In a bid to end violence against Christians and other religions, Pope Benedict XVI used a Jan. 13 speech to Italian police to call for educating young people in the true meaning of justice and peace.
“Even the past year, unfortunately, was marked by violence and intolerance,” he said in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Jan 13.
“Frequently, in different parts of the world, the object of reprisals and attacks were Christians, who paid with their lives for their adherence to Christ and to the Church.”
The Pope made his comments to a gathering of those Italian state police who are charged with patrolling and protecting St. Peter’s Square and the Vatican.
The Pope said that while young people often hear the words “justice” and “peace” being mentioned, not enough is done to explain what the terms really mean.
“Justice,” he explained, “is not a mere human convention.” If it is viewed as such, he added, it can end up being dominated and subverted by the “criteria of utility, profit and material possession.” Pope Benedict said that when justice is corrupted in this way, the value and dignity of people can be “trampled underfoot.”
In reality, justice is a virtue that guides the human will, “prompting us to give others what is due to them by reason of their existence and their actions,” he said.
Similarly, “peace” is not merely defined as the “absence of war or the result of man’s actions to avoid conflict.”
Instead, it is primarily “a gift of God which must be implored with faith and which has the way to its fulfillment in Jesus.” Therefore, “true peace” must be “constructed day after day with compassion, solidarity, fraternity and collaboration on everyone’s part,” the Pope said.
The Pope’s comments reflected his message earlier this month when he dedicated the Church’s 45th World Day of Peace on New Year’s Day to the education of the young in justice and peace.
He concluded his remarks today by holding up the police officers present as “true promoters of justice and sincere builders of peace” and commending all present to Mary “the Mother of God, Queen of Peace.”
“To her we entrust this year of 2012, that everyone may live in mutual respect and strive after the common good, in the hope that no act of violence will be committed in the name of God, supreme guarantor of justice and peace.”
In related news, a Spanish bishop says that although teens are constantly pushed by society to engage in sex outside of marriage, they are in fact happier being chaste and living according to their dignity.
“Chastity is the virtue that educates one’s sexuality, making it more human,” Bishop Demetrio Fernandez of Cordoba, Spain, said in a Jan. 12 letter to parishioners.
“When sexuality is properly channeled, a person lives in harmony with himself and with others,” he said. But when sexuality is disordered, it’s “like a grenade that can explode at any time and injure the person holding it.”
Bishop Fernandez opened his statement lamenting how sex outside of marriage is “continuously incited in the media, in movies, on TV and even in some high schools as part of the curriculum.”
In response to this, he underscored the need in modern culture for human sexuality to be “viewed with pure eyes.” When this happens, he said, sexuality can become the “language and expression of true love” that “does not seek its own interests and satisfaction, but rather is gift and self-donation.”
“A love that seeks the happiness of the other and is open to sacrifice and renunciation,” he added. “A love that finds its place and its channel in a stable marriage blessed by God.”
Bishop Fernandez clarified that everyone is called to love sacrificially through the virtue of chastity, not just the unmarried.
This “applies to every state in life,” he said, “for the single person, for whom there is no place for the exercise of sexuality; for the married person, who must learn to manage his or her impulses in accord with authentic love; for the consecrated person, who lives his or her sexuality transformed into a more pure and sacrificial love.”
The Cordoba bishop emphasized that it is possible to remain a virgin until marriage and to stay faithful to a spouse within marriage, even in today’s environment.
“It is possible to be totally consecrated to the Lord in body and in soul, as an offering to the Lord that benefits others,” he said. “It is possible to be faithful to one’s husband or one’s wife.”
This is because “Christianity is the religion of the redemption of our flesh,” he explained. “Our love of God, of Jesus Christ, passes through our bodies.”
Through grace, “God is capable of ordering our human sexuality and making it progressively capable of expressing the most authentic love, the only love that makes every human person happy.” the bishop said.
Benjamin Wiker: Benedict XVI: Doctor of the Church
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Well, thank God Bishop Fernandez mentioned single people - we are SO left out of the conversation in the Church. I think the Church mistakenly thinks we are single because we choose to be, and not because society has made at least one generation of men afraid of marriage.
The church’s dictatorship over activities that go on “in the bedroom” of married Catholic couples is the spiritual equivalent of female genital mutilation.
This is precisely the place and reason where Blessed John Paul IIs Theology of the Body needs to be learned and taught. I grew up Catholic, and my formative teen years were the late 70s and early 80s. I had NO IDEA JPII was present a 5-year series of talks on sexuality, the body, our relationships and God’s glorious plan of salvation. The power of these talks, based upon his earlier work “Love and Responsibility” renewed and firmed up what I’d been lacking in my understanding of faith, love, and sacrficial love. Even as I drifted away and became a Lutheran pastor (but now I am home - “once Catholic, always Catolic” is certainly true), I was still absorbed by the MTV, public school sanctioned, sexual freedom sub-culture that so dominated our world then. After reading these works by JP II, I understood what I’d been missing, and if someone had taken the time to introduce them to me and teach me what the Pope was teaching us, my life would totally different today.
We need to teach this, to the young, the old, the single, the married, those considering religious life. It’s the most brilliant and profound teaching out there, and the most I hear from religious educators is “We can’t talk about body parts or anything connected with them because of boundary and privacy issues.” REALLY? So we who now have the best, most beautiful teaching to redeem our sex and relationships, which will sanctify our lives and our world, cannot talk about any of it because of privacy and fear of legal issues? Are we really going to allow the culture, media, schools and contemporary views teach our kids what we won’t - a worldview that is even more disordered and pervasively influential than it was in even my youth?
Athenian -
Thank you for illustrating my point for me.
Athenian—masochism goes masquerading as freedom in our culture. The evidence is here: http://www.ptm.org/01PT/JulAug/revenge.htm
The truth is, all this so-called “freedom” is causing us misery. Freedom to what, feel used and restless, and maybe get an incurable disease to boot? Freedom to become the enemies of our own children? I recently read an article by a man boasting, on the surface anyway, about all his conquests. The interesting part of the article to me was when he mentioned the price he paid for it: his ability to place any trust in half the inhabitants of the planet, or ever marry if he wanted to. I know it’s a cliche but I really felt this man crying out from the pain of the damage he did to himself, and pitied him, living in a kind of hell on earth. If this is the freedom the world offers, the world can keep it.
Even a hamster in a maze figures his way out eventually, but we don’t seem to learn from our mistakes, we just conclude we aren’t committed enough to them.
Enness, I find it laughable that you have chosen to mis-read my post as pro-promiscuity. Reading comprehension seems to be a common problem for Catholics.
Athenian—
And writing coherently must also be a common problem, becuase your comment is COMPLETELY pro-promiscuity. After all, to say that the Church’s teachings on sexual activities is “dictatorship” and “the spiritual equivalent of female genital mutilation” is certainly leaving the impression that you want to be allowed to indulge in whatever sinful pleasure you want without God’s own exhortation and call to holiness. You seem to want God’s Love without his Justice—when his Justice is Love itself. For there is no greater example of God’s Justice than to convert a sinner’s heart to repentance from ungodly ways, empowered by Love himself which died on the cross for us. You owe your whole life to God—both in its creation, redemtion and sustaining - without Him none of us would be here. And so we show our love to God, our gratefulness and praise, by rejecting his own Word, teaching, and commands?
Dave - the scriptures I have read on the Pope’s teachings and rules regulating what happens in the bedrooms of married couples (key word = married) is what I have a problem with. The Pope care’s not for a woman’s pleasure and the countless limitations upon the “marital sex act” which ensures that the woman will receive no pleasure except for “giving herself to her husband.” The fact that you not only chose to ignore the word “married” in my initial post, but also confuse pleasure with promiscuity just goes to prove my point. As for the “sinful indulgence” you describe, many of the acts forbidden by the Pope actually AID in conception (and yes, I’m still speaking about a married couple in their bedroom).
Athenian
Once again, you befuddle readablity in your writing.
First, I said the way you wrtoe your first post leaves the IMPRESSION of pro-promiscutiy, which includes things married couples shouldn’t engage in either…. however, that is a broad statment not intended to argue your next point; just a fact that there are things NONE of us should do, no matter how much pleasure they give. You implicity agree witht this, but we may differ on the specific things. No matter.
Secondly, there are no SCRIPTURES on the Pope’s TEACHINGS. The Scriptures are Scriptures and the Pope’s teachcings are just that - teachings. Some have more authoritative weight, some have less. But on the whole, these teachings have more authoritative wieght than either you or I have in our teachings. (That is, unless you ARE the Pope and writing peudonymously)
Third, which Pope’s teachings are you speaking about? There are many Popes, though one Chair of Peter.
Fourth, pleasure itself is not the prime reason for the marital act - for either male or female. Two two purposes of the act are unitive and generative (closeness/communion and procreation). Pleasure is a benefit, a side-effect, if you will, the enables us to WANT to engage in this most holy act (after all, it is a participation in the divine nature of the Trinity and reflects its communion and generativeness). Many things are pleasureable, but they are not all good for us or moral. But good things have pleasure attached so we don’t neglect them. “The Pope” woudln’t be concerned as to who gets the most pleasure, as if there were a contest. Thus, in a nutshell, if one is seeking the pleasure primarily, or of more importance than the other aspects, one’s view of the act is out-of-whack and cannot be used as an arguement against what is deemed moral and immoral.
Which brings me to my last point - when it comes to morality, the ends DO NOT justify the means. If an act is deemed immoral, then even if it is employed to reach a good end it remains immoral. The Pope AND the bishops, as the magisterium of the Church (the living voice of authority, and only final authority on such matters, regardless of how many letters a nun or brother or priest or deacon or lay theologican or scripture scholar or medical doctor or tv personality or whatever have behind their name), have that function - to speak on matters of faith AND morals. This teaching is guided by the Spirit (see John 14) And when they do (the Pope in his own right and the bishops in concert with each other), then it is to be received without question—that, unfortunately for many poeple, is is an intregal part of what it means to be a faithful Catholic.
The Pope (Peter) and the bishops (the successors to the Apostles) were given this authority over the Church in these matters. To refuse to submit to their authority and teaching in these matters is really to refuse to submit to Christ and even God himself. (“He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” Luke 10:16; “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives any one whom I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” John 13:20)
Bottome line is, I’m not here to judge you, Athenian. I don’t know what teachings you are referring to, which ones you follow and which you don’t. I’m simply putting forward for consideration, the fact that as Catholics we DON’T get to pick and choose what is right and what is not. If we disagree, that is fine. You are always free to believe or not believe - just as you are always free to obey or not to obey. The Church won’t “come into your bedroom” and force you to act a certain way. But to remain in full-communion, so to speak, in good standing as a Catholic, we must obey. If it is wrong, the Holy Spirit will correct it—for the Spirit is the Spirit of Truth himself. To reject the authority of Mother Church and those whom Christ has sent to be our spiritual Fathers is a sin most of us, if we are honest, fall in to from time to time and need to repent of it.
Promiscuity, in human sexual behavior, refers to the practice of casual sex with multiple sexual partners. Nowhere in my text did I say anything about promiscuity. As for the quality of my writing, my writing has been featured and cited in countless journals and publications, so perhaps it’s your reading comprehension that is the problem. For procreation to happen, the man, by default, will always feel pleasure. Pleasure is not biologically required for women in successful procreation (it just helps it along and ensures a more mutual bond between sexual partners). Procreative or not, sex should be pleasurable for both partners, otherwise, the woman is reduced to a living, breathing tool of male masturbation.
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