Here is the translation of the letter sent by Pope Francis to the founder of La Repubblica Italian newspaper Eugenio Scalfari in response to several questions made by him in various articles. The Holy Father addresses both Mr. Scalfari and non-believers.
Letter
of His Holiness, Pope Francis
addressed to the founder of La Repubblica
Dear Doctor Scalfari,
It is with great cordiality, although only in broad
lines, that with this letter I would like to respond to your letter, addressed
to me on July 7 in the pages of La
Reppublica, with a series of your personal reflections, which you then
enriched on the pages of the same daily on August 7.
I thank you, first of all, for the attention with which
you read the encyclical Lumen fidei.
The intention of my beloved Predecessor, Benedict XVI, who conceived it and to
a great extent wrote it, and which I inherited with gratitude, is directed not
only to confirm in the faith in Jesus Christ those who recognize themselves in
it, but also to arouse a sincere and rigorous dialogue with those whom, like
you, describe themselves as non-believers
for many years interested and fascinated by the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
Therefore, it seems to me that it is nothing other than
positive, not only for us individually but also for the society in which we
live, to pause to dialogue on a reality as important as the faith is, which
calls to preaching and to the figure of Jesus. I think there are, in
particular, two circumstances that today render this dialogue right and proper
and precious. Moreover, as noted, it constitutes one of the principal objectives
of Vatican Council II, desired by John XXIII and the ministry of Popes that,
each one with his sensibility and contribution, from then to today has followed
in the track traced by the Council.
The first circumstance – as recalled in the initial pages
of the encyclical – stems from the fact that, in the course of the centuries of
modernity, we have witnessed a paradox: the Christian faith, whose novelty and
incidence on the life of man since the beginning were expressed in fact through
the symbol of light, was often referred to as the darkness of superstition that
is opposed to the light of reason. Thus between the Church and the culture of
Christian inspiration, on one hand, and the modern culture of Enlightenment
stamp, on the other, there has been incommunicability. Moreover the time has
come, and the Vatican in fact inaugurated the season of an open dialogue
without preconceptions, which opens the doors for a serious and fruitful
meeting.
The second circumstance, for one who seeks to be faithful
to the gift of following Jesus in the light of faith, stems from the fact that
this dialogue is not a secondary accessory of the existence of the believer: it
is, instead, a profound and indispensable expression. In this connection, allow
me to quote an affirmation of the encyclical, which in my opinion is very
important: because the truth witnessed by faith is that of love – it is
underlined -- it is clear that the faith
is not intransigent, but grows in coexistence that respects the other. The
believer isn’t arrogant; on the contrary, truth makes him humble, knowing that,
more than our possessing it, it is truth that embraces and possesses us. Far
from stiffening us, the certainty of the faith puts us on the way, and makes
possible witness and dialogue with everyone (n. 34).
This is the spirit that animates the words that I write
to you.
For me, faith is born from the encounter with Jesus. A
personal encounter, which has touched my heart and given direction and new
meaning to my existence. But at the same time an encounter that was made
possible by the community of faith in which I have lived and thanks to which I
found access to the intelligence of Sacred Scripture, to new life that, as
gushing water, flows from Jesus through the Sacraments, to fraternity with
everyone and at the service of the poor; this is a true image of the Lord.
Believe me, without the Church I would not have been able to encounter Christ,
also in the awareness that the immense gift that faith is is kept in the
fragile earthen vessels of our humanity.
Now, it is precisely beginning from here, from this
personal experience of faith lived in the Church, that I feel at ease in
listening to your questions and in seeking, together with you, the ways through
which we might, perhaps, begin a segment of the way together.
Forgive me if I do not follow step by step the arguments
you propose in the editorial of July 7. It seems to me more fruitful, if not
more congenial, to go in a certain sense to the heart of your considerations. I
won’t even enter into the explanatory way followed by the encyclical, in which
you perceive the lack of a section dedicated specifically to the historical
experience of Jesus of Nazareth.
To begin, I observe only that an analysis of this kind
isn’t secondary. It is, in fact, by following the logic that guides the
unfolding of the encyclical, pausing our attention on the meaning of what Jesus
said and did and thus, in a word, on what Jesus was and is for us. The Letters
of Paul and the Gospel of John, of which particular reference is made in the
encyclical, are constructed, in fact, on the solid foundation of the messianic
ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, which reached its decisive culmination in the
Pasch of Death and Resurrection.
Therefore, one must be confronted with Jesus, I would
say, in the concreteness and roughness of his event, as is narrated especially
by the oldest of the Gospels: that of Mark. One sees then that the scandal that the word and practice of
Jesus caused around him stem from his extraordinary authority: a word, that is, which attests from the Gospel of Mark,
but which isn’t easy to render in Italian. The Greek word is exousia, which literally refers to that
which comes from being – from that
which is. It’s not about something exterior or forced therefore, but about
something that emanates from within and that imposes itself. Jesus, in
fact, strikes, breaks, innovates beginning with – He himself says so – his
relationship with God who he refers to familiarly as Abba, who gives Him this authority so that he will exercise it in
favor of men.
So Jesus preaches as
one who has authority, heals, calls the disciples to follow him, forgives -
all things that, in the Old Testament, are of God and only of God. The question
that returns most in Mark’s Gospel is: Who
is he who …? which refers to Jesus’ identity, a question which is born from
witnessing an authority that is different from that of the world, an authority
that is not aimed at exercising power over others, but at serving them, at
giving them liberty and the fullness of life. And this to the point of putting
at stake one’s own life, to the point of experiencing incomprehension,
betrayal, rejection, to the point of being condemned to death, of sealing the
state of abandonment on the cross. But Jesus remains faithful to God, to the
end.
And it is precisely then – as the Roman centurion exclaims
at the foot of the cross in Mark’s Gospel – that Jesus shows himself
paradoxically as the Son of God! He is the Son of a God that is love and that
wishes with all His being that man - every man – should discover himself
and also live as His true son. This is, for the Christian faith, the
certificate of the fact that Jesus is risen: not to triumph over those who
rejected him, but to attest that the love of God is stronger than death, the
forgiveness of God is stronger than any sin, and that it is worthwhile to spend
one’s life, to the end, witnessing this immense gift.
The Christian faith believes this: that Jesus is the Son
of God who came to give his life to open to all people the way of love. Because
of this you are right, illustrious Doctor Scalfari, when you see in the
Incarnation of the Son of God the foundation of the Christian faith. Tertullian
already wrote caro cardo salutis, the
flesh (of Christ) is the foundation of salvation. Because the Incarnation, namely,
the fact that the Son of God came in our flesh and shared our joys and sorrows,
the victories and defeats of our existence, to the cry of the cross, living
everything in love and fidelity to Abba, attests to the incredible love that
God has for every man, the inestimable value that he gives him. Because of
this, each one of us is called to make his own the look and the choice of the
love of Jesus, to enter into his way of being, of thinking and acting. This is
the faith, with all the expressions that are described unfailingly in the
encyclical.
In the editorial of July 7, you ask me in addition
how to understand the originality of the Christian faith in as much as it is
founded on the Incarnation of the Son of God, in regard to other faiths that
gravitate instead around the absolute transcendence of God.
The originality, I would say, lies precisely in the fact
that the faith makes us participate , in Jesus, in the relationship that He has
with God who is Abba and, in this light, the relationship that He has with all
other men, including enemies, in the sign of love. In other words, Jesus’
offspring, as presented by the Christian faith, is not revealed to mark an
insurmountable separation between Jesus and all others: but to tell us that, in
Him, we are all called to be children of the one Father and brothers among
ourselves. The singularity of Jesus is for communication, not for exclusion.
Of course from this also follows – and it isn’t something
small – the distinction between the religious sphere and the political sphere
which is sanctioned in giving to God what
is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s, affirmed clearly by Jesus and on
which, laboriously, the history of the West was built. In fact, the Church is
called to sow the leaven and the salt of the Gospel, and this is the love and
mercy of God that reaches all men, pointing out the celestial and definitive
goal of our destiny, whereas civil and political society has the arduous task
of articulating and embodying in justice and solidarity, in law and in peace,
an ever more human life. For one who lives the Christian faith, this does not
mean fleeing the world or seeking hegemony, but service to man, to the whole of
man and to all men, beginning from the fringes of history and keeping awake the
sense of hope that drives one to do good despite everything and always looking
to the beyond.
You also ask me, at the conclusion of your first article,
what we should say to our Jewish brothers about the promise made to them by
God: has it all come to nothing? Believe me, this is a question that challenges
us radically as Christians, because, with the help of God, especially since
Vatican Council II, we have rediscovered that the Jewish people are still for
us the holy root from which Jesus germinated. In the friendship I cultivated in
the course of all these years with Jewish brothers in Argentina, often in
prayer I also questioned God, especially when my mind went to the memory of the
terrible experience of the Shoa. What
I can say to you, with the Apostle Paul, is that God’s fidelity to the close
covenant with Israel never failed and that, through the terrible trials of
these centuries, the Jews have kept their faith in God. And for this, we shall
never be sufficiently grateful to them as Church, but also as humanity. They,
then, precisely by persevering in the faith of the God of the Covenant, called
all people, also us Christians, to the fact that we are always waiting, as
pilgrims, for the Lord’s return and, therefore, that we must always be open to
Him and never take refuge in what we have already attained.
So I come to the three questions you put to me in the
article of August 7. It seems to me that, in the first two, what is in your
heart is to understand the attitude of the Church to those who don’t share
faith in Jesus. First of all, you ask me if the God of Christians forgives one
who doesn’t believe and doesn’t seek the faith. Start from the premise that –
and it’s the fundamental thing – the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to
him with a sincere and contrite heart; the question for one who doesn’t believe
in God lies in obeying one’s conscience. Sin, also for those who don’t have
faith, exists when one goes against one’s conscience. To listen to and to obey
it means, in fact, to decide based on what is perceived as good or evil. And on
this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.
In the second place, you ask me if the thought, according
to which no absolute exists and therefore not even an absolute truth but only a
series of relative or subjective truths, is an error or a sin. To begin with, I
will not speak, not even to one who believes in absolute truth, in the sense that absolute is what is inconsistent,
what is deprived of any relationship. Now truth, according to the Christian
faith, is the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, truth is a
relationship! So true is it that each one of us also takes up the truth and
expresses it him or herself: from the point of view of his or her history and
culture, from the situation in which he or she lives, etc. This doesn’t mean
that truth is variable or subjective, quite the opposite. But is means that it
is given to us always and only as a way and a life. Did not Jesus himself say: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life?
In other words, truth being altogether one with love requires humility and
openness to be sought, received and expressed. Therefore, it’s necessary to
understand one another well on the terms and, perhaps, to come out of the tight
spots of opposition … absolute, to pose the question again in depth. I think that
this is today absolutely necessary to initiate that serene and constructive
dialogue that I hoped for at the beginning of this my response.
In the last question you ask me if, with the
disappearance of man on earth, the thought will also disappear that is able to
think of God. Certainly, man’s greatness lies in his being able to think of
God. And that is in being able to live a conscious and responsible relationship
with Him. However, the relationship is between two realities. God – this is my
thought and this is my experience, but how many, yesterday and today, share it!
– is not an idea, even though very lofty, the fruit of man’s thought. God is
reality with a capital R. Jesus
reveals this truth – and lives the relationship with him – as a Father of
goodness and infinite mercy. Hence, God doesn’t depend on our thought.
Moreover, even when the life of man on earth should finish – and for the
Christian faith, in any case, this world as we know it is destined to fail --,
man won’t stop existing and, in a way that we don’t know, also the universe
created with him. Scripture speaks of new
heavens and a new earth and affirms that, in the end, in the where and when
that is beyond us, but towards which, in faith, we tend with desire and
expectation, God will be all in all.
Illustrious Doctor Scalfari, I thus conclude my
reflections, aroused by what you wished to communicate to me and ask me.
Receive it as the tentative and provisional but sincere and confident answer to
the invitation to escort you in a segment of the road together. Believe me, the
Church despite all the slowness, the infidelities, the errors and sins she
could have committed and can still commit in those that accompany her, has no
other sense or end but that of living and witnessing Jesus: He who was sent by
Abba to preach good news to the poor, to
proclaim release to captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at
liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord
(Luke 4:18-19).
With fraternal closeness,
Francis
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