Sorry for the bad translation
A company always riformanda,
HE Conference Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the end of the eleventh edition of the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples entitled: Admiration, Einstein, Thomas Becket (25 August-1 September 1990).
Dear friends, thank you for this very warm welcome, you know the title of my talk: A company always reforming. You do not need much imagination to guess that the company of which I speak here is the Church. Perhaps he avoided mentioning the title, the word "Church", because it leads naturally, in the majority of people today, defense reactions. They think: "As a Church we have already heard too much and mostly it was not nothing nice." The word and the reality of the Church have fallen into disrepute. And therefore such a permanent reform does not seem to change anything. Or maybe the problem is only that so far not found the kind of reform that would make the Church a company really worth living?
But first let us ask: why the Church can disagreeable to so many people, and indeed even to believers, even to people who until recently could be counted among the most faithful or who are suffering from, they are in some way today? The reasons are of very different, even opposite, according to the positions.
Some suffer too much because the Church has adapted to the parameters of today's world, others are annoyed because it is still too far removed. For most people, the discontent against the Church begins with the fact that it is an institution, like many others, and as such limits my freedom. The thirst for freedom is the form in which we will express the desire for liberation and the perception of not being free, to be alienated. The invocation of freedom aspires to a life that is not limited by what is already given and that hinders me in my full development, submitted from outside the way I should go. But everywhere we go crashing into barriers and roadblocks of this sort, which stopped us from going any further.
The barriers that the Church stands looked like a doubly heavy because it penetrates into the most personal and intimate sphere. The rules of life of the Church are in fact much more than a kind of traffic rules, so that human society as much as possible to avoid clashes. They relate to my inner journey, and tell me how I should understand and configure my freedom. They call for decisions by myself, which can not be taken without the pain of renunciation. This is not to deny us perhaps the most beautiful fruits of the garden of life? Is it not true that the narrowness of so many commands prohibitions and blocked the road there is an open horizon? And thought, perhaps it is not hindered in its magnitude, as well as the will? Should not necessarily be the liberation of the output from a similar spiritual protection? And the only real reform, would it not be to dismiss all this? But what remains of this company?
But first let us ask: why the Church can disagreeable to so many people, and indeed even to believers, even to people who until recently could be counted among the most faithful or who are suffering from, they are in some way today? The reasons are of very different, even opposite, according to the positions.
Some suffer too much because the Church has adapted to the parameters of today's world, others are annoyed because it is still too far removed. For most people, the discontent against the Church begins with the fact that it is an institution, like many others, and as such limits my freedom. The thirst for freedom is the form in which we will express the desire for liberation and the perception of not being free, to be alienated. The invocation of freedom aspires to a life that is not limited by what is already given and that hinders me in my full development, submitted from outside the way I should go. But everywhere we go crashing into barriers and roadblocks of this sort, which stopped us from going any further.
The barriers that the Church stands looked like a doubly heavy because it penetrates into the most personal and intimate sphere. The rules of life of the Church are in fact much more than a kind of traffic rules, so that human society as much as possible to avoid clashes. They relate to my inner journey, and tell me how I should understand and configure my freedom. They call for decisions by myself, which can not be taken without the pain of renunciation. This is not to deny us perhaps the most beautiful fruits of the garden of life? Is it not true that the narrowness of so many commands prohibitions and blocked the road there is an open horizon? And thought, perhaps it is not hindered in its magnitude, as well as the will? Should not necessarily be the liberation of the output from a similar spiritual protection? And the only real reform, would it not be to dismiss all this? But what remains of this company?
The bitterness against the Church but also a specific reason. In fact, in the midst of a world governed by harsh discipline and relentless constraints, the Church still stands and always a silent hope it could represent this as a small island for a better life, a small oasis of freedom, where from time to time you can withdraw. The anger against the Church or the disappointment against him have therefore a particular character, because silence is expected of it more than other secular institutions. In it you should realize the dream of a better world. At the very least, you want to taste it in the taste of freedom, of being freed: Queiró get out of the cave, mentioned by Gregory the Great linking up with Plato.
However, since the Church in its concrete aspect has become so removed from such dreams, taking also the flavor of an institution and of all that is human, it rises against a particularly bitter anger.
And this anger can not fail, just because you can not extinguish the dream that he had turned to it with hope. Since the Church is not as it appears in dreams, trying desperately to make it as you want: a place where you can express all the freedom, a place where our limitations are to be killed, where it is hoped that utopia we will but to be somewhere. As in the field of political action we would like to finally build a better world, so you think you should finally (perhaps as a first step on the path towards it) to put up even better the Church: a Church full of humanity, full of sense of brotherhood , to generate creativity, an abode of reconciliation of all and for all.
And this anger can not fail, just because you can not extinguish the dream that he had turned to it with hope. Since the Church is not as it appears in dreams, trying desperately to make it as you want: a place where you can express all the freedom, a place where our limitations are to be killed, where it is hoped that utopia we will but to be somewhere. As in the field of political action we would like to finally build a better world, so you think you should finally (perhaps as a first step on the path towards it) to put up even better the Church: a Church full of humanity, full of sense of brotherhood , to generate creativity, an abode of reconciliation of all and for all.
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