“No one loves freedom, progress and modernity more than the Church…”
Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy said so today in the inaugural lecture of the theology courses at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC), a Catholic university in Milan.
The cardinal spoke of “which Church for which world” and at one point in his speech, seemed to echo the title of a book by Sergio and Beda Romano, entitled La Chiesa Contro (“The intransigent Church”).
“It is becoming increasingly evident in today’s world, that following the collapse of atheist ideologies which presented the possibility of doing away with God, the real objection and the real target of power and of the dominant dependent culture, is the Church,” the cardinal said.
He also recalled that the Church, in its purpose as “a spatial and temporal prolongation of the experience of Christ’s existence,” is also “completely relative.”
Today, he continued, “people think they can do without God and the meaning of sacredness is considered a legacy of the past, from which “adult” humans have emancipated themselves. Even the Church, which believes itself to represent God’s presence and therefore the presence of sacredness, cannot avoid being conceived as “something one needs to free oneself from” in order to finally become “adult”.”
In this context, relativism is presented as “the only reality in which democracy can exist.”
“We want to surprise” those who have this mindset, Piacenza said, “affirming that the Church is also relative in a certain sense, in that it does not just exist for itself , it is not an end in itself, but must lead to the place up on high. When the Church is not what it should be, that is, when its members do not refer to God, but live lives that are rooted in worldliness, the prophetic force of the whole ecclesiastical body is weakened and the radical nature of the Church’s identity, as a divine presence in the world, appears inconceivable.”
There is therefore a huge difference, the Prefect of the clergy stressed, between “ecclesiastical radicalism” which “refers to a relationship and leads on to God and the cultural relativism that is dominant.”
“Who is more free?” Piacenza asked himself. “Those who know their journey’s destination and enjoy each stage of it or those who are forced to wander from one place to another, with no purpose? Who is more “modern”? Those who live in the present, intuiting its meaning rooted in the past thus heading towards a bright future, or those who are prisoners of the present, with no roots and no prospects?”
“No one - the cardinal added – loves freedom, progress and modernity more than the Church, because the Church is the communion of those who have been freed by Christ forever. They belong to Him through this freedom, becoming witnesses of it and desiring it for themselves and for all people, fighting for it, so that all those who are given the opportunity to enjoy this extraordinary experience we call life, can embrace the freedom offered by Christ.”
It is “this infinite love of God, who became man that brings the Church to passionately love every human being. Even non-Christians, even those who are not believers are loved by the Church because they are human, because the Church, the community of those saved by Christ makes freedom a real experience and strives for the recognition of the freedom and dignity - which are fundamental and integral to it as a body - of each and every person throughout the world.”
The cardinal explained that in contrast to all ideologies which aim to diminish or eliminate its presence, the Church has “the advantage of being alive and living, in a completely modern and contemporary way, in the present; in this present!”
“The partial, unilateral and deliberately “intransigent” presentation of the Church, - Piacenza went on to say – is part of the suppression of freedom and as clergy we must deeply examine our consciences because the preaching, teaching - even of theology - and the testimony of life, are often not used as instruments for that experience of an event, of a meeting with a person that gives life a whole new meaning,” as the Pope wrote in his prologue to the encyclical Deus caritas est.
In the final part of his inaugural lecture, the Prefect of the Clergy spoke about the Church’s mission: “Despite the persecution, which will last until the end of time and history, the Church will carry on being a witness of Christ, because He “represents what is dearest to us,” he is the very reason for which the Church exists.”
“Being fitness to Christ - he concluded – also means loving humanity, loving freedom, loving true progress… No one, not even believers have any reason to fear the Church. The Church is not against anybody. It stands for Christ, the Gospel and thus human beings. The Church does not impose its truth on anyone but proposes the truth to everyone, offering everyone a meeting with Christ. An act of faith would not be one if it was not free and this is also the reason of its worth.”