The "cultural and artistic" debate and "daily reality" are drawing our attention to "the necessity and urgency for a renewed dialogue between aesthetics and ethics, between beauty, truth and goodness." That is what Pope Benedict XVI said this morning in a statement to the 13th Public Conference for the Pontifical Academies on the theme "The Universality of Beauty: a comparison between aesthetics and ethics" which is being held in Rome. "At different levels, a dramatic scission is emerging, and sometimes even a contrast between two dimensions. That of the search of beauty reductively interpreted as outward appearance to be pursued at all costs, and that of the truth and goodness of actions undertaken to achieve a certain purpose." "A cult of beauty totally independent and alien to the human search for truth and goodness, – states the Holy Father in his message read by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone – will result, as often happens, in a mere aestheticism and, for young people in particular, in a path that leads to ephemeral realities, to superficial and banal appearances, or even to artificial paradises that disguise the emptiness and the inconsistency of their inner life." (continued) ” ” ” “
