At the beginning of my speech I told you that it is by means of initiatives like your Respect for Life Week and conferences like the one today, that we are able to make manifest the importance of catholic social teaching for our personal life, for our work, for our society. We work in a world increasingly dominated by a secularist paradigm that either ignores or dismisses the relevance of religion, or assumes that religion is mostly a source of conflict and division. The solution, according to these secularists, is to marginalize and privatize religion, to take it out of the public square, to take it out of domestic and foreign policy.
What, then, shall we do? Go with the current or against it? We need to demonstrate, by our words and actions, that religion can play an important role in building a just and peaceful society. Human rights and their underlying values are deeply rooted in the world’s religious and cultural traditions. All around the world religious leaders and communities play an essential -sometimes very discrete- role in processes of social transformation. Faith-based organisations are often close to poor and less privileged people. Religious leaders have moral authority among large groups of people, and have in may cases made statements against poverty and injustice and in favour of human rights and social justice.
We share a dream, a dream of humanity, diverse in culture and religion, but one in defending human rights and social justice. So the solution to conflicts in today’s world is not less religion, but more and authentic religion. We need to change that dominant secularist paradigm.
But then, I think, we need to ask ourselves: what does it mean to be a living Christian witness?
What does it mean to engage more effectively in the linking of faith and justice? Have we been adequately trained for the kind of action for justice and witness to justice which the Church now demands of us? What does this mean? We need to rediscover this best kept secret of the Church, this rich body of social thought, through an increased knowledge of, appreciation of, and response to Catholic Social Teaching.
