{"id":4579,"date":"2006-11-16T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2006-11-16T09:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/the-swiss-and-the-germans.html"},"modified":"2006-11-16T09:00:35","modified_gmt":"2006-11-16T09:00:35","slug":"the-swiss-and-the-germans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/the-swiss-and-the-germans.html","title":{"rendered":"The Swiss and the Germans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sandro Magister very helpfully pulls together what the Pope has said recently to Swiss and German bishops, detecting a theme:<\/a><\/p>\n

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In the second of his two addresses to the Swiss bishops on their \u201cad limina\u201d visit, Benedict XVI replied to what is, perhaps, the objection most commonly directed against the pope and the Church hierarchy by progressive Catholic circles. <\/p>\n

The objection is that, in the areas of life and the family, the Church\u2019s hierarchy preaches truths defined as non-negotiable, pure, and solid, binding even in political decisions, while in the areas of peace, justice, and the protection of the environment, it waters down \u201cChristian distinctiveness\u201d and makes feeble statements, acquiescing to the temporal powers. <\/p>\n

According to the progressive Catholic circles, the priority should be reversed. The Church should put in the first place the struggle for peace, justice, and the defense of nature, and should be more understanding toward modern \u201csubjectivity\u201d in the areas of life and the family. <\/p>\n

Benedict XVI told the Swiss bishops that he has reflected a great deal on this. And his conviction is that, in effect, there exists in today\u2019s world a division between \u201ctwo parts of morality.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Pope to the Swiss, one excerpt, but in case you haven’t, go read more:<\/p>\n

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It is only if human life is respected from conception to death that the ethics of peace is also possible and credible; it is only then that non-violence can express itself in every direction; only then that we truly welcome creation, and only then that we can arrive at true justice. <\/p>\n

I think that we are facing a great task here: on the one hand, we must not make Christianity appear as mere moralism, but as a gift in which is given to us the love that sustains us and provides us with the strength necessary to be able to \u201close one\u2019s life\u201d; on the other hand, in this context of the gift of love, we must also progress toward concretization, the foundations of which are still provided for us by the Decalogue, which, with Christ and with the Church, we should interpret in a new and progressive way at this time. <\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sandro Magister very helpfully pulls together what the Pope has said recently to Swiss and German bishops, detecting a theme: In the second of his two addresses to the Swiss bishops on their \u201cad limina\u201d visit, Benedict XVI replied to what is, perhaps, the objection most commonly directed against the pope and the Church hierarchy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Swiss and the Germans - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/the-swiss-and-the-germans.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Swiss and the Germans - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}