II, who 30 years ago, as we heard, wanted to found both the Pontifical Council for the Family and your pontifical institute; two organisms that show how he was firmly convinced about the decisive importance of the family for the Church and for society. I greet the representatives of your great community, which has now spread to all the continents as has the worthy foundation for marriage and the family that I created to support your mission. I thank the president, Monsignor Melina, for the words that he has addressed to me in the name of everyone. The newly beatified John Paul II, who, as was recalled, exactly 30 years ago today was the victim of the terrible assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square, especially entrusted to you his “catecheses on human love,” which contain a profound reflection on the human body for study, research and dissemination. Conjugating the theology of the body with the theology of love to find the unity of man’s journey: this is the theme that I would like to indicate as the horizon of your work.
Shortly after the death of Michelangelo, Paolo Veronese was called before the Inquisition with the accusation of having painted inappropriate figures in a depiction of the Last Supper. The painter said that in the Sistine Chapel too the bodies were depicted nude with little reverence. It was precisely the inquisitor who defended Michelangelo with the response that has become famous: “Do you not know that in these figures there is nothing save what is of spirit?” We moderns have a hard time understanding these words, because the body appears to us as inert, heavy matter, opposed to the consciousness and the freedom of the spirit. But the bodies of Michelangelo are inhabited by light, life, splendor. He wanted to show in this way that our bodies hide a mystery. In them the spirit manifests itself and operates. They are called to be spiritual bodies as St. Paul says (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:44). We can thus ask ourselves: can this destiny of the body illuminate the stages of its journey? If our body is called to be spiritual, should its story not be that of the alliance between body and spirit? In fact, far from opposing itself to the spirit, the body is that place where the spirit can dwell. In light of this it is possible to understand that our bodies are not inert, heavy, but they speak -- if we know how to hear them -- the language of true love.
The first word of this language we find in the creation of man. The body speaks to us of an origin that we did not confer on ourselves. “You knit me together in my mother’s womb,” the Psalmist of the Lord says (Psalm 139:13). We can say that the body, in revealing the Origin to us, bears in itself a filial meaning, because it reminds us of our generation, that derives, through our parents who transmitted life to us, from God the Creator. Only when he recognizes the originary love that gave him life, can man accept himself, can he reconcile himself with nature and the world. Following that of Adam is the creation of Eve. The flesh, received from God, is called to render possible the union of love between man and woman and to transmit life. The bodies of Adam and Eve, before the Fall, appear in perfect harmony. There is a language in them that they did not create, an eros rooted in their nature, that invites them mutually to receive themselves from the Creator, to be able thus to give themselves.
So, we understand that in love man is “re-created.” “Incipit vita nova,” Dante said (“Vita Nuova I, 1) -- “the new life begins” -- the life of the new union of the two in one flesh. The true appeal of sexuality is born from the greatness of this horizon that discloses integral beauty, the universe of the other person and the “we” that is born in the union, the promise of the communion that is hidden there, the new fruitfulness, the path that love opens to God, font of love. The union of one flesh is thus made a union for life so that man and woman also become one spirit. In this way a path is opened in which the body teaches us the value of time, of the slow maturation in love. In this light the virtue of chastity receives a new meaning. It is not a “no” to pleasures and to the joy of life, but the great “yes” to love as profound communication between persons, that requires time and respect, as a journey together toward fullness and as love that becomes able to generate life and generously welcome the new life that is born.
It is certain that the body also contains a negative language: it speaks to us of the oppression of the other, of the desire to possess and exploit. Nevertheless, we know that this language does not pertain to God’s original design, but is the fruit of sin. When it is detached from its filial meaning, from the connection with the Creator, the body rebels against man, it loses its capacity to make communion transpire and it becomes the terrain of the appropriation of the other. Is this not perhaps the drama of sexuality, which today remains shut up in the closed circle of one’s own body and in emotionalism, but that in reality can only fulfill itself in the call to something greater? In this regard John Paul II spoke of the body’s humility.
A character in Paul Claudel’s play “The Satin Slipper” says to his lover: “I am incapable of accomplishing the promise that my body makes to you,” and is answered thus: “The body is broken but not the promise…” (Day 3, Scence 13). The power of this promise explains how the Fall is not the last word on the body in salvation history. God also offers to man a journey of redemption of the body, whose language is preserved in the family. If after the Fall, Eve received the name Mother of the Living this testifies that the power of sin does not succeed in erasing the original language of the body, the blessing of life that God continues to offer when man and woman unite in one flesh. The family is the place where the theology of the body and the theology of love intersect. Here we learn the goodness of the body, its witness of a good origin, in the experience of love that we receive from our parents. Here is lived the gift of self in one flesh in conjugal charity that joins the spouses. Here the fecundity of love is experienced and our life is interwoven with that of other generations. It is in the family that man discovers his relationality, not as an autonomous individual who is self-actualized, but as a child, spouse, parent, whose identity is founded on being called to love, to receive himself from others and give himself to others.
This path from creation finds its fullness in the Incarnation, with the coming of Christ. God took on the body, he revealed himself in it. The upward movement of the body is here integrated into a more primordial movement, the humble movement of God who lowers himself toward the body to then raise it up to himself. As Son, he received the filial body in gratitude and obedience to the Father and gave his body for us, to thereby generate the new body of the Church. The liturgy of the Ascension sings this history of the flesh, sinful in Adam, assumed and redeemed in Christ. It is a body that becomes ever more full of light and of the Spirit, full of God. Here appears the profundity of the theology of the body. This, when it is read in the space of tradition, avoids the danger of superficiality and gathers the grandeur of the vocation to love, which is a call to the communion of persons in the double form of the life of virginity and of matrimony.
Dear friends, your institute is placed under the protection of the Madonna. Of Mary, Dante spoke illuminating words for a theology of the body: “In your womb love was rekindled” (Paradiso 23, 7). In her female body that Love that generates the Church took on a body. May the Mother of the Lord continue to protect your journey and to make fruitful your study and teaching, in service to the Church’s mission for the family and society. May the Apostolic Benediction, which I bestow on all of you from my heart, accompany you. Thank you.
- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave Friday to mark the 30th anniversary of the foundation of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family.
* * *
Lord Cardinals,
venerable brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood,
dear brothers and sisters,
With joy I receive you today, several days after the beatification of Pope John Paul II, who 30 years ago, as we heard, wanted to found both the Pontifical Council for the Family and your pontifical institute; two organisms that show how he was firmly convinced about the decisive importance of the family for the Church and for society. I greet the representatives of your great community, which has now spread to all the continents as has the worthy foundation for marriage and the family that I created to support your mission. I thank the president, Monsignor Melina, for the words that he has addressed to me in the name of everyone. The newly beatified John Paul II, who, as was recalled, exactly 30 years ago today was the victim of the terrible assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square, especially entrusted to you his “catecheses on human love,” which contain a profound reflection on the human body for study, research and dissemination. Conjugating the theology of the body with the theology of love to find the unity of man’s journey: this is the theme that I would like to indicate as the horizon of your work.
Shortly after the death of Michelangelo, Paolo Veronese was called before the Inquisition with the accusation of having painted inappropriate figures in a depiction of the Last Supper. The painter said that in the Sistine Chapel too the bodies were depicted nude with little reverence. It was precisely the inquisitor who defended Michelangelo with the response that has become famous: “Do you not know that in these figures there is nothing save what is of spirit?” We moderns have a hard time understanding these words, because the body appears to us as inert, heavy matter, opposed to the consciousness and the freedom of the spirit. But the bodies of Michelangelo are inhabited by light, life, splendor. He wanted to show in this way that our bodies hide a mystery. In them the spirit manifests itself and operates. They are called to be spiritual bodies as St. Paul says (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:44). We can thus ask ourselves: can this destiny of the body illuminate the stages of its journey? If our body is called to be spiritual, should its story not be that of the alliance between body and spirit? In fact, far from opposing itself to the spirit, the body is that place where the spirit can dwell. In light of this it is possible to understand that our bodies are not inert, heavy, but they speak -- if we know how to hear them -- the language of true love.
The first word of this language we find in the creation of man. The body speaks to us of an origin that we did not confer on ourselves. “You knit me together in my mother’s womb,” the Psalmist of the Lord says (Psalm 139:13). We can say that the body, in revealing the Origin to us, bears in itself a filial meaning, because it reminds us of our generation, that derives, through our parents who transmitted life to us, from God the Creator. Only when he recognizes the originary love that gave him life, can man accept himself, can he reconcile himself with nature and the world. Following that of Adam is the creation of Eve. The flesh, received from God, is called to render possible the union of love between man and woman and to transmit life. The bodies of Adam and Eve, before the Fall, appear in perfect harmony. There is a language in them that they did not create, an eros rooted in their nature, that invites them mutually to receive themselves from the Creator, to be able thus to give themselves.
So, we understand that in love man is “re-created.” “Incipit vita nova,” Dante said (“Vita Nuova I, 1) -- “the new life begins” -- the life of the new union of the two in one flesh. The true appeal of sexuality is born from the greatness of this horizon that discloses integral beauty, the universe of the other person and the “we” that is born in the union, the promise of the communion that is hidden there, the new fruitfulness, the path that love opens to God, font of love. The union of one flesh is thus made a union for life so that man and woman also become one spirit. In this way a path is opened in which the body teaches us the value of time, of the slow maturation in love. In this light the virtue of chastity receives a new meaning. It is not a “no” to pleasures and to the joy of life, but the great “yes” to love as profound communication between persons, that requires time and respect, as a journey together toward fullness and as love that becomes able to generate life and generously welcome the new life that is born.
It is certain that the body also contains a negative language: it speaks to us of the oppression of the other, of the desire to possess and exploit. Nevertheless, we know that this language does not pertain to God’s original design, but is the fruit of sin. When it is detached from its filial meaning, from the connection with the Creator, the body rebels against man, it loses its capacity to make communion transpire and it becomes the terrain of the appropriation of the other. Is this not perhaps the drama of sexuality, which today remains shut up in the closed circle of one’s own body and in emotionalism, but that in reality can only fulfill itself in the call to something greater? In this regard John Paul II spoke of the body’s humility.
A character in Paul Claudel’s play “The Satin Slipper” says to his lover: “I am incapable of accomplishing the promise that my body makes to you,” and is answered thus: “The body is broken but not the promise…” (Day 3, Scence 13). The power of this promise explains how the Fall is not the last word on the body in salvation history. God also offers to man a journey of redemption of the body, whose language is preserved in the family. If after the Fall, Eve received the name Mother of the Living this testifies that the power of sin does not succeed in erasing the original language of the body, the blessing of life that God continues to offer when man and woman unite in one flesh. The family is the place where the theology of the body and the theology of love intersect. Here we learn the goodness of the body, its witness of a good origin, in the experience of love that we receive from our parents. Here is lived the gift of self in one flesh in conjugal charity that joins the spouses. Here the fecundity of love is experienced and our life is interwoven with that of other generations. It is in the family that man discovers his relationality, not as an autonomous individual who is self-actualized, but as a child, spouse, parent, whose identity is founded on being called to love, to receive himself from others and give himself to others.
This path from creation finds its fullness in the Incarnation, with the coming of Christ. God took on the body, he revealed himself in it. The upward movement of the body is here integrated into a more primordial movement, the humble movement of God who lowers himself toward the body to then raise it up to himself. As Son, he received the filial body in gratitude and obedience to the Father and gave his body for us, to thereby generate the new body of the Church. The liturgy of the Ascension sings this history of the flesh, sinful in Adam, assumed and redeemed in Christ. It is a body that becomes ever more full of light and of the Spirit, full of God. Here appears the profundity of the theology of the body. This, when it is read in the space of tradition, avoids the danger of superficiality and gathers the grandeur of the vocation to love, which is a call to the communion of persons in the double form of the life of virginity and of matrimony.
Dear friends, your institute is placed under the protection of the Madonna. Of Mary, Dante spoke illuminating words for a theology of the body: “In your womb love was rekindled” (Paradiso 23, 7). In her female body that Love that generates the Church took on a body. May the Mother of the Lord continue to protect your journey and to make fruitful your study and teaching, in service to the Church’s mission for the family and society. May the Apostolic Benediction, which I bestow on all of you from my heart, accompany you. Thank you.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Benedict XVI's Address to Tribunal of the Roman Rota
"The Right to Contract Marriage Presupposes That One Can Marry"
- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered Saturday upon receiving in audience the judges, officials and collaborators of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota on the occasion of the inauguration of the judicial year.
* * *
Dear Members of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota!
I am delighted to meet with you for this annual gathering on the occasion of the beginning of the judicial year. A cordial greeting to the College of Prelate Auditors, beginning with the dean, Bishop Antoni Stankiewicz, whom I thank for his polite words. A salute the officials, the lawyers and the other collaborators of this tribunal, and all present. This moment permits me the opportunity of renewing my esteem for the work that you do in the service of the Church and to encourage you to an ever greater commitment in such a delicate and important sector for pastoral care and the "salus animarum."
The relationship between law and pastoral care was at the center of the postconciliar debate over canon law. The well known statement of the Venerable Servant of God John Paul II, according to which "it is not true that to be more pastoral the law must make itself less juridical" (Allocution of the Roman Rota, Jan. 18, 1990, No. 4: AAS 82 [1990], p. 874) expresses the radical overcoming of apparent opposition. "The juridical dimension and the pastoral dimension," he said, "are inseparably united in the pilgrim Church on this earth. First of all, there is their harmony that derives from their common finality: the salvation of souls" (ibid.).
In my first meeting with you in 2006, I tried to show the authentic pastoral meaning of the processes of the annulment of marriage, based on love of the truth (cf. Allocution to the Roman Rota, Jan. 28, 2006: AAS 98 [2006], pp. 135-138). Today I would like to pause to consider the juridical dimension that is inherent in the pastoral activity of preparation and admission to marriage, to try to shed light on the connection between such activity and the judicial matrimonial processes.
The canonical dimension of the preparation for marriage is not perhaps an immediately obvious element. In effect, on the one hand we observe how in the courses of preparation for marriage, the canonical questions occupy a very modest place, if not insignificant, insofar as we tend to think that the future spouses have a very minimal interest in questions that are reserved for specialists. On the other hand, while not neglecting any of the necessities of the juridical activities that precede marriage, ready to accept that "nothing be opposed to its valid and licit celebration" (CIC, Canon 1066), there is a widespread belief according to which the examination of the spouses, the marriage banns and the other appropriate measures taken in the necessary pre-matrimonial investigations (cf. ibid., Canon 1067), among which are the marriage preparation courses, are merely formal obligations. In fact, it is often thought that in admitting couples to marriage, pastors must proceed with generosity since the natural right of the persons to marry is in play.
It is a good thing, then, to reflect on the juridical dimension of marriage itself. It is an issue that I have touched on in the context of reflection on the truth about marriage, in which I stated, among other things, that: "[w]ith regard to the subjective and libertarian relativizing of the sexual experience, the Church's tradition clearly affirms the natural juridical character of marriage, that is, the fact that it belongs by nature to the context of justice in interpersonal relations. In this perspective, the law is truly interwoven with life and love as one of the intrinsic obligations of its existence" (Allocution to the Roman Rota, Jan. 27, 2007, AAS 99 [2007], p. 90). Thus, there are not [two different kinds of marriage:] an existential marriage ("matrimonio della vita") and a legal marriage: there is only one marriage, which is constitutively a real juridical bond between the man and the woman, a bond upon which the authentic conjugal dynamic of life and love rests. The marriage celebrated by the spouses, the one that pastoral care concerns itself with and that which canonical doctrine focuses on, are a single natural and salvific reality, whose richness certainly permits a variety of approaches, without however losing its essential identity. The juridical aspect is essentially linked to the essence of marriage. This is understood in the light of a non-positivistic notion of law, but considered in the perspective of the relational character of justice.
The right to marriage, or "ius connubii," must be seen from this perspective. It is not, therefore, a subjective pretense that must be satisfied by pastors through a mere formal recognition, independently of the actual content of the union. The right to contract marriage presupposes that one can marry, and one intends to authentically celebrate marriage, that is, to do so in the truth of its essence as it is taught by the Church. No one can boast of a right to a nuptial ceremony. The "ius connubii," in fact, refers to the right to celebrate a real marriage. The "ius connubii," therefore, is not being denied where it is evident that the premises for its exercise are not present, that is, if the requested capacity to wed is manifestly lacking, or an objective is sought that is contrary to the natural reality of marriage.
In this regard I would like to reaffirm what I wrote after the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist: "Given the complex cultural context which the Church today encounters in many countries, the synod also recommended devoting maximum pastoral attention to training couples preparing for marriage and to ascertaining beforehand their convictions regarding the obligations required for the validity of the sacrament of Matrimony. Serious discernment in this matter will help to avoid situations where impulsive decisions or superficial reasons lead two young people to take on responsibilities that they are then incapable of honoring (cf. Proposition 40). The good that the Church and society as a whole expect from marriage and from the family founded upon marriage is so great as to call for full pastoral commitment to this particular area. Marriage and the family are institutions that must be promoted and defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature, since whatever is injurious to them is injurious to society itself" (Post-Synodal Exhortation "Sacramentum caritatis," Feb. 22, 2007, No. 29: AAS 99 [2007], p. 130).
Preparation for marriage, in its various phases described by Pope John Paul II in the apostolic exhortation "Familiaris consortio," certainly has its purposes that transcend the juridic dimension, since its horizon is constituted by the whole good, human and Christian, of the couple and their future children (cf. no. 66: AAS 73 [1981], pp. 159-162), definitively directed to the holiness of their life (cf. CIC, can. 1063, No. 2). Nevertheless, we must never forget that the immediate objective of such preparation is that of promoting the free celebration of an authentic marriage, that is, the constituting of a bond of justice and love between the couple, with the characteristics of unity and indissolubility, ordained to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of children, and which between baptized persons constitutes one of the sacraments of the New Covenant. With this an extrinsic ideological message is not addressed to the couple, much less is a cultural model imposed; rather the betrothed are made able to discover the truth of a natural inclination and a capacity for commitment that is inscribed in the being of their man-woman relationship. Law as an essential component of the matrimonial relation flows from here; it is rooted in a natural power of the couple that is actualized in consensual self-giving. Reason and faith concur to illuminate this truth of life but it must be clear in any case that, as the Venerable John Paul II taught, "the Church does not refuse the matrimonial celebration to those who are well-disposed, even if imperfectly prepared from the supernatural point of view, so long as the person has the right intention to wed according to the natural reality of marriage" (Allocution to the Roman Rota, Jan. 30, 2003, No. 8: AAS 95 [2003], p. 397). On this view, a special care must accompany the marriage preparation whether it be remote, proximate or immediate (cf. John Paul II, apostolic exhortation "Familiaris consortio," Nov. 22, 1981, No. 66: AAS 73 [1981], pp. 159-162)
Among the means for judging that the plan of the engaged couple is really conjugal, there is the pre-marriage examination. This examination has a principally juridical purpose: to judge that nothing is opposed to the valid and licit celebration of the marriage. To say that it is juridical is not to say that it is formalistic, as if it were a bureaucratic task consisting in filling out a form based on the answers to set questions. It is rather a unique pastoral event -- to be valued for all the seriousness and attention that it demands -- in which, through a dialogue full of respect and cordiality, the pastor tries to help the person seriously place himself before the truth about himself and his human and Christian vocation to marriage. In this case the dialogue, always conducted with man and woman separately -- without diminishing the importance of other conversations with the couple -- requires a climate full of sincerity in which their must be an emphasis on the fact that those entering into the contract are the ones primarily concerned and primarily obligated in conscience to celebrate a valid matrimony.
In this way, with the various means at our disposal for a sound preparation and verification, we can develop effective pastoral care aimed at preventing matrimonial annulments. We must do our best to break -- to the extent that it is possible -- the vicious circle that often exists between a careless admission to marriage, without adequate preparation and a serious examination of the necessary requirements for its celebration, and judicial declaration sometimes just as careless, but opposite in significance, in which the same marriage is considered null solely on the basis of the claim of its failure. It is true that not all the causes of a future declaration of nullity can be identified or manifested in the preparation for the marriage, but, at the same time, it would not be right to block access to marriage on the basis of unfounded presumptions, such as that as holding that in today's world people are generally incapable of marriage or only have an apparent desire for it. In light of this it is evidently important that there be a more acute awareness of the responsibility that those charged with the care of souls have in these matters. Canon law in general, and that dealing with marriage and trials in particular, certainly demands a special preparation, but a knowledge of the basic and the immediately practical aspects of Canon Law, relative to our proper functions, constitutes a formative exigency of fundamental relevance for all pastoral workers, in particular for those who are engaged in the pastoral care of families.
All of this requires, further, that the conduct of ecclesiastical tribunals send a univocal message about what is essential to marriage in harmony with the magisterium and Canon Law, speaking with one voice. Seeing the necessity of the unity of jurisprudence entrusted to this Tribunal, the other ecclesiastical tribunals must conform to the jurisprudence of the Roman Rota (cf. John Paul II, Allocution to Roman Rota, Jan. 17, 1998, No. 4: AAS 90 [1998], p. 783). Recently I insisted on the necessity of ruling rightly about the causes related to consensual incapacity (cf. Allocution to the Roman Rota, Jan. 29, 2009: AAS 101 [2009], pp. 124-128). The question continues to be quite relevant and unfortunately incorrect positions persist, such as that of identifying the discretion of judgment required for marriage (cf. CIC, Canon 1095, No. 2) with the prudence expected in the decision to marry, thus confusing a question of capacity with another that does not touch validity, since it concerns the degree of practical wisdom with which a decision is made that is, in any case, matrimonial. Graver still would be the misunderstanding if one were to attribute invalidating efficaciousness to imprudent choices made in the marriage.
In the sphere of nullity created by the exclusion of the essential goods of marriage (cf. ibid. can. 1101, No. 2) a serious commitment is necessary, moreover, so that the judicial rulings reflect the truth about marriage, the same truth that must illuminate admission to marriage. I am thinking, in a special way, of the exclusion of the "bonum coniugum." In relation to the this exclusion the same danger that threatens the correct application of the norms dealing with incapacity seems to repeat itself, and, that is, looking for the causes of nullity in the behaviors that do not regard the constitution of the bond but rather its realization in life. We must resist the temptation to transform the simple failures of the spouses in the conjugal life into defects of consent. True exclusion can only manifest itself when the ordination to the good of the spouses is harmed (cf. ibid., Canon 1055, No. 1), excluded with a positive act of the will. Without a doubt the cases in which there is a failure to recognize the other as a spouse are an exception. This occurs when the essential ordination of the community of conjugal life is excluded from the good of the other. The clarification of these hypotheses about the exclusion of the "bonum coniugum" must be carefully assessed by the jurisprudence of the Roman Rota.
In concluding these reflections of mine, I turn to consider the relationship between law and pastoral care. It is often the object of misunderstandings, to the detriment of law, but also to the detriment of pastoral work. On the contrary, it is necessary to promote in all sectors, and in a special way in that of marriage and the family, profound harmony between the pastoral and the juridical, which will certainly show itself to be fruitful for those who approach marriage.
Dear members of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, I entrust all of you to the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that you never lack divine assistance in carrying out your daily labors with fidelity, the spirit of service and with fruitfulness, and I gladly impart to all a special Apostolic Blessing.
- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered Saturday upon receiving in audience the judges, officials and collaborators of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota on the occasion of the inauguration of the judicial year.
* * *
Dear Members of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota!
I am delighted to meet with you for this annual gathering on the occasion of the beginning of the judicial year. A cordial greeting to the College of Prelate Auditors, beginning with the dean, Bishop Antoni Stankiewicz, whom I thank for his polite words. A salute the officials, the lawyers and the other collaborators of this tribunal, and all present. This moment permits me the opportunity of renewing my esteem for the work that you do in the service of the Church and to encourage you to an ever greater commitment in such a delicate and important sector for pastoral care and the "salus animarum."
The relationship between law and pastoral care was at the center of the postconciliar debate over canon law. The well known statement of the Venerable Servant of God John Paul II, according to which "it is not true that to be more pastoral the law must make itself less juridical" (Allocution of the Roman Rota, Jan. 18, 1990, No. 4: AAS 82 [1990], p. 874) expresses the radical overcoming of apparent opposition. "The juridical dimension and the pastoral dimension," he said, "are inseparably united in the pilgrim Church on this earth. First of all, there is their harmony that derives from their common finality: the salvation of souls" (ibid.).
In my first meeting with you in 2006, I tried to show the authentic pastoral meaning of the processes of the annulment of marriage, based on love of the truth (cf. Allocution to the Roman Rota, Jan. 28, 2006: AAS 98 [2006], pp. 135-138). Today I would like to pause to consider the juridical dimension that is inherent in the pastoral activity of preparation and admission to marriage, to try to shed light on the connection between such activity and the judicial matrimonial processes.
The canonical dimension of the preparation for marriage is not perhaps an immediately obvious element. In effect, on the one hand we observe how in the courses of preparation for marriage, the canonical questions occupy a very modest place, if not insignificant, insofar as we tend to think that the future spouses have a very minimal interest in questions that are reserved for specialists. On the other hand, while not neglecting any of the necessities of the juridical activities that precede marriage, ready to accept that "nothing be opposed to its valid and licit celebration" (CIC, Canon 1066), there is a widespread belief according to which the examination of the spouses, the marriage banns and the other appropriate measures taken in the necessary pre-matrimonial investigations (cf. ibid., Canon 1067), among which are the marriage preparation courses, are merely formal obligations. In fact, it is often thought that in admitting couples to marriage, pastors must proceed with generosity since the natural right of the persons to marry is in play.
It is a good thing, then, to reflect on the juridical dimension of marriage itself. It is an issue that I have touched on in the context of reflection on the truth about marriage, in which I stated, among other things, that: "[w]ith regard to the subjective and libertarian relativizing of the sexual experience, the Church's tradition clearly affirms the natural juridical character of marriage, that is, the fact that it belongs by nature to the context of justice in interpersonal relations. In this perspective, the law is truly interwoven with life and love as one of the intrinsic obligations of its existence" (Allocution to the Roman Rota, Jan. 27, 2007, AAS 99 [2007], p. 90). Thus, there are not [two different kinds of marriage:] an existential marriage ("matrimonio della vita") and a legal marriage: there is only one marriage, which is constitutively a real juridical bond between the man and the woman, a bond upon which the authentic conjugal dynamic of life and love rests. The marriage celebrated by the spouses, the one that pastoral care concerns itself with and that which canonical doctrine focuses on, are a single natural and salvific reality, whose richness certainly permits a variety of approaches, without however losing its essential identity. The juridical aspect is essentially linked to the essence of marriage. This is understood in the light of a non-positivistic notion of law, but considered in the perspective of the relational character of justice.
The right to marriage, or "ius connubii," must be seen from this perspective. It is not, therefore, a subjective pretense that must be satisfied by pastors through a mere formal recognition, independently of the actual content of the union. The right to contract marriage presupposes that one can marry, and one intends to authentically celebrate marriage, that is, to do so in the truth of its essence as it is taught by the Church. No one can boast of a right to a nuptial ceremony. The "ius connubii," in fact, refers to the right to celebrate a real marriage. The "ius connubii," therefore, is not being denied where it is evident that the premises for its exercise are not present, that is, if the requested capacity to wed is manifestly lacking, or an objective is sought that is contrary to the natural reality of marriage.
In this regard I would like to reaffirm what I wrote after the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist: "Given the complex cultural context which the Church today encounters in many countries, the synod also recommended devoting maximum pastoral attention to training couples preparing for marriage and to ascertaining beforehand their convictions regarding the obligations required for the validity of the sacrament of Matrimony. Serious discernment in this matter will help to avoid situations where impulsive decisions or superficial reasons lead two young people to take on responsibilities that they are then incapable of honoring (cf. Proposition 40). The good that the Church and society as a whole expect from marriage and from the family founded upon marriage is so great as to call for full pastoral commitment to this particular area. Marriage and the family are institutions that must be promoted and defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature, since whatever is injurious to them is injurious to society itself" (Post-Synodal Exhortation "Sacramentum caritatis," Feb. 22, 2007, No. 29: AAS 99 [2007], p. 130).
Preparation for marriage, in its various phases described by Pope John Paul II in the apostolic exhortation "Familiaris consortio," certainly has its purposes that transcend the juridic dimension, since its horizon is constituted by the whole good, human and Christian, of the couple and their future children (cf. no. 66: AAS 73 [1981], pp. 159-162), definitively directed to the holiness of their life (cf. CIC, can. 1063, No. 2). Nevertheless, we must never forget that the immediate objective of such preparation is that of promoting the free celebration of an authentic marriage, that is, the constituting of a bond of justice and love between the couple, with the characteristics of unity and indissolubility, ordained to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of children, and which between baptized persons constitutes one of the sacraments of the New Covenant. With this an extrinsic ideological message is not addressed to the couple, much less is a cultural model imposed; rather the betrothed are made able to discover the truth of a natural inclination and a capacity for commitment that is inscribed in the being of their man-woman relationship. Law as an essential component of the matrimonial relation flows from here; it is rooted in a natural power of the couple that is actualized in consensual self-giving. Reason and faith concur to illuminate this truth of life but it must be clear in any case that, as the Venerable John Paul II taught, "the Church does not refuse the matrimonial celebration to those who are well-disposed, even if imperfectly prepared from the supernatural point of view, so long as the person has the right intention to wed according to the natural reality of marriage" (Allocution to the Roman Rota, Jan. 30, 2003, No. 8: AAS 95 [2003], p. 397). On this view, a special care must accompany the marriage preparation whether it be remote, proximate or immediate (cf. John Paul II, apostolic exhortation "Familiaris consortio," Nov. 22, 1981, No. 66: AAS 73 [1981], pp. 159-162)
Among the means for judging that the plan of the engaged couple is really conjugal, there is the pre-marriage examination. This examination has a principally juridical purpose: to judge that nothing is opposed to the valid and licit celebration of the marriage. To say that it is juridical is not to say that it is formalistic, as if it were a bureaucratic task consisting in filling out a form based on the answers to set questions. It is rather a unique pastoral event -- to be valued for all the seriousness and attention that it demands -- in which, through a dialogue full of respect and cordiality, the pastor tries to help the person seriously place himself before the truth about himself and his human and Christian vocation to marriage. In this case the dialogue, always conducted with man and woman separately -- without diminishing the importance of other conversations with the couple -- requires a climate full of sincerity in which their must be an emphasis on the fact that those entering into the contract are the ones primarily concerned and primarily obligated in conscience to celebrate a valid matrimony.
In this way, with the various means at our disposal for a sound preparation and verification, we can develop effective pastoral care aimed at preventing matrimonial annulments. We must do our best to break -- to the extent that it is possible -- the vicious circle that often exists between a careless admission to marriage, without adequate preparation and a serious examination of the necessary requirements for its celebration, and judicial declaration sometimes just as careless, but opposite in significance, in which the same marriage is considered null solely on the basis of the claim of its failure. It is true that not all the causes of a future declaration of nullity can be identified or manifested in the preparation for the marriage, but, at the same time, it would not be right to block access to marriage on the basis of unfounded presumptions, such as that as holding that in today's world people are generally incapable of marriage or only have an apparent desire for it. In light of this it is evidently important that there be a more acute awareness of the responsibility that those charged with the care of souls have in these matters. Canon law in general, and that dealing with marriage and trials in particular, certainly demands a special preparation, but a knowledge of the basic and the immediately practical aspects of Canon Law, relative to our proper functions, constitutes a formative exigency of fundamental relevance for all pastoral workers, in particular for those who are engaged in the pastoral care of families.
All of this requires, further, that the conduct of ecclesiastical tribunals send a univocal message about what is essential to marriage in harmony with the magisterium and Canon Law, speaking with one voice. Seeing the necessity of the unity of jurisprudence entrusted to this Tribunal, the other ecclesiastical tribunals must conform to the jurisprudence of the Roman Rota (cf. John Paul II, Allocution to Roman Rota, Jan. 17, 1998, No. 4: AAS 90 [1998], p. 783). Recently I insisted on the necessity of ruling rightly about the causes related to consensual incapacity (cf. Allocution to the Roman Rota, Jan. 29, 2009: AAS 101 [2009], pp. 124-128). The question continues to be quite relevant and unfortunately incorrect positions persist, such as that of identifying the discretion of judgment required for marriage (cf. CIC, Canon 1095, No. 2) with the prudence expected in the decision to marry, thus confusing a question of capacity with another that does not touch validity, since it concerns the degree of practical wisdom with which a decision is made that is, in any case, matrimonial. Graver still would be the misunderstanding if one were to attribute invalidating efficaciousness to imprudent choices made in the marriage.
In the sphere of nullity created by the exclusion of the essential goods of marriage (cf. ibid. can. 1101, No. 2) a serious commitment is necessary, moreover, so that the judicial rulings reflect the truth about marriage, the same truth that must illuminate admission to marriage. I am thinking, in a special way, of the exclusion of the "bonum coniugum." In relation to the this exclusion the same danger that threatens the correct application of the norms dealing with incapacity seems to repeat itself, and, that is, looking for the causes of nullity in the behaviors that do not regard the constitution of the bond but rather its realization in life. We must resist the temptation to transform the simple failures of the spouses in the conjugal life into defects of consent. True exclusion can only manifest itself when the ordination to the good of the spouses is harmed (cf. ibid., Canon 1055, No. 1), excluded with a positive act of the will. Without a doubt the cases in which there is a failure to recognize the other as a spouse are an exception. This occurs when the essential ordination of the community of conjugal life is excluded from the good of the other. The clarification of these hypotheses about the exclusion of the "bonum coniugum" must be carefully assessed by the jurisprudence of the Roman Rota.
In concluding these reflections of mine, I turn to consider the relationship between law and pastoral care. It is often the object of misunderstandings, to the detriment of law, but also to the detriment of pastoral work. On the contrary, it is necessary to promote in all sectors, and in a special way in that of marriage and the family, profound harmony between the pastoral and the juridical, which will certainly show itself to be fruitful for those who approach marriage.
Dear members of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, I entrust all of you to the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that you never lack divine assistance in carrying out your daily labors with fidelity, the spirit of service and with fruitfulness, and I gladly impart to all a special Apostolic Blessing.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Families That Eat Together, Stay Together
Economist Points to Families as an Answer to Recession
It is no more complicated than sitting down together at the table, but according to an economist from the Catholic University of America, simply sharing family meals is key for children's development.
And, the economist suggested, strong families are good not just for the children given life within them. They are also good for the economy.
These were affirmations made by Maria Sophia Aguirre, a professor in the department of economics at Washington, D.C.'s Catholic University of America, during her address today at the 6th World Meeting of Families, underway in Mexico City.
Her presentation focused on the multiple benefits of stable families based on marriage, for all involved parties. She cited statistics such as marriage increases the likelihood of the father having good relations with children; divorce reduces the likelihood of children graduating from college and high school; and married mothers have lower levels of depression than single or co-habiting mothers.
Even physical health is better for families based on marriage, she said: Infant mortality is sharply reduced in this structure and there are lower probabilities of injury.
On the contrary, Aguirre noted, "the breakdown of the family is a symptom of a sick and weak society."
Problems of all sorts increase in irregular families: Women are more likely to be abused, kids are more likely to use drugs, and women and children of broken families have a higher probability of living in poverty.
More than a meal
And though it cannot be the solution for every problem, Aguirre mentioned that the simple act of eating together as a family has an effect on the development of children.
According to a study done by the National Center on Substance and Addiction at Colombia University, when comparing adolescents who eat dinner 0-2 times a week with their families and those who eat dinner 5-7 times, those who eat with their families more frequently are 40% more like to talk to their parents about a problem. Meanwhile, 171% of the teens who don't eat with their families note more tension at home.
Academic performance went up 38%. Kids were 142% less likely to smoke, 93% less likely to drink, 191% less likely to use marijuana and 169% less likely to have more than half of their friends be drug users.
And predictably, a family composed of both parents is 3.5 times more likely to have dinner as a family than a single-parent household.
More than money
Aguirre then turned her attention to the economic benefits of stable families based on marriage. Giving a review of nations ranging from Canada to Chile, the economist concluded that families are simply better for the economy.
"The breakdown of the family damages the economy and society since human, moral and social capital is reduced and social costs increase," she explained.
The professor contended that family structure is quite relevant for wealth, and that there is evidence to support this from across countries.
"The family is a necessary good for economic development," Aguirre concluded. "It should be promoted and protected if poverty reduction wants to be achieved."
It is no more complicated than sitting down together at the table, but according to an economist from the Catholic University of America, simply sharing family meals is key for children's development.
And, the economist suggested, strong families are good not just for the children given life within them. They are also good for the economy.
These were affirmations made by Maria Sophia Aguirre, a professor in the department of economics at Washington, D.C.'s Catholic University of America, during her address today at the 6th World Meeting of Families, underway in Mexico City.
Her presentation focused on the multiple benefits of stable families based on marriage, for all involved parties. She cited statistics such as marriage increases the likelihood of the father having good relations with children; divorce reduces the likelihood of children graduating from college and high school; and married mothers have lower levels of depression than single or co-habiting mothers.
Even physical health is better for families based on marriage, she said: Infant mortality is sharply reduced in this structure and there are lower probabilities of injury.
On the contrary, Aguirre noted, "the breakdown of the family is a symptom of a sick and weak society."
Problems of all sorts increase in irregular families: Women are more likely to be abused, kids are more likely to use drugs, and women and children of broken families have a higher probability of living in poverty.
More than a meal
And though it cannot be the solution for every problem, Aguirre mentioned that the simple act of eating together as a family has an effect on the development of children.
According to a study done by the National Center on Substance and Addiction at Colombia University, when comparing adolescents who eat dinner 0-2 times a week with their families and those who eat dinner 5-7 times, those who eat with their families more frequently are 40% more like to talk to their parents about a problem. Meanwhile, 171% of the teens who don't eat with their families note more tension at home.
Academic performance went up 38%. Kids were 142% less likely to smoke, 93% less likely to drink, 191% less likely to use marijuana and 169% less likely to have more than half of their friends be drug users.
And predictably, a family composed of both parents is 3.5 times more likely to have dinner as a family than a single-parent household.
More than money
Aguirre then turned her attention to the economic benefits of stable families based on marriage. Giving a review of nations ranging from Canada to Chile, the economist concluded that families are simply better for the economy.
"The breakdown of the family damages the economy and society since human, moral and social capital is reduced and social costs increase," she explained.
The professor contended that family structure is quite relevant for wealth, and that there is evidence to support this from across countries.
"The family is a necessary good for economic development," Aguirre concluded. "It should be promoted and protected if poverty reduction wants to be achieved."
Michael Waldstein on Forming Values
"We Parents Must Wake Up and Take Action"
Here is the text of the address given today by Michael Waldstein, Max Seckler Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University, Florida, at the 6th World Meeting of Families, under way in Mexico. The address was titled: "The Family: Forming Human and Christian Values: Overview of USA and Canada."
* * *
In his letter to the World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Pope Benedict wrote, "Today more than ever, the Christian family has a very noble mission that it cannot shirk: the transmission of the faith, which involves the gift of self to Jesus Christ who died and rose, and insertion into the Ecclesial Community. Parents are the first evangelizers of children, a precious gift from the Creator (cf. Gaudium et spes, n. 50), and begin by teaching them to say their first prayers. In this way a moral universe is built up, rooted in the will of God, where the child grows in the human and Christian values that give life its full meaning."
The vision of this statement is clear and strong. Do families in the United States and Canada live up to it? Do they introduce their children to the sincere gift of self to Christ? Do they help them become mature members of the Ecclesial Community? The positive side needs to be mentioned first. Many families do follow their mission with admirable strength and devotion.
At the same time one must admit that many families fall short of their mission. The United States and Canada built up extensive systems of Catholic schools. Catholic parents have traditionally delegated much of their responsibility as educators to these schools and they are still delegating it. The schools, however, have changed. Like all academic institutions, they have become increasingly secularized, which severely compromises the transmission of the faith.
Strong efforts are being made in some places to strengthen the identity and effectiveness of Catholic schools. A few weeks ago, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, DC, published a pastoral letter that is spearheading a renewal of the Catholic school system in his diocese. He sees the urgency of the situation and is calling for broad cooperation in the renewal. Yet this is only one diocese among many.
A more fundamental problem, however, arises from the strong reliance of most parents on the schools. Children spend much time at school and relatively little time with their parents. Only during vacations is the situation different. Since the life they share with their parents is often reduced to a minimum when school is in session, it is not easy to build up such a life during vacations. Parents and children often do not know what to do with each other during vacations.
There is another major force that is taking much of education out of the hands of the family, namely, the global youth culture. It is important to realize that this youth culture is a new phenomenon. It only began after the Second World War.
Two forces are perhaps the most formative in this youth culture. One of them is the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution is a child of the dominant utilitarian and consumerist adult culture after the Second World War. Utilitarianism and consumerism inevitably destroy the link between sex and love, between sex and procreation by reducing the other person in erotic experience to a means for pleasure. In the formation of the teenager, the piercing sexual passions of adolescent children were suddenly released into destructive premature relationships. Instead of being introduced into a culture of love, children were and are abandoned to a culture of the use of each other for pleasure or, to use their own preferred word, fun.
The second major force, intimately connected with the first, is the rise of a new music produced specifically for adolescent children. It is a music tailor-made for the absence of deeper personal formation of sexual passion by authentic love. This music and its cultural trappings could not have achieved the power it achieved without a large economic muscle behind it. American and European adolescents after the Second World War were perhaps the first generation of children who constituted a strong market by themselves in distinction from the adult world, because they got large amounts of discretionary money from their parents. The parents were happy enough to let the children do what they wanted while they themselves pursued their professional lives. The removal of women from the home and their induction into the work force increased the cultural vacuum in which children lived. It also increased the economic power of this vacuum. The entertainment industry exploded, aided by technological progress, especially by the invention of the radio and the television. Music turned out to be the single most important article of trade in this exploding market. It is a music that consistently conquers market share by preying on the most intense and most immature passions of adolescents, above all on erotic passion and on anger. The hearts of children were simply abandoned to the formative power of this music.
What should we do in this difficult situation? Many parents feel completely helpless. They see their children taken out of their hands and increasingly formed by another culture. Sociologists call this phenomenon the "generation gap." History as a whole shows that the generation gap is not a normal developmental phase. The normal situation is for children to grow in the culture of their parents and their society. The generation gap is without precedent. Children in Jewish communities grew up Jewish; in Catholic communities they grew up Catholic; in Buddhist communities they grew up Buddhist. Now Jewish, Catholic and Buddhist children grow to be one and the same thing: they become copies of their peers in the global youth culture.
We parents must wake up and take action! We must recall that it is our inalienable duty and therefore also our inalienable right to educate our children. In his encyclical Divini illius magistri of 1929 Pius XI writes, "The family ... holds directly from the Creator the mission (munus) and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to a strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the state, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth" (Divini illius magistri, 59, DS 3690). Following Vatican II, John Paul II insists on the same point. "The task of giving education is rooted in the primary vocation of married couples to participate in God's creative activity: by begetting in love and for love a new person who has within himself or herself the vocation to growth and development, parents by that very fact take on the task of helping that person effectively to live a fully human life. As the Second Vatican Council recalled, ‘since parents have conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn obligation to educate their offspring. Hence, parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it. For it devolves on parents to create a family atmosphere so animated with love and reverence for God and others that a well-rounded personal and social development will be fostered among the children.'... (Vatican II, Gravissimum educationis, 3). The right and duty of parents to give education is [1-] essential since it is connected with the transmission of human life; [2-] it is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children; [3-] and it is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others" (John Paul II, Familiaris consortio, 36).
The first and most important step is for us parents to embrace our duty and our right. We must defend this right as indeed inalienable. The second most important step is to spend time with our children, to build up a shared life. Only in a loving shared life can we transmit to our children what is dearest to us. The third most important step is to become involved in the education of our children. Archbishop Wuerl is calling on parents in his diocese to become involved in helping to renew the Catholic school system. For the majority of Catholic parents, such involvement in the children's schooling is the form this third most important step will take.
In describing the situation of the United States and Canada, however, I must also point to a more radical way in which parents are becoming involved in the education of their children, namely, homeschooling. According to recent credible estimates, there are about two million families in the United States that educate their children at home. My wife and I have eight children. We have been and are educating them from first grade all the way up to the end of high school. Four of them have already entered universities. The main reason why we began home schooling was the report we heard from close friends about the effect of home schooling on their family. The children, they said, became more friends with each other, because they shared the same experience of schooling in the home. The parents also became more friends with their children, because they shared more of their life. Like many other homeschoolers, we have seen that the global youth culture is not an irresistible force. It is possible to pass on our own Christian culture. The generation gap is not inevitable.
Here is the text of the address given today by Michael Waldstein, Max Seckler Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University, Florida, at the 6th World Meeting of Families, under way in Mexico. The address was titled: "The Family: Forming Human and Christian Values: Overview of USA and Canada."
* * *
In his letter to the World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Pope Benedict wrote, "Today more than ever, the Christian family has a very noble mission that it cannot shirk: the transmission of the faith, which involves the gift of self to Jesus Christ who died and rose, and insertion into the Ecclesial Community. Parents are the first evangelizers of children, a precious gift from the Creator (cf. Gaudium et spes, n. 50), and begin by teaching them to say their first prayers. In this way a moral universe is built up, rooted in the will of God, where the child grows in the human and Christian values that give life its full meaning."
The vision of this statement is clear and strong. Do families in the United States and Canada live up to it? Do they introduce their children to the sincere gift of self to Christ? Do they help them become mature members of the Ecclesial Community? The positive side needs to be mentioned first. Many families do follow their mission with admirable strength and devotion.
At the same time one must admit that many families fall short of their mission. The United States and Canada built up extensive systems of Catholic schools. Catholic parents have traditionally delegated much of their responsibility as educators to these schools and they are still delegating it. The schools, however, have changed. Like all academic institutions, they have become increasingly secularized, which severely compromises the transmission of the faith.
Strong efforts are being made in some places to strengthen the identity and effectiveness of Catholic schools. A few weeks ago, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, DC, published a pastoral letter that is spearheading a renewal of the Catholic school system in his diocese. He sees the urgency of the situation and is calling for broad cooperation in the renewal. Yet this is only one diocese among many.
A more fundamental problem, however, arises from the strong reliance of most parents on the schools. Children spend much time at school and relatively little time with their parents. Only during vacations is the situation different. Since the life they share with their parents is often reduced to a minimum when school is in session, it is not easy to build up such a life during vacations. Parents and children often do not know what to do with each other during vacations.
There is another major force that is taking much of education out of the hands of the family, namely, the global youth culture. It is important to realize that this youth culture is a new phenomenon. It only began after the Second World War.
Two forces are perhaps the most formative in this youth culture. One of them is the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution is a child of the dominant utilitarian and consumerist adult culture after the Second World War. Utilitarianism and consumerism inevitably destroy the link between sex and love, between sex and procreation by reducing the other person in erotic experience to a means for pleasure. In the formation of the teenager, the piercing sexual passions of adolescent children were suddenly released into destructive premature relationships. Instead of being introduced into a culture of love, children were and are abandoned to a culture of the use of each other for pleasure or, to use their own preferred word, fun.
The second major force, intimately connected with the first, is the rise of a new music produced specifically for adolescent children. It is a music tailor-made for the absence of deeper personal formation of sexual passion by authentic love. This music and its cultural trappings could not have achieved the power it achieved without a large economic muscle behind it. American and European adolescents after the Second World War were perhaps the first generation of children who constituted a strong market by themselves in distinction from the adult world, because they got large amounts of discretionary money from their parents. The parents were happy enough to let the children do what they wanted while they themselves pursued their professional lives. The removal of women from the home and their induction into the work force increased the cultural vacuum in which children lived. It also increased the economic power of this vacuum. The entertainment industry exploded, aided by technological progress, especially by the invention of the radio and the television. Music turned out to be the single most important article of trade in this exploding market. It is a music that consistently conquers market share by preying on the most intense and most immature passions of adolescents, above all on erotic passion and on anger. The hearts of children were simply abandoned to the formative power of this music.
What should we do in this difficult situation? Many parents feel completely helpless. They see their children taken out of their hands and increasingly formed by another culture. Sociologists call this phenomenon the "generation gap." History as a whole shows that the generation gap is not a normal developmental phase. The normal situation is for children to grow in the culture of their parents and their society. The generation gap is without precedent. Children in Jewish communities grew up Jewish; in Catholic communities they grew up Catholic; in Buddhist communities they grew up Buddhist. Now Jewish, Catholic and Buddhist children grow to be one and the same thing: they become copies of their peers in the global youth culture.
We parents must wake up and take action! We must recall that it is our inalienable duty and therefore also our inalienable right to educate our children. In his encyclical Divini illius magistri of 1929 Pius XI writes, "The family ... holds directly from the Creator the mission (munus) and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to a strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the state, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth" (Divini illius magistri, 59, DS 3690). Following Vatican II, John Paul II insists on the same point. "The task of giving education is rooted in the primary vocation of married couples to participate in God's creative activity: by begetting in love and for love a new person who has within himself or herself the vocation to growth and development, parents by that very fact take on the task of helping that person effectively to live a fully human life. As the Second Vatican Council recalled, ‘since parents have conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn obligation to educate their offspring. Hence, parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it. For it devolves on parents to create a family atmosphere so animated with love and reverence for God and others that a well-rounded personal and social development will be fostered among the children.'... (Vatican II, Gravissimum educationis, 3). The right and duty of parents to give education is [1-] essential since it is connected with the transmission of human life; [2-] it is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children; [3-] and it is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others" (John Paul II, Familiaris consortio, 36).
The first and most important step is for us parents to embrace our duty and our right. We must defend this right as indeed inalienable. The second most important step is to spend time with our children, to build up a shared life. Only in a loving shared life can we transmit to our children what is dearest to us. The third most important step is to become involved in the education of our children. Archbishop Wuerl is calling on parents in his diocese to become involved in helping to renew the Catholic school system. For the majority of Catholic parents, such involvement in the children's schooling is the form this third most important step will take.
In describing the situation of the United States and Canada, however, I must also point to a more radical way in which parents are becoming involved in the education of their children, namely, homeschooling. According to recent credible estimates, there are about two million families in the United States that educate their children at home. My wife and I have eight children. We have been and are educating them from first grade all the way up to the end of high school. Four of them have already entered universities. The main reason why we began home schooling was the report we heard from close friends about the effect of home schooling on their family. The children, they said, became more friends with each other, because they shared the same experience of schooling in the home. The parents also became more friends with their children, because they shared more of their life. Like many other homeschoolers, we have seen that the global youth culture is not an irresistible force. It is possible to pass on our own Christian culture. The generation gap is not inevitable.
Anderson's Address to Family Meeting
"Solidarity Is Grounded in the Mystery of the Triune God"
Here is the text of the address given today by Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, at the 6th World Meeting of Families, under way in Mexico.
* * *
I. INTRODUCTION:
Today, speaking of the Christian family and solidarity may seem obvious. We've spoke of the family and justice, social issues, truth, and freedom - solidarity seems a natural progression. However, to speak of the Christian family and solidarity together at an earlier time would have seemed radical and even contradictory. As Cardinal Ratzinger once noted, while other unitive terms like Eucharist and Communion are expressly Christian, solidarity "comes to us from outside .... developed initially among the early socialists by Pierre Leroux ... in contraposition to the Christian idea of love, as the new, rational and effective response to social problems."[1]
Leroux had abandoned the religion of Christianity and to compensate, he developed the idea of a new "religion of humanity". And although many do not consciously follow Leroux's idea of a "religion of humanity" as the basis of solidarity, solidarity and the unity of the human race is often divorced from God and the "Christian idea of love". Thus it is important to understand how John Paul II purified the concept of solidarity, even to the point of describing solidarity as "undoubtedly a Christian virtue" which "finds its deepest roots in Christian faith" and "is expressed in Christian love."[2]
Many saints canonized by John Paul II exhibited this Christian virtue of solidarity. But few inspired Karol Wojtyla as priest and as pope especially in regard to his understanding of Christian brotherhood than Adam Chmielowski of Krakow -- who the world knows now as Saint Brother Albert. Not only did the pope preach over forty homilies on Brother Albert, but even earlier, while a secret seminarian and a worker in the Solvay chemical plant, he composed a play on this saintly artist's devotion to the poor. The play's title is Our God's Brother, and it already sets up the question of family and humanity. At one point in the play, Adam's concern for the poor is questioned by his friend Max. Adam's charitable work is uncharacteristic of Adam's artistic vocation according to Max. His friend is also confused that Adam cannot bring himself to ignore the poor and get on with his real work as a painter. Max says:
"Of course, it must be running away from responsibility....
[H]ow can I be made responsible for a citizen who has wasted his life and is now at the bottom?"
But Adam contradicts him. His work with the poor is not a running away from reality and his vocation, but is a running toward it. He says:
"You still think, Max, that the pattern of human poverty corresponds to the pattern of punishment...But this is not just running away from responsibility. It is running away from something, or rather someone, in oneself and in all those people."[3]
Today, solidarity encounters the same problems of withdrawal and confusion. Solidarity may seem unattractive when it is seen as a reward for behavior rather than as a response to personhood -- of a necessary correspondence between persons. Sometimes, even when we commit ourselves to acts of solidarity, we may be confused by the draw to compassion. But the answer to both problems can be seen in the need to see the truth about the human person -- the "someone in oneself and in all those people" -- that binds us together.
II. Communion of Persons
For this reason, four decades after writing Our God's Brother, John Paul II describes "solidarity" in his encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis in terms of unity. He writes: "Beyond human and natural bonds, already so close and strong, there is discerned in the light of faith a new model of the unity of the human race, which must ultimately inspire our solidarity. This supreme model of unity," John Paul continues, "which is a reflection of the intimate life of God, one God in three Persons, is what we Christians mean by the word 'communion.'"[4]
Especially in this context and gathered so near to the great Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we remember John Paul II's visit to Mexico City to give us the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America. This great document, which celebrates its tenth anniversary, next week, takes as its subtitle, "On the encounter with the living Jesus Christ: The Way to Conversion, Communion and Solidarity in America.[5] In it he writes that just as communion is the fruit of conversion, so "solidarity is ... the fruit of the communion which is grounded in the mystery of the triune God, and in the Son of God who took flesh and died for all. It is expressed in Christian love which seeks the good of others, especially of those most in need."[6]
John Paul II's early general audiences on Genesis (which came to be known as the Wednesday Catechesis on the Theology of the Body) made great inroads in understanding man as a being created for communion. According to the pope, "man became the 'image and likeness' of the triune God not only through his own person, but also as a person intended to form a communion of persons-a communion which man and woman form right from the beginning."[7] In other words, to be made in the image of God is not simply to be fashioned as such, but to function as an image of God - that is, to be ontologically destined to a life of loving communion with others. This is the foundation of the civilization of love; moreover, this Christian anthropology provides such an understanding of man that makes the call to build a civilization of love not only a feasible option, but the most necessary fulfillment of our humanity.
III. Benedict XVI and John Paul II on Interdependence
Nevertheless, such a view of the person may be seen by some as too theological or religious or too idealistic and removed from daily life, making it irrelevant. And as Marcello Pera has pointed out, today "people no longer believe in 'ultimate' foundations; they no longer dream of essences."[8] Consequently, we find ourselves depending more and more on different facets of this communion to convey the message. One of the tangible facets of communion that are at stake is loving interdependence. In Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, John Paul II declared there is a "need for a solidarity which will take up interdependence and transfer it to the moral plane."
In Mulieris Dignitatem John Paul II saw this in Adam's solitary search for not only a companion but a helpmate: "In the 'unity of the two', man and woman are called from the beginning not only to exist 'side by side' or 'together', but they are also called to exist mutually 'one for the other'."[9] Benedict XVI takes this further. In Adam and Eve's relationship, being with each other can be understood most fully in context of being from.
This constitutes another facet of the imago Dei which we discover in the human person. In addition to St. Augustine's understanding of an "interior" trinity of intellect, will and spirit within man, and contributing to John Paul II's "social" trinity among men, Cardinal Ratzinger presented the imago Dei as a trinity of "being." He writes: "The real God is by his very nature entirely being-for (Father), being-from (Son), and being-with (Holy Spirit). Man, for his part, is God's image precisely insofar as the "from," "with," and "for" constitute the fundamental anthropological pattern."[10]
Human love and interdependence cannot be understood only at a horizontal level. When it is, it is often reduced to mutual dependence or even mutual usury. Rather, human love and interdependence is enlightened by our common vertical interdependence, a dependence between persons made apparent first in a relationship with those who gave us life. In this, Benedict XVI's elucidation I believe provides us with great inroads in understanding and defending solidarity, both within the family and beyond the family.
The Biblical foundations are explored in John Paul II's general audience catechesis on the Theology of the Body, when he points to the fact that God's design for man is expressed even before man is created.[11] As Genesis says, "Then God said, 'let us make man in our own image.'"[12] This intentionality simultaneously sets man apart from the rest of creation and establishes the intimate connection between God and man. As John Paul II notes, it is "as if the Creator entered into himself; as if, creating, not only did he call things into existence from nothingness...but, as if, in a special way, he drew man from the mystery of his own Being."[13] Consequently, man "must not be understood as a portrait, but as a living being, who will live a life similar to that of God."[14]
In his solitude, Adam begins to see how to live a life similar to God's life, a life that necessitates a communion of persons. But even more, when tested with solitude, Adam compares himself not with the animals he shares the world with. He looks to the creator, and compares himself with God. In this he finds that "man resembles God more than nature."[15] The importance of origins is reflected in the words of Adam in the second creation account, when Adam recognizes Eve, exclaiming "This now is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken from man."[16]
In the family, the human person is revealed from the beginning as interdependent. Cardinal Ratzinger presented this idea when speaking of pregnancy and abortion. Within the womb, the child's life depends upon being with the mother. But like Adam, mere presence is not enough, and in pregnancy, the child's presence with the mother necessitates the mother's goodness. "This being-with compels the being of the other ... to become a being-for." In this, "the child in the mother's womb is simply a very graphic depiction of the essence of human existence in general."
This fundamental human reality of "being-for" for the other applies as much to physically matured persons as it does to the child. Even so, the importance of the continuity of love comes through in other areas of life. On the genetic level, this is obvious in how each child resembles the mother and father. On the personal level, this is recognized by each mother and father who immediately after birth tries to identify those similarities. It is recognized by the children born as the result of anonymous donors who try to find their anonymous fathers. Its confusion was expressed, symbolically, when the mother of the first Chinese child born from in vitro fertilization gave her daughter not only the mother's own name, but the name of the doctor who performed the procedure.[17]
IV. Without Roots
The truth is this: although a person can be isolated socially and geographically from other people, no person can survive without entrusting himself to individuals and community. For this reason, true autonomy cannot exist; nor is it an ideal to aspire to. "Whenever there is an attempt to free ourselves from this pattern, we are not on our way to divinity, but to dehumanization, to the destruction of being itself through the destruction of the truth."[18]
When Marcello Pera lamented that "people no longer believe in 'ultimate' foundations", it was in the context of lamenting Europe's detachment from its historical and moral Christian. But this detachment from foundations is part of a more fundamental detachment seen also at the level of the person, especially within the family. Through divorce, abandonment, and some uses of fertility technology, parenthood is separated from presence. That is, for many children today being from a parent no longer means being with a parent and thus no longer means having a parent present being for that child. Likewise, parenthood is separated from marriage, when being with a spouse is separated from the openness of a child being from the couple. The result is what Carle Zimmerman described as the "atomistic family."
Nine months ago, one son recently published his diary from the weeks leading up to his mother's choice to end her life through assisted suicide. When the doctor doubted that her pain was "unbearable" - the third and last requirement for euthanasia - the conversation of mother and son quickly evolves into a distressing fragmentation of love and life. Recounting the situation, her son writes, Mum puts her coffee down. "Well, I have to die anyway, don't I?" Then she asks us what we think.
I interrupt: "It should be your own decision. None of us is to say anything."
But Mum struggles to say she wants to die. Eventually I say, "I think what she finds unbearable is not so much her pain and sickness, but the fear of it getting worse and of losing control."
When [Doctor] Martin is finally satisfied that Mum wants to end it, he agrees to contact the second doctor. He leaves with an empathetic nod to us all."[19]
This is not the empathy or interdependence in the foundation of a civilization of love. True sympathy or compassion - in the truest sense of either of those words - is to suffer with. Moreover, this decisiveness, this silence, this measure of life is not the foundation of any civilization.
This dying mother's decision was ultimately supported by the value of individual autonomy and the fear "of losing control." But although autonomy is an important value - it is not the most important. More important than autonomy is community - especially that special community which is also a communion of persons. And at the foundation of community is appreciation, gratitude and respect for the gift and dignity of human life.
Perhaps what this mother longed to hear, needed to hear was something entirely different than, "It should be your own decision. None of us is to say anything." Perhaps, what she longed to hear from her children was, "We love you. We need you. Stay with us." Where the family values a life in existence as a good, there can be a society and a civilization that values a life in existence as a good. But this can only happen if families themselves are not closed in on themselves. In this, autonomy of individuals and families cannot be treated as the principle or only value.
Solidarity's role in and through the family is more than just another "social virtue" along with "truth, freedom, justice, subsidiarity and...charity."[20] If solidarity's future must be built upon this communion of persons, the champion of this communion is first and foremost the family - not only as a teacher of social virtues, but as the first model of the Trinitarian communion of persons. It is there that we not only find the family present in solidarity, but indeed its vital model and its nucleus. For this reason, John Paul II said "we cannot speak of solidarity in the modern community without also mentioning family life."[21] Without solidarity within the family, there can be no solidarity beyond the family. Without an understanding and protection of the family, there can be no easy understanding of the human family that is society, the Christian family that is the Church, or the family of families that is the parish.
V. Challenged by Childhood
In John Paul II's first apostolic journey, he came to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and called us to a new evangelization, beginning by preaching the truth about the human person. In Benedict XVI's first apostolic journey to the Marian Shrine at Aparecida, he called us to build not only a Continent of Hope throughout our hemisphere but to build a Continent of Love. And now, we await our Holy Father's next encyclical, entitled "Caritas in Veritate" ("Love in Truth"), addressing social issues and globalization. As we prepare, we should take time to examine not only the condition of our countries and our continents, but also of our families. In her Nobel Prize address, Mother Teresa famously used the refrain "love begins at home."[22] What kind of foundation for solidarity is there, if it is not present within the family, with the presence of children whose very existence depends on the goodness of others?
For example, an international poll conducted by the Gallup polling institute asked people if children in their country are treated with dignity and respect. In Latin America as a whole, about 60 percent of respondents said no. In Haiti, this rose to nearly 90% saying children are not treated with dignity and respect.[23] Several questions come to mind. How are these children treated that indicated a disregard for dignity and respect? Why are they not treated with dignity and respect? And, importantly, does this treatment change? At what age will children be treated with respect, if ever? And when these children grow up, will they in turn know how to treat others with dignity and respect?
But a more fundamental question is necessary today in this place so close to Tepeyac hill. How is this treatment of children possible in a continent where so many know by heart the words of Blessed Mary of Guadalupe: "Am I not here, who am your mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the fold of my mantle, in the cradle of my arms?"[24]
And were not these words addressed to a layman who was concerned for the health and welfare of his family?
In Ecclesia in America, John Paul II writes in chapter 5 entitled, "The Path to Solidarity" that, "The human being's dignity as a child of God is the source of human rights."[25] But when we read these words we must ask, "How are we to recognize the dignity of our neighbor as "a child of God" if we have no regard for the children we find around us?"
John Paul II has observed that nothing can replace the heart of a mother always present and waiting in her home. But it is also true when he writes that, "A family rests on a father. If it has a father, it is a family. The father is the one who ties the family members into that unity whose name is family."[26] The family must be community in which both mother and father accept and live their responsibility. And it must be a community in solidarity with those whose own community of family is broken or wounded.
In this way the Christian family may walk the path of true solidarity and make its own the words of Ecclesia in America: "Solidarity is grounded in the mystery of the triune God, and in the Son of God who took flesh and died for all. It is expressed in Christian love which seeks the good of others, especially of those most in need."[27]
Thank you.
[1] Ratzinger, "Eucharist, Communion, and Solidarity", Lecture at the Bishops' Conference of Campania in Benevento, Italy, June 2, 2002. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020602_ratzinger-eucharistic-congress_en.html
[2] John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §40; ibid; Ecclesia in America,§52, quoting Propositio §67.
[3] Karol Wojtyla. "Our God's Brother". The Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. Translated by Boleslaw Taborwski. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Pg. 182.
[4] John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §52.
[5] John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, given at Mexico City, January 22, in the year 1999, the twenty-first of his Pontificate.
[6] John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, §52. Quoting Propositio §67.
[7] John Paul II, General Audience, November 14, 1979.
[8] Marcello Pera, "Relativism, Christianity, and the West", Without Roots, pg. 19.
[9] John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §7.
[10] Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal."Truth and Freedom", Communio: International Catholic Review, Spring 1996 issue.
[11] John Paul II, General Audience, 1979. §
[12] Genesis 1
[13] John Paul II, General Audience, December 6, 1978. §2.
[14] John Paul II, General Audience, December 6, 1978. §2.
[15] John Paul II, General Audience, December 6, 1978. §3.
[16] Genesis 2 - accentuated in the Hebrew using not "of" but "from" - as word also used for distance and origin, not mere similarity.
[17] Zheng Mengzhu. Zheng (mother's name), Meng ("first"), Zhu (from doctor's last name, Lizhu).
[18] Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal."Truth and Freedom", Communio: International Catholic Review, Spring 1996 issue.
[19] Marc Weide, Diary of terminally ill woman who chose euthanasia. "'I'm going to die on Monday at 6.15pm': When Marc Weide's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she chose euthanasia. Here, we publish his shockingly frank diary of her final days". The Guardian, Saturday 23 August 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/23/euthanasia.cancer
[20] John Paul II, Address to the Members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Friday, May 2, 2003.
[21] John Paul II, Homily at the Globe Stadium, Pastoral Journey to Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Stockholm, Sweden, June 8, 1989. §6.
[22] Mother Teresa, Nobel Lecture, for the Nobel Peace Prize 1979, 11 December, 1979. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html
[23] http://www.gallup.com/poll/106507/Latin-Americans-Dignity-Denied-Regions-Youth.aspx
[24] Nican Mopohua, nos. 118-119. Also quoted by Benedict XVI at Aparecida, at the Inaugural Session of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, 13 May 2007.
[25] John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, §57.
[26] John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla), Homily on the 80th anniversary of the birth of Pope Paul VI, Wawel Cathedral, September 26, 1977. Kalendarium, 782.
[27] John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, §52.
Here is the text of the address given today by Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, at the 6th World Meeting of Families, under way in Mexico.
* * *
I. INTRODUCTION:
Today, speaking of the Christian family and solidarity may seem obvious. We've spoke of the family and justice, social issues, truth, and freedom - solidarity seems a natural progression. However, to speak of the Christian family and solidarity together at an earlier time would have seemed radical and even contradictory. As Cardinal Ratzinger once noted, while other unitive terms like Eucharist and Communion are expressly Christian, solidarity "comes to us from outside .... developed initially among the early socialists by Pierre Leroux ... in contraposition to the Christian idea of love, as the new, rational and effective response to social problems."[1]
Leroux had abandoned the religion of Christianity and to compensate, he developed the idea of a new "religion of humanity". And although many do not consciously follow Leroux's idea of a "religion of humanity" as the basis of solidarity, solidarity and the unity of the human race is often divorced from God and the "Christian idea of love". Thus it is important to understand how John Paul II purified the concept of solidarity, even to the point of describing solidarity as "undoubtedly a Christian virtue" which "finds its deepest roots in Christian faith" and "is expressed in Christian love."[2]
Many saints canonized by John Paul II exhibited this Christian virtue of solidarity. But few inspired Karol Wojtyla as priest and as pope especially in regard to his understanding of Christian brotherhood than Adam Chmielowski of Krakow -- who the world knows now as Saint Brother Albert. Not only did the pope preach over forty homilies on Brother Albert, but even earlier, while a secret seminarian and a worker in the Solvay chemical plant, he composed a play on this saintly artist's devotion to the poor. The play's title is Our God's Brother, and it already sets up the question of family and humanity. At one point in the play, Adam's concern for the poor is questioned by his friend Max. Adam's charitable work is uncharacteristic of Adam's artistic vocation according to Max. His friend is also confused that Adam cannot bring himself to ignore the poor and get on with his real work as a painter. Max says:
"Of course, it must be running away from responsibility....
[H]ow can I be made responsible for a citizen who has wasted his life and is now at the bottom?"
But Adam contradicts him. His work with the poor is not a running away from reality and his vocation, but is a running toward it. He says:
"You still think, Max, that the pattern of human poverty corresponds to the pattern of punishment...But this is not just running away from responsibility. It is running away from something, or rather someone, in oneself and in all those people."[3]
Today, solidarity encounters the same problems of withdrawal and confusion. Solidarity may seem unattractive when it is seen as a reward for behavior rather than as a response to personhood -- of a necessary correspondence between persons. Sometimes, even when we commit ourselves to acts of solidarity, we may be confused by the draw to compassion. But the answer to both problems can be seen in the need to see the truth about the human person -- the "someone in oneself and in all those people" -- that binds us together.
II. Communion of Persons
For this reason, four decades after writing Our God's Brother, John Paul II describes "solidarity" in his encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis in terms of unity. He writes: "Beyond human and natural bonds, already so close and strong, there is discerned in the light of faith a new model of the unity of the human race, which must ultimately inspire our solidarity. This supreme model of unity," John Paul continues, "which is a reflection of the intimate life of God, one God in three Persons, is what we Christians mean by the word 'communion.'"[4]
Especially in this context and gathered so near to the great Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we remember John Paul II's visit to Mexico City to give us the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America. This great document, which celebrates its tenth anniversary, next week, takes as its subtitle, "On the encounter with the living Jesus Christ: The Way to Conversion, Communion and Solidarity in America.[5] In it he writes that just as communion is the fruit of conversion, so "solidarity is ... the fruit of the communion which is grounded in the mystery of the triune God, and in the Son of God who took flesh and died for all. It is expressed in Christian love which seeks the good of others, especially of those most in need."[6]
John Paul II's early general audiences on Genesis (which came to be known as the Wednesday Catechesis on the Theology of the Body) made great inroads in understanding man as a being created for communion. According to the pope, "man became the 'image and likeness' of the triune God not only through his own person, but also as a person intended to form a communion of persons-a communion which man and woman form right from the beginning."[7] In other words, to be made in the image of God is not simply to be fashioned as such, but to function as an image of God - that is, to be ontologically destined to a life of loving communion with others. This is the foundation of the civilization of love; moreover, this Christian anthropology provides such an understanding of man that makes the call to build a civilization of love not only a feasible option, but the most necessary fulfillment of our humanity.
III. Benedict XVI and John Paul II on Interdependence
Nevertheless, such a view of the person may be seen by some as too theological or religious or too idealistic and removed from daily life, making it irrelevant. And as Marcello Pera has pointed out, today "people no longer believe in 'ultimate' foundations; they no longer dream of essences."[8] Consequently, we find ourselves depending more and more on different facets of this communion to convey the message. One of the tangible facets of communion that are at stake is loving interdependence. In Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, John Paul II declared there is a "need for a solidarity which will take up interdependence and transfer it to the moral plane."
In Mulieris Dignitatem John Paul II saw this in Adam's solitary search for not only a companion but a helpmate: "In the 'unity of the two', man and woman are called from the beginning not only to exist 'side by side' or 'together', but they are also called to exist mutually 'one for the other'."[9] Benedict XVI takes this further. In Adam and Eve's relationship, being with each other can be understood most fully in context of being from.
This constitutes another facet of the imago Dei which we discover in the human person. In addition to St. Augustine's understanding of an "interior" trinity of intellect, will and spirit within man, and contributing to John Paul II's "social" trinity among men, Cardinal Ratzinger presented the imago Dei as a trinity of "being." He writes: "The real God is by his very nature entirely being-for (Father), being-from (Son), and being-with (Holy Spirit). Man, for his part, is God's image precisely insofar as the "from," "with," and "for" constitute the fundamental anthropological pattern."[10]
Human love and interdependence cannot be understood only at a horizontal level. When it is, it is often reduced to mutual dependence or even mutual usury. Rather, human love and interdependence is enlightened by our common vertical interdependence, a dependence between persons made apparent first in a relationship with those who gave us life. In this, Benedict XVI's elucidation I believe provides us with great inroads in understanding and defending solidarity, both within the family and beyond the family.
The Biblical foundations are explored in John Paul II's general audience catechesis on the Theology of the Body, when he points to the fact that God's design for man is expressed even before man is created.[11] As Genesis says, "Then God said, 'let us make man in our own image.'"[12] This intentionality simultaneously sets man apart from the rest of creation and establishes the intimate connection between God and man. As John Paul II notes, it is "as if the Creator entered into himself; as if, creating, not only did he call things into existence from nothingness...but, as if, in a special way, he drew man from the mystery of his own Being."[13] Consequently, man "must not be understood as a portrait, but as a living being, who will live a life similar to that of God."[14]
In his solitude, Adam begins to see how to live a life similar to God's life, a life that necessitates a communion of persons. But even more, when tested with solitude, Adam compares himself not with the animals he shares the world with. He looks to the creator, and compares himself with God. In this he finds that "man resembles God more than nature."[15] The importance of origins is reflected in the words of Adam in the second creation account, when Adam recognizes Eve, exclaiming "This now is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken from man."[16]
In the family, the human person is revealed from the beginning as interdependent. Cardinal Ratzinger presented this idea when speaking of pregnancy and abortion. Within the womb, the child's life depends upon being with the mother. But like Adam, mere presence is not enough, and in pregnancy, the child's presence with the mother necessitates the mother's goodness. "This being-with compels the being of the other ... to become a being-for." In this, "the child in the mother's womb is simply a very graphic depiction of the essence of human existence in general."
This fundamental human reality of "being-for" for the other applies as much to physically matured persons as it does to the child. Even so, the importance of the continuity of love comes through in other areas of life. On the genetic level, this is obvious in how each child resembles the mother and father. On the personal level, this is recognized by each mother and father who immediately after birth tries to identify those similarities. It is recognized by the children born as the result of anonymous donors who try to find their anonymous fathers. Its confusion was expressed, symbolically, when the mother of the first Chinese child born from in vitro fertilization gave her daughter not only the mother's own name, but the name of the doctor who performed the procedure.[17]
IV. Without Roots
The truth is this: although a person can be isolated socially and geographically from other people, no person can survive without entrusting himself to individuals and community. For this reason, true autonomy cannot exist; nor is it an ideal to aspire to. "Whenever there is an attempt to free ourselves from this pattern, we are not on our way to divinity, but to dehumanization, to the destruction of being itself through the destruction of the truth."[18]
When Marcello Pera lamented that "people no longer believe in 'ultimate' foundations", it was in the context of lamenting Europe's detachment from its historical and moral Christian. But this detachment from foundations is part of a more fundamental detachment seen also at the level of the person, especially within the family. Through divorce, abandonment, and some uses of fertility technology, parenthood is separated from presence. That is, for many children today being from a parent no longer means being with a parent and thus no longer means having a parent present being for that child. Likewise, parenthood is separated from marriage, when being with a spouse is separated from the openness of a child being from the couple. The result is what Carle Zimmerman described as the "atomistic family."
Nine months ago, one son recently published his diary from the weeks leading up to his mother's choice to end her life through assisted suicide. When the doctor doubted that her pain was "unbearable" - the third and last requirement for euthanasia - the conversation of mother and son quickly evolves into a distressing fragmentation of love and life. Recounting the situation, her son writes, Mum puts her coffee down. "Well, I have to die anyway, don't I?" Then she asks us what we think.
I interrupt: "It should be your own decision. None of us is to say anything."
But Mum struggles to say she wants to die. Eventually I say, "I think what she finds unbearable is not so much her pain and sickness, but the fear of it getting worse and of losing control."
When [Doctor] Martin is finally satisfied that Mum wants to end it, he agrees to contact the second doctor. He leaves with an empathetic nod to us all."[19]
This is not the empathy or interdependence in the foundation of a civilization of love. True sympathy or compassion - in the truest sense of either of those words - is to suffer with. Moreover, this decisiveness, this silence, this measure of life is not the foundation of any civilization.
This dying mother's decision was ultimately supported by the value of individual autonomy and the fear "of losing control." But although autonomy is an important value - it is not the most important. More important than autonomy is community - especially that special community which is also a communion of persons. And at the foundation of community is appreciation, gratitude and respect for the gift and dignity of human life.
Perhaps what this mother longed to hear, needed to hear was something entirely different than, "It should be your own decision. None of us is to say anything." Perhaps, what she longed to hear from her children was, "We love you. We need you. Stay with us." Where the family values a life in existence as a good, there can be a society and a civilization that values a life in existence as a good. But this can only happen if families themselves are not closed in on themselves. In this, autonomy of individuals and families cannot be treated as the principle or only value.
Solidarity's role in and through the family is more than just another "social virtue" along with "truth, freedom, justice, subsidiarity and...charity."[20] If solidarity's future must be built upon this communion of persons, the champion of this communion is first and foremost the family - not only as a teacher of social virtues, but as the first model of the Trinitarian communion of persons. It is there that we not only find the family present in solidarity, but indeed its vital model and its nucleus. For this reason, John Paul II said "we cannot speak of solidarity in the modern community without also mentioning family life."[21] Without solidarity within the family, there can be no solidarity beyond the family. Without an understanding and protection of the family, there can be no easy understanding of the human family that is society, the Christian family that is the Church, or the family of families that is the parish.
V. Challenged by Childhood
In John Paul II's first apostolic journey, he came to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and called us to a new evangelization, beginning by preaching the truth about the human person. In Benedict XVI's first apostolic journey to the Marian Shrine at Aparecida, he called us to build not only a Continent of Hope throughout our hemisphere but to build a Continent of Love. And now, we await our Holy Father's next encyclical, entitled "Caritas in Veritate" ("Love in Truth"), addressing social issues and globalization. As we prepare, we should take time to examine not only the condition of our countries and our continents, but also of our families. In her Nobel Prize address, Mother Teresa famously used the refrain "love begins at home."[22] What kind of foundation for solidarity is there, if it is not present within the family, with the presence of children whose very existence depends on the goodness of others?
For example, an international poll conducted by the Gallup polling institute asked people if children in their country are treated with dignity and respect. In Latin America as a whole, about 60 percent of respondents said no. In Haiti, this rose to nearly 90% saying children are not treated with dignity and respect.[23] Several questions come to mind. How are these children treated that indicated a disregard for dignity and respect? Why are they not treated with dignity and respect? And, importantly, does this treatment change? At what age will children be treated with respect, if ever? And when these children grow up, will they in turn know how to treat others with dignity and respect?
But a more fundamental question is necessary today in this place so close to Tepeyac hill. How is this treatment of children possible in a continent where so many know by heart the words of Blessed Mary of Guadalupe: "Am I not here, who am your mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the fold of my mantle, in the cradle of my arms?"[24]
And were not these words addressed to a layman who was concerned for the health and welfare of his family?
In Ecclesia in America, John Paul II writes in chapter 5 entitled, "The Path to Solidarity" that, "The human being's dignity as a child of God is the source of human rights."[25] But when we read these words we must ask, "How are we to recognize the dignity of our neighbor as "a child of God" if we have no regard for the children we find around us?"
John Paul II has observed that nothing can replace the heart of a mother always present and waiting in her home. But it is also true when he writes that, "A family rests on a father. If it has a father, it is a family. The father is the one who ties the family members into that unity whose name is family."[26] The family must be community in which both mother and father accept and live their responsibility. And it must be a community in solidarity with those whose own community of family is broken or wounded.
In this way the Christian family may walk the path of true solidarity and make its own the words of Ecclesia in America: "Solidarity is grounded in the mystery of the triune God, and in the Son of God who took flesh and died for all. It is expressed in Christian love which seeks the good of others, especially of those most in need."[27]
Thank you.
[1] Ratzinger, "Eucharist, Communion, and Solidarity", Lecture at the Bishops' Conference of Campania in Benevento, Italy, June 2, 2002. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020602_ratzinger-eucharistic-congress_en.html
[2] John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §40; ibid; Ecclesia in America,§52, quoting Propositio §67.
[3] Karol Wojtyla. "Our God's Brother". The Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. Translated by Boleslaw Taborwski. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Pg. 182.
[4] John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §52.
[5] John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, given at Mexico City, January 22, in the year 1999, the twenty-first of his Pontificate.
[6] John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, §52. Quoting Propositio §67.
[7] John Paul II, General Audience, November 14, 1979.
[8] Marcello Pera, "Relativism, Christianity, and the West", Without Roots, pg. 19.
[9] John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §7.
[10] Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal."Truth and Freedom", Communio: International Catholic Review, Spring 1996 issue.
[11] John Paul II, General Audience, 1979. §
[12] Genesis 1
[13] John Paul II, General Audience, December 6, 1978. §2.
[14] John Paul II, General Audience, December 6, 1978. §2.
[15] John Paul II, General Audience, December 6, 1978. §3.
[16] Genesis 2 - accentuated in the Hebrew using not "of" but "from" - as word also used for distance and origin, not mere similarity.
[17] Zheng Mengzhu. Zheng (mother's name), Meng ("first"), Zhu (from doctor's last name, Lizhu).
[18] Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal."Truth and Freedom", Communio: International Catholic Review, Spring 1996 issue.
[19] Marc Weide, Diary of terminally ill woman who chose euthanasia. "'I'm going to die on Monday at 6.15pm': When Marc Weide's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she chose euthanasia. Here, we publish his shockingly frank diary of her final days". The Guardian, Saturday 23 August 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/23/euthanasia.cancer
[20] John Paul II, Address to the Members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Friday, May 2, 2003.
[21] John Paul II, Homily at the Globe Stadium, Pastoral Journey to Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Stockholm, Sweden, June 8, 1989. §6.
[22] Mother Teresa, Nobel Lecture, for the Nobel Peace Prize 1979, 11 December, 1979. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html
[23] http://www.gallup.com/poll/106507/Latin-Americans-Dignity-Denied-Regions-Youth.aspx
[24] Nican Mopohua, nos. 118-119. Also quoted by Benedict XVI at Aparecida, at the Inaugural Session of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, 13 May 2007.
[25] John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, §57.
[26] John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla), Homily on the 80th anniversary of the birth of Pope Paul VI, Wawel Cathedral, September 26, 1977. Kalendarium, 782.
[27] John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, §52.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Communication Losing Ground, Says Philosopher
Being "Connected" Isn't the Same Thing, Clarifies Speaker
Youth are acquiring a mental habit of living "connected" -- connected, that is, to the Internet. But being "connected" is not the same as communicating, warns a Chilean philosopher.
Jaime Antúnez, director of the cultural and anthropological magazine Humanitas, was one of the speakers today at the 6th World Meeting of Families underway in Mexico City.
His address took a look at what values really are, considering on what basis we can affirm that a certain human act is good or evil, that a certain behavior is just or unjust, that a certain activity is correct or not.
Antúnez said that in the modern world there is a grave disorder in the language associated with morality. The same words are used, he noted, but in large part or even entirely, the understanding of these words has been lost, both in theory and in the practice of morality.
Before addressing the some 10,000 participants in the family meeting, Antúnez spoke with ZENIT about some of the themes relating to values and the family.
Asked if families, which should be the principal educators in values, are losing ground to the communications media in values education, Antúnez acknowledged that things have only gotten worse since John Paul II wrote his "Letter to Families" in 1994.
"Consider," he said," just the increasing dependence that youth live today on a whole variety of electronic media, which technology is offering every day. It's clear that -- besides the useful benefit that the good use of many of these can obviously generate -- the mental habit of living 'connected' is spreading. This is a worrying situation because of the marked dehumanizing implication this has, which displaces the natural and personal [state of] living 'communicated,' a quality that characterizes a society of human persons.
"While the second quality, as the word says, is proper of interpersonal communion, the same thing does not happen with connection, increasingly impersonal, both a catalyst and a symptom of the solitude that contemporary man lives, in particular, millions of youth."
Youth are acquiring a mental habit of living "connected" -- connected, that is, to the Internet. But being "connected" is not the same as communicating, warns a Chilean philosopher.
Jaime Antúnez, director of the cultural and anthropological magazine Humanitas, was one of the speakers today at the 6th World Meeting of Families underway in Mexico City.
His address took a look at what values really are, considering on what basis we can affirm that a certain human act is good or evil, that a certain behavior is just or unjust, that a certain activity is correct or not.
Antúnez said that in the modern world there is a grave disorder in the language associated with morality. The same words are used, he noted, but in large part or even entirely, the understanding of these words has been lost, both in theory and in the practice of morality.
Before addressing the some 10,000 participants in the family meeting, Antúnez spoke with ZENIT about some of the themes relating to values and the family.
Asked if families, which should be the principal educators in values, are losing ground to the communications media in values education, Antúnez acknowledged that things have only gotten worse since John Paul II wrote his "Letter to Families" in 1994.
"Consider," he said," just the increasing dependence that youth live today on a whole variety of electronic media, which technology is offering every day. It's clear that -- besides the useful benefit that the good use of many of these can obviously generate -- the mental habit of living 'connected' is spreading. This is a worrying situation because of the marked dehumanizing implication this has, which displaces the natural and personal [state of] living 'communicated,' a quality that characterizes a society of human persons.
"While the second quality, as the word says, is proper of interpersonal communion, the same thing does not happen with connection, increasingly impersonal, both a catalyst and a symptom of the solitude that contemporary man lives, in particular, millions of youth."
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
John Paul II's Letter to Artists
I was inspired to post this letter by John Paul II, after a meeting with one of the
leaders of Pointe Coeur, http://www.pointscoeur.org/, a movement in the Church that seeks to meet and share the experience of Catholicism with artists.
They have two houses currently in New York, and forty one in total in 20 countries around the world.
JR
To all who are passionately dedicated
to the search for new “epiphanies” of beauty
so that through their creative work as artists
they may offer these as gifts to the world.
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gn 1:31)
The artist, image of God the Creator
1. None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands. A glimmer of that feeling has shone so often in your eyes when—like the artists of every age—captivated by the hidden power of sounds and words, colours and shapes, you have admired the work of your inspiration, sensing in it some echo of the mystery of creation with which God, the sole creator of all things, has wished in some way to associate you.
That is why it seems to me that there are no better words than the text of Genesis with which to begin my Letter to you, to whom I feel closely linked by experiences reaching far back in time and which have indelibly marked my life. In writing this Letter, I intend to follow the path of the fruitful dialogue between the Church and artists which has gone on unbroken through two thousand years of history, and which still, at the threshold of the Third Millennium, offers rich promise for the future.
In fact, this dialogue is not dictated merely by historical accident or practical need, but is rooted in the very essence of both religious experience and artistic creativity. The opening page of the Bible presents God as a kind of exemplar of everyone who produces a work: the human craftsman mirrors the image of God as Creator. This relationship is particularly clear in the Polish language because of the lexical link between the words stwórca (creator) and twórca (craftsman).
What is the difference between “creator” and “craftsman”? The one who creates bestows being itself, he brings something out of nothing—ex nihilo sui et subiecti, as the Latin puts it—and this, in the strict sense, is a mode of operation which belongs to the Almighty alone. The craftsman, by contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he gives form and meaning. This is the mode of operation peculiar to man as made in the image of God. In fact, after saying that God created man and woman “in his image” (cf. Gn 1:27), the Bible adds that he entrusted to them the task of dominating the earth (cf. Gn 1:28). This was the last day of creation (cf. Gn 1:28-31). On the previous days, marking as it were the rhythm of the birth of the cosmos, Yahweh had created the universe. Finally he created the human being, the noblest fruit of his design, to whom he subjected the visible world as a vast field in which human inventiveness might assert itself.
God therefore called man into existence, committing to him the craftsman's task. Through his “artistic creativity” man appears more than ever “in the image of God”, and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous “material” of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power. Obviously, this is a sharing which leaves intact the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature, as Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa made clear: “Creative art, which it is the soul's good fortune to entertain, is not to be identified with that essential art which is God himself, but is only a communication of it and a share in it”.(1)
That is why artists, the more conscious they are of their “gift”, are led all the more to see themselves and the whole of creation with eyes able to contemplate and give thanks, and to raise to God a hymn of praise. This is the only way for them to come to a full understanding of themselves, their vocation and their mission.
The special vocation of the artist
2. Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.
It is important to recognize the distinction, but also the connection, between these two aspects of human activity. The distinction is clear. It is one thing for human beings to be the authors of their own acts, with responsibility for their moral value; it is another to be an artist, able, that is, to respond to the demands of art and faithfully to accept art's specific dictates.(2) This is what makes the artist capable of producing objects, but it says nothing as yet of his moral character. We are speaking not of moulding oneself, of forming one's own personality, but simply of actualizing one's productive capacities, giving aesthetic form to ideas conceived in the mind.
The distinction between the moral and artistic aspects is fundamental, but no less important is the connection between them. Each conditions the other in a profound way. In producing a work, artists express themselves to the point where their work becomes a unique disclosure of their own being, of what they are and of how they are what they are. And there are endless examples of this in human history. In shaping a masterpiece, the artist not only summons his work into being, but also in some way reveals his own personality by means of it. For him art offers both a new dimension and an exceptional mode of expression for his spiritual growth. Through his works, the artist speaks to others and communicates with them. The history of art, therefore, is not only a story of works produced but also a story of men and women. Works of art speak of their authors; they enable us to know their inner life, and they reveal the original contribution which artists offer to the history of culture.
The artistic vocation in the service of beauty
3. A noted Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid, wrote that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up”.(3)
The theme of beauty is decisive for a discourse on art. It was already present when I stressed God's delighted gaze upon creation. In perceiving that all he had created was good, God saw that it was beautiful as well.(4) The link between good and beautiful stirs fruitful reflection. In a certain sense, beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty. This was well understood by the Greeks who, by fusing the two concepts, coined a term which embraces both: kalokagathía, or beauty-goodness. On this point Plato writes: “The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful”.(5)
It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship with being, with the truth and with the good. The artist has a special relationship to beauty. In a very true sense it can be said that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him by the Creator in the gift of “artistic talent”. And, certainly, this too is a talent which ought to be made to bear fruit, in keeping with the sense of the Gospel parable of the talents (cf. Mt 25:14-30).
Here we touch on an essential point. Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic vocation—as poet, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, actor and so on—feel at the same time the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbour and of humanity as a whole.
The artist and the common good
4. Society needs artists, just as it needs scientists, technicians, workers, professional people, witnesses of the faith, teachers, fathers and mothers, who ensure the growth of the person and the development of the community by means of that supreme art form which is “the art of education”. Within the vast cultural panorama of each nation, artists have their unique place. Obedient to their inspiration in creating works both worthwhile and beautiful, they not only enrich the cultural heritage of each nation and of all humanity, but they also render an exceptional social service in favour of the common good.
The particular vocation of individual artists decides the arena in which they serve and points as well to the tasks they must assume, the hard work they must endure and the responsibility they must accept. Artists who are conscious of all this know too that they must labour without allowing themselves to be driven by the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity, and still less by the calculation of some possible profit for themselves. There is therefore an ethic, even a “spirituality” of artistic service, which contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people. It is precisely this to which Cyprian Norwid seems to allude in declaring that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up”.
Art and the mystery of the Word made flesh
5. The Law of the Old Testament explicitly forbids representation of the invisible and ineffable God by means of “graven or molten image” (Dt 27:15), because God transcends every material representation: “I am who I am” (Ex 3:14). Yet in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Son of God becomes visible in person: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son born of woman” (Gal 4:4). God became man in Jesus Christ, who thus becomes “the central point of reference for an understanding of the enigma of human existence, the created world and God himself”.(6)
This prime epiphany of “God who is Mystery” is both an encouragement and a challenge to Christians, also at the level of artistic creativity. From it has come a flowering of beauty which has drawn its sap precisely from the mystery of the Incarnation. In becoming man, the Son of God has introduced into human history all the evangelical wealth of the true and the good, and with this he has also unveiled a new dimension of beauty, of which the Gospel message is filled to the brim.
Sacred Scripture has thus become a sort of “immense vocabulary” (Paul Claudel) and “iconographic atlas” (Marc Chagall), from which both Christian culture and art have drawn. The Old Testament, read in the light of the New, has provided endless streams of inspiration. From the stories of the Creation and sin, the Flood, the cycle of the Patriarchs, the events of the Exodus to so many other episodes and characters in the history of salvation, the biblical text has fired the imagination of painters, poets, musicians, playwrights and film-makers. A figure like Job, to take but one example, with his searing and ever relevant question of suffering, still arouses an interest which is not just philosophical but literary and artistic as well. And what should we say of the New Testament? From the Nativity to Golgotha, from the Transfiguration to the Resurrection, from the miracles to the teachings of Christ, and on to the events recounted in the Acts of the Apostles or foreseen by the Apocalypse in an eschatological key, on countless occasions the biblical word has become image, music and poetry, evoking the mystery of “the Word made flesh” in the language of art.
In the history of human culture, all of this is a rich chapter of faith and beauty. Believers above all have gained from it in their experience of prayer and Christian living. Indeed for many of them, in times when few could read or write, representations of the Bible were a concrete mode of catechesis.(7) But for everyone, believers or not, the works of art inspired by Scripture remain a reflection of the unfathomable mystery which engulfs and inhabits the world.
A fruitful alliance between the Gospel and art
6. Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath reality's surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself springs from the depths of the human soul, where the desire to give meaning to one's own life is joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things. All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit.
Believers find nothing strange in this: they know that they have had a momentary glimpse of the abyss of light which has its original wellspring in God. Is it in any way surprising that this leaves the spirit overwhelmed as it were, so that it can only stammer in reply? True artists above all are ready to acknowledge their limits and to make their own the words of the Apostle Paul, according to whom “God does not dwell in shrines made by human hands” so that “we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold or silver or stone, a representation by human art and imagination” (Acts 17:24, 29). If the intimate reality of things is always “beyond” the powers of human perception, how much more so is God in the depths of his unfathomable mystery!
The knowledge conferred by faith is of a different kind: it presupposes a personal encounter with God in Jesus Christ. Yet this knowledge too can be enriched by artistic intuition. An eloquent example of aesthetic contemplation sublimated in faith are, for example, the works of Fra Angelico. No less notable in this regard is the ecstatic lauda, which Saint Francis of Assisi twice repeats in the chartula which he composed after receiving the stigmata of Christ on the mountain of La Verna: “You are beauty... You are beauty!”.(8) Saint Bonaventure comments: “In things of beauty, he contemplated the One who is supremely beautiful, and, led by the footprints he found in creatures, he followed the Beloved everywhere”.(9)
A corresponding approach is found in Eastern spirituality where Christ is described as “the supremely Beautiful, possessed of a beauty above all the children of earth”.(10) Macarius the Great speaks of the transfiguring and liberating beauty of the Risen Lord in these terms: “The soul which has been fully illumined by the unspeakable beauty of the glory shining on the countenance of Christ overflows with the Holy Spirit... it is all eye, all light, all countenance”.(11)
Every genuine art form in its own way is a path to the inmost reality of man and of the world. It is therefore a wholly valid approach to the realm of faith, which gives human experience its ultimate meaning. That is why the Gospel fullness of truth was bound from the beginning to stir the interest of artists, who by their very nature are alert to every “epiphany” of the inner beauty of things.
The origins
7. The art which Christianity encountered in its early days was the ripe fruit of the classical world, articulating its aesthetic canons and embodying its values. Not only in their way of living and thinking, but also in the field of art, faith obliged Christians to a discernment which did not allow an uncritical acceptance of this heritage. Art of Christian inspiration began therefore in a minor key, strictly tied to the need for believers to contrive Scripture-based signs to express both the mysteries of faith and a “symbolic code” by which they could distinguish and identify themselves, especially in the difficult times of persecution. Who does not recall the symbols which marked the first appearance of an art both pictorial and plastic? The fish, the loaves, the shepherd: in evoking the mystery, they became almost imperceptibly the first traces of a new art.
When the Edict of Constantine allowed Christians to declare themselves in full freedom, art became a privileged means for the expression of faith. Majestic basilicas began to appear, and in them the architectural canons of the pagan world were reproduced and at the same time modified to meet the demands of the new form of worship. How can we fail to recall at least the old Saint Peter's Basilica and the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, both funded by Constantine himself? Or Constantinople's Hagia Sophia built by Justinian, with its splendours of Byzantine art?
While architecture designed the space for worship, gradually the need to contemplate the mystery and to present it explicitly to the simple people led to the early forms of painting and sculpture. There appeared as well the first elements of art in word and sound. Among the many themes treated by Augustine we find De Musica; and Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, Prudentius, Ephrem the Syrian, Gregory of Nazianzus and Paulinus of Nola, to mention but a few, promoted a Christian poetry which was often of high quality not just as theology but also as literature. Their poetic work valued forms inherited from the classical authors, but was nourished by the pure sap of the Gospel, as Paulinus of Nola put it succinctly: “Our only art is faith and our music Christ”.(12) A little later, Gregory the Great compiled the Antiphonarium and thus laid the ground for the organic development of that most original sacred music which takes its name from him. Gregorian chant, with its inspired modulations, was to become down the centuries the music of the Church's faith in the liturgical celebration of the sacred mysteries. The “beautiful” was thus wedded to the “true”, so that through art too souls might be lifted up from the world of the senses to the eternal.
Along this path there were troubled moments. Precisely on the issue of depicting the Christian mystery, there arose in the early centuries a bitter controversy known to history as “the iconoclast crisis”. Sacred images, which were already widely used in Christian devotion, became the object of violent contention. The Council held at Nicaea in 787, which decreed the legitimacy of images and their veneration, was a historic event not just for the faith but for culture itself. The decisive argument to which the Bishops appealed in order to settle the controversy was the mystery of the Incarnation: if the Son of God had come into the world of visible realities—his humanity building a bridge between the visible and the invisible— then, by analogy, a representation of the mystery could be used, within the logic of signs, as a sensory evocation of the mystery. The icon is venerated not for its own sake, but points beyond to the subject which it represents.(13)
The Middle Ages
8. The succeeding centuries saw a great development of Christian art. In the East, the art of the icon continued to flourish, obeying theological and aesthetic norms charged with meaning and sustained by the conviction that, in a sense, the icon is a sacrament. By analogy with what occurs in the sacraments, the icon makes present the mystery of the Incarnation in one or other of its aspects. That is why the beauty of the icon can be best appreciated in a church where in the shadows burning lamps stir infinite flickerings of light. As Pavel Florensky has written: “By the flat light of day, gold is crude, heavy, useless, but by the tremulous light of a lamp or candle it springs to life and glitters in sparks beyond counting—now here, now there, evoking the sense of other lights, not of this earth, which fill the space of heaven”.(14)
In the West, artists start from the most varied viewpoints, depending also on the underlying convictions of the cultural world of their time. The artistic heritage built up over the centuries includes a vast array of sacred works of great inspiration, which still today leave the observer full of admiration. In the first place, there are the great buildings for worship, in which the functional is always wedded to the creative impulse inspired by a sense of the beautiful and an intuition of the mystery. From here came the various styles well known in the history of art. The strength and simplicity of the Romanesque, expressed in cathedrals and abbeys, slowly evolved into the soaring splendours of the Gothic. These forms portray not only the genius of an artist but the soul of a people. In the play of light and shadow, in forms at times massive, at times delicate, structural considerations certainly come into play, but so too do the tensions peculiar to the experience of God, the mystery both “awesome” and “alluring”. How is one to summarize with a few brief references to each of the many different art forms, the creative power of the centuries of the Christian Middle Ages? An entire culture, albeit with the inescapable limits of all that is human, had become imbued with the Gospel; and where theology produced the Summa of Saint Thomas, church art moulded matter in a way which led to adoration of the mystery, and a wonderful poet like Dante Alighieri could compose “the sacred poem, to which both heaven and earth have turned their hand”,(15) as he himself described the Divine Comedy.
Humanism and the Renaissance
9. The favourable cultural climate that produced the extraordinary artistic flowering of Humanism and the Renaissance also had a significant impact on the way in which the artists of the period approached the religious theme. Naturally, their inspiration, like their style, varied greatly, at least among the best of them. But I do not intend to repeat things which you, as artists, know well. Writing from this Apostolic Palace, which is a mine of masterpieces perhaps unique in the world, I would rather give voice to the supreme artists who in this place lavished the wealth of their genius, often charged with great spiritual depth. From here can be heard the voice of Michelangelo who in the Sistine Chapel has presented the drama and mystery of the world from the Creation to the Last Judgement, giving a face to God the Father, to Christ the Judge, and to man on his arduous journey from the dawn to the consummation of history. Here speaks the delicate and profound genius of Raphael, highlighting in the array of his paintings, and especially in the “Dispute” in the Room of the Signatura, the mystery of the revelation of the Triune God, who in the Eucharist befriends man and sheds light on the questions and expectations of human intelligence. From this place, from the majestic Basilica dedicated to the Prince of the Apostles, from the Colonnade which spreads out from it like two arms open to welcome the whole human family, we still hear Bramante, Bernini, Borromini, Maderno, to name only the more important artists, all rendering visible the perception of the mystery which makes of the Church a universally hospitable community, mother and travelling companion to all men and women in their search for God.
This extraordinary complex is a remarkably powerful expression of sacred art, rising to heights of imperishable aesthetic and religious excellence. What has characterized sacred art more and more, under the impulse of Humanism and the Renaissance, and then of successive cultural and scientific trends, is a growing interest in everything human, in the world, and in the reality of history. In itself, such a concern is not at all a danger for Christian faith, centred on the mystery of the Incarnation and therefore on God's valuing of the human being. The great artists mentioned above are a demonstration of this. Suffice it to think of the way in which Michelangelo represents the beauty of the human body in his painting and sculpture.(16)
Even in the changed climate of more recent centuries, when a part of society seems to have become indifferent to faith, religious art has continued on its way. This can be more widely appreciated if we look beyond the figurative arts to the great development of sacred music through this same period, either composed for the liturgy or simply treating religious themes. Apart from the many artists who made sacred music their chief concern—how can we forget Pier Luigi da Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, Tomás Luis de Victoria?—it is also true that many of the great composers—from Handel to Bach, from Mozart to Schubert, from Beethoven to Berlioz, from Liszt to Verdi—have given us works of the highest inspiration in this field.
Towards a renewed dialogue
10. It is true nevertheless that, in the modern era, alongside this Christian humanism which has continued to produce important works of culture and art, another kind of humanism, marked by the absence of God and often by opposition to God, has gradually asserted itself. Such an atmosphere has sometimes led to a separation of the world of art and the world of faith, at least in the sense that many artists have a diminished interest in religious themes.
You know, however, that the Church has not ceased to nurture great appreciation for the value of art as such. Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience. In so far as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption.
It is clear, therefore, why the Church is especially concerned for the dialogue with art and is keen that in our own time there be a new alliance with artists, as called for by my revered predecessor Paul VI in his vibrant speech to artists during a special meeting he had with them in the Sistine Chapel on 7 May 1964.(17) From such cooperation the Church hopes for a renewed “epiphany” of beauty in our time and apt responses to the particular needs of the Christian community.
In the spirit of the Second Vatican Council
11. The Second Vatican Council laid the foundation for a renewed relationship between the Church and culture, with immediate implications for the world of art. This is a relationship offered in friendship, openness and dialogue. In the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, the Fathers of the Council stressed “the great importance” of literature and the arts in human life: “They seek to probe the true nature of man, his problems and experiences, as he strives to know and perfect himself and the world, to discover his place in history and the universe, to portray his miseries and joys, his needs and strengths, with a view to a better future”.(18)
On this basis, at the end of the Council the Fathers addressed a greeting and an appeal to artists: “This world—they said—in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration!”.(19) In this spirit of profound respect for beauty, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium recalled the historic friendliness of the Church towards art and, referring more specifically to sacred art, the “summit” of religious art, did not hesitate to consider artists as having “a noble ministry” when their works reflect in some way the infinite beauty of God and raise people's minds to him.(20) Thanks also to the help of artists “the knowledge of God can be better revealed and the preaching of the Gospel can become clearer to the human mind”.(21) In this light, it comes as no surprise when Father Marie Dominique Chenu claims that the work of the historian of theology would be incomplete if he failed to give due attention to works of art, both literary and figurative, which are in their own way “not only aesthetic representations, but genuine 'sources' of theology”.(22)
The Church needs art
12. In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colours, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. It does so without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery.
The Church has need especially of those who can do this on the literary and figurative level, using the endless possibilities of images and their symbolic force. Christ himself made extensive use of images in his preaching, fully in keeping with his willingness to become, in the Incarnation, the icon of the unseen God.
The Church also needs musicians. How many sacred works have been composed through the centuries by people deeply imbued with the sense of the mystery! The faith of countless believers has been nourished by melodies flowing from the hearts of other believers, either introduced into the liturgy or used as an aid to dignified worship. In song, faith is experienced as vibrant joy, love, and confident expectation of the saving intervention of God.
The Church needs architects, because she needs spaces to bring the Christian people together and celebrate the mysteries of salvation. After the terrible destruction of the last World War and the growth of great cities, a new generation of architects showed themselves adept at responding to the exigencies of Christian worship, confirming that the religious theme can still inspire architectural design in our own day. Not infrequently these architects have constructed churches which are both places of prayer and true works of art.
Does art need the Church?
13. The Church therefore needs art. But can it also be said that art needs the Church? The question may seem like a provocation. Yet, rightly understood, it is both legitimate and profound. Artists are constantly in search of the hidden meaning of things, and their torment is to succeed in expressing the world of the ineffable. How then can we fail to see what a great source of inspiration is offered by that kind of homeland of the soul that is religion? Is it not perhaps within the realm of religion that the most vital personal questions are posed, and answers both concrete and definitive are sought?
In fact, the religious theme has been among those most frequently treated by artists in every age. The Church has always appealed to their creative powers in interpreting the Gospel message and discerning its precise application in the life of the Christian community. This partnership has been a source of mutual spiritual enrichment. Ultimately, it has been a great boon for an understanding of man, of the authentic image and truth of the person. The special bond between art and Christian revelation has also become evident. This does not mean that human genius has not found inspiration in other religious contexts. It is enough to recall the art of the ancient world, especially Greek and Roman art, or the art which still flourishes in the very ancient civilizations of the East. It remains true, however, that because of its central doctrine of the Incarnation of the Word of God, Christianity offers artists a horizon especially rich in inspiration. What an impoverishment it would be for art to abandon the inexhaustible mine of the Gospel!
An appeal to artists
14. With this Letter, I turn to you, the artists of the world, to assure you of my esteem and to help consolidate a more constructive partnership between art and the Church. Mine is an invitation to rediscover the depth of the spiritual and religious dimension which has been typical of art in its noblest forms in every age. It is with this in mind that I appeal to you, artists of the written and spoken word, of the theatre and music, of the plastic arts and the most recent technologies in the field of communication. I appeal especially to you, Christian artists: I wish to remind each of you that, beyond functional considerations, the close alliance that has always existed between the Gospel and art means that you are invited to use your creative intuition to enter into the heart of the mystery of the Incarnate God and at the same time into the mystery of man.
Human beings, in a certain sense, are unknown to themselves. Jesus Christ not only reveals God, but “fully reveals man to man”.(23) In Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself. All believers are called to bear witness to this; but it is up to you, men and women who have given your lives to art, to declare with all the wealth of your ingenuity that in Christ the world is redeemed: the human person is redeemed, the human body is redeemed, and the whole creation which, according to Saint Paul, “awaits impatiently the revelation of the children of God” (Rom 8:19), is redeemed. The creation awaits the revelation of the children of God also through art and in art. This is your task. Humanity in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.
The Creator Spirit and artistic inspiration
15. Often in the Church there resounds the invocation to the Holy Spirit: Veni, Creator Spiritus... – “Come, O Creator Spirit, visit our minds, fill with your grace the hearts you have created”.(24)
The Holy Spirit, “the Breath” (ruah), is the One referred to already in the Book of Genesis: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (1:2). What affinity between the words “breath - breathing” and “inspiration”! The Spirit is the mysterious Artist of the universe. Looking to the Third Millennium, I would hope that all artists might receive in abundance the gift of that creative inspiration which is the starting-point of every true work of art.
Dear artists, you well know that there are many impulses which, either from within or from without, can inspire your talent. Every genuine inspiration, however, contains some tremor of that “breath” with which the Creator Spirit suffused the work of creation from the very beginning. Overseeing the mysterious laws governing the universe, the divine breath of the Creator Spirit reaches out to human genius and stirs its creative power. He touches it with a kind of inner illumination which brings together the sense of the good and the beautiful, and he awakens energies of mind and heart which enable it to conceive an idea and give it form in a work of art. It is right then to speak, even if only analogically, of “moments of grace”, because the human being is able to experience in some way the Absolute who is utterly beyond.
The “Beauty” that saves
16. On the threshold of the Third Millennium, my hope for all of you who are artists is that you will have an especially intense experience of creative inspiration. May the beauty which you pass on to generations still to come be such that it will stir them to wonder! Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.
From this wonder there can come that enthusiasm of which Norwid spoke in the poem to which I referred earlier. People of today and tomorrow need this enthusiasm if they are to meet and master the crucial challenges which stand before us. Thanks to this enthusiasm, humanity, every time it loses its way, will be able to lift itself up and set out again on the right path. In this sense it has been said with profound insight that “beauty will save the world”.(25)
Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”.(26)
Artists of the world, may your many different paths all lead to that infinite Ocean of beauty where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy.
May you be guided and inspired by the mystery of the Risen Christ, whom the Church in these days contemplates with joy.
May the Blessed Virgin Mary be with you always: she is the “tota pulchra” portrayed by countless artists, whom Dante contemplates among the splendours of Paradise as “beauty that was joy in the eyes of all the other saints”.(27)
“From chaos there rises the world of the spirit”. These words of Adam Mickiewicz, written at a time of great hardship for his Polish homeland,(28) prompt my hope for you: may your art help to affirm that true beauty which, as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal.
With my heartfelt good wishes!
From the Vatican, 4 April 1999, Easter Sunday.
(1) Dialogus de Ludo Globi, lib. II: Philosophisch-Theologische Schriften, Vienna 1967, III, p. 332.
(2) The moral virtues, and among them prudence in particular, allow the subject to act in harmony with the criterion of moral good and evil: according to recta ratio agibilium (the right criterion of action). Art, however, is defined by philosophy as recta ratio factibilium (the right criterion of production).
(3) Promethidion, Bogumil, vv. 185-186: Pisma wybrane, Warsaw 1968, vol. 2, p. 216.
(4) The Greek translation of the Septuagint expresses this well in rendering the Hebrew term t(o-)b (good) as kalón (beautiful).
(5) Philebus, 65 A.
(6) JOHN PAUL II, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998), 80: AAS 91 (1999), 67.
(7) This pedagogical principle was given authoritative formulation by Saint Gregory the Great in a letter of 599 to Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles: “Painting is employed in churches so that those who cannot read or write may at least read on the walls what they cannot decipher on the page”, Epistulae, IX, 209: CCL 140A, 1714.
(8) Lodi di Dio Altissimo, vv. 7 and 10: Fonti Francescane, No. 261, Padua 1982, p. 177.
(9) Legenda Maior, IX, 1: Fonti Francesane, No. 1162, loc. cit., p. 911.
(10) Enkomia of the Orthós of the Holy and Great Saturday.
(11) Homily I, 2: PG 34, 451.
(12) “At nobis ars una fides et musica Christus”: Carmen 20, 31: CCL 203, 144.
(13) Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Apostolic Letter Duodecimum Saeculum (4 December 1987), 8-9: AAS 80 (1988), pp. 247-249.
(14) La prospettiva rovesciata ed altri scritti, Rome 1984, p. 63.
(15) Paradiso XXV, 1-2.
(16) Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Homily at the Mass for the Conclusion of the Restoration of Michelangelo's Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, 8 April 1994: Insegnamenti, XVII, 1 (1994), 899-904.
(17) Cf. AAS 56 (1964), 438-444.
(18) No. 62.
(19) Message to Artists, 8 December 1965: AAS 58 (1966), 13.
(20) Cf. No. 122.
(21) SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 62.
(22) La teologia nel XII secolo, Milan 1992, p. 9.
(23) SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 22.
(24) Hymn at Vespers on Pentecost.
(25) F. DOSTOYEVSKY, The Idiot, Part III, chap. 5.
(26) Sero te amavi! Pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi!: Confessions, 10, 27: CCL 27, 251.
(27) Paradiso XXXI, 134-135.
(28) Oda do mlodosci, v. 69: Wybór poezji, Wroclaw 1986, vol. 1, p. 63.
leaders of Pointe Coeur, http://www.pointscoeur.org/, a movement in the Church that seeks to meet and share the experience of Catholicism with artists.
They have two houses currently in New York, and forty one in total in 20 countries around the world.
JR
To all who are passionately dedicated
to the search for new “epiphanies” of beauty
so that through their creative work as artists
they may offer these as gifts to the world.
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gn 1:31)
The artist, image of God the Creator
1. None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands. A glimmer of that feeling has shone so often in your eyes when—like the artists of every age—captivated by the hidden power of sounds and words, colours and shapes, you have admired the work of your inspiration, sensing in it some echo of the mystery of creation with which God, the sole creator of all things, has wished in some way to associate you.
That is why it seems to me that there are no better words than the text of Genesis with which to begin my Letter to you, to whom I feel closely linked by experiences reaching far back in time and which have indelibly marked my life. In writing this Letter, I intend to follow the path of the fruitful dialogue between the Church and artists which has gone on unbroken through two thousand years of history, and which still, at the threshold of the Third Millennium, offers rich promise for the future.
In fact, this dialogue is not dictated merely by historical accident or practical need, but is rooted in the very essence of both religious experience and artistic creativity. The opening page of the Bible presents God as a kind of exemplar of everyone who produces a work: the human craftsman mirrors the image of God as Creator. This relationship is particularly clear in the Polish language because of the lexical link between the words stwórca (creator) and twórca (craftsman).
What is the difference between “creator” and “craftsman”? The one who creates bestows being itself, he brings something out of nothing—ex nihilo sui et subiecti, as the Latin puts it—and this, in the strict sense, is a mode of operation which belongs to the Almighty alone. The craftsman, by contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he gives form and meaning. This is the mode of operation peculiar to man as made in the image of God. In fact, after saying that God created man and woman “in his image” (cf. Gn 1:27), the Bible adds that he entrusted to them the task of dominating the earth (cf. Gn 1:28). This was the last day of creation (cf. Gn 1:28-31). On the previous days, marking as it were the rhythm of the birth of the cosmos, Yahweh had created the universe. Finally he created the human being, the noblest fruit of his design, to whom he subjected the visible world as a vast field in which human inventiveness might assert itself.
God therefore called man into existence, committing to him the craftsman's task. Through his “artistic creativity” man appears more than ever “in the image of God”, and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous “material” of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power. Obviously, this is a sharing which leaves intact the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature, as Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa made clear: “Creative art, which it is the soul's good fortune to entertain, is not to be identified with that essential art which is God himself, but is only a communication of it and a share in it”.(1)
That is why artists, the more conscious they are of their “gift”, are led all the more to see themselves and the whole of creation with eyes able to contemplate and give thanks, and to raise to God a hymn of praise. This is the only way for them to come to a full understanding of themselves, their vocation and their mission.
The special vocation of the artist
2. Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.
It is important to recognize the distinction, but also the connection, between these two aspects of human activity. The distinction is clear. It is one thing for human beings to be the authors of their own acts, with responsibility for their moral value; it is another to be an artist, able, that is, to respond to the demands of art and faithfully to accept art's specific dictates.(2) This is what makes the artist capable of producing objects, but it says nothing as yet of his moral character. We are speaking not of moulding oneself, of forming one's own personality, but simply of actualizing one's productive capacities, giving aesthetic form to ideas conceived in the mind.
The distinction between the moral and artistic aspects is fundamental, but no less important is the connection between them. Each conditions the other in a profound way. In producing a work, artists express themselves to the point where their work becomes a unique disclosure of their own being, of what they are and of how they are what they are. And there are endless examples of this in human history. In shaping a masterpiece, the artist not only summons his work into being, but also in some way reveals his own personality by means of it. For him art offers both a new dimension and an exceptional mode of expression for his spiritual growth. Through his works, the artist speaks to others and communicates with them. The history of art, therefore, is not only a story of works produced but also a story of men and women. Works of art speak of their authors; they enable us to know their inner life, and they reveal the original contribution which artists offer to the history of culture.
The artistic vocation in the service of beauty
3. A noted Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid, wrote that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up”.(3)
The theme of beauty is decisive for a discourse on art. It was already present when I stressed God's delighted gaze upon creation. In perceiving that all he had created was good, God saw that it was beautiful as well.(4) The link between good and beautiful stirs fruitful reflection. In a certain sense, beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty. This was well understood by the Greeks who, by fusing the two concepts, coined a term which embraces both: kalokagathía, or beauty-goodness. On this point Plato writes: “The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful”.(5)
It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship with being, with the truth and with the good. The artist has a special relationship to beauty. In a very true sense it can be said that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him by the Creator in the gift of “artistic talent”. And, certainly, this too is a talent which ought to be made to bear fruit, in keeping with the sense of the Gospel parable of the talents (cf. Mt 25:14-30).
Here we touch on an essential point. Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic vocation—as poet, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, actor and so on—feel at the same time the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbour and of humanity as a whole.
The artist and the common good
4. Society needs artists, just as it needs scientists, technicians, workers, professional people, witnesses of the faith, teachers, fathers and mothers, who ensure the growth of the person and the development of the community by means of that supreme art form which is “the art of education”. Within the vast cultural panorama of each nation, artists have their unique place. Obedient to their inspiration in creating works both worthwhile and beautiful, they not only enrich the cultural heritage of each nation and of all humanity, but they also render an exceptional social service in favour of the common good.
The particular vocation of individual artists decides the arena in which they serve and points as well to the tasks they must assume, the hard work they must endure and the responsibility they must accept. Artists who are conscious of all this know too that they must labour without allowing themselves to be driven by the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity, and still less by the calculation of some possible profit for themselves. There is therefore an ethic, even a “spirituality” of artistic service, which contributes in its way to the life and renewal of a people. It is precisely this to which Cyprian Norwid seems to allude in declaring that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up”.
Art and the mystery of the Word made flesh
5. The Law of the Old Testament explicitly forbids representation of the invisible and ineffable God by means of “graven or molten image” (Dt 27:15), because God transcends every material representation: “I am who I am” (Ex 3:14). Yet in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Son of God becomes visible in person: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son born of woman” (Gal 4:4). God became man in Jesus Christ, who thus becomes “the central point of reference for an understanding of the enigma of human existence, the created world and God himself”.(6)
This prime epiphany of “God who is Mystery” is both an encouragement and a challenge to Christians, also at the level of artistic creativity. From it has come a flowering of beauty which has drawn its sap precisely from the mystery of the Incarnation. In becoming man, the Son of God has introduced into human history all the evangelical wealth of the true and the good, and with this he has also unveiled a new dimension of beauty, of which the Gospel message is filled to the brim.
Sacred Scripture has thus become a sort of “immense vocabulary” (Paul Claudel) and “iconographic atlas” (Marc Chagall), from which both Christian culture and art have drawn. The Old Testament, read in the light of the New, has provided endless streams of inspiration. From the stories of the Creation and sin, the Flood, the cycle of the Patriarchs, the events of the Exodus to so many other episodes and characters in the history of salvation, the biblical text has fired the imagination of painters, poets, musicians, playwrights and film-makers. A figure like Job, to take but one example, with his searing and ever relevant question of suffering, still arouses an interest which is not just philosophical but literary and artistic as well. And what should we say of the New Testament? From the Nativity to Golgotha, from the Transfiguration to the Resurrection, from the miracles to the teachings of Christ, and on to the events recounted in the Acts of the Apostles or foreseen by the Apocalypse in an eschatological key, on countless occasions the biblical word has become image, music and poetry, evoking the mystery of “the Word made flesh” in the language of art.
In the history of human culture, all of this is a rich chapter of faith and beauty. Believers above all have gained from it in their experience of prayer and Christian living. Indeed for many of them, in times when few could read or write, representations of the Bible were a concrete mode of catechesis.(7) But for everyone, believers or not, the works of art inspired by Scripture remain a reflection of the unfathomable mystery which engulfs and inhabits the world.
A fruitful alliance between the Gospel and art
6. Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath reality's surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself springs from the depths of the human soul, where the desire to give meaning to one's own life is joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things. All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit.
Believers find nothing strange in this: they know that they have had a momentary glimpse of the abyss of light which has its original wellspring in God. Is it in any way surprising that this leaves the spirit overwhelmed as it were, so that it can only stammer in reply? True artists above all are ready to acknowledge their limits and to make their own the words of the Apostle Paul, according to whom “God does not dwell in shrines made by human hands” so that “we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold or silver or stone, a representation by human art and imagination” (Acts 17:24, 29). If the intimate reality of things is always “beyond” the powers of human perception, how much more so is God in the depths of his unfathomable mystery!
The knowledge conferred by faith is of a different kind: it presupposes a personal encounter with God in Jesus Christ. Yet this knowledge too can be enriched by artistic intuition. An eloquent example of aesthetic contemplation sublimated in faith are, for example, the works of Fra Angelico. No less notable in this regard is the ecstatic lauda, which Saint Francis of Assisi twice repeats in the chartula which he composed after receiving the stigmata of Christ on the mountain of La Verna: “You are beauty... You are beauty!”.(8) Saint Bonaventure comments: “In things of beauty, he contemplated the One who is supremely beautiful, and, led by the footprints he found in creatures, he followed the Beloved everywhere”.(9)
A corresponding approach is found in Eastern spirituality where Christ is described as “the supremely Beautiful, possessed of a beauty above all the children of earth”.(10) Macarius the Great speaks of the transfiguring and liberating beauty of the Risen Lord in these terms: “The soul which has been fully illumined by the unspeakable beauty of the glory shining on the countenance of Christ overflows with the Holy Spirit... it is all eye, all light, all countenance”.(11)
Every genuine art form in its own way is a path to the inmost reality of man and of the world. It is therefore a wholly valid approach to the realm of faith, which gives human experience its ultimate meaning. That is why the Gospel fullness of truth was bound from the beginning to stir the interest of artists, who by their very nature are alert to every “epiphany” of the inner beauty of things.
The origins
7. The art which Christianity encountered in its early days was the ripe fruit of the classical world, articulating its aesthetic canons and embodying its values. Not only in their way of living and thinking, but also in the field of art, faith obliged Christians to a discernment which did not allow an uncritical acceptance of this heritage. Art of Christian inspiration began therefore in a minor key, strictly tied to the need for believers to contrive Scripture-based signs to express both the mysteries of faith and a “symbolic code” by which they could distinguish and identify themselves, especially in the difficult times of persecution. Who does not recall the symbols which marked the first appearance of an art both pictorial and plastic? The fish, the loaves, the shepherd: in evoking the mystery, they became almost imperceptibly the first traces of a new art.
When the Edict of Constantine allowed Christians to declare themselves in full freedom, art became a privileged means for the expression of faith. Majestic basilicas began to appear, and in them the architectural canons of the pagan world were reproduced and at the same time modified to meet the demands of the new form of worship. How can we fail to recall at least the old Saint Peter's Basilica and the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, both funded by Constantine himself? Or Constantinople's Hagia Sophia built by Justinian, with its splendours of Byzantine art?
While architecture designed the space for worship, gradually the need to contemplate the mystery and to present it explicitly to the simple people led to the early forms of painting and sculpture. There appeared as well the first elements of art in word and sound. Among the many themes treated by Augustine we find De Musica; and Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, Prudentius, Ephrem the Syrian, Gregory of Nazianzus and Paulinus of Nola, to mention but a few, promoted a Christian poetry which was often of high quality not just as theology but also as literature. Their poetic work valued forms inherited from the classical authors, but was nourished by the pure sap of the Gospel, as Paulinus of Nola put it succinctly: “Our only art is faith and our music Christ”.(12) A little later, Gregory the Great compiled the Antiphonarium and thus laid the ground for the organic development of that most original sacred music which takes its name from him. Gregorian chant, with its inspired modulations, was to become down the centuries the music of the Church's faith in the liturgical celebration of the sacred mysteries. The “beautiful” was thus wedded to the “true”, so that through art too souls might be lifted up from the world of the senses to the eternal.
Along this path there were troubled moments. Precisely on the issue of depicting the Christian mystery, there arose in the early centuries a bitter controversy known to history as “the iconoclast crisis”. Sacred images, which were already widely used in Christian devotion, became the object of violent contention. The Council held at Nicaea in 787, which decreed the legitimacy of images and their veneration, was a historic event not just for the faith but for culture itself. The decisive argument to which the Bishops appealed in order to settle the controversy was the mystery of the Incarnation: if the Son of God had come into the world of visible realities—his humanity building a bridge between the visible and the invisible— then, by analogy, a representation of the mystery could be used, within the logic of signs, as a sensory evocation of the mystery. The icon is venerated not for its own sake, but points beyond to the subject which it represents.(13)
The Middle Ages
8. The succeeding centuries saw a great development of Christian art. In the East, the art of the icon continued to flourish, obeying theological and aesthetic norms charged with meaning and sustained by the conviction that, in a sense, the icon is a sacrament. By analogy with what occurs in the sacraments, the icon makes present the mystery of the Incarnation in one or other of its aspects. That is why the beauty of the icon can be best appreciated in a church where in the shadows burning lamps stir infinite flickerings of light. As Pavel Florensky has written: “By the flat light of day, gold is crude, heavy, useless, but by the tremulous light of a lamp or candle it springs to life and glitters in sparks beyond counting—now here, now there, evoking the sense of other lights, not of this earth, which fill the space of heaven”.(14)
In the West, artists start from the most varied viewpoints, depending also on the underlying convictions of the cultural world of their time. The artistic heritage built up over the centuries includes a vast array of sacred works of great inspiration, which still today leave the observer full of admiration. In the first place, there are the great buildings for worship, in which the functional is always wedded to the creative impulse inspired by a sense of the beautiful and an intuition of the mystery. From here came the various styles well known in the history of art. The strength and simplicity of the Romanesque, expressed in cathedrals and abbeys, slowly evolved into the soaring splendours of the Gothic. These forms portray not only the genius of an artist but the soul of a people. In the play of light and shadow, in forms at times massive, at times delicate, structural considerations certainly come into play, but so too do the tensions peculiar to the experience of God, the mystery both “awesome” and “alluring”. How is one to summarize with a few brief references to each of the many different art forms, the creative power of the centuries of the Christian Middle Ages? An entire culture, albeit with the inescapable limits of all that is human, had become imbued with the Gospel; and where theology produced the Summa of Saint Thomas, church art moulded matter in a way which led to adoration of the mystery, and a wonderful poet like Dante Alighieri could compose “the sacred poem, to which both heaven and earth have turned their hand”,(15) as he himself described the Divine Comedy.
Humanism and the Renaissance
9. The favourable cultural climate that produced the extraordinary artistic flowering of Humanism and the Renaissance also had a significant impact on the way in which the artists of the period approached the religious theme. Naturally, their inspiration, like their style, varied greatly, at least among the best of them. But I do not intend to repeat things which you, as artists, know well. Writing from this Apostolic Palace, which is a mine of masterpieces perhaps unique in the world, I would rather give voice to the supreme artists who in this place lavished the wealth of their genius, often charged with great spiritual depth. From here can be heard the voice of Michelangelo who in the Sistine Chapel has presented the drama and mystery of the world from the Creation to the Last Judgement, giving a face to God the Father, to Christ the Judge, and to man on his arduous journey from the dawn to the consummation of history. Here speaks the delicate and profound genius of Raphael, highlighting in the array of his paintings, and especially in the “Dispute” in the Room of the Signatura, the mystery of the revelation of the Triune God, who in the Eucharist befriends man and sheds light on the questions and expectations of human intelligence. From this place, from the majestic Basilica dedicated to the Prince of the Apostles, from the Colonnade which spreads out from it like two arms open to welcome the whole human family, we still hear Bramante, Bernini, Borromini, Maderno, to name only the more important artists, all rendering visible the perception of the mystery which makes of the Church a universally hospitable community, mother and travelling companion to all men and women in their search for God.
This extraordinary complex is a remarkably powerful expression of sacred art, rising to heights of imperishable aesthetic and religious excellence. What has characterized sacred art more and more, under the impulse of Humanism and the Renaissance, and then of successive cultural and scientific trends, is a growing interest in everything human, in the world, and in the reality of history. In itself, such a concern is not at all a danger for Christian faith, centred on the mystery of the Incarnation and therefore on God's valuing of the human being. The great artists mentioned above are a demonstration of this. Suffice it to think of the way in which Michelangelo represents the beauty of the human body in his painting and sculpture.(16)
Even in the changed climate of more recent centuries, when a part of society seems to have become indifferent to faith, religious art has continued on its way. This can be more widely appreciated if we look beyond the figurative arts to the great development of sacred music through this same period, either composed for the liturgy or simply treating religious themes. Apart from the many artists who made sacred music their chief concern—how can we forget Pier Luigi da Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, Tomás Luis de Victoria?—it is also true that many of the great composers—from Handel to Bach, from Mozart to Schubert, from Beethoven to Berlioz, from Liszt to Verdi—have given us works of the highest inspiration in this field.
Towards a renewed dialogue
10. It is true nevertheless that, in the modern era, alongside this Christian humanism which has continued to produce important works of culture and art, another kind of humanism, marked by the absence of God and often by opposition to God, has gradually asserted itself. Such an atmosphere has sometimes led to a separation of the world of art and the world of faith, at least in the sense that many artists have a diminished interest in religious themes.
You know, however, that the Church has not ceased to nurture great appreciation for the value of art as such. Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience. In so far as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption.
It is clear, therefore, why the Church is especially concerned for the dialogue with art and is keen that in our own time there be a new alliance with artists, as called for by my revered predecessor Paul VI in his vibrant speech to artists during a special meeting he had with them in the Sistine Chapel on 7 May 1964.(17) From such cooperation the Church hopes for a renewed “epiphany” of beauty in our time and apt responses to the particular needs of the Christian community.
In the spirit of the Second Vatican Council
11. The Second Vatican Council laid the foundation for a renewed relationship between the Church and culture, with immediate implications for the world of art. This is a relationship offered in friendship, openness and dialogue. In the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, the Fathers of the Council stressed “the great importance” of literature and the arts in human life: “They seek to probe the true nature of man, his problems and experiences, as he strives to know and perfect himself and the world, to discover his place in history and the universe, to portray his miseries and joys, his needs and strengths, with a view to a better future”.(18)
On this basis, at the end of the Council the Fathers addressed a greeting and an appeal to artists: “This world—they said—in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration!”.(19) In this spirit of profound respect for beauty, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium recalled the historic friendliness of the Church towards art and, referring more specifically to sacred art, the “summit” of religious art, did not hesitate to consider artists as having “a noble ministry” when their works reflect in some way the infinite beauty of God and raise people's minds to him.(20) Thanks also to the help of artists “the knowledge of God can be better revealed and the preaching of the Gospel can become clearer to the human mind”.(21) In this light, it comes as no surprise when Father Marie Dominique Chenu claims that the work of the historian of theology would be incomplete if he failed to give due attention to works of art, both literary and figurative, which are in their own way “not only aesthetic representations, but genuine 'sources' of theology”.(22)
The Church needs art
12. In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colours, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. It does so without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery.
The Church has need especially of those who can do this on the literary and figurative level, using the endless possibilities of images and their symbolic force. Christ himself made extensive use of images in his preaching, fully in keeping with his willingness to become, in the Incarnation, the icon of the unseen God.
The Church also needs musicians. How many sacred works have been composed through the centuries by people deeply imbued with the sense of the mystery! The faith of countless believers has been nourished by melodies flowing from the hearts of other believers, either introduced into the liturgy or used as an aid to dignified worship. In song, faith is experienced as vibrant joy, love, and confident expectation of the saving intervention of God.
The Church needs architects, because she needs spaces to bring the Christian people together and celebrate the mysteries of salvation. After the terrible destruction of the last World War and the growth of great cities, a new generation of architects showed themselves adept at responding to the exigencies of Christian worship, confirming that the religious theme can still inspire architectural design in our own day. Not infrequently these architects have constructed churches which are both places of prayer and true works of art.
Does art need the Church?
13. The Church therefore needs art. But can it also be said that art needs the Church? The question may seem like a provocation. Yet, rightly understood, it is both legitimate and profound. Artists are constantly in search of the hidden meaning of things, and their torment is to succeed in expressing the world of the ineffable. How then can we fail to see what a great source of inspiration is offered by that kind of homeland of the soul that is religion? Is it not perhaps within the realm of religion that the most vital personal questions are posed, and answers both concrete and definitive are sought?
In fact, the religious theme has been among those most frequently treated by artists in every age. The Church has always appealed to their creative powers in interpreting the Gospel message and discerning its precise application in the life of the Christian community. This partnership has been a source of mutual spiritual enrichment. Ultimately, it has been a great boon for an understanding of man, of the authentic image and truth of the person. The special bond between art and Christian revelation has also become evident. This does not mean that human genius has not found inspiration in other religious contexts. It is enough to recall the art of the ancient world, especially Greek and Roman art, or the art which still flourishes in the very ancient civilizations of the East. It remains true, however, that because of its central doctrine of the Incarnation of the Word of God, Christianity offers artists a horizon especially rich in inspiration. What an impoverishment it would be for art to abandon the inexhaustible mine of the Gospel!
An appeal to artists
14. With this Letter, I turn to you, the artists of the world, to assure you of my esteem and to help consolidate a more constructive partnership between art and the Church. Mine is an invitation to rediscover the depth of the spiritual and religious dimension which has been typical of art in its noblest forms in every age. It is with this in mind that I appeal to you, artists of the written and spoken word, of the theatre and music, of the plastic arts and the most recent technologies in the field of communication. I appeal especially to you, Christian artists: I wish to remind each of you that, beyond functional considerations, the close alliance that has always existed between the Gospel and art means that you are invited to use your creative intuition to enter into the heart of the mystery of the Incarnate God and at the same time into the mystery of man.
Human beings, in a certain sense, are unknown to themselves. Jesus Christ not only reveals God, but “fully reveals man to man”.(23) In Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself. All believers are called to bear witness to this; but it is up to you, men and women who have given your lives to art, to declare with all the wealth of your ingenuity that in Christ the world is redeemed: the human person is redeemed, the human body is redeemed, and the whole creation which, according to Saint Paul, “awaits impatiently the revelation of the children of God” (Rom 8:19), is redeemed. The creation awaits the revelation of the children of God also through art and in art. This is your task. Humanity in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.
The Creator Spirit and artistic inspiration
15. Often in the Church there resounds the invocation to the Holy Spirit: Veni, Creator Spiritus... – “Come, O Creator Spirit, visit our minds, fill with your grace the hearts you have created”.(24)
The Holy Spirit, “the Breath” (ruah), is the One referred to already in the Book of Genesis: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (1:2). What affinity between the words “breath - breathing” and “inspiration”! The Spirit is the mysterious Artist of the universe. Looking to the Third Millennium, I would hope that all artists might receive in abundance the gift of that creative inspiration which is the starting-point of every true work of art.
Dear artists, you well know that there are many impulses which, either from within or from without, can inspire your talent. Every genuine inspiration, however, contains some tremor of that “breath” with which the Creator Spirit suffused the work of creation from the very beginning. Overseeing the mysterious laws governing the universe, the divine breath of the Creator Spirit reaches out to human genius and stirs its creative power. He touches it with a kind of inner illumination which brings together the sense of the good and the beautiful, and he awakens energies of mind and heart which enable it to conceive an idea and give it form in a work of art. It is right then to speak, even if only analogically, of “moments of grace”, because the human being is able to experience in some way the Absolute who is utterly beyond.
The “Beauty” that saves
16. On the threshold of the Third Millennium, my hope for all of you who are artists is that you will have an especially intense experience of creative inspiration. May the beauty which you pass on to generations still to come be such that it will stir them to wonder! Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.
From this wonder there can come that enthusiasm of which Norwid spoke in the poem to which I referred earlier. People of today and tomorrow need this enthusiasm if they are to meet and master the crucial challenges which stand before us. Thanks to this enthusiasm, humanity, every time it loses its way, will be able to lift itself up and set out again on the right path. In this sense it has been said with profound insight that “beauty will save the world”.(25)
Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”.(26)
Artists of the world, may your many different paths all lead to that infinite Ocean of beauty where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy.
May you be guided and inspired by the mystery of the Risen Christ, whom the Church in these days contemplates with joy.
May the Blessed Virgin Mary be with you always: she is the “tota pulchra” portrayed by countless artists, whom Dante contemplates among the splendours of Paradise as “beauty that was joy in the eyes of all the other saints”.(27)
“From chaos there rises the world of the spirit”. These words of Adam Mickiewicz, written at a time of great hardship for his Polish homeland,(28) prompt my hope for you: may your art help to affirm that true beauty which, as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal.
With my heartfelt good wishes!
From the Vatican, 4 April 1999, Easter Sunday.
(1) Dialogus de Ludo Globi, lib. II: Philosophisch-Theologische Schriften, Vienna 1967, III, p. 332.
(2) The moral virtues, and among them prudence in particular, allow the subject to act in harmony with the criterion of moral good and evil: according to recta ratio agibilium (the right criterion of action). Art, however, is defined by philosophy as recta ratio factibilium (the right criterion of production).
(3) Promethidion, Bogumil, vv. 185-186: Pisma wybrane, Warsaw 1968, vol. 2, p. 216.
(4) The Greek translation of the Septuagint expresses this well in rendering the Hebrew term t(o-)b (good) as kalón (beautiful).
(5) Philebus, 65 A.
(6) JOHN PAUL II, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998), 80: AAS 91 (1999), 67.
(7) This pedagogical principle was given authoritative formulation by Saint Gregory the Great in a letter of 599 to Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles: “Painting is employed in churches so that those who cannot read or write may at least read on the walls what they cannot decipher on the page”, Epistulae, IX, 209: CCL 140A, 1714.
(8) Lodi di Dio Altissimo, vv. 7 and 10: Fonti Francescane, No. 261, Padua 1982, p. 177.
(9) Legenda Maior, IX, 1: Fonti Francesane, No. 1162, loc. cit., p. 911.
(10) Enkomia of the Orthós of the Holy and Great Saturday.
(11) Homily I, 2: PG 34, 451.
(12) “At nobis ars una fides et musica Christus”: Carmen 20, 31: CCL 203, 144.
(13) Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Apostolic Letter Duodecimum Saeculum (4 December 1987), 8-9: AAS 80 (1988), pp. 247-249.
(14) La prospettiva rovesciata ed altri scritti, Rome 1984, p. 63.
(15) Paradiso XXV, 1-2.
(16) Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Homily at the Mass for the Conclusion of the Restoration of Michelangelo's Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, 8 April 1994: Insegnamenti, XVII, 1 (1994), 899-904.
(17) Cf. AAS 56 (1964), 438-444.
(18) No. 62.
(19) Message to Artists, 8 December 1965: AAS 58 (1966), 13.
(20) Cf. No. 122.
(21) SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 62.
(22) La teologia nel XII secolo, Milan 1992, p. 9.
(23) SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 22.
(24) Hymn at Vespers on Pentecost.
(25) F. DOSTOYEVSKY, The Idiot, Part III, chap. 5.
(26) Sero te amavi! Pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi!: Confessions, 10, 27: CCL 27, 251.
(27) Paradiso XXXI, 134-135.
(28) Oda do mlodosci, v. 69: Wybór poezji, Wroclaw 1986, vol. 1, p. 63.
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