Welcome by Archbishop Celestino Migliore

CONFERENCE

RELATIVISM AND THE CRISIS OF CULTURES

IN THE WRITINGS OF POPE BENEDICT XVI

Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium, United Nations, New York, 20 November 2006

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

In the absence of the Author of the book we are launching this evening - the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI -  the honour falls to me to welcome you on his behalf and to thank all of you for attending in such great numbers.

In your name, I would also like to greet our distinguished panelists: Senator Pera, Professor Weigel and the moderator Mr Bardazzi, along with the various co-sponsors who made this event possible: namely, the editors of the Italian version Catagalli, and the English version Ignatius Press; the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, as well as the Sublacense and Path to Peace Foundations.

Congratulations are in order for the sponsors of this book launch. Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures saw the light of day just weeks before Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to the pontificate as Benedcit XVI. In this book, he refers in particular to the European and Western context and, in a way, he takes up and makes explicit a reflection and a concern that was already expressed by his predecessor, the late John Paul II.

            Borrowing from the mystical experience of the Spanish Saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, John Paul spoke of the “dark night” of Europe. Pope Benedict, on the other hand, characterizes the crisis as the divorce of reason from faith. Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life. In other words, some say that, if we want to build a free and democratic society, we have somehow to tame God and – as it were - put him in a corner.

            This book help to confront such an approach, and I would say that the presentation of Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures at the United Nations is a kind of recognition that this crisis is taking place worldwide, though with different connotations.

Over the past two years, religion has very quickly become enormously important on the UN scene. We speak more and more now about the encounter or even dialogue among religions and civilizations. The UN dedicated the year 2001 to dialogue among civilizations and, last year a new formula was launched, called the Alliance of Civilizations. Not only that, a couple of countries recently set up a Tripartite Forum on inter-religious dialogue and cooperation for peace.

So we can see that international opinion is coagulating around the idea that there is a close connection between faith and culture and, therefore, between cultural dialogue and interreligious dialogue. Faiths are not born in a vacuum, but inside a given culture. The dialogue among religions cannot remain simply a theological or religious dialogue to be conducted by believers; instead it must become a dialogue of cultures and civilizations, emphasizing cultural issues as well as its strictly religious aspects.

           Once again I would like to thank our panelists this evening, who will hopefully shed some light on this, as well as on the contribution that the UN is giving to the epoch-making exercise in dialogue and reciprocal understanding.

 Thank you very much.