A Soul for All Seasons - by George Weigel

In EPPC

In a March 1996 conversation, Pope John Paul II told me, almost wistfully, “They try to understand me from the outside, but I can only be understood from inside.” His tone that evening was less critical than it was bemused, even resigned. But whether his regrets involved biographers who treated him as a globe-trotting politician or journalists who parsed his every word and deed in conventional left-right categories, the view from outside, he knew, was not going to get anyone close to the essence of Karol Wojtyła.

I agreed with him then; and now, nine years after his death, in the days before his April 27 canonization, I agree with him even more. John Paul II, who embodied the human drama of the second half of the 20th century in a singular way, and whose witness to the truth of humanity’s noblest aspirations bent the curve of history toward freedom, can only be understood from inside out. Or, if you prefer, soul first.

His was a many-textured soul. Some of its multiple facets help explain his extraordinary accomplishments in the Catholic Church and on the world stage.

He had a Polish soul, formed by a distinctive experience of history. Vivisected in the Third Polish Partition of 1795, his country was not restored to the map of Europe until 1918. But during those 123 years of political humiliation, the Polish nation survived the demise of the Polish state through its language, its literature and its faith, with the Catholic Church acting as the safe-deposit box of national identity.

Learning about that hard experience as a boy, Karol Wojtyła was permanently inoculated against the twin heresies that had beset the West for centuries: the Jacobin heresy that the political quest for power runs history, and the Marxist heresy that history is simply the exhaust fumes of economic processes. Knowing in his Polish soul that culture, not politics or economics, drives history over the long haul, John Paul II could ignite a revolution of conscience during his first papal visit to Poland in 1979. He summoned his people to live the truth about themselves, to reject the communist culture of the lie, and to find in that restored national identity irresistible tools of resistance to oppression.

This son of Poland was, at the same time, a man of global vision with a deeply humanistic soul, forged by what he regarded as the crisis of modernity: a crisis in the very idea of the human person. That crisis, he believed, was not confined to communism’s materialist reduction of the human condition, which he tenaciously fought as a university chaplain, a professor of ethics, a charismatic priest and a dynamic bishop. The crisis could also be found in those Western systems that were tempted to measure men and women by their commercial utility rather than by the innate and inalienable dignity that was their birthright.

John Paul II’s conviction, biblically rooted and philosophically refined, was that every human life is of infinite value, at every stage and in every condition. This was the basis of his priestly ministry for almost six decades; it was the conviction that forged his unique moral analysis of world politics; and it was the ground from which he could inspire men and women from a staggering variety of cultures.

He could also touch those lives because of his dramatic soul. As a young man, he confessed in a memoir later in life, he was “obsessed” with the theater. And while he took some useful skills from those experiences on stage— John Gielgud once commented on John Paul II’s “perfect” sense of timing, as Alec Guinness marveled at the resonance of his voice—he also developed a dramatic view of the human condition. We all live, he believed, in a quotidian, yet deeply consequential, moral drama. Every day of our lives is lived in the dramatic tension between who we are and who we should be.

John Paul II intuited this on stage; he refined that intuition as a philosopher. And it was deepened by his Christian conviction that the drama of every human life is playing within a cosmic drama in which the God of the Bible is producer, director, scriptwriter and protagonist. That Christian conviction, in turn, was what allowed him to say, a year after he was shot in St. Peter’s Square in 1981, “In the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences.”

A man whose soul is formed by the conviction that “coincidence” is merely a facet of providence that he has not yet grasped is a man impervious to the tyranny of the possible. And here, too, the soul of John Paul II helps explain his accomplishment.

When he was elected pope in 1978, some observers, fixated on what they imagined to be possible, saw in the Catholic Church only contention and possible ruin. He saw seeds of reform and renewal, leading to what he would call a “New Evangelization,” a new missionary dynamic in Catholicism that would offer the divine mercy to a broken and wounded humanity. Others, fixated on what seemed settled in world affairs, believed that the Yalta division of Europe after World War II was permanent. But after June 1979 and the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, he saw possibilities for dramatic cultural, social and eventually political change in Eastern Europe—and then helped effect them.

If John Paul II seemed able to discern possibilities where others saw only barriers; if he saw (as he put it at the United Nations in 1995), a “springtime of the human spirit” after a winter of murderous discontent embodied in two world wars, the gulag and Auschwitz—well, one could look to his keen mind for an explanation. But the deeper explanation lies in his soul, and in the human character formed by that soul.

It was John Paul’s soul in which hundreds of millions of human beings found an exemplar of decency and an icon of hope. It was the character formed by that soul that made him a champion of resistance against the tyranny of diminished expectations, personal and political.

Agreeing with Pope Francis - Michael Novak

 In CERC 

The exhortation looks very different read through the lens of Argentine experience.

Reading the new exhortation by Pope Francis after the wildly misleading presentations of it by the Guardian and Reuters (both from the left side of the U.K. press), and reading it with an American ear for language, I was at first amazed at how partisan and empirically unfounded were five or six of its sentences.

But reading the exhortation in full in its English translation, and reading it through the eyes of a professor-bishop-pope who grew up in Argentina, I began to have more sympathy for the phrases used by Pope Francis.

For one thing, I have closely studied the early writings of Pope John Paul II, which grew out of long experience of an oppressive Communist regime that pretended to be wholly devoted to "equality," yet enforced total control over polity, economy, and culture by a thorough and cruel state.  From 1940 (under the Nazi/Soviet occupation) until 1978 (when he moved to the Vatican), Karol Wojtyla had virtually no experience of a capitalist economy and a democratic/republican polity.  To come to understand the concepts behind that sort of political economy, he had to listen closely and learn a quite different vocabulary.

The early experiences of these two popes were very different.  So, having spent not a little time lecturing in Argentina and in Chile since the late 1970s, I read the entire exhortation with an ear for echoes of daily economic and political life in Argentina.

In my visits to Argentina, I observed a far sharper divide between the upper middle class and the poor than any I had experienced in America.  In Argentina I saw very few paths by which the poor could rise out of poverty.  In the U.S., many of those who are now rich or middle class had come to America (or their parents had) dirt poor, many of us not speaking English, with minimal schooling, and with mainly menial skills.  But before us lay many paths upward.  As Peru's Hernando de Soto stresses, the U.S.  had the rule of law and clear property rights, on which one could safely build over generations.

Virtually all my acquaintances while I was growing up had experienced early poverty.  Our grandfathers were garment workers, steelworkers, store clerks, gardeners, handymen, blue-collar workers of all sorts, without social insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, housing allowances, or the like.  But they labored and somehow were able to send their children to colleges and universities.  Now their children are doctors, lawyers, professors, editors, and owners of small businesses all over the country.

In his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith compared the economic history of Latin America with that of North America.  He noted that in Latin America there were still many institutions of feudal Europe — large landholders, plantations, plantation workers.  In North America, only the southern United States was something like that.

Throughout Latin America, for almost two centuries at the time Smith wrote, many economic powers and permissions were doled out by government officials in far-off Spain or Portugal.  In the Dominican Republic, for example, a farmer who wanted to build a small iron foundry had to wait months or years until a decision came back from Spain.  Trading with pirates was easier.  In the English-speaking colonies of North America, however, a farmer could just build his foundry without asking anybody.  And even after the various Latin American countries achieved independence, habits of state direction were still entrenched, as if by immemorial habit.

Besides, experience in the Anglosphere had led to a distrust of monarchs and their courts, and later of barons and dukes and the aristocracy as a whole, since these people could not be counted on either to see or to serve the common good.  By contrast, the opposite habit of mind had grown throughout the Latin world.  There, officials of the state were regularly entrusted with minding the common good, despite a long record of official betrayals of duty, outbreaks of tyranny, and the use of economic resources to enrich successive leaders of the state.  In Latin America, the pluralistic private sector was mistrusted, but not the state.

By contrast, in the U.S., under a government strictly limited by law, there grew up almost universal property ownership by individuals (except under the evil institution of slavery, America's primal sin), a large swath of small enterprises, and a huge base of prospering small farms.  Smith described the creation of wealth in North America as welling up from below, from the prosperity at the bottom, where frugal habits led to wise investments in railroads, canals, and other large business corporations.

Less than 70 years after Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, a son of the frontier farm country of central Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, spoke eloquently about the evidences of global trade visible in homes across the prairie — tobacco, cotton, spices, whiskey, sugar, tea, glassware, silverware.  He attributed this enprospering trade to the daring of American seamen (as Tocqueville also did).

 

Lincoln also wrote about the patent-and-copyright clause of the U.S.  Constitution, which guaranteed to inventors the right to the monetary fruit of their inventions.  Lincoln thought this small clause one of the six greatest contributions to liberty in the history of the world.  He thought it critical to liberating human beings everywhere from misery and tyranny.

That single clause — the only time the term "right" is used within the body of the Constitution — launched a wholly new economic model for the world, based not on land (as it had been for thousands of years) but on creative ideas, inventions, and discoveries, which greatly speeded up a cascade of new improvements and new products to enrich the lives of ordinary citizens.  The more people these improvements helped, the higher the inventors' royalties.  By serving others, they reaped rewards.  These rewards furthered the common good.

The Polish pope, John Paul II, recognized this huge social change in Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year, 1991), of which paragraph 32 opens:  "In our time, in particular, there exists another form of ownership which is no less important than land:  the possession of know-how, knowledge, and skill.  The wealth of the industrialized nations is based much more on this kind of ownership than on natural resources."  The rest of this paragraph is concise in its penetration of the causes of wealth and the role of human persons and associations in the virtue of worldwide solidarity, of which globalization is the outward expression.

Pope John Paul II quickly recognized that today "the decisive factor [in production] is increasingly man himself, that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization, as well as his ability to perceive the needs of others and to satisfy them."  (See the whole of paragraph 32 here.)

Then in paragraph 42, John Paul II defined his ideal capitalism, succinctly, as that economic system springing from creativity, under the rule of law, and "the core of which is ethical and religious."  In his first social encyclical ten years earlier, Laborem Exercens (On Human Work, 1981), directly rejecting orthodox Marxist language about labor, the pope had already begun to project "creation theology" as a replacement for "liberation theology."  A bit later, he reached the concept of "human capital."  Step by step, he thought his way to his own vision of the economy best suited to the human person — not perfectly so, in this vale of tears, but better than any rival, Communist or traditional.  John Paul II set it forth as "the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress."  (See the whole of paragraph 42 here.) 

As the 20th century began, Argentina was ranked among the top 15 industrial nations, and more and more of its wealth was springing from modern inventions rather than farmland.  Then a destructive form of political economy, just then spreading like a disease from Europe — a populist fascism with tight government control over the economy — dramatically slowed Argentina's economic and political progress.  Instability in the rule of law undermined economic creativity.  Inflation blew to impossible heights.  (I brought home from Argentina in the early 1980s a note for a million Argentine pesos that had declined in worth to two American pennies.)

 

Over three generations, very little of the nation's natural wealth and opportunity for social advancement has overflowed into the upraised buckets of the poor.  Upward mobility from the bottom up was (and is) infrequent.  Today, the lot of Argentina's poor is still static.  The poor receive little personal instruction in turning to independent creativity and initiative, and few laws, lending institutions, and other practical arrangements support them in moving upward.  Human energies are drained by dependency on state benefits.  The visible result has been a largely static society, with little opportunity for the poor to rise out of poverty.  A great inner humiliation comes over the poor as they see their lack of personal achievement and their dependency.  If this is what Pope Francis was painfully visualizing as he wrote this exhortation, it is exactly what the eyes of many other observers have seen.

The single word "capitalism" has a number of very different meanings, based on very different experiences.  In many Latin countries, today's corporate leaders are often the grandsons of the great landholders of the past.  Some of these are men of vision, invention, and personal initiative who have built their own firms.  Yet as of now most Americans cannot name a single household item invented by a Latin American.

True, in several new fields, creativity and invention are growing in Latin America.  The Brazilian Embraer jets (used in the fleets of many U.S.  carriers), for example, are highly useful originals.  But still the economic system of Argentina and other Latin American countries is very like a static traditional market system, not yet capitalist in invention and enterprise. 

Anyone commenting on the economic themes of Evangelii Gaudium should note at the outset that the pope insists this document is not a full expression of his views on political economy but only an expression of his pastoral heart.  In paragraph 51 Francis writes:

It is not the task of the Pope to offer a detailed and complete analysis of contemporary reality, but I do exhort all the communities to an "ever watchful scrutiny of the signs of the times."  .  .  .  In this Exhortation I claim only to consider briefly, and from a pastoral perspective, certain factors which can restrain or weaken the impulse of missionary renewal in the Church, either because they threaten the life and dignity of God's people or because they affect those who are directly involved in the Church's institutions and in her work of evangelization.

But about six of his swipes are so highly partisan and biased that they seem outside this pope's normal tranquillity and generosity of spirit.  Exactly these partisan phrases were naturally leapt upon by media outlets such as Reuters and the Guardian.  Among these are "trickle-down theories," "invisible hand," "idolatry of money," "inequality," and trust in the state "charged with vigilance for the common good."

Why is it then, asks Mary Anastasia O'Grady, one of the shrewdest observers of Latin America today, "that most of today's desperate poor are concentrated in places where the state has gained an outsize role in the economy specifically on just such grounds"?  Ever since Max Weber, Catholic social thought has been blamed for much of the poverty in many Catholic nations.  Pope Francis inadvertently adds evidence for Weber's thesis.

Truly, we would do well to have an economic historian set each of these highly inflammable and partisan charges in context, to explain what each meant to the author who originated them, as opposed to the partisan usage of today's media.  Allow me here to focus on the flaws in only one of the pope's too-hasty claims:  his careless mention of "trickle-down theories."  Actually, the fault here seems to have been exacerbated by a poor translation, as seen in the stark differences between the Vatican's official English version and the pope's original Spanish.  The Spanish:

En este contexto, algunos todavía defienden las teorías del "derrame," que suponen que todo crecimiento económico, favorecido por la libertad de mercado, logra provocar por sí mismo mayor equidad e inclusión social en el mundo.

Now compare the unfortunate English version:

In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.

Note first that "trickle-down" nowhere appears in the original Spanish, as it would have done if the pope had meant to invoke the battle-cry of the American Democrats against the American Republicans.  Professional translators of Spanish say the correct translation of derrame is "spillover" or "overflow."  Instead, the English translation introduces both a sharply different meaning and a harsh new tone into this passage.  Only those hostile to capitalism and Reagan's successful reforms, and to the policies of Republicans in general after the downward mobility of the Carter years, use the derisive expression "trickle-down," intended to caricature what actually happened under Reagan, namely, dramatic upward mobility.  (See, for example, my article "The Rich, the Poor, & the Reagan Administration.")

Those who emphasize capitalism's successes in raising the poor out of poverty do not use that term.  They see the defining classical movement of capitalist economies as upward for the poor:  higher employment rates, higher wages, measurable outbursts of personal initiative and new enterprises, unparalleled opportunities for upward mobility among the poor, immigrants moving out of poverty in less than ten years, the working-class "proletariat" becoming solid members of the middle class who can afford to own their own homes and support the higher education of their children.

There is no empirical evidence, Evangelii Gaudium says, for trust in such economic outcomes.  It is "instead a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system."  In Argentina and other static systems with no upward mobility, this comment might be understandable.  In nations with generations of reliable upward mobility, it is not true at all.

The upward movement promoted by certain capitalist systems is the experience — not a "crude and naïve trust" — of a large majority of Americans.  "Trickle-down" is not an apt description of what has happened here; rather, what has been experienced is wealth "welling up from below."  Exactly this is what continues to attract millions of immigrants into our economy.

In addition, the English translation of Evangelii Gaudium insists that there are people who believe that economic growth will inevitably produce greater justice and inclusiveness (equidad e inclusión sociål).  But the Spanish text does not use a word that would be properly translated as "inevitably."  The more moderate (and accurate) expression used is por si mismo, or "by itself."  Unlike the English translation, the original Spanish gets it right:  It takes a lot more than economic growth to make a system "equitable."  It takes the rule of law, the protection of natural rights, and the Jewish/Christian concern for the widow, the orphan, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned — in short, effective concern for all the vulnerable and needy.

Despite its glaring faults, especially in its entertainment sector — obscene and sexually explicit pop music, decadent images and themes in movies — the American system has been more "inclusive" of the poor than any other nation on earth. 

Two things I especially value in Evangelii Gaudium.  The whole of the cosmos, and the whole of human life, are upward-leaping flames from the inner life of the Creator, from caritas — that outward-moving, creative love that is God.  As the erudite and brilliant Pope Benedict XVI showed in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, everything crucial to human life begins in God's caritas.  Think of this in your own life:  Is not the love you have for your dear spouse, children, and close friends the most "divine" experience you know?

 

That is one reason why Catholic social thought begins in caritas.  It is also why the poor are so close to the center of Christian concern — and Christian worship.

The second point I most value is the focus Evangelii Gaudium places on the main practical task of our generation:  breaking the last round of chains of ancient poverty.  In 1776, there were fewer than 1 billion people on earth.  A vast majority of them were poor, and living under tyrannies.  Just over two centuries later, there are more than 7 billion human beings.  Rapid medical discoveries and inventions have helped to more than double the average lifespan, vastly reduce infant mortality, and provide relief for hundreds of diseases.  Thanks to economic progress, six-sevenths of the greatly expanded human race have now broken free from poverty — over a billion people from 1950 to 1980, and another billion since 1980.  There are another billion more still in chains.  The Jewish, Christian, and humanist task is to break this remnant free.

Whatever one prays in worship on Sunday gets its truthfulness from what Christians actually do in their daily lives to help the poor.  If one doesn't come to the aid of the poor, one does not love God.

"No one has ever seen God," St.  John writes in his first Letter, "but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us" (1 Jn 4:12).  And Jesus instructed, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" (Mt 25:40).

An exhortation is not so much a teaching document laying out a careful argument — that is the task for an encyclical.  Rather, it is more like a sermon, a somewhat informal occasion for the pope to set out his vision as a pastor, and to present it as an invitation to deeply felt piety and devotion.  Pope Francis excels at such personal speech.

In the future, Francis will unfold his fuller arguments about the political economy that best helps the poor to move out of poverty.  I can only imagine that consultations on the subject have already begun.

I hope the pope's aides will begin with the experience-impelled conclusion, a bit reluctantly advanced, in the well-reasoned pathway of paragraph 42 of John Paul II's Centesimus Annus:

Can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society?  Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress?

To this John Paul II answered, in effect, "Yes and no."  He went on:

The answer is obviously complex.  If by "capitalism" is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a "business economy," "market economy" or simply "free economy."  But if by "capitalism" is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.

The Marxist solution has failed, but the realities of marginalization and exploitation remain in the world, especially the Third World, as does the reality of human alienation, especially in the more advanced countries.  Against these phenomena the Church strongly raises her voice.  Vast multitudes are still living in conditions of great material and moral poverty.  The collapse of the Communist system in so many countries certainly removes an obstacle to facing these problems in an appropriate and realistic way, but it is not enough to bring about their solution.  Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which refuses even to consider these problems, in the a priori belief that any attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their solution to the free development of market forces.

Although economic growth falls far short of being the only goal of free societies, its blessings in terms of education, medical improvements, the prospering of freedom of conscience, and the private financing of civic life and multiple philanthropies are not inessential to the common good.

Further, it is not market systems alone that produce upward mobility, economic progress for all, and wide economic opportunity.  Argentina has always had a market economy.  So, too, have almost all the peoples in human history.  Jerusalem in the biblical period cherished private property ("Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods"), and it lived by a vital market (as the commercial interface of three continents).  But for the 1,800 years after Christ, none of the world's markets — nor the aggregate thereof — produced much economic development.  The world's economies remained relatively static, as they faced a merciless cycle of "fat" years followed by "lean" ones.  Before the rise of capitalism, traditional market systems experienced famines and massive outbreaks of deadly diseases in nearly every generation.

Pope John Paul II came to see this historical reality.  His insights are still in the treasury of Catholic social teaching, and naturally they will come to the attention of Pope Francis, who devotes a whole section of Evangelii Gaudium to the theme "Reality is more powerful than ideas."

Finally, I would like to offer a bet:  More human beings by far will move out of poverty by the methods of democracy and capitalism than by any other means.

The empirical evidence from the swift upward thrust of the war-leveled economies of 1946-48 — those of Japan and Germany, but also those of Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, which turned to democracy and one form or another of capitalism — is overwhelming.  But so also is the evidence from most of us in the United States, whose grandparents were "the wretched refuse" of the earth, yet now in a short time their families are counted among the most affluent people of the world.  How was that possible?  Through what system was that done, and what are its imitable secrets?

Those who wish to be practical and successful in breaking the remaining chains of poverty in the world might learn from what has worked until now, right before our eyes.

O homem que não perdoou aos mais vulneráveis e desencadeou uma atroz guerra injusta e violenta genocidando multidões incontáveis - por Nuno Serras Pereira

06. 12. 2013

Infelizmente tem existido em muitos membros da Igreja uma óbvia obsessão obstinada - que parece ter-se acentuado intensa e inesperadamente, ao mais alto nível, ao longo deste último ano -, em desconsiderar objectivamente, apesar de raras e inócuas declarações sobre o assunto, com uma apatia gélida, que estende sinistramente a sua indiferença globalmente, a pessoa humana (e sua concomitante dignidade sublime, eminente e transcendente) nas suas fases ou etapas, unicelular, embrionária e fetal.  

Não obstante, o Papa S. João Paulo II ter ensinado insistentemente (em particular na Encíclica Evangelium vitae, a Magna Carta da defesa da vida, que o então Cardeal Ratzinger considerou um dos 4 pilares da Igreja no terceiro milénio), sendo seguido com o mesmo vigor por Bento XVI, que não há crime contra a vida humana tão perverso e abominável como o do aborto provocado; que se trata de uma guerra dos poderosos contra os fracos; que não há paz, nem democracia (mas sim tirania e totalitarismo) nem liberdade quando os estados o legalizam; quase todos continuamos a pensar e proceder como nada disso contasse, como se não fora verdade, mas tão só uma retórica barroca que no fundo não é para levar a sério, e muito menos para dela tirar as devidas consequências – não passam, na nossa vida, de palavras cristãs sem Cristo, para citar o Papa Francisco I.  

Se Madiba fosse responsável, em virtude de uma lei injusta por ele firmada, da matança de cem adultos inocentes ou de mil ou de dezenas de milhares quem é que o celebraria como um modelo e exemplo a seguir, tecendo elogios e lisonjas tais que branqueassem, lembrando tácticas leninistas e estalinistas, esses factos irrefutáveis? Não seria certo que isso nos assombraria como um negrume demoníaco que pairasse sobre nós, provocando um justíssimo movimento de indignação que nos empuxasse a denunciar a farsa e a repor a verdade?

Nelson Mandela que foi capaz de gestos admiráveis na sua vida teve, no entanto, também as mais altas responsabilidades na deflagração de uma guerra absolutamente injusta e tétrica, que implantou um estado tirano e totalitário, posto ao serviço da eliminação da liberdade e do trucidamento da vida de um milhão de inocentes (também aqui). Mas como se trata de crianças concebidas ainda não nascidas, ninguém, mas mesmo ninguém, as tem verdadeiramente em conta, sendo totalmente ignoradas, na “canonização” imediata de Madiba.

Independentemente da culpabilidade e responsabilidade subjectivas de Mandela, que ultimamente só Deus pode julgar, objectivamente esses actos criminosos que referi são desumanos, feros e cruéis. E deles terá de responder perante Deus, não podendo, para usar uma expressão de Bento XVI, simplesmente, sem mais, sentar-se à mesa do Banquete no Reino com as suas vítimas.

Todos devemos rezar por alma de Madiba implorando a sua Salvação; é também natural que o Santo Padre, como chefe de estado, envie as suas condolências, e como Pastor Supremo, na terra, eleve as suas orações pelo passamento de Mandela. No entanto, a falta de recato, a bajulação, a louvaminhice equivalem na prática a um desmentido, a uma descredibilização do que se tem doutrinado em relação ao giga-genocídio das pessoas nascituras. À honra e glória de Cristo. Ámen.

The Federalist Option of the Bishop of Rome - by Sandro Magister

In Chiesaespresso

More autonomy for the national episcopal conferences. And more room for different cultures. The two points on which “Evangelii Gaudium" most distinguishes itself from the magisterium of the previous popes

ROME, December 3, 2013 – In the voluminous apostolic exhortation "Evangelii Gaudium"  made public one week ago, Pope Francis has made it known that he wants to distinguish himself on at least two points from the popes who preceded him.

The first of these points is also the one that has had the greatest impact in the media. And it concerns both the exercise of the primacy of the pope and the powers of the episcopal conferences.

The second point concerns the relationship between Christianity and cultures.


1. ON THE PAPACY AND THE NATIONAL CHURCHES


On the role of the pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio credits John Paul II with having paved the way to a new form of the exercise of primacy.  But he laments that “we have made little progress in this regard” and promises that he intends to proceed with greater vigor  toward a form of papacy “more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it and to the present needs of evangelization."

But more than on the role of the pope - where Francis remains vague and has so far operated by making most decisions himself - it is on the powers of the episcopal conferences that "Evangelii Gaudium" heralds a major transition.

The pope writes in paragraph 32 of the document:

"The Second Vatican Council stated that, like the ancient patriarchal Churches, episcopal conferences are in a position 'to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit.' Yet this desire has not been fully realized, since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated. Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach."

In a footnote, Francis refers to a 1998 motu proprio of John Paul II, concerning precisely "the theological and juridical nature of the episcopal conferences":

> Apostolos Suos

But if one reads that document, one discovers that it attributes to the national episcopal conferences a function that is exclusively practical, cooperative, of a simple intermediate auxiliary body between the college of all the world's bishops together with the pope on the one hand - the only "collegiality" declared to have a theological foundation - and the individual bishop with authority over his diocese on the other.

Above all, the motu proprio "Apostolos Suos" strongly limits that "authentic doctrinal authority" which Pope Francis says he wants to grant to the episcopal conferences. It prescribes that if doctrinal declarations really need to be issued, this must be done with unanimous approval and in communion with the pope and the whole Church, or at least "by a substantial majority" after review and authorization by the Holy See.

One danger warned against in the motu proprio "Apostolos Suos" is that the episcopal conferences might release doctrinal declarations in contrast with each other and with the universal magisterium of the Church.

Another risk that it intends to prevent is the creation of separation and antagonism between individual national Churches and Rome, as happened in the past in France with "Gallicanism" and as takes place among the Orthodox with some of the autocephalous national Churches.

That motu proprio bears the signature of John Paul II, but it owes its framework to the one who was his highly trusted prefect of doctrine, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

And Ratzinger - as was known - had long been very critical of the superpowers that some episcopal conferences had attributed to themselves, especially in certain countries, including his native Germany.

In his bombshell interview of 1985, published with the title "The Ratzinger Report," he had resolutely opposed the idea that the Catholic Church should become "a kind of federation of national Churches."

Instead of a "decisive new emphasis on the role of the bishops" as desired by Vatican Council II, the national episcopal conferences - he accused - have "smothered" the bishops with their weighty bureaucratic structures.

And again:

"It seems wonderful always to decide together," but "the truth cannot be created through ballots," both because "the group spirit and perhaps even the wish for a quiet, peaceful life or conformism lead the majority to accept the positions of active minorities bent upon pursuing clear goals" and because "the search for agreement between the different tendencies and the effort at mediation often yield flattened documents in which decisive positions (where they might be necessary) are weakened."

John Paul II and Benedict XVI after him judged the average quality of the world's bishops and of most episcopal conferences to be modest. And they acted accordingly. Making themselves the leader and model and in some cases - as in Italy - resolutely intervening to change the leadership and marching orders.

With Francis, the episcopal conferences could instead see a recognition of greater autonomy. With the foreseeable repercussions exemplified recently by Germany, where prominent bishops and cardinals have been clashing publicly over the most varied questions, from the criteria of diocesan administration to communion for the divorced and remarried, in this latter case anticipating and forcing solutions on which the double synod of bishops of 2014 and 2015 has been called to debate and decide.


2. ON CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURES


As for the encounter between Christianity and cultures, Pope Francis has insisted a great deal, in paragraphs 115-118 of "Evangelii Gaudium," on the idea that "Christianity does not have simply one cultural expression," but ever since its origin "is incarnate in the peoples of the earth, each of which has its own culture."

In other words:

"Grace supposes culture, and God’s gift becomes flesh in the culture of those who receive it."

With this corollary:

"While it is true that some cultures have been closely associated with the preaching of the Gospel and the development of Christian thought, the revealed message is not identified with any of them; its content is transcultural."

In maintaining this, pope Bergoglio seems to be reaching out to those who hold that the proclamation of the Gospel has an original purity of its own apart from any cultural contamination. A purity that should be restored to it, freeing it mainly from its "Western" trappings of yesterday and today, allowing it to "inculturate" itself each time in new syntheses with other cultures.

But put in these terms, this relationship between Christianity and cultures  overlooks the indivisible connection between faith and reason, between biblical revelation and Greek culture, between Jerusalem and Athens, to which John Paul II dedicated the encyclical “Fides et Ratio" and on which Benedict XVI focused his memorable talk in Regensburg of September 12, 2006:

> Faith, Reason and the University

For pope Ratzinger, the bond between biblical faith and Greek philosophy is "an intrinsic necessity" that is manifested not only in the dazzling prologue of the Gospel of John, "in the beginning was the Logos," but already in the Old Testament, in the mysterious "I am" of God in the burning bush: "a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy."

This encounter "between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit" - Benedict XVI maintained - took place "in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity."

And it is a synthesis - Pope Benedict furthermore argued - that must be defended from all the attacks that over the course of the centuries, until our own time, have aimed at breaking it, in the name of the "dehellenization of Christianity."

In our time - Ratzinger noted in Regensburg - this attack is produced "in the light of our experience with cultural pluralism":

"It is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was an initial inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not simply false, but it is coarse and lacking in precision. […] True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself."

On this capital theme, "Evangelii Gaudium" does not necessarily contradict the magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. But it is certainly distant from it.

Here as well with an evident sympathy for a plurality of forms of Church, modeled on the respective local cultures.

L'option fédéraliste de l’évêque de Rome - par Sandro Magister

 In Chiesaespresso

Davantage d’autonomie pour les conférences épiscopales nationales. Et une plus grande place pour les diverses cultures. Ce sont les deux points sur lesquels "Evangelii gaudium" se distingue principalement du magistère des papes précédents

ROME, le 3 décembre 2013 – Dans la très longue exhortation apostolique "Evangelii gaudium" qui a été rendue publique il y a une semaine, le pape François a fait comprendre que, sur deux points au moins, il voulait se distinguer des papes qui l’ont précédé.

Le premier de ces points est aussi celui qui a eu le plus d’écho dans les médias. Et il concerne à la fois l'exercice de la primauté du pape et les pouvoirs des conférences épiscopales.

Le second point concerne le rapport entre le christianisme et les cultures.


1. À PROPOS DE LA PAPAUTÉ ET DES ÉGLISES NATIONALES


En ce qui concerne le rôle du pape, Jorge Mario Bergoglio reconnaît à Jean-Paul II le mérite d’avoir ouvert la voie vers une nouvelle forme d’exercice de la primauté. Mais il déplore un fait - "nous avons peu avancé en ce sens" - et il assure qu’il veut progresser avec davantage d’élan vers une forme de papauté qui soit "plus fidèle à la signification que Jésus-Christ a voulu lui donner et aux nécessités actuelles de l’évangélisation".

Toutefois ce n’est pas tellement à propos du rôle du pape – sujet sur lequel François reste dans le vague et domaine dans lequel, jusqu’à présent, il a en fait agi en concentrant sur lui-même la plus grande part des décisions – qu’à propos des pouvoirs des conférences épiscopales qu’"Evangelii gaudium" laisse pressentir un tournant.

Voici ce qu’écrit le pape, au paragraphe 32 de ce document :

"Le concile Vatican II a affirmé que, d’une manière analogue à celle des anciennes Églises patriarcales, les conférences épiscopales peuvent 'contribuer de façons multiples et fécondes à ce que le sentiment collégial se réalise concrètement'. Mais ce souhait ne s’est pas pleinement réalisé parce qu’un statut des conférences épiscopales qui les conçoive comme sujets d’attributions concrètes, y compris une certaine autorité doctrinale authentique, n’a pas encore été suffisamment explicité. Une centralisation excessive, au lieu d’aider, complique la vie de l’Église et sa dynamique missionnaire".

En note, François renvoie à un motu proprio de Jean-Paul II datant de 1998, qui concerne précisément "la nature théologique et juridique des conférences épiscopales" :

> Apostolos suos

Cependant, lorsqu’on lit ce document, on découvre qu’il reconnaît aux conférences épiscopales nationales une fonction exclusivement pratique, coopérative, de simple corps auxiliaire servant d’intermédiaire entre, d’une part, le collège de tous les évêques du monde réunis autour du pape – unique "collégialité" qui soit déclarée théologiquement fondée – et, d’autre part, chaque évêque qui a autorité sur son diocèse.

Mais, surtout, le motu proprio "Apostolos suos" limite fortement cette "authentique autorité doctrinale" que le pape François dit vouloir concéder aux conférences épiscopales. Il prescrit que, si elles veulent vraiment émettre des déclarations doctrinales, elles doivent le faire avec une approbation unanime et en communion avec le pape et l'ensemble de l’Église, ou tout au moins "à la majorité qualifiée", et avec le contrôle préalable et l’autorisation du Saint-Siège.

Un danger contre lequel le motu proprio "Apostolos suos" met en garde est que les conférences épiscopales puissent émettre des déclarations doctrinales qui seraient en opposition les unes avec les autres ainsi qu’avec le magistère universel de l’Église.

Un autre risque auquel le motu proprio veut s’opposer est la constitution de séparations et d’antagonismes entre les Églises nationales prises individuellement et Rome, comme cela s’est produit dans le passé en France avec le "gallicanisme" et comme c’est le cas, chez les orthodoxes, de certaines Églises nationales autocéphales.

Ce motu proprio porte la signature de Jean-Paul II, mais il doit sa structure à celui qui était son préfet de la doctrine et en qui il avait toute confiance, le cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Et Ratzinger – on le savait – portait depuis longtemps un jugement très critique sur les superpouvoirs que quelques conférences épiscopales s’étaient attribuées, surtout dans certains pays, parmi lesquels son Allemagne natale.

Dans son interview-bombe de 1985, publiée sous le titre "Rapport sur la foi", Ratzinger s’était résolument opposé à ce que l’Église catholique devienne "une espèce de fédération d’Églises nationales".

Au lieu de susciter "une relance énergique du rôle de l’évêque" comme l’avait voulu le concile Vatican II, les conférences épiscopales nationales – accusait-il – "étouffaient" les évêques sous leurs lourdes structures bureaucratiques.

Et il affirmait aussi :

"Décider toujours ensemble, cela paraît très beau", mais "la vérité ne peut pas être créée comme résultat de votes". D’une part parce que "l’esprit de groupe, ou peut-être la volonté de vivre tranquille, ou même le conformisme, conduisent la majorité à accepter les prises de position de minorités entreprenantes et déterminées à aller dans des directions précises". D’autre part parce que "la recherche du point de rencontre entre les différentes tendances et l’effort de médiation donnent fréquemment lieu à des documents plats et incolores".

Jean-Paul II et après lui Benoît XVI considéraient que la qualité moyenne des évêques dans le monde et celle d’une grande partie des conférences épiscopales étaient modestes. Et ils ont agi en conséquence. En se présentant eux-mêmes comme guides et comme modèles et, dans certains cas – par exemple celui de l’Italie – en intervenant de manière énergique afin de modifier les leaderships et les orientations.

Sous le pontificat de François, en revanche, les conférences épiscopales pourraient se voir reconnaître une plus grande autonomie, avec les contrecoups que l’on peut prévoir, dont un exemple a été récemment donné par l’Allemagne. Dans ce pays, des évêques et des cardinaux de premier plan s’affrontent publiquement sur les sujets les plus variés, depuis les critères d’administration des diocèses jusqu’à la distribution de la communion aux divorcés remariés ; en ce qui concerne ce dernier sujet, ils l’ont fait en anticipant et en imposant des solutions sur lesquelles le double synode des évêques qui aura lieu en 2014 et 2015 a été appelé à débattre et à prendre des décisions.


2. À PROPOS DU CHRISTIANISME ET DES CULTURES


En ce qui concerne la rencontre entre le christianisme et les cultures, le pape François a beaucoup insisté, dans les paragraphes 115-118 d’"Evangelii gaudium", sur la thèse selon laquelle "le christianisme ne dispose pas d’un unique modèle culturel" mais, depuis les origines, il "s’incarne dans les peuples de la terre, chacun de ceux-ci ayant sa propre culture".

En d’autres termes :

"La grâce suppose la culture et le don de Dieu s’incarne dans la culture de celui qui le reçoit".

Avec ce corollaire :

"Bien qu’il soit vrai que certaines cultures ont été étroitement liées à la prédication de l’Évangile et au développement d’une pensée chrétienne, le message révélé ne s’identifie à aucune d’entre elles et il possède un contenu transculturel".

En affirmant cela, le pape Bergoglio semble s’opposer à ceux qui soutiennent que l'annonce de l’Évangile possède une pureté originelle par rapport à quelque contamination culturelle que ce soit. Pureté qui devrait lui être restituée, en la libérant principalement de ses revêtements "occidentaux" d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, pour lui donner à chaque fois la possibilité de "s’inculturer" en de nouvelles synthèses avec d’autres cultures.

Mais, présenté en ces termes, ce rapport entre le christianisme et les cultures laisse de côté ce lien indissoluble entre la foi et la raison, entre la révélation biblique et la culture grecque, entre Jérusalem et Athènes, auquel Jean-Paul II a consacré l'encyclique "Fides et ratio" et sur lequel Benoît XVI a focalisé son mémorable discours prononcé à Ratisbonne le 12 septembre 2006 :

> Foi, Raison et Université

D’après le pape Ratzinger, le lien entre la foi biblique et la philosophie grecque constitue "une nécessité intrinsèque" qui se manifeste non seulement dans le fulgurant prologue de l’Évangile de Jean : "Au commencement était le Logos", mais également, déjà, dans l'Ancien Testament, par le mystérieux "Je suis" de Dieu dans le buisson ardent : "une contestation par rapport au mythe avec laquelle la tentative de Socrate de vaincre et de dépasser le mythe lui-même est en intime analogie".

Cette rencontre "entre l’esprit grec et l’esprit chrétien" – affirmait Benoît XVI – "s’est faite d’une manière qui a eu une signification décisive pour la naissance du christianisme et sa diffusion".

Et c’est une synthèse – argumentait encore le pape Benoît – qu’il faut défendre contre toutes les attaques qui, au cours des siècles, jusqu’à nos jours, ont cherché à la détruire, au nom de la "déshellénisation du christianisme".

De nos jours – faisait remarquer Ratzinger à Ratisbonne – cette attaque est lancée "au regard de la rencontre avec la multiplicité des cultures":

"On dit volontiers aujourd'hui que la synthèse avec l'hellénisme, qui s'est opérée dans l'Église antique, était une première inculturation du christianisme qu'il ne faudrait pas imposer aux autres cultures. Il faut leur reconnaître le droit de remonter en deçà de cette inculturation vers le simple message du Nouveau Testament, pour l'inculturer à nouveau dans leurs espaces respectifs. Cette thèse n'est pas simplement erronée mais encore grossière et inexacte. […] Certes, il existe des strates dans le processus d'évolution de l'Église antique qu'il n'est pas besoin de faire entrer dans toutes les cultures. Mais les décisions fondamentales, qui concernent précisément le lien de la foi avec la recherche de la raison humaine, font partie de la foi elle-même et constituent des développements qui sont conformes à sa nature".

Sur ce point essentiel, "Evangelii gaudium" n’est pas nécessairement en contradiction avec le magistère de Jean-Paul II et de Benoît XVI. Mais il est certain qu’elle en est éloignée.

Là encore avec une sympathie évidente pour une pluralité de formes d’Église, modelées sur les cultures locales respectives.

La opción federal del obispo de Roma - di Sandro Magister

In Chiesaespresso

Más autonomía a las conferencias episcopales nacionales. Y más espacio a las diversas culturas. Los dos puntos sobre los cuales la "Evangelii gaudium" se distingue mayormente del magisterio de los anteriores Papas

ROMA, 3 de diciembre de 2013 – En la fluvial exhortación apostólica "Evangelii gaudium" dada a conocer públicamente hace una semana, el papa Francisco ha dado a entender que quiere distinguirse al menos en dos puntos de los Papas que lo han precedido.

El primero de estos puntos es también el que ha tenido más resonancia en los medios de comunicación. Remite tanto al ejercicio del primado del Papa como a los poderes de las conferencias episcopales.

El segundo punto remite a la relación entre el cristianismo y las culturas.


1. SOBRE EL PAPADO Y LAS IGLESIAS NACIONALES


Respecto al rol del Papa, Jorge Mario Bergoglio reconoce en Juan Pablo II el mérito de haber abierto el camino hacia una nueva forma de ejercicio del primado. Pero lamenta que "hemos avanzado poco en este sentido" y promete proceder con más decisión hacia una forma de papado "más fiel al sentido que Jesucristo quiso darle y a la necesidad actual de la evangelización".

Pero más que sobre el rol del Papa – tema sobre el cual Francisco permanece impreciso y así hasta ahora ha actuado concentrando en sí el máximo de las decisiones – es sobre los poderes de las conferencias episcopales que la "Evangelii gaudium" permite presagiar un giro.

Escribe el Papa, en el parágrafo 32 del documento:

“El Concilio Vaticano II expresó que, de modo análogo a las antiguas Iglesias patriarcales, las Conferencias episcopales pueden ‘desarrollar una obra múltiple y fecunda, a fin de que el afecto colegial tenga una aplicación concreta’. Pero este deseo no se realizó plenamente, por cuanto todavía no se ha explicitado suficientemente un estatuto de las Conferencias episcopales que las conciba como sujetos de atribuciones concretas, incluyendo también alguna auténtica autoridad doctrinal. Una excesiva centralización, más que ayudar, complica la vida de la Iglesia y su dinámica misionera”.

En una cita, Francisco remite a un Motu proprio de Juan Pablo II, del año 1998, respecto precisamente a "la naturaleza teológica y jurídica de las conferencias episcopales":

> Apostolos suos

Pero si se lee ese documento, se descubre que éste reconoce a las conferencias episcopales una función exclusivamente práctica, cooperativa, de simple cuerpo auxiliar intermedio entre el colegio de todos los obispos del mundo junto al Papa por un lado – única "colegialidad" declarada y teológicamente fundada – y el obispo particular con autoridad sobre su diócesis por el otro lado.

Sobre todo, el Motu proprio "Apostolos suos" limita fuertemente esa "auténtica autoridad doctrinal" que el papa Francisco dice querer conceder a las conferencias episcopales. Prescribe que si precisamente quieren emitir declaraciones doctrinales, lo deben hacer con aprobación unánime y en comunión con el Papa y el conjunto de la Iglesia, o al menos con una "mayoría calificada" con el previo control y autorización de la Santa Sede.

Un peligro contra el cual Motu proprio "Apostolos suos" pone en guardia es que las conferencias episcopales emitan declaraciones doctrinales contradictorias entre sí y con el magisterio universal de la Iglesia.

Otro riesgo que quiere conjurar es que se creen separaciones y antagonismos entre Iglesias particulares nacionales y Roma, como aconteció en el pasado en Francia con el "galicanismo" y como sucedió entre los ortodoxos con algunas Iglesias nacionales autocéfalas.

Ese Motu proprio lleva la firma de Juan Pablo II, pero debe su instalación a quien era su prefecto de la doctrina digno de confianza: el cardenal Joseph Ratzinger.

Y Ratzinger – se sabía – era desde hacía tiempo muy crítico de los superpoderes que algunas conferencias episcopales se habían atribuido, sobre todo en algunos países, entre los cuales se contaba su Alemania.

En su entrevista-bomba de 1985, editada con el título "Informe sobre la fe", Ratzinger se opuso resueltamente a que la Iglesia Católica se convirtiera en "una especie de federación de Iglesias nacionales".

Más que "un decidido relanzamiento del rol del obispo" querido por el Concilio Vaticano II, las conferencias episcopales nacionales – acusaba – habían "sofocado" a los obispos con su pesadas estructuras burocráticas.

Y también:

"Resulta muy bonito decidir siempre conjuntamente ", pero "la verdad no puede ser creada como resultado de votaciones", ya sea porque " el espíritu de grupo, quizá la voluntad de vivir en paz, o incluso el conformismo, arrastran a la mayoría a aceptar las posiciones de minorías audaces decididas a ir en una dirección muy precisa”, o porque "la búsqueda del punto de encuentro entre las varias tendencias y el esfuerzo de mediación dan lugar muchas veces a documentos anodinos y depreciados".

Juan Pablo II y luego Benedicto XVI juzgaban modesta la calidad promedio de los obispos del mundo y de la mayor parte de las conferencias episcopales. Actuaron entonces en consecuencia, haciendo ellos mismos de guías y de modelo, y en algunos casos – como en Italia – interviniendo resueltamente para cambiar el liderazgo y las direcciones de la marcha.

Con Francisco las conferencias episcopales podrían, por el contrario, ver que se les reconocería una mayor autonomía. Con los previsibles contragolpes del cual Alemania es fresco ejemplo, donde obispos y cardenales de primer nivel están enfrentándose públicamente sobre las cuestiones más diversas, desde los criterios de administración de las diócesis hasta la comunión a los divorciados que se han vuelto a casar, en este último caso anticipando y forzando soluciones sobre las que está llamado a debatir y decidir el doble sínodo de los obispos del 2015 y del 2015.
 

2. SOBRE EL CRISTIANISMO Y LAS CULTURAS


En cuanto al encuentro entre el cristianismo y las culturas, el papa Francisco ha insistido mucho, en los parágrafos 115-118 de la "Evangelii gaudium", sobre la tesis que "el cristianismo no tiene un único modelo cultural", sino que desde sus orígenes "se encarna en los pueblos de la tierra, cada uno de los cuales tiene su cultura propia".

En otras palabras:

"La gracia supone la cultura, y el don de Dios se encarna en la cultura de quien lo recibe".

Con este corolario:

"Si bien es verdad que algunas culturas han estado estrechamente ligadas a la predicación del Evangelio y al desarrollo de un pensamiento cristiano, el mensaje revelado no se identifica con ninguna de ellas y tiene un contenido transcultural".

Al sostener esto, el papa Bergoglio parece ir al encuentro de quien sostiene que el anuncio del Evangelio tiene su pureza originaria respecto a cualquier contaminación cultural. Una pureza que se le debería restituir, liberándolo precisamente de sus revestimientos "occidentales" de ayer y de hoy, para permitirle siempre "inculturarse" en nuevas síntesis con otras culturas.

Pero planteado en estos términos, este vínculo entre el cristianismo y las culturas olvida ese nexo inescindible entre la fe y la razón, entre la revelación bíblica y la cultura griega, entre Jerusalén y Atenas, nexo al que Juan Pablo II le ha dedicado la encíclica "Fides et ratio" y sobre el que Benedicto XVI ha focalizado su memorable discurso en Ratisbona del 12 de setiembre de 2006:

> Fe, razón y universidad

Para el papa Ratzinger, el vínculo entre la fe bíblica y el filosofar griego es "una necesidad intrínseca" que se manifiesta no sólo en el fulgurante prólogo del Evangelio según san Juan - "En el principio era el Logos" -, sino ya en el Antiguo Testamento, en el misterioso "Yo soy" de Dios en la zarza ardiente: "una contraposición al mito que tiene una estrecha analogía con el intento de Sócrates de batir y superar al mito mismo".

Este encuentro "entre el espíritu griego y el espíritu cristiano" – sostenía Benedicto XVI – "se ha realizado de un modo que tuvo un significado decisivo para el nacimiento y difusión del cristianismo".

Y es una síntesis – argumentaba también el papa Benedicto – que se defiende de todos los ataques que en el transcurso de los siglos, hasta nuestros días, han intentado romperla, en nombre de la "des-helenización del cristianismo".

En nuestros días – hacía notar Ratzinger en Ratisbona – este ataque se produce "en consideración del encuentro con la multiplicidad de las culturas":

"Se suele decir hoy que la síntesis con el helenismo en la Iglesia antigua fue una primera inculturación, que no debería ser vinculante para las demás culturas. Éstas deberían tener derecho a volver atrás, hasta el momento previo a dicha inculturación, para descubrir el mensaje puro del Nuevo Testamento e inculturarlo de nuevo en sus ambientes respectivos. Esta tesis no es simplemente falsa, sino también rudimentaria e imprecisa. […] Ciertamente, en el proceso de formación de la Iglesia antigua hay elementos que no deben integrarse en todas las culturas. Sin embargo, las opciones fundamentales que atañen precisamente a la relación entre la fe y la búsqueda de la razón humana forman parte de la fe misma, y son un desarrollo acorde con su propia naturaleza".

Sobre este tema capital, la "Evangelii gaudium" no necesariamente contradice el magisterio de Juan Pablo II y de Benedicto XVI, pero seguramente se distancia de él.

También aquí, con una evidente simpatía por una pluralidad de formas de Iglesia, modeladas sobre las respectivas culturas locales.