“Evangelise this Freedom”
-
Cardinal M. Martini
Pope
Benedict XVI is at pains to show that the teaching of Vatican II is not a break
from the past but is implicit in some of what had gone before. The Council did
not reinvent Catholicism but renewed it. Fifty years on from the Council, the
Holy Father hails its documents on religious freedom (“Dignitatis Humanae”) and
on relations with other faiths (“Nostra Aetate”) as Vatican II’s greatest
achievements. Their riches are still being unpacked today, even though they
were considered minor documents as compared to the great pastoral constitution
“Gaudium et Spes” (Church in the Modern World).
The straight
forward reply of Peter and the Apostles to the Sanhedrin, “We prefer to obey God
rather than men” laid down the basic claim that the state could neither decide
on the truth nor prescribe any kind of worship. By its very nature, the
Christian Faith demanded freedom of religious belief and practice without
prejudice to the internal ordering of state. The world owes it to Christianity
birthing the principle of religious freedom.
Thirteen years
after the Council, it was providentially
relevant that Pope John Paul II hailed from Marxist Poland where freedom
of religion was heartlessly trampled on, not to speak of the bitterness of
Nazism that he had also tasted as a young man. It was he, together with some
bishops from Communist countries, who were wary about state qualifications on
the freedom of religion. The Council fathers had conceded that citizens
exercising religious freedom had to pay due regard to pubic order and safety. When
necessary, though, the state could constrain freedom of religion in order to
safeguard the rights of all citizens and to maintain public order and decency.
Hence the Council fathers had to navigate a tense middle course between those
who insisted on the primacy of truth and those apprehensive of the state
overstepping its competence. We return to the old problem that is ever new:
what to do with our freedom? In 1993, the late Cardinal Mara Martini told
Jesuit students in Rome: “More people today have the gift of freedom than ever
before in history, and my task is to evangelise this freedom.”
The other
document, extolled by Pope Benedict, is “Nostra Aetate” that treats about the
Church’s relations with non-Christian religions. It has powerfully impacted the
Church’s outlook and every department of its activity. Strongly influenced by
the horrific memories of the Holocaust, the Council’s original intention was to
issue a statement on the Church’s relationship with the Jews, but in the
process of discussion and redaction it was realised that basic values were
becoming increasingly operative. These were instigated by the contentions of
the bishops of the Arabic continent. Why not make a similar statement about
relations with Muslims? It also emerged that consideration was also due to
Hinduism and Buddhism and to religion in general. Interestingly, there was no
condemnation of atheism! Then the dynamic led to the feasibility and, indeed,
the necessity of dialogue with and receptivity to the insights and values of
other faith persuasions, since all inspirations are slated to the enrichment of
the human condition. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the scope of
all the common endeavour and responsibility was constantly expanding. Today the
need for introspection is increasingly emphasised, especially in the exercise
of authority and the requirements of the personal vis-à-vis the institutional,
the local as confronting the universal. Listening to the Spirit is an ongoing
task that calls for humility and collective meditation.
The positive
scope of common endeavour began to take shape and broaden out. The Council’s
bishops admitted themselves as apprentices of the Holy Spirit, supreme master
of the school of reciprocal collaboration, and as witnesses to the Christian
faith at the service of the Word. The Spirit was their supreme enabler not to
found another Church but to deepen their understanding of their potential for
the renewal of humanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment