Pope at Angelus: Advent, Christ’s hope stronger than science

Vatican City, 03, 2007 (CINS/AsiaNews) – “Science contributes much to the good of mankind, but it is not capable of redemption.  Man is redeemed by love, which transforms his personal and social life for the better.  This is why hope, full and definitive hope, is guaranteed only by God, who in Jesus Christ came to us and gifted us life, and it will return in Him in the fullness of time.  It is in Christ that we hope, it is for Him that we wait!”  Weaving together hope, love, faith and waiting – recalling some of the themes present in his new encyclical Spe salvi – Benedict XVI began the first Angelus of the new liturgical year, which for the Church begins with the first Sunday of Advent.

 “Advent – said the pope – is ….  That time when in our hearts reawakens the hopeful waiting for He “who is who was and who will come again’ (Ap 1,8). The Son of God already came to Bethlehem, twenty centuries ago, he comes in every moment to the souls of the communities willing to receive him, he will come again in the fullness of time, ‘to judge the living and the dead’.  The believer is therefore, ever vigilant, animated by the intimate hope of meeting the Lord”.

The beginning of the liturgical years is when “God’s people once again set out on the journey, to re-live the mystery of Christ in history”.  This journey is a mission of evangelization: “Christ is the same yesterday, today and always (Eb 13,8); instead history changes and asks to be constantly evangelized; it needs to be renewed from within and the only true novelty is Christ: it is fully realized in Him, the bright future of man and of the world”.

The pontiff recalled that in his new encyclical Spe salvi (we have been saved by hope – cfr Rom 8, 24), published two 2 days ago, he reflects on the Christian hope and that it is dedicated to “the Church and to all men of goodwill”.

Hope “is a gift which changes the life of those who receive it, as the lives of the saint’s show.  What does this hope, so great and ‘trustworthy’ that we say we are saved by it, consist of?  In short it is awareness of God, the discovery of his fatherly and merciful heart.  Jesus, through his death on the cross and his resurrection, revealed his face to us, the face of a God so great in love that it communicates unshakeable hope, a hope that not even death can break, because the lives of those who trust themselves to this Father, open up onto a horizon of blessed eternity”.

 Benedict XVI also underlined that often Christian hope has been marginalized by history: “The progress of modern science has increasingly pushed faith and hope to the private, individual sphere this is why today it is becoming all the more evident that the world, that man, is in need of God – of the true God! – otherwise they remain without hope”.  In his encyclical he has also highlights that this form of marginalization is also derived from a “withdrawal” of Christians from the course of history, reducing Christian hope to a hope for individual salvation thus reducing the “horizon”, without “sufficiently recognizing the greatness of his duty”(v. Spe salvi, n. 25).

This is why in wishing a “happy Advent to all”, the pope indicated the path to follow: “With Mary, our Mother, the Church goes forth to meet her Spouse: and it does so through works of love because hope, like faith, is shown through love”.

Pope invites Islamic leaders for dialogue

Vatican City,Dec.02, 2007 (CINS /CWN) - Pope Benedict XVI has answered a call for dialogue between Christian and Islamic leaders, inviting a group of 138 Muslim officials to Rome to continue the exchange.

The Pope's answer to the Muslim leaders-- who had released their open letter on October 13-- came in the form of a letter to Jordan's Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, the president of the Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought and one of the 138 Islamic leaders who had signed the open letter. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, signed the response, explaining that he was writing on behalf of Pope Benedict .

The Pope voiced his "deep appreciation" for the Muslim leaders' initiative, and observed:

Without ignoring or downplaying our differences as Christians and Muslims, we can and therefore should look to what unites us, namely, belief in the one God, the provident Creator and universal Judge who at the end of time will deal with each person according to his or her actions. We are all called to commit ourselves totally to him and to obey his sacred will.

Cardinal Bertone went on to say that the Pope hopes to foster "mutual respect and acceptance" among young Christians and Muslims, and believes that by working together, the two faiths can make a great contribution to preserving the dignity of human life and promoting peace and justice.

The Pope's response asks Prince Ghazi to select "a restricted group of signatories of the open letter" to visit the Vatican, and continue the inter-religious dialogue there. The Pontiff offers the services of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue and the pontifical universities to facilitate the exchange.

Pope has also hopes for atheists

VATICAN CITY, Dec.01,2007 (CINS /AsiaNews) – In his new magisterial encyclical “Spe Salvi,” Benedict XVI calls on every Christian to become “ministers of hope for others” (n. 34). In it he refers to the universal value of mission, something more than a plain exhortation. Christians, he says, are called to “produce” hope for the world in the fields of science, culture and politics.

The hopelessness in today’s society is for all to see. Social problems grip entire populations; hunger, disease and the lack of human rights are still seeking solutions as a result of the inanity of many government and international organisations and because many prefer not to put their power and wealth on the line and prefer to build up armies and plan wars rather than work for peace.

Faced with the same problems day in and day out, humankind has tired with its younger generations less and less interested in the common good. This is true for Asia, where young Chinese and Indians can only dream about their careers and making money, but even more so for an aging West.

“If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth (cf Eph, 3:16; 2 Cor, 4:16), then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world” (n. 22 ).

Vietnam’s government now realises that. After years of materialist ideology it is coming to grip with the fact that it has created a corrupt political class and fashioned younger generations who are now desperately trying to drown their sorrows in sex and drugs, unconcerned about the fate of their elders. For this reason it is trying to save the country by calling on the Catholic Church to educate the young and instil society with values it had lost.

This turn of event seems to vindicate the late Cardinal Van Thuan (cited throughout the encyclical), who spent 13 years in prison and in isolation whilst the country was under the spell of the violently ideological intoxication of the Vietcong.

The Pope calls on Christians to think about hope in terms that are not merely personal but are socially broader in scope. For this reason he singles out as role models martyrs, (“people [who] resist[ed] the overbearing power of ideology and its political organs and, by their death, renew[ed] the world” (n.8 ) ), and those who are consecrated, virgin, who “leave everything for love of Christ, so as to bring to men and women the faith and love of Christ, and to help those who are suffering in body and spirit” (n. 8 ).

In order to make Christian witness bear fruit, the Pontiff suggests praying, compassion and providing consolation to those who suffer but he also recommends accepting suffering for the truth. “Truth and justice must stand above my comfort and physical well-being, or else my life itself becomes a lie” (n. 38).”

Elsewhere in the encyclical, the Holy Father talks about hypostole, i.e. “shrinking back through lack of courage to speak openly and frankly a truth that may be dangerous,” adding that “[h]iding through a spirit of fear leads to ‘destruction’ (Heb, 10:39)” (cf n. 9).

Various scholars and theologians from the last century (J.B. Metz, E. Bloch) said that Christians must be a source of hope for the world, but they also believed that Christian had to support the Marxist hope in a better society in the future. However, for Benedict XVI Christians must base their hope on Jesus Christ, humankind’s “philosopher” and “shepherd,” whose presence in our life creates hope that “does not let you down.”

If anything Benedict XVI goes even further, telling the world that hope can truly be discovered in Jesus Christ, starting with a “self-critique of modernity” (n. 22), one that has the courage to look into the ambiguities of scientific progress and analyse the failure of 19th and 20th social projects.

Thus, whilst he urges Christians to get more radically involved in the world, he also wants scientific reason and atheism to open up to a reason that is “truly human” and open to faith. The “reason behind action and capacity for action is likewise urgently in need of integration through reason's openness to the saving forces of faith, to the differentiation between good and evil. Only thus does reason become truly human” (n. 23). This way the Pope can try to make the secular world understand the meaning of religious terms like Hell, which is the irremediable situation of those “people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves” (n. 45); Purgatory, i.e. the situation where our compromise with evil is purified and “our defilement” is “burned away through Christ's Passion” (n. 47); and the Last Judgment which asserts the existence of an ultimate form off justice: “faith in the Last Judgement,” he writes, “is first and foremost hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries;” consequently, “I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal life” (n. 43).

Pope Benedict XVI's second Encyclical : "SPE SALVI"-"In hope we were saved"

 VATICAN CITY, Dec.01, 2007 (CINS /VIS) - Benedict XVI's second Encyclical, "Spe Salvi" which is dedicated to the theme of Christian hope, was published today. The document - which has an introduction and eight chapters - begins with a quote from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans: "spe salvi facti sumus" (in hope we are saved).

The chapter titles are as follows: "1. Faith is Hope; 2. The concept of faith-based hope in the New Testament and the early Church; 3. Eternal life - what is it?; 4. Is Christian hope individualistic?; 5. The transformation of Christian faith-hope in the modern age; 6. The true shape of Christian hope; 7. 'Settings' for learning and practicing hope: i) Prayer as a school of hope, ii) Action and suffering as settings for learning hope, iii) Judgement as a setting for learning and practicing hope; 8. Mary, Star of Hope."

The Holy Father explains in his Introduction that "according to the Christian faith, 'redemption' - salvation - is not simply a given. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey."

Hence, "a distinguishing mark of Christians" is "the fact that they have a future: ... they know ... that their life will not end in emptiness. ... The Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known - it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life."

"To come to know God - the true God - means to receive hope." This was well understood by the early Christians, such as the Ephesians who before encountering Christ had many gods but "were without hope." The problem faced by Christians of long standing, the Holy Father says, is that they "have grown accustomed to, ... have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God."

The Pope recalls that Jesus "did not bring a message of social revolution" like Spartacus, and that "he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation like Barabbas of Bar-Kochba." He brought "something totally different: ... an encounter with the living God, ... an encounter with a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life and the world from within, ... even if external structures remained unaltered."

Christ makes us truly free. "We are not slaves of the universe" or of "the laws of matter and of evolution." We are free because "heaven is not empty," because the Lord of the universe is God "Who in Jesus has revealed Himself as Love."

Christ is the "true philosopher" Who "tells us who man truly is and what a man must do in order to be truly human." He shows us "the way beyond death; only someone able to do this is a true teacher of life." He offers us a hope that is, at one and the same time, expectation and presence because "the fact that this future exists changes the present."

The Pope remarks that "perhaps many people reject the faith today simply because they do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive. ... The present-day crisis of faith," he continues, "is essentially a crisis of Christian hope. ... The restoration of the lost Paradise is no longer expected from faith," but from technical and scientific progress whence, it its believed, the "kingdom of man" will emerge. Hope thus becomes "faith in progress" founded on two pillars: reason and freedom which "seem to guarantee by themselves, by virtue of their intrinsic goodness, a new and perfect human community."

The Pope mentions "two essential stages in the political realization of this hope:" the French and the Marxist Revolutions. Faced with the French Revolution, "the Europe of the Enlightenment ... had cause to reflect anew on reason and freedom," while the proletarian revolution left behind "a trail of appalling destruction." Marx's fundamental error was that "he forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. ... He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism. ... Let us put it very simply: man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope. ... Man can never be redeemed simply" by an external structure, "man is redeemed by love," an unconditional, absolute love: "Man's great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God - God Who has loved us and continues to love us to the end."

The Pope then identifies four "settings" for learning and practicing hope. The first of these is prayer. "When no one listens to me any more, God still listens to me. ... When there is no longer anyone to help me, ... He can help me."

Alongside prayer is action: "Hope in a Christian sense is always hope for others as well. It is an active hope, in which we struggle ... towards a brighter and more humane world." Yet only if I know that "my own life and history in general ... are held firm by the indestructible power of Love" can "I always continue to hope."

Suffering is another of the "settings" for learning hope. "Certainly we must do whatever we can to reduce suffering," however "it is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, Who suffered with infinite love." Another fundamental aspect is to suffer with others and for others. "A society unable to accept its suffering members ... is a cruel and inhuman society," he writes.

Finally, another setting for learning hope is the Judgement of God. "There is a resurrection of the flesh. There is justice. There is an 'undoing' of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright." The Pope writes of his conviction "that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favor of faith in eternal life." It is, indeed, impossible "that the injustice of history should be the final word. ... God is justice and creates justice. ... And in His justice there is also grace. ... Grace does not cancel out justice. ... Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened."

Letter from the 138 Muslims to Pope

Vatican City, Nov.28, 2007 (CINS /Chiesa) - The letter from the 138 Muslims addressed last month to Benedict XVI and to the heads of the other Christian churches received a spectacular collective reply in a message signed by 300 scholars and published in "The New York Times" on November 18.

The message originated in the Divinity School of Yale University, specifically through the initiative of its dean, Harold W. Attridge, a professor of New Testament exegesis.

The signatories belong mainly to the Protestant confessions, of both "evangelical" and "liberal" strains, and include such a celebrity as the theologian Harvey Cox. But the list of the 300 also includes a Catholic bishop, Camillo Ballin, the apostolic vicar in Kuwait. Other Catholics include the Islamologist John Esposito of Georgetown University and the theologians Donald Senior, a Passionist, and Thomas P. Rausch, a Jesuit from Loyola Marymount University.

Also Catholic – although at the margins of orthodoxy – are Paul Knitter, a specialist on interreligious dialogue, and Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, a teacher at Harvard and a feminist theologian.

The message lavishes praise upon the letter of the 138. It endorses the letter's contents, or the indication of the love of God and neighbor as the "common word" between Muslims and Christians, at the center of both the Qur'an and the Bible. And it prefaces everything with a request for forgiveness to "the All-Merciful One and the Muslim community around the world."

This is the reason given for the request for forgiveness:

"Since Jesus Christ says: 'First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye' (Matthew 7:5), we want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the 'war on terror') many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbor."

In releasing the message, its promoters announced that it will be followed by meetings with some of the signers of the letter of the 138, in the United States, Great Britain, and the Middle East, meetings that will also be open to Jews.

Benedict XVI and the directors of the Holy See appear more cautious and reserved toward this flurry of dialogue.

The Holy See immediately replied to the letter of the 138 Muslims with polite statements of appreciation. But it put off until later a more fully elaborated response.

The only comment on the letter of the 138 so far released by an institution connected to the Holy See – The Pontifical Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies – has also been kept in the shadows, in spite of the fact that it emphasizes the new and positive elements of the Muslim initiative.

Not even "L'Osservatore Romano" mentioned it. The only reference made so far to the letter of the 138 in the newspaper of the Holy See was within a note announcing and commenting on the November 6 meeting between King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia and Benedict XVI. "L'Osservatore" did not even give coverage to the commentaries on the letter of the 138 by two scholars of Islam highly respected by pope Joseph Ratzinger, the Jesuits Samir Khalil Samir, from Egypt, and Christian W. Troll, from Germany.

But it is precisely from reading these commentaries – and that of Troll in particular – that one understands the reason for the caution of the Church of Rome.

Troll notes that the letter of the 138 Muslims, with its insistence on the commandments of the love of God and neighbor as the "common word" of both the Qur'an and the Bible, seems intended to bring dialogue onto the sole terrain of doctrine and theology.

But – Troll objects – there is a gaping distinction between the one God of the Muslims and the Trinitarian God of the Christians, with the Son who becomes man. This cannot be minimized, much less negotiated. The true "common word" must be sought elsewhere: in "putting into effect these commandments in the concrete, here-and-now reality of plural societies." It must be sought in the defense of human rights, of religious freedom, of equality between man and woman, of the distinction between religious and political powers. The letter of the 138 is elusive or silent on all of this.

And it is so intentionally. One of the main authors of the letter, the Libyan theologian Aref Ali Nayed, a professor at the University of Cambridge, explained himself this way in an interview with "Catholic News Service," the agency of the United States bishops' conference:

"Mere ethical/social dialogue is useful, and is very much needed. However, dialogue of that kind happens everyday, through purely secular institutions such as the United Nations and its organizations. If religious revelation-based communities are to truly contribute to humanity, their dialogue must be ultimately theologically and spiritually grounded. Many Muslim theologians are not just interested in mere ethical dialogue of ‘cultures’ or ‘civilizations’."

But what is the kind of dialogue with Islam that Benedict XVI wants?

The pope explained this most clearly in a passage of his pre-Christmas address to the Roman curia, on December 22, 2006:

"In a dialogue to be intensified with Islam, we must bear in mind the fact that the Muslim world today is finding itself faced with an urgent task. This task is very similar to the one that has been imposed upon Christians since the Enlightenment, and to which the Second Vatican Council, as the fruit of long and difficult research, found real solutions for the Catholic Church.

"It is a question of the attitude that the community of the faithful must adopt in the face of the convictions and demands that were strengthened in the Enlightenment.

"On the one hand, one must counter a dictatorship of positivist reason that excludes God from the life of the community and from public organizations, thereby depriving man of his specific criteria of judgment.

"On the other, one must welcome the true conquests of the Enlightenment, human rights and especially the freedom of faith and its practice, and recognize these also as being essential elements for the authenticity of religion.

"As in the Christian community, where there has been a long search to find the correct position of faith in relation to such beliefs - a search that will certainly never be concluded once and for all -, so also the Islamic world with its own tradition faces the immense task of finding the appropriate solutions in this regard.

"The content of the dialogue between Christians and Muslims will be at this time especially one of meeting each other in this commitment to find the right solutions. We Christians feel in solidarity with all those who, precisely on the basis of their religious conviction as Muslims, work to oppose violence and for the synergy between faith and reason, between religion and freedom."

The letter of the 138 contains no trace of this proposal that Benedict XVI issued to the Muslim world in December one year ago. This is a sign that there is truly a great distance between the visions of these two.

The vision of Benedict XVI is the same one that the other authorities of the Holy See demonstrate each time they speak on these topics. Proof of this is the message addressed to the Muslims last October, on the occasion of the end of Ramadan, from the pontifical council for interreligious dialogue, headed by cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran. This message also has at its center "freedom of faith and its exercise," as a task for all the religions, in keeping with the "plan of the Creator."

And this is a vision that Ratzinger has been defending with great consistency for years, first as cardinal and then as pope.

The lecture in Regensburg, on the need for "synergy between faith and reason" is the most fully elaborated foundation for this vision.

But even before this, the premises of how Benedict XVI conceives of dialogue with Islam and the other religions must be traced back to the discussion he had in January of 2004, in Munich, with the secular philosopher Jürgen Habermas.

On that occasion, Ratzinger said that a universally valid "natural law" is far from being recognized today by all cultures and civilizations, which are divided from each other and also divided on this issue within themselves. But he indicated the way in which "the essential norms and values known or intuited by all human beings" may be illuminated and "keep the world united." The way is that of a positive bond between reason and faith, which are "called to reciprocal purification" from the pathologies that expose both of these to domination by violence.

A great scholar has conducted a particularly lucid analysis of Benedict XVI's vision in relation to Islam: the German jurist Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, in an essay published this year in German, and translated in Italy by the magazine "Il Regno."

Böckenförde agrees completely with the pope in maintaining that Islam is now facing a challenge similar to the one posed to Christianity by the Enlightenment, in the matter of freedom of religion.

At Vatican Council II, the Catholic Church responded to this challenge with the declaration "Dignitatis Humanae" on religious freedom as founded upon the rights of the person.

But, Böckenförde asks, is the Muslim world ready to make a similar journey? Is it ready to recognize the religious neutrality of the state, and therefore the equal freedom, within the state, of all the religions?

The Muslims living "in diaspora," as minorities in the countries of Europe and the West, seem willing to accept this recognition. Proof of this is a declaration adopted in 2001 by the association of Muslims in Germany, which stated: "Islamic law binds Muslims who live in diaspora to adhere to the local legal system."

But what about where Muslims are in the majority, and control the state? Böckenförde is skeptical. He maintains that Islam, in a position of command, remains far from accepting the neutrality of the state, and therefore the full freedom of all religions.

Böckenförde is so convinced of this that he concludes his essay with a hypothetical conjecture: the hypothesis that in a European country, Muslim immigrants should be close to becoming the majority of the population.

In this case – the German jurist maintains – that country would have the right to close its borders, in self-defense. Because a secular state cannot renounce the "natural law" that is its foundation: "a law induced by membership in a cultural world rooted in the elements of the classical world, Judaism, and Christianity, but reconceived within the context of the Enlightenment."

In any case, there is no lack in modern Islamic thought of positions "open to a tolerant form of reason," as Ratzinger defined them in his conversation with Habermas in 2004.

One of these positions is highlighted by Fr. Maurice Borrmans, former head of the Pontifical Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, in the latest issue of "Oasis," the magazine in multiple languages, including Arabic and Urdu, sponsored by the patriarch of Venice, cardinal Angelo Scola.

Borrmans cites a Tunisian scholar who lives in Paris, Abdelwahab Meddeb, who commented positively on the theses of Benedict XVI in an essay entitled "Le Dieu purifié," included in a collection published in France: "La conference de Ratisbonne: Enjeux et controverses."

Meddeb writes, in part:

"In Regensburg, the pope wanted to prompt the Muslims to undertake an effort of anamnesis, so that they might forsake violence and return to the articulation of the logos familiar to their ancestors, so that they might broaden and deepen it."

And after recalling that these "ancestors" of an Islam purified by reason included the great philosopher Averroes (1126-1198), he continues:

"It is toward these territories that the Muslim must make his return, to participate in the great logos, in its broadening and deepening within the way of purification that neutralizes violence and establishes an ethical serenity."

Abdelwahab Meddeb is not among the signatories of the letter of the 138, nor of the letter of the 38 from a year before.

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