PAPAL LETTER TO ORDER OF PREACHERS FOR THEIR GENERAL CHAPTER

VATICAN CITY, JUL 11, 2001 (VIS) - Made public today was a Pontifical Letter from Pope John Paul to Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, master general of the Order of Preachers, on occasion of the July 10 General Chapter, held in Rhode Island, U.S.A., to elect the 85th successor of the Order's founder, St. Dominic.

Recalling that one of the first tasks the Order received at its founding was responding to the Albigensian heresy, "a new form of the recurrent Manichaean heresy ... at whose core there lay the denial of the Incarnation," the Pope writes, "To respond to this new form of the old heresy, the Holy Spirit raised up the Order of Preachers, men who would be pre-eminent in their poverty and mobility in the service of the Gospel."

"It is clear that the ancient afflictions of the human soul and the great untruths never die but lie hidden for a time, to reappear later in other forms," he continues. "We live in a time marked in its own way by a denial of the Incarnation. For the first time since Christ's birth 2000 years ago, it is as if He no longer had a place in an ever more secularized world. Not that He is always denied explicitly; indeed many claim to admire Jesus and to value elements of His teaching. Yet He remains distant; He is not truly known, loved and obeyed."

Pope John Paul writes that the consequences of denying the Incarnation are "clear and disturbing. In the first place the individual's relationship with God is seen as purely personal and private, so that God is removed from the processes that govern social, political and economic activity. This in turn leads to a greatly diminished sense of human possibility."

The Pope, continuing to list the consequences of denying the Incarnation, adds, "When Christ is excluded or denied, our vision of human purpose dwindles; and as we anticipate and aim for less, hope gives away to despair, joy to depression. There also appears a profound distrust of reason, and of the human capacity to grasp the truth, indeed the very concept of truth is cast into doubt. ... Life is not valued and loved, hence the advance of a certain culture of death, with its dark blooms of abortion and euthanasia. The body and human sexuality are not properly valued and loved; hence the degradation of sex which shows itself in a tide of moral confusion, infidelity and the violence of pornography."

"In such a situation," the Letter concludes, "the Church and the Successor of the Apostle Peter look to the Order of Preachers with no less hope and confidence than at the time of your foundation. The needs of the new evangelization are great, and it is certain that your Order ... must play a vital part in the Church's mission to overturn the old untruths."

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