Earlier this week Pope Benedict XVI told his fellow Germans, and other modern Western societies, that they are shutting their ears to the Christian message when they insist that science and technology alone can combat AIDS and other social ills. His description of the problem is one that will stand out for me for the foreseeable future. He refers to this acute spiritual malady as a “hardness of hearing.”
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The secularized West is experiencing a growing disaffection with both militant atheism and traditional Christian faith. The Vatican recently addressed this issue in a study published by the Pontifical Council for Culture. It is more than interesting to me to see how this document begins to address this problem. It suggests that any effective pastoral strategy must begin with seeing “the importance of witnessing the beauty of being a person loved by God.”
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As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about just war, I’m passing along this TCS Daily piece by Prof. Bainbridge, “Just War for the Sake of Argument” (it’s also discussed at The Remedy and Bainbridge’s own blog).
Today, my Phillipina demographer friend and I went to the center city of Valencia. We have tickets to go to the Encounter with the Holy Father tonight, and we thought we’d do some sight-seeing during the day. Well, we couldn’t get near the Cathedral, where a cup reported to be the Holy Grail is kept. The streets were already filling with pilgrims waiting for the Pope’s arrival. The streets along the official parade were lined with police barriers, but no ordinary police barriers: they were yellow and white, the colors of the Vatican flag.
Earlier this week at the World Meeting of Families:
On July 4, the opening day,the program began at 4 PM and was scheduled to go until 8:00. But the opening day had a cloud hanging over it. A subway accident in Valencia claimed the lives of 41 people and injured many others. The conference was originally scheduled to have welcoming speeches by the major of Valencia, Mrs. Rita Barbera, and the Archbishop of Valencia, the Most Rev. Agustin Garcia-Gascon Vicente. But because of the accident, they were not in attendance.
Late evening, July 6.
My session finally took place today at about 4:15 pm. Cardinal Martino presented the Compendium of the Social Doctrine. He pointed out that the family was given pride of place in the document, listed before the economy or government or international relations or the environment. Most memorable statement: “The family is not a function of society or the state. State and society are functions of the family.”
Read more on Second Post from the World Meeting of Families…
Blog post: July 5, 2005. 11:30 PM, Valencia time.
I am writing from the Fifth World Meeting of Families, held this year in Valencia Spain. This periodic event is sponsored by the Pontifical Council on the Family, chaired by the formidable Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo. I have come at the invitation of His Eminence to give a presentation on The Family, the Social Doctrine of the Church and Social Questions. In addition to the Theological and Pastoral Congress, the Meeting also has a Congress for the Young and a Congress for the Elderly. There is also the Family Fare, which is a huge display of family-oriented ministries from all over the world. Since the meeting is in Spain, most of the displays are in Spanish.
Read more on Initial Post from the World Meeting of Families, Valencia…
The Vatican recently concluded a conference on corruption (insert joke about ‘knowing whereof they speak’). It was an impressive array of speakers, including World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, and many sensible things were said. But one is tempted to respond, “That’s all well and good; but what is anybody *doing* about it?”
It’s been in the news for a few days already, but the charges and countercharges continue to fly. Anyone familiar with Catholicism in China knows that the Vatican and the Chinese Communist government have been more or less at loggerheads ever since Mao Zedong drove Catholicism underground. At the heart of the dispute is the Vatican’s insistence on its right to appoint bishops; the Chinese government sees this as “foreign interference” in domestic affairs. The government’s Patriotic Association (PA) is the bureau in charge of Catholicism in China. Complicating the matter is the fact that many (nearly all?) the bishops appointed by the PA have subsequently and clandestinely sought ex post facto approval from the Vatican, thereby normalizing their status as leaders of the local churches.
With the publication of Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI is warning that an all-encompassing government would be unable to provide the one thing that people really need — loving, personal concern. Sam Gregg sees parallels between Benedict’s new encyclical and Tocqueville’s 19th century understanding of the autonomous, social associations that gave America its dynamic character and limited government power.
