During his flight from Rome to Mexico today, Pope Benedict VI spoke with the press onboard the plane. When asked what the Church can do to help combat the serious drug-trafficking problem in Mexico, the Pope responded with a helpful reflection for all of us to consider, especially during an election year.
"The Church must of course ask if she does enough for social justice on that great continent", the Pope replied. "It is a question of conscience which we must always pose ourselves. ... What must the Church do? What can she not do? What must she not do? The Church is not a political power, she is not a party but a moral entity, a moral power. The Church's first concern is to educate minds in both individual and public ethics, thus creating the necessary sense of responsibility. Here perhaps there are some shortcomings. In Latin America, as elsewhere, no small number of Catholics show a kind of schizophrenia between individual and public morals. ... We must educate people to overcome this schizophrenia, educate them not only in ... individual morality, but also in public morality. This we must seek to do with the social doctrine of the Church because, of course, such public morality must be a reasonable morality, shared and shareable by non believers. We, of course, in the light of faith can better see many things that are also visible to reason, but it is faith which serves to liberate reason from the false interests that cloud it. Thus we must use social doctrine to create fundamental policy models, and so ... overcome these divisions".

3/24/2012

Msgr. William J. King