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Congregation for the Clergy Prefect, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, has written to priests to mark the Year for Priests warning that Western culture is a barrier to evangelization.
In his letter to priests, Cardinal Hummes wrote that “the Western culture which, by means of the globalised media and human mobility, is currently dominant and increasingly widespread throughout the world, even in countries of a different culture, presents no small challenge to evangelisation”.
“It is a culture which is marked profoundly by a relativism which refuses any affirmation of an absolute and transcendent truth and thus which ruins the foundations of morality and which closes itself off to religion. In this way the passion for truth is lost, being relegated to the place of a ‘useless passion’.
“In contrast Jesus Christ is the Truth, the Universal Logos, the Reason which enlightens and explains all that exists. Relativism, then, is accompanied by an individualistic subjectivism, which places one’s own ego at the centre of everything.
“In the end one cannot but arrive at a nihilism according to which there is nothing and nobody in whom there is any point in investing one’s entire life, and consequently life has no real meaning.
“However, one must recognise that the post-modern culture which is currently dominant brings with it a truly great scientific and technological progress which fascinates the human being, especially the young, Cardinal Hummes wrote.
Cardinal Hummes also celebrated Mass in Ars, France this week to mark the feast of St Jean Marie Vianney, Catholic News Agency reports.
St Jean Marie Vianney, Cardinal Hummes said, “did not want to lose anybody and did not want to rest without first seeing everyone in church, assiduously and frequently receiving the sacraments.”
“Thus we priests,” he continued, “for the mere sake of our ordination, are all consecrated to participating in the universal mission of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. It is our priestly and missionary essence. With the task of adapting ourselves to the specific needs of our age, we are ‘sent’ to proclaim the Good News to all men, in particular, as did the Cure d’Ars, to the baptized that have strayed from the light of the faith, beginning with those who are poorest.”
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From the Prefect of the Congregation for for the Clergy to All Priests (Catholic Online)
Sanctification is center of Year of Priests, says Cardinal Hummes in Ars (Catholic News Agency)
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