British Bishop Challenges Government on Economy

Says Solution Is Virtue, Not Regulation

BIRMINGHAM, England, NOV. 26, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Causes of the British financial crisis are ethical, and civic leaders must look past financial measures to the realm of virtue to resolve economic recession, says Archbishop Vincent Nichols.

The archbishop of Birmingham affirmed this in Sunday's sermon at an annual Civic Mass. "The Christian faith is a guardian of the true human virtues we need as we begin to live in a time of austerity and hardship," he stated.

"A market controlled only by regulation, sooner or later will succumb to its inherent drive for profit at all costs," the prelate said to the civil servants in attendance.

He added: "Of course the profit motive is crucial and responsibility to investors is a significant balancing factor in risk taking. But what we have seen is that, left to itself, the financial market has no robust external frame of reference, not even a wider economic framework.

"The financial market has behaved as if it exists for itself and within itself and to the benefit of those who are part of it."

Archbishop Nichols spoke of the market's need for "the perspective and practice of true virtue, which builds trust, and without which every human endeavor is unstable."

The prelate invoked God's blessing on those present at the Mass, and all public servants. "We will not find financial or commercial solutions here," he acknowledged. "But we should gain some insight into our situation, in the light of the truth about our human nature which this feast [of Christ the King] expresses, and which faith in God makes clear."

Virtues, not values

Archbishop Nichols emphasized society's need for the "perspective and practice of true virtue." He asserted: "As a society we have neglected the development of shared ethical values and principles to guide and shape our behavior, believing that to be an unattainable goal, and we have substituted raft after raft of regulation.

"Whereas the notion of 'values' is a flexible and friendly one -- because a person can establish or negotiate their own values, and accommodate them to their own behavior -- virtues are more demanding.

"A virtue is a personal capacity for action and a power for progress and perfection. The rules of the game alone have never produced a masterful performance. Only dedication, sacrifice and true skill do that. This is the arena of virtue."

The prelate spoke about the human virtues of prudence, courage, justice and temperance, adding "These human virtues have their true foundation in the greater, theological virtues: faith, hope and love, which bind us to God and to each other."

He turned his focus to the virtue of mercy "by which the application of expected rules is suspended, out of love and compassion."

"A family or society that is incapable of showing mercy to its weak and vulnerable is dead from within," the archbishop concluded. "The wooden application of regulation squeezes the life out of us, and can only be rescued or redeemed, by lives of true virtue and above all by mercy, the most precious quality of God."

On Deify, Divinize, Transform

Thursday, November 27

Divinize Me

† My Jesus, penetrate me through and through so that I might be able to reflect You in my whole life. Divinize me so that my deeds may have supernatural value. Grant that I may have love, compassion, and mercy for every soul without exception (Diary, 1242).

† Most sweet Jesus, set on fire my love for You and transform me into Yourself. Divinize me that my deeds may be pleasing to You. May this be accomplished by the power of the Holy Communion which I receive daily. Oh, how greatly I desire to be wholly transformed into You, O Lord! (Diary, 1289).

On Signs of a Living Faith

"Christian Ethics … Is the Consequence of our Friendship With Christ"

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 26, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered during today's general audience in St. Peter's Square.

Dear brothers and sisters,

In last Wednesday's catechesis, I spoke of the question of how man is justified before God. Following St. Paul, we have seen that man is not capable of making himself "just" with his own actions, but rather that he can truly become "just" before God only because God confers on him his "justice," uniting him to Christ, his Son. And man obtains this union with Christ through faith.

In this sense, St. Paul tells us: It is not our works, but our faith that makes us "just." This faith, nevertheless, is not a thought, opinion or idea. This faith is communion with Christ, which the Lord entrusts to us and that because of this, becomes life in conformity with him. Or in other words, faith, if it is true and real, becomes love, charity -- is expressed in charity. Faith without charity, without this fruit, would not be true faith. It would be a dead faith.

We have therefore discovered two levels in the last catechesis: that of the insufficiency of our works for achieving salvation, and that of "justification" through faith that produces the fruit of the Spirit. The confusion between these two levels down through the centuries has caused not a few misunderstandings in Christianity.

In this context it is important that St. Paul, in the Letter to the Galatians, puts emphasis on one hand, and in a radical way, on the gratuitousness of justification not by our efforts, and, at the same time, he emphasizes as well the relationship between faith and charity, between faith and works. "For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6). Consequently, there are on one hand the "works of the flesh," which are fornication, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, etc. (Galatians 5:19-21), all of which are contrary to the faith. On the other hand is the action of the Holy Spirit, which nourishes Christian life stirring up "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Galatians 5:22): These are the fruits of the Spirit that arise from faith.

At the beginning of this list of virtues is cited ágape, love, and at the end, self-control. In reality, the Spirit, who is the Love of the Father and the Son, infuses his first gift, ágape, into our hearts (cf. Romans 5:5); and ágape, love, to be fully expressed, demands self-control. Regarding the love of the Father and the Son, which comes to us and profoundly transforms our existence, I dedicated my first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est." Believers know that in mutual love the love of God and of Christ is incarnated by means of the Spirit.

Let us return to the Letter of the Galatians. Here, St. Paul says that believers complete the command of love by bearing each other's burdens (cf. Galatians 6:2). Justified by the gift of faith in Christ, we are called to live in the love of Christ toward others, because it is by this criterion that we will be judged at the end of our existence. In reality, Paul does nothing more than repeat what Jesus himself had said, and which we recalled in the Gospel of last Sunday, in the parable of the Final Judgment.

In the First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul becomes expansive with his famous praise of love. It is the so-called hymn to charity: "If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. … Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests …" (1 Corinthians 13:1,4-5).

Christian love is so demanding because it springs from the total love of Christ for us: this love that demands from us, welcomes us, embraces us, sustains us, even torments us, because it obliges us to live no longer for ourselves, closed in on our egotism, but for "him who has died and risen for us" (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:15). The love of Christ makes us be in him this new creature (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17), who enters to form part of his mystical body that is the Church.

From this perspective, the centrality of justification without works, primary object of Paul's preaching, is not in contradiction with the faith that operates in love. On the contrary, it demands that our very faith is expressed in a life according to the Spirit. Often, an unfounded contraposition has been seen between the theology of Paul and James, who says in his letter: "For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead" (2:26).

In reality, while Paul concerns himself above all with demonstrating that faith in Christ is necessary and sufficient, James highlights the consequent relationship between faith and works (cf. James 2:2-4). Therefore, for Paul and for James, faith operative in love witnesses to the gratuitous gift of justification in Christ. Salvation, received in Christ, needs to be protected and witnessed "with fear and trembling. For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work. Do everything without grumbling or questioning … as you hold on to the word of life," even St. Paul would say to the Christians of Philippi (cf. Philippians 2:12-14,16).

Often we tend to fall into the same misunderstandings that have characterized the community of Corinth: Those Christians thought that, having been gratuitously justified in Christ by faith, "everything was licit." And they thought, and often it seems that the Christians of today think, that it is licit to create divisions in the Church, the body of Christ, to celebrate the Eucharist without concerning oneself with the brothers who are most needy, to aspire to the best charisms without realizing that they are members of each other, etc.

The consequences of a faith that is not incarnated in love are disastrous, because it is reduced to a most dangerous abuse and subjectivism for us and for our brothers. On the contrary, following St. Paul, we should renew our awareness of the fact that, precisely because we have been justified in Christ, we don't belong to ourselves, but have been made into the temple of the Spirit and are called, therefore, to glorify God in our bodies and with the whole of our existence (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19). It would be to scorn the inestimable value of justification if, having been bought at the high price of the blood of Christ, we didn't glorify him with our body. In reality, this is precisely our "reasonable" and at the same time "spiritual" worship, for which Paul exhorts us to "offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God" (Romans 12:1).

To what would be reduced a liturgy directed only to the Lord but that doesn't become, at the same time, service of the brethren, a faith that is not expressed in charity? And the Apostle often puts his communities before the Final Judgment, on which occasion "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil" (2 Corinthians 5:10; and cf. Romans 2:16).

If the ethics that St. Paul proposes to believers does not lapse into forms of moralism, and if it shows itself to be current for us, it is because, each time, it always recommences from the personal and communitarian relationship with Christ, to verify itself in life according to the Spirit. This is essential: Christian ethics is not born from a system of commandments, but rather is the consequence of our friendship with Christ. This friendship influences life: If it is true, it incarnates and fulfills itself in love for neighbor. Hence, any ethical decline is not limited to the individual sphere, but at the same time, devalues personal and communitarian faith: From this it is derived and on this, it has a determinant effect.

Let us, therefore, be overtaken by the reconciliation that God has given us in Christ, by God's "crazy" love for us: No one and nothing could ever separate us from his love (cf. Romans 8:39). With this certainty we live. And this certainty gives us the strength to live concretely the faith that works in love.

On Deify, Divinize

British Bishop Challenges Government on Economy

Dairy from St. Faustina

On Deify, Divinize, Transform

Divinize Me

On Signs of a Living Faith