Quote of the Day
Why would a Catholic university host a public conference on [the topic of homosexuality], given the apparent impasse between Catholic teaching and wider culture on LGBT issues? For one thing, Catholic universities are dedicated to seeking knowledge and reflecting on value – scientific, humanistic, moral, and spiritual – wherever these might be found, both knowledge for its own sake, and for the good of human communities. Moreover, as Pope Benedict XVI recently underscored, everyone dedicated to discovering what’s true, and to living lives of love ‘in’ truth (Caritas in Veritate) requires the good student’s habit of attentive, capacious, and responsive listening. Discovering and hewing to what’s true and valuable demands a cultivated readiness to attend, to consider, and to respond; this is, at root, what it means to obey – obedire, to take heed of, to listen. From this ministry of listening to and for truth and value, especially among vulnerable neighbors or marginalized voices, Benedict writes, nothing, not even religion, can excuse. “If in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be ‘devout’ and to perform my ‘religious duties’, then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely ‘proper’, but loveless.” (Deus Caritas Est #18)
Recommended Off-site Links:
More Than a Monologue: Sexual Diversity and the Catholic Church – The Progressive Catholic Voice (March 16, 2011).
Sexual Diversity, the Catholic Church, and All That Remains Unsaid – Jamie L. Manson (National Catholic Reporter, September 14, 2011).
Reminds me of the close of today's speech to the German Parliament:
ReplyDelete"As he assumed the mantle of office, the young King Solomon was invited to make a request. How would it be if we, the law-makers of today, were invited to make a request? What would we ask for? I think that, even today, there is ultimately nothing else we could wish for but a listening heart – the capacity to discern between good and evil, and thus to establish true law, to serve justice and peace."
http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-benedict-addresses-the-german-parliament-2