The present question

In which way can “Christ’s historical and cosmic centrality” “meet the needs of the contemporary person? What does Christ have to offer to hyper-demanding reason and to man’s often unfulfilled freedom?” The question was at the centre of the lectio magistralis delivered on December 9 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice Angelo Scola, at the Stefan Wyszynski Hall of The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, that conferred upon His Eminence a Honoris Causa Doctorate . Modernity and postmodernity. After the opening address by the dean Stanisalw Wilk, the reading of the Senate resolution and the laudatio by the archbishop of Lublin Msgr. Jozef Zycinski, Cardinal Scola delved into “The teaching of Karol Wojtyla -John Paul II and the post-modern man”. The patriarch of Venice underlined the value of the University named after the Polish Pope, along with its “prestigious and noble” history. “The space of liberty which it represented in the dark years of Communism – His Eminence remarked – the openness with which the various crucial challenges have been addressed, are concrete signs of its high vocation”. Having witnessed “the tragic period of grand ideologies, the totalitarian regimes and their collapse, John Paul II was profoundly aware of the transition from modernity to so-called post-modernity”. He “anticipated the phase of strong toil whereby humanity experienced new tensions and new contradictions”, His Eminence said.An individual person or an “experiment” of himself? Following the “radical and militant atheist” phase of modernity, “a less fierce period, albeit increasingly aggressive towards religion” ensued, marked by a “recovery of the sacred” which was not “void of ambiguities”. The current tendency testifies to the “ongoing universal disenchantment whereby the profession of Christian faith, which many view as a purely subjective belief that cannot be rationally documented, could be legitimately endorsed along with other religious faiths in the name of the universal right to diversity”, His Eminence said. In fact, “through a faulty understanding of the equality principle the claim is made that religions are all different yet equal”. A further element of “tension” is contemporary societies’ “pretense” to acknowledge experimental science as the bearer of “the very objectivity which contemporary culture fails to ascribe to faith”. Only to experimental science, His Eminence cautioned, “is recognized the task of providing a definition, or rather, a wholesome description, of man. Indeed, given unprecedented discoveries in the field of biology, biochemistry and neurosciences, a scientist-like vulgate whereby all human expressions and faculties are reduced to purely cerebral activity is rapidly being spread”. Accordingly, said activity “could even become artificial, thus it would no longer be possible to speak of a human person, endowed with intrinsic dignity, bearer of rights and duties. On the basis of this thought, man would be nothing more ‘than his own experiment'”. An “exhaustive response”. These problems, pointed out Cardinal Scola, “require a major effort on the part of Christianity”, while the contemporary question is no longer: “Does God exist?” but rather “How should God be referred, how should we relate God to mankind?” In order to speak of God, he explained, “we must dare the hypothesis that God has allowed man to become intimate with Him”. “In order to encounter God, post-modern man” will therefore have to seek Him “along those paths where” God is revealed to man, “an existing living being who is unaware of the principle of his own existence”. John Paul II indicated three paths: the common human experience; the marriage relationship of human love; redeeming suffering, namely, the experience of fragility, disease and death which His Holiness has showed us to be inseparable from “the quest for salvation and redemption”. Having recalled the “proposal of God” formulated by John Paul II in the three “Trinitarian encyclicals”: “Redemptor hominis”, “Dives in misericordia” and “Dominum et vivificantem”, the cardinal highlighted that Christ offers man “an exhaustive proposal” which “does not annul his freedom, since” God “does not preemptively decide individual drama”, but rather, “by revealing Himself as the universal Redeemer and Creator, He is revealed as the Event that explains man to man”. “Since it constitutes the finite likeness to God’s infinite freedom” man’s freedom is thus “liberated”. According to the patriarch of Venice, “Christology does not replace anthropology, while the latter should grant to the former all the space it deserves”. “In the historical person of Jesus Christ – is Cardinal Scola’s conclusion – are present and projected, in the new Heavens and new Earth eschatology, all anthropological dimensions”.