from catholic news
took this from here.some soundbites
Violence as such is potentially ever present
and it is a characteristic feature of our world.
Freedom is a great good. But the world of
freedom has proved to be largely directionless,
and not a few have misinterpreted freedom as
somehow including freedom for violence. Discord
has taken on new and frightening guises, and
the struggle for freedom must engage us all in
a new way".
we may distinguish two types of the new forms
of violence, which are the very antithesis of
each other in terms of their motivation and
manifest a number of differences in detail.
Firstly there is terrorism, for which in place
of a great war there are targeted attacks
intended to strike the opponent destructively
at key points, with no regard for the lives
of innocent human beings, who are cruelly
killed or wounded in the process. In the eyes
of the perpetrators, the overriding goal of
damage to the enemy justifies any form of
cruelty. Everything that had been commonly
recognised and sanctioned in international
law as the limit of violence is overruled.
We know that terrorism is often religiously
motivated and that the specifically religious
character of the attacks is proposed as a
justification for the reckless cruelty. ...
In this case, religion does not serve peace,
but is used as justification for violence".
"The fact that, in the case we are considering
here, religion really does motivate violence
should be profoundly disturbing to us as
religious persons. In a way that is more subtle
but no less cruel, we also see religion as the
cause of violence when force is used by the
defenders of one religion against others. The
religious delegates who were assembled in Assisi
in 1986 wanted to say, and we now repeat it
emphatically and firmly: this is not the true
nature of religion. It is the antithesis of
religion and contributes to its destruction".
"As a Christian I want to say at this point:
yes, it is true, in the course of history,
force has also been used in the name of the
Christian faith. We acknowledge it with great
shame. But it is utterly clear that this was an
abuse of the Christian faith, one that evidently
contradicts its true nature. The God in whom we
Christians believe is the Creator and Father of
all, and from Him all people are brothers and
sisters and form one single family. For us the
Cross of Christ is the sign of the God Who put
'suffering-with' (compassion) and 'loving-with'
in place of force. ... It is the task of all
who bear responsibility for the Christian faith
to purify the religion of Christians again and
again from its very heart, so that it truly
serves as an instrument of God's peace in the
world, despite the fallibility of humans.
"If one basic type of violence today is
religiously motivated and thus confronts
religions with the question as to their
true nature and obliges all of us to undergo
purification, a second complex type of violence
is motivated in precisely the opposite way: as
a result of God's absence, His denial and the
loss of humanity which goes hand in hand with
it. The enemies of religion - as we said earlier
- see in religion one of the principal sources
of violence in the history of humanity and thus
they demand that it disappear. But the denial
of God has led to much cruelty and to a degree
of violence that knows no bounds, which only
becomes possible when man no longer recognises
any criterion or any judge above himself, now
having only himself to take as a criterion.
the decline of man
"In addition
to the two phenomena of religion and anti-religion,
a further basic orientation is found in the
growing world of agnosticism: people to whom
the gift of faith has not been given, but who
are nevertheless on the lookout for truth,
searching for God. Such people do not simply
assert: 'There is no God'. They suffer from His
absence and yet are inwardly making their way
towards Him, inasmuch as they seek truth and
goodness. They are 'pilgrims of truth, pilgrims
of peace'. They ask questions of both sides.
They take away from militant atheists the false
certainty. ... But they also challenge the
followers of religions not to consider God
as their own property, as if He belonged to
them, in such a way that they feel vindicated
in using force against others.
"These people are seeking the truth, they
are seeking the true God, Whose image is
frequently concealed in the religions because
of the ways in which they are often practised.
Their inability to find God is partly the
responsibility of believers with a limited
or even falsified image of God. So all their
struggling and questioning is in part an
appeal to believers to purify their faith,
so that God, the true God, becomes accessible.
Therefore I have consciously invited delegates
of this third group to our meeting in Assisi,
which does not simply bring together representatives
of religious institutions. Rather it is a
case of being together on a journey towards
truth, a case of taking a decisive stand for
human dignity and a case of common engagement
for peace against every form of destructive force.
posted by green unseen @ 12:32 AM
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