VATICAN CITY, 5 DEC 2009 (VIS) - Prelates from the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (Region South 3 and 4), who have just completed their "ad limina" visit, were received in audience this morning by the Holy Father who focused his remarks to them on the places where culture is transmitted (schools and universities) and on the consequences of liberation theology.
"The Catholic school", he said, "cannot be conceived or experienced separately from other educational institutions. It is at the service of society, having a public function and offering a service of public utility which is not reserved exclusively to Catholics but remains open to whoever wishes to receive a quality education. The problem of juridical and economic parity with State schools cannot be correctly understood save by recognising the primary role of families and the subsidiary role of other educational institutions".
Turning then to consider the subject of higher education, the Pope highlighted how the Church "has always supported universities and their vocation to take human beings to the highest level of knowledge, of truth and of dominion of the world in all its aspects". Benedict XVI likewise expressed his gratitude to the religious congregations which founded and still support various famous universities in Brazil, recalling how these places "are not the property of those who founded them, or of those who frequent them, but an expression of the Church and of her heritage of faith".
The Pope then went on to recall how 25 August this year marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Instruction "Libertatis nuntius" concerning certain aspects of liberation theology. That document, he said, "highlights the danger involved in the uncritical absorption, by certain theologians, of theses and methodologies that come from Marxism".
"The more or less visible consequences of that approach - characterised by rebellion, division, dissent, offence and anarchy - still linger today, producing great suffering and a serious loss of vital energies in your diocesan communities".
"I appeal to all who, in the depths of their being, feel in some way attracted, involved or encouraged by some of the misleading principles of liberation theology, to re-examine the aforementioned Instruction, accepting the benign light it emanates. And I remind everyone that 'the supreme rule of the faith [of the Church] derives from the unity which the Spirit has created between Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church in a reciprocity which means that none of the three can survive without the others'".
The Pope concluded by invoking the Virgin Mary, "so loved and venerated ... in Brazil. ... In her we find, pure and un-deformed, the true essence of the Church and we learn to know and love the mystery of the Church which lives in history and of which we feel ourselves to be a part. Thus do we become 'ecclesial souls', learning to resist that 'inner secularisation' which threatens the Church and her teachings".
AL/.../BRAZIL VIS 20091207 (500)
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