VATICAN - “Some try to exclude God from every ambit of life presenting Him as man’s antagonist. As Christians we must show that God is love and He desires the good and happiness of all mankind.”: the Pope addresses participants at a study congress on "Secularity and secularities”

Monday, 11 December 2006

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - The Pope on 9 December received participants in the 56th national study congress, promoted by the Union of Italian Catholic Jurists, held in Rome on the theme: "Secularity and secularities." The concept of secularity, said the Holy Father in his address to the group, originally referred to "the condition of simple faithful Christian, not belonging to the clergy or the religious state. During the Middle Ages it acquired the meaning of opposition between civil authorities and ecclesial hierarchies, and in modern times it has assumed the significance of the exclusion of religion and its symbols from public life by confining them to the private sphere and the individual conscience. In this way, the term secularity has acquired an ideological meaning quite opposite to the one it originally held."
Secularity today, then, "is understood as a total separation between State and Church, the latter not having any right to intervene in questions concerning the life and behavior of citizens. And such secularity even involves the exclusion of religious symbols from public places." In accordance with this definition, the Pope continued, "today we hear talk of secular thought, secular morals, secular science, secular politics. In fact, at the root of such a concept, is an a-religious view of life, thought and morals; that is, a view in which there is no place for God, for a Mystery that transcends pure reason, for a moral law of absolute value that is valid in all times and situations."
The Holy Father said every believer, particularly the believer in Christ, has the duty to help elaborate a concept of secularity which on the one hand acknowledges the place due to God and his moral law, to Christ and to his Church in individual and social human life, and on the other affirms and respects «legitimate autonomy of earthly realities »” indicated already by Vatican II (cfr. Gaudium et spes, 36). “This Conciliar affirmation is the doctrinal basis for healthy secularity which implicates effective autonomy of earthly realities certainly not from moral order, from the ecclesiastical sphere” the Pope said underlining that “"'healthy secularity' means that the State does not consider religion merely as an individual sentiment that can be confined to the private sphere." Rather, it must be "recognized as a ... public presence. This means that all religious confessions (so long as they do not contrast the moral order and are not dangerous to public order) are guaranteed free exercise of their acts of worship." Hostility against "any form of political or cultural relevance of religion," and in particular against "any kind of religious symbol in public institutions" is a degenerated form of secularity, said the Holy Father, as is "refusing the Christian community, and those who legitimately represent it, the right to pronounce on the moral problems that today appeal to the conscience of all human beings, particularly of legislators. "This," he added, "does not constitute undue interference of the Church in legislative activity, which is the exclusive competence of the State, but the affirmation and the defense of those great values that give meaning to people's lives and safeguard their dignity. These values, even before being Christian, are human”.
The Pope concluded: “We live in an exciting time with regard to progress made by humanity in many fields… At the same time some try to exclude God from every ambit of life presenting Him as man’s antagonist. As Christians we must show that God is love and desires the good and happiness of all mankind. It is our duty to bring people to understand that the moral law God gave us - and that expresses itself in us through the voice of conscience - has the aim not of oppressing us but of freeing us from evil and of making us happy. We must show that without God man is lost, and that the exclusion of religion from social life, and in particular the marginalization of Christianity, undermines the very foundations of human coexistence.”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 11/12/2006 - Righe 48, parole 696)


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