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ARTICLE TITLE: Pope contrasts healthy and unhealthy secularism

ARTICLE: Dec. 11 (CWNews.com) - In a December 9 address to the Italian Union of Catholic Lawyers, Pope Benedict XVI rejected the vision of secular government that calls for “an exclusion of religion from various society environments and as its exile in the framework of the individual conscience."

The Holy Father, who has spoken frequently about false understandings of secularity, elaborated on that theme in his talk to the Italian lawyers’ group. Originally, he observed, secularity referred simply to “the condition of a simple faithful Christian, not belonging to the clergy or the religious state.� Later the term acquired a connotation that suggested tension with the Church, he said. And today, “it has assumed the significance of the exclusion of religion and its symbols from public life by confining them to the private sphere and the individual conscience.� Thus, the Pope said, the concept of secularity has become invested with “an ideological meaning quite opposite to the one it originally held."

Christians cannot accept a “total separation between state and Church,� in which the Church is not granted “any right to intervene in questions concerning the life and behavior of citizens,� the Pope said. That approach, he argued, “is an a-religious viw of life, thought, and morals.�

Pope Benedict called for the revival of a healthy concept of secularism, which could allow for references to God and moral law, and give the Church a “just place in human life, at both an individual and a social level.� This sort of secularity, he emphasized, would allow for “the legitimate autonomy of earthly affairs,� and could rightly bar “undue interference� by the Church in governmental affairs. Nevertheless, the Pope continued, this healthy secularity would be open to the “political or cultural relevance of religion.�

Healthy secularism should also make room for discussion of natural law, the Pope said, because the natural law consists of principles that “even before being Christian, are human,� and form the basis for organization of any healthy human society.

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http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=48118

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