VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Excluding truth and the transcendent from scientific debate and research has impoverished modern thought and weakened the intellect’s ability to understand reality, Pope Benedict XVI said.

True intellectual and scientific progress requires an openness to dialogue with opposing views, rather than settling with the “mere repetition” of what one already knows, he added.

The pope made his remarks May 3 in an address to faculty, doctors and students at Rome’s Sacred Heart University, one of the biggest Catholic universities in the world.

The pope spoke to hundreds of people, including Italian government officials, gathered in the square outside the auditorium of the university’s Agostino Gemelli Department of Medicine and Surgery. His visit marked the 50th anniversary of the faculty’s founding.

The pope praised the scientific and technological discoveries that have been made in modern times, saying they rightly are a source of pride. However, the “breakneck” speed of innovation sometimes has brought with it “disturbing consequences.”

Lurking behind the optimism about all the new possibilities now open to humanity is “the shadow of a crisis of thought,” he said.

Mankind has a plethora of new tools and means but often lacks noble ends because the prevailing culture of “reductionism and relativism” has led to the disappearance of the true meaning of things, he said.

“Almost blinded by technical potency, (humanity) forgets the fundamental question of meaning, thereby banishing the transcendental dimension to irrelevance,” he said.

In this kind of environment, the pope said, intellectual thought “becomes weak” and is based on impoverished ethical foundations, which “clouds valuable normative points of reference.”

“A mentality that is basically techno-practical creates a risky imbalance between what is technically possible and what is morally good, with unforeseeable consequences,” he said.

Therefore, it is critical that modern culture rediscover the meaning and role of the transcendent, he said.

Scientific inquiry and the search for meaning both share the same source — the “logos” or creative rationality of God himself, Pope Benedict said.

In fact, the search for truth and for the absolute has been part of what fuels the desire to deepen scientific enquiry and all areas of human knowledge, he said.

The very same motivation behind scientific discovery “originates in the longing for God that dwells in the human heart: essentially scientists aim — often unconsciously — to obtain that truth that can give meaning to life.”

Science and faith have a mutually enriching relationship, the pope said, and reflect an “almost complementary requirement” for discerning reality.

“Yet paradoxically, a positivistic culture, which excludes the question of God from scientific debate, leads to the decline of thought and the weakening of the intellect’s ability” to understand reality, he said.

Christianity doesn’t drive faith into the realm of the irrational, rather it shines light on the dizzying maze of options and alternatives in the world, and guides people toward the right path of “the way, the truth and the light” in Jesus Christ.

When it is carried out correctly, “research is illuminated by science and faith and draws its impetus and enthusiasm from these two ‘wings’ without ever losing the accordant humility and sense of limits,” he said.

Thus, “the search for God becomes fruitful for the intellect, a leaven of culture, a promoter of true humanism and a quest that doesn’t stop at the surface,” he said.

Sacred Heart’s teaching hospital — usually referred to as the Gemelli Hospital and known for treating popes — has always known that healing isn’t a job, but a mission, the pope said. Research, teaching and study come together so that the institution reaches its full innovative potential, he said.

“No progress, let alone in the cultural sphere, feeds on mere repetition, but requires an ever new beginning” that demands an “openness to comparison and dialogue, which broadens the intellect and gives witness to the rich, prolific nature of the heritage of the faith.”

A strong, well-formed Christian identity will influence everything one does and can be expressed by top-notch professionalism, he said.

Catholic universities have a particular tie to the church and are called to be “exemplary institutions” that don’t reduce their vision to what is the most pragmatic, productive or economically advantageous or necessary. Rather, they enlarge their horizons to use human wisdom to explore and develop the gifts of creation, he added.

Merging scientific research with unconditional service to life is what defines the university’s department of medicine because faith is being used as an inner resource and guide that does not overpower or oppose professional research and avid learning, he said.

The pope encouraged the university to continue its work protecting human dignity and protecting life at all its stages.

Love for the human person, especially the weak, helpless and suffering must be at the core of medicine and research because “without love, science, too, loses its nobility. Only love guarantees the humanity of research,” he said.

— By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A Vatican decree established new statutes and norms for Caritas Internationalis, giving Vatican offices, including the Secretariat of State, greater authority over the work of the Vatican-based umbrella group of Catholic aid agencies.

The decree strengthens the roles Vatican offices and the pope play in working with the charity confederation, including naming and approving new board members and approving its texts, contracts with foreign governments and financial transactions.

It also creates a special “support commission” of legal, technical and organizational experts named by the pope to help the organization follow the new norms as well as canon law and the laws of Vatican City State concerning the procurement and distribution of aid, and employment of workers.

At least three members of Caritas’ executive board will be papal appointees, and Pope Benedict XVI named U.S. Bishop Bernard A. Hebda of Gaylord, Mich., as one of them.

The general decree — signed by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, and approved by Pope Benedict XVI — was published by the Vatican May 2 and went into effect the same day. At the same time, the new statutes and internal rules of the federation were published on the Caritas website.

Prepared by the Secretary of State in conjunction with the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and legal experts, the decree said it was meant to “complete and interpret” Caritas Internationalis’ juridical status and give the organization a legal foundation and reference point for the application of the new statutes.

Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Caritas Internationalis president, said, “This is a day of joy and hope” for the organization.

“Our new statutes and rules will modernize our work in delivering humanitarian assistance and development in service to the poor. They will provide us with the framework to carry out our work as part of the mission of the church,” he said in a written statement.

Secretary General Michel Roy said the new statutes and rules clarify that Caritas is “both at the service of the confederation members and of the Holy See.”

The revision process began in 2007 as a follow-up to Blessed John Paul II having raised the technical status of the federation to a “public juridical entity” of the church in 2004. The new status formally recognized that Caritas carries out its charitable activities in the name of the Catholic Church and it meant the organization would function under the administration of the Vatican.

Caritas Internationalis, whose original statutes were approved by the Vatican in 1951, is made up of 164 Catholic relief, development and social service agencies working in almost 200 countries. Most of the member agencies are Caritas or relief and development agencies sponsored by national bishops’ conferences, such as the U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services or the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace.

Cor Unum is the Vatican office responsible for coordinating and promoting charitable giving.

Msgr. Osvaldo Neves de Almeida, an official in the Vatican’s secretariat of state, said in an explanatory statement accompanying the decree that the updated status was meant to better support the federation’s activity.

Given Caritas’ worldwide presence, international profile and that it acts in the name of the church, the Vatican “has the task of following its activity and exercising vigilance in order that both its humanitarian and charitable action and the content of the documents that it disseminates may be in harmony with the Apostolic See and with the church’s magisterium, and in order that it may be administered with competence and transparency,” the monsignor wrote.

According to the new norms, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will continue to give doctrinal oversight to texts that are of a moral or doctrinal nature and the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See will continue to monitor the administration of temporal goods.

The Secretariat of State will have to approve official grants coming from governments and international organizations and non-emergency aid and development projects that have been started or are being run by Caritas Internationalis. Cor Unum and the secretariat of state will have to be notified of any agreements made with government authorities or nongovernmental organizations when Caritas Internationalis responds to emergency humanitarian situations.

The new norms are part of Pope Benedict XVI’s concern over the authentic Catholic identity of church-run or sponsored aid and development programs, and his teaching that Catholic charitable activity should not be simple philanthropy, but a reflection of Christian faith and the obligation to love others as Christ loved.

In fact, Pope Benedict “set out the fundamental principles to be developed in the new norms” in a speech to the Caritas general assembly last year and he “gave precise instructions” to the secretary of state on the contents of the new statutes, Msgr. Neves wrote.

The pope told the assembly that the Vatican is responsible for following the activities of Caritas and “exercising oversight to ensure that its humanitarian and charitable activity, and the content of its documents, are completely in accord with the Apostolic See and the church’s magisterium.”

Some new elements laid out in the statutes include:

— Cor Unum will name an ecclesiastical assistant whose role will be to foster “a spirit of communion” between the Vatican and members of the organization, foster reflection on theological questions and promote Caritas’ Catholic identity.

— The list of candidates for president, secretary general and now treasurer will require approval from Cor Unum, the Secretariat of State and the pope.

— The new papal appointees to the executive board are Bishop Hebda, Archbishop Paul Yembuado Ouedraogo of Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso, and Maronite Archbishop Youssef Soueif of Cyprus.

— Caritas Internationalis and all of its employees, including those working on contract, will have to abide by the new norms, the norms of canon law and the laws of Vatican City.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, said in a statement that the new legal framework does not apply to national Caritas organizations, which will maintain their autonomy; however, the new norms “could inspire the bishops and bishops’ conferences to eventually review their diocesan or national Caritas statutes.”

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— By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) — The relationship between art and the sacred is an unsolved problem of culture that exposes contradictions among society’s less-than-consistent moral, religious and political ideologies, according to speakers at an April 25 forum at Jesuit-run Fordham University. The program, “Taking Offense: When Art and the Sacred Collide,” examined controversies over disturbing artistic treatments of religious imagery.

Speakers said thoughtful consideration of the collision is often precluded by reflexive, cliched, self-righteous reactions to provocative art of negligible significance.

“Most of the public discussion over the conflict between art and the sacred is simplistic, partisan, shrill and sublimely dopey,” said Dana Gioia, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and professor of poetry and public culture at the University of Southern California.

Camille Paglia, university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, criticized contemporary artists for mediocrity, “cynical snarky atheism,” cowardly provocation and ignorance of religion. A self-described atheist who was raised Catholic, Paglia said, “Respect for religion and interest in religion should be absolutely basic in any educated person. In order to understand the history of art, you need respect for religion.”

Gioia said there is a chasm between the church and the contemporary arts world. The church has moved away from its historic role as patron, promoter and conservator of the arts and “retreated mostly into sentimental kitsch.” The American arts have become isolated from one another, collectively remote, increasingly irrelevant and starved for something, he said.

As a result, the American arts world is spiritually impoverished by the loss of “a transcendent religious vision and a refined and rigorous sense of the sacred,” he said. Concurrently, “the loss of the aesthetic sensibility of the church and its disengagement with the broader artistic culture has weakened its ability to make its call heard in the world.”

“Once you remove the religious as one of the possible modes of art, once you separate art from the long-established traditional discipline of the spiritual, once you remove 2,000 years of religious symbol, ritual, language and mythos that has long animated Western art, you don’t remove the spiritual hunger of the artist or the audience, but you satisfy it more crudely with vague, pretentious and sentimental substitutes,” Gioia said.

Artists in America have no idea of their general audience and live in an echo chamber, where they hear only their own voices, Paglia said. As a result, they are widely disrespected by a majority of the population and considered hoaxsters and con men.

“The art world has been staking its own exclusivity and prestige on works of mediocrity,” she said. “The provocations that make people who live in Manhattan proud have resulted in the gutting of art programs nationwide. Schoolchildren are paying the price for Manhattan arrogance.”

She faulted artists for making uninteresting work and then hiding behind banal explanations when controversy erupts. “If you’re going to have blasphemous art, it should be done with imagination. And if you’re going to commit blasphemy, cop to it!”

Paglia dismissed Andres Serrano’s photo of a plastic crucifix immersed in the artist’s urine as “a work of schlock” and said it gained importance because it caused “a big political dustup” and not because it was high quality. She said the artist gave a mealy-mouthed explanation of the piece, rather than admitting his intent, and the art world was foolish to “go to the mat” in his defense.

Museums have “milked controversy to get better box office” and exhibited third-rate works of art below their standards, she said.

Both speakers said the church’s discomfort with nudity contributed to the tension between art and the sacred. Paglia said church art should not be innately lustful, but should acknowledge the Renaissance concept that physical beauty mirrors spiritual beauty. “To understand the history of art, you need to be able to be able to appreciate sex and eroticism,” she said.

The program was sponsored by the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture and marked the center’s final presentation under the leadership of founding co-directors Peter and Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, who are retiring.

The Steinfels established the center in 2004 to explore questions arising at the intersection of religious faith and contemporary culture. James P. McCartin, co-director since September 2011, will become the center’s director.

—By Beth Griffin, Catholic News Service

DUBLIN (CNS) — The primate of All Ireland has said he will not resign despite criticism of his role in a 1975 canonical inquiry into a pedophile priest, Norbertine Father Brendan Smyth.

In a statement issued in Armagh, Northern Ireland, May 2, Cardinal Sean Brady defended his involvement in the inquiry and accused the BBC documentary “The World: The Shame of the Catholic Church” of making a number of claims that overstated and misrepresented his role.

He also highlighted that no state or church guidelines existed in the 1970s in the Irish Republic to assist those responding to an allegation of abuse against a minor.

The BBC documentary reported the testimony of Brendan Boland, a 14-year-old victim of Father Smyth, arrested in 1994 and convicted in 1997 of sexually assaulting 20 victims over a period of 35 years.

In 1975, Boland told a three-priest inquiry team, which included the then-Father Brady, of his two years of abuse at the hands of Father Smyth. This became public knowledge in 2010 and led to calls for the cardinal to step down over the oath of secrecy that Boland was forced to sign and the fact that the civil authorities were not informed of the abuse.

The BBC program reported that, during his deposition, Boland also furnished the inquiry with the names and addresses of other victims of Father Smyth.

According to journalist Darragh MacIntyre’s report, the parents of these victims were never notified by the church of the abuse allegations.

One of the victims said in the documentary that he was sexually abused for a further year by Father Smyth after the inquiry was completed, while his sister was abused until 1982 and that four of his cousins were abused until 1988.

According to Cardinal Brady, when the inquiry was completed he passed all the information he had obtained to his bishop, Bishop Francis McKiernan.

In his May 2 statement, Cardinal Brady rejected the program’s claim that he was an investigator in the inquiry.

“I did not formulate the questions asked in the inquiry process. I did not put these questions to Mr. Boland. I simply recorded the answers that he gave,” he said.

“The documentation of the interview with Brendan Boland, signed in his presence, clearly identifies me as the ‘notary’ or ‘note taker.’ Any suggestion that I was other than a ‘notary’ in the process of recording evidence from Mr. Boland is false and misleading,” Cardinal Brady said.

He said he subsequently interviewed one of the alleged victims who lived in his own diocese.

“That I conducted this interview on my own is already on the public record. This provided prompt corroboration of the evidence given by Mr. Boland,” he said.

The cardinal also said it was incorrect to suggest that he had the “power to stop Brendan Smyth in 1975.”

He said even Bishop McKiernan had limited authority over Father Smyth, and that those culpable for the inadequate response were the Norbertine abbot and religious superiors.

Describing himself as “shocked, appalled and outraged” when he “first discovered in the mid-1990s that Brendan Smyth had gone on to abuse others,” he said he thought that Bishop McKiernan had taken the evidence to the abbot of Kilnacrott and that the abbot would then have prevented Father Smyth from abusing others.

In an interview with RTE Radio May 2, Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the promoter of justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, defended Cardinal Brady’s handling of the case.

“He was doing his duty to investigate something that had come to the knowledge of the church, and I think he fulfilled his duty well,” he said, adding that the then-36-year-old priest acted as a notary, not an investigator.

Cardinal Brady did say that he was part of “an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society and the church” which he said was now “a thing of the past.”

In the wake of the publication of the Murphy Report in 2009, Cardinal Brady told RTE that he would resign if he found that a child had been abused as a result of any managerial failure on his part.

Two years ago, the cardinal refused to resign, offering to remain on to lead the church in Ireland forward on its path of renewal as a “wounded healer.” He suggested he was better placed to help it deal with the tragedy of child sexual abuse on account of his brokenness.

Marie Collins, an abuse survivor from Ireland who recently participated in a Vatican symposium on abuse, said she was repeating her 2010 call for Cardinal Brady to resign.

“What I saw in that documentary was just appalling. He has to go and, if he doesn’t, how can a man like that lead the church in Ireland?” she said.

“I was devastated by Msgr. Scicluna’s comments in which he backed Cardinal Brady. I was so impressed with him at the symposium on abuse in Rome in February, and then to hear him defend the indefensible. They are circling the wagons, and the Vatican has decided that Brady cannot go because they are afraid of the domino effect.

“The church in Ireland has no credibility left,” she said.

— By Sarah MacDonald, Catholic News Service