VATICAN CITY, 5 DEC 2008 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican, the Pope received participants in the plenary session of the International Theological Commission. The meeting coincided with the conclusion of the commission's five-year mandate, the seventh since it was created.
Referring in his remarks to a soon-to-be-approved draft document entitled "The search for universal ethics. A new look at natural law", the Holy Father pointed out "the urgent need, in the current situation of culture and of civil and political society, to create the conditions necessary to raise awareness of the indispensable value of natural moral law".
"Natural law", he went on, "is the authentic guarantee everyone has to live free and respected in their dignity as human beings, and to feel they are defended from any form of ideological manipulation and all abuses perpetrated on the basis of the law of the strongest".
Commenting then on the question of the "meaning and method of theology", which the members of the commission have been studying over the last five years, Benedict XVI indicated that "the real task of theology is to enter into the Word of God, to seek to understand it and to make it understood in our world, and thus to find the answer to our great questions".
"Methods in theology cannot be constituted only on the basis of criteria and norms common to other academic disciplines, but must above all observe the principles and norms deriving from the Revelation, and from faith in its personal and ecclesial dimensions".
After highlighting how "the fundamental virtue of theologians is that of seeking obedience to the faith, which makes them collaborators of truth", the Pope affirmed that "obedience to truth does not mean giving up research or the effort of thought. Restiveness of thought, which in the life of believers can certainly never be fully placated because they too are searching for and studying the Truth, will nonetheless be a restiveness that accompanies and stimulates them on their pilgrimage of thought towards God, and in this way it will bear fruit".
AC/THEOLOGY NATURAL LAW/CTI VIS 20081205 (360)
Referring in his remarks to a soon-to-be-approved draft document entitled "The search for universal ethics. A new look at natural law", the Holy Father pointed out "the urgent need, in the current situation of culture and of civil and political society, to create the conditions necessary to raise awareness of the indispensable value of natural moral law".
"Natural law", he went on, "is the authentic guarantee everyone has to live free and respected in their dignity as human beings, and to feel they are defended from any form of ideological manipulation and all abuses perpetrated on the basis of the law of the strongest".
Commenting then on the question of the "meaning and method of theology", which the members of the commission have been studying over the last five years, Benedict XVI indicated that "the real task of theology is to enter into the Word of God, to seek to understand it and to make it understood in our world, and thus to find the answer to our great questions".
"Methods in theology cannot be constituted only on the basis of criteria and norms common to other academic disciplines, but must above all observe the principles and norms deriving from the Revelation, and from faith in its personal and ecclesial dimensions".
After highlighting how "the fundamental virtue of theologians is that of seeking obedience to the faith, which makes them collaborators of truth", the Pope affirmed that "obedience to truth does not mean giving up research or the effort of thought. Restiveness of thought, which in the life of believers can certainly never be fully placated because they too are searching for and studying the Truth, will nonetheless be a restiveness that accompanies and stimulates them on their pilgrimage of thought towards God, and in this way it will bear fruit".
AC/THEOLOGY NATURAL LAW/CTI VIS 20081205 (360)
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