{"id":5492,"date":"2006-01-13T10:14:06","date_gmt":"2006-01-13T10:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-pope-and-the-world.html"},"modified":"2006-01-13T10:14:06","modified_gmt":"2006-01-13T10:14:06","slug":"the-pope-and-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-pope-and-the-world.html","title":{"rendered":"The Pope and the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Magister offers two evaluations of the Pope’s address to the Diplomatic Corps<\/a>, particularly in regard to Iran and China:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

In effect, the thesis that \u201ctruth can only be attained in freedom\u201d is typically Ratzingerian. It leads to the conclusion that \u201cno government can feel free to neglect its duty to ensure suitable conditions of freedom for its own citizens without thereby damaging its credibility to speak out on international problems.\u201d In these words from the pope, Parsi recognized \u201ca more authoritative defense than ever of the ethical superiority of liberal and democratic systems.\u201d <\/p>\n

Both Iran and China \u2013 as well as other states \u2013 crumble under the pope\u2019s withering critique, which hinges on the truth-freedom nexus. <\/p>\n

But the pope is not alone. In full agreement with his statements, \u201cAvvenire\u201d \u2013 a newspaper closely linked to cardinal Camillo Ruini \u2013 prominently published, on January 5, a front-page editorial and an important exclusive interview. The editorial was on Iran, and the interview was on China, two crucial countries where both truth and freedom are seriously restricted, not without some responsibility on the part of the West. <\/p>\n

Here are both of these texts, which were issued by the newspaper of the Italian bishops\u2019 conference: the first is interesting above all because of the clarity of its analysis; the second is full of up-to-date information on the changes taking place in the Chinese Church. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Magister offers two evaluations of the Pope’s address to the Diplomatic Corps, particularly in regard to Iran and China: In effect, the thesis that \u201ctruth can only be attained in freedom\u201d is typically Ratzingerian. It leads to the conclusion that \u201cno government can feel free to neglect its duty to ensure suitable conditions of freedom…<\/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-5492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pope and the World - 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\/01\/the-pope-and-the-world.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Pope and the World - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Magister offers two evaluations of the Pope’s address to the Diplomatic Corps, particularly in regard to Iran and China: In effect, the thesis that \u201ctruth can only be attained in freedom\u201d is typically Ratzingerian. 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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\/5492","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=5492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}