Subject: VISnews121002
From: Vatican Information Service - Eng - txt
--Boundary_(ID_iaDMDdUmGxlNuuUwSEQ/vA)
Content-type: text/plain; CHARSETUS-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
body, html { font-size: 12pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
color: #000000; }
.txt { font-size: 12pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color:
#000000; }
VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE
YEAR XXII - N° 176
DATE 02-10-2012
Summary:
- STUDYING VATICAN COUNCIL II FROM THE ARCHIVES
- RESPECTING THE JURIDICAL MECHANISMS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
___________________________________________________________
STUDYING VATICAN COUNCIL II FROM THE ARCHIVES
Vatican City, 2 October 2012 (VIS) - A conference was held in the Holy See
Press Office this morning to present an International Academic Conference:
"Vatican Council II in the Light of the Archives of the Council Fathers, on
the Fiftieth Anniversary of
its Opening (1962-2012)". The event has been organised by the Pontifical
Committee for Historical Sciences in collaboration with the "Vatican Council
II" Centre for Research and Study of the Pontifical Lateran University, and
will take place from 3 to 5
October.
Participating in this morning's presentation were Fr. Bernard Ardura O.
Praem., president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, and
Philippe Chenaux, director of the "Vatican Council II" Centre for Research and
Study of the Pontifical
Lateran University and a member of the Pontifical Committee for Historical
Sciences.
Fr. Ardura explained how a global project has been organised in view of the
anniversary of Vatican Council II, involving an examination of the personal
archives of the Council Fathers, the aim being to produce original and
academically valid research
and to favour an increasingly deep understanding of an event "which has
profoundly marked the life of the Church over the last half century".
"Following the path laid down by Blessed Pope John XXIII in his opening
address to the Council, all available archive material must be submitted to
careful historical scrutiny, in order to ensure that people do not, as the
Pope himself said, 'act as if
they had nothing to learn from history, which is a teacher of life'. The
consultation and publication of diaries, memories and correspondence of
important figures who participated in Vatican Council II has already
contributed to the development of an
hermeneutic of the Council; ... that 'hermeneutic of reform in continuity'
identified by Benedict XVI as the way to ensure authentic ecclesial
interpretation.
"In this light", Fr. Ardura added, "we have begun researching the private
archives of the Council Fathers, in order to identify and catalogue the
documents they produced: diaries, notes on the various meetings of commission,
... and all the documents
that may help us to understand how the Council Fathers experienced the great
event, how they viewed it and how they reacted to the various opinions
expressed".
The current conference is to be the first of two events on Vatican Council II.
It aims to "present the current state of research and to highlight, for
example, the difficulties encountered in searching the archives". Of the
Council Fathers, 2,090 were
from Europe and the Americas, while 408 were from Asia, 351 from Africa and 74
from Oceania. A large number of the latter came from mission lands and
belonged to missionary institutions, for which reason much of their
documentation is held in convents.
Moreover the 'cult of the archive' which is habitual in Europe and America is
not equally widespread in Asia and Africa, although the archives of the
Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples do, to some extent, make up for
these shortcomings".
Fr. Ardura explained that "the intention of the Pontifical Committee is to
promote, in the light of the Holy Father's Magisterium and following a strict
historical-critical methodology divorced from any ideology, a pondered and
academically grounded
historiographical re-reading of what was undeniably 'the great event' of
Vatican Council II".
The conference will begin with a documentary prepared by the Vatican film
library, and an opening address by two speakers. The first of these will be
Cardinal Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan, Italy, who will focus on the
months between the
announcement and the opening of the Council because, Fr. Ardura said, "the
preparatory period offers many keys to understanding the subsequent
development of the Council". The other opening speaker will be Professor
Philippe Chenaux himself, who will
discuss historiography with relation to Vatican Council II. In order to recall
the ecumenical dimension, "strongly underlined" by Blessed John XXIII, one
representative from the Patriarchate of Moscow and one from the Protestant
churches will also
attend the conference.
The results of the research of recent years, and of the conference, "will be a
preliminary inventory of the Council Fathers' archives. This will be fed into
an online database which may be consulted free of charge on the website of the
Pontifical
Council".
For his part, Philippe Chenaux explained that "the attempt to write a history
of Vatican Council II involves not only research into the sources, ... but
also interpretation, the so-called conciliar 'hermeneutic'. In other words,
the historians who
devised this project of the history of Vatican II have 'excogitated' the
Council, whence have emerged two interpretative criteria which guided their
work: the Council as 'event' and the Council as 'rupture'".
"The fundamental challenge for historians of the Council is, then, how to
reconcile these two opposing readings of Vatican II and its decisions. This
does not mean writing a 'counter history' of Vatican Council II. Rather, more
modestly, it means
resuming historical research on the basis of the widest possible documentation
and with no ideological bias. It means avoiding the manipulation of conciliar
history for ends other than the history itself, in order to achieve a more
balanced and shared
understanding of the event and its decisions. 'Starting again from the
archives', that is the challenge underlying the great research project of into
the archives of the Council Fathers", he concluded.
___________________________________________________________
RESPECTING THE JURIDICAL MECHANISMS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Vatican City, 2 October 2012 (VIS) - Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, secretary
for Relations with States, yesterday spoke before the sixty-seventh General
Assembly of the United Nations, which has as its theme: "Adjustment or
settlement of international
disputes or situations by peaceful means".
In his address the archbishop highlighted how "loss of faith in the value of
dialogue, and the temptation to favour 'a priori' one of the sides in regional
and national conflicts, threaten respect for the juridical mechanisms of the
United Nations.
However, the pre-eminence of the values contained in the Charter should lead
to the adoption of all possible means to ensure the protection of the most
vulnerable, the promotion of respect for the rule of law and the rights of
man, and the safeguarding
of centuries-old cultural and religious balances".
The secretary for Relations with States went on: "The urgency of the situation
is even more evident with respect to current events in the Middle East, and in
particular in Syria. A solution is impossible if it fails to respect the rules
of international
and humanitarian law, or falls outside the mechanisms established in the
United Nations Charter. All interested parties should not only facilitate the
mission of the special envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League, but
also ensure humanitarian
assistance to the suffering peoples. The international community must unite
its efforts so that all sides replace the race to arms with negotiation, just
as it must insist on effective respect for religious liberty, human rights and
all fundamental
freedoms".
"Only an international community strongly anchored in values that are truly
concordant with human dignity will be capable of suggesting feasible solutions
to new types of conflict. These include transnational groups which diffuse a
hegemonic,
pseudo-religious ideology that fails to respect the rights of persons and
civil peace. We are thinking of recent terrorist attacks in certain parts of
Africa and Asia, and of the collusion between drug trafficking and terrorism
in other parts of the
world".
"It is of vial importance", Archbishop Mamberti concluded, "to reach an
effective outcome in the debate about the reform and improvement of the
working of the United Nations Organisation, in order to revive its capacities
to foresee conflicts and to
resolve then using peaceful means".
___________________________________________________________
Per ulteriori informazioni e per la ricerca di documenti consultare il
sito: www.wisnews.org e www.vatican.va
Il servizio del VIS viene inviato soltanto agli indirizzi di posta
elettronica che ne hanno fatto richiesta. Se per qualunque motivo
non si desidera continuare a riceverlo, si prega di visitare nostra pagina
dinizio:
http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vis/italinde.php
Copyright (VIS): Le notizie contenute nei servizi del Vatican
Information Service possono essere riprodotte parzialmente o totalmente
citando la fonte: V.I.S. - Vatican Information Service.
--Boundary_(ID_iaDMDdUmGxlNuuUwSEQ/vA)
Content-type: text/html; CHARSETUS-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
VISnews121002
VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE YEAR XXII - N° 176DATE 02-10-2012
Summary: - STUDYING VATICAN COUNCIL II FROM
THE ARCHIVES -
RESPECTING THE JURIDICAL MECHANISMS OF THE UNITED NATIONS ___________________________________________________________
STUDYING VATICAN COUNCIL II FROM THE ARCHIVES
Vatican City, 2 October 2012 (VIS) - A conference was held in the Holy See
Press Office this morning to present an International Academic Conference:
"Vatican Council II in the Light of the Archives of the Council Fathers, on
the Fiftieth Anniversary
of its Opening (1962-2012)". The event has been organised by the Pontifical
Committee for Historical Sciences in collaboration with the "Vatican Council
II" Centre for Research and Study of the Pontifical Lateran University, and
will take place from 3
to 5 October.
Participating in this morning's presentation were Fr. Bernard Ardura O.
Praem., president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, and
Philippe Chenaux, director of the "Vatican Council II" Centre for Research and
Study of the Pontifical
Lateran University and a member of the Pontifical Committee for Historical
Sciences.
Fr. Ardura explained how a global project has been organised in view of the
anniversary of Vatican Council II, involving an examination of the personal
archives of the Council Fathers, the aim being to produce original and
academically valid research
and to favour an increasingly deep understanding of an event "which has
profoundly marked the life of the Church over the last half century".
"Following the path laid down by Blessed Pope John XXIII in his opening
address to the Council, all available archive material must be submitted to
careful historical scrutiny, in order to ensure that people do not, as the
Pope himself said, 'act as
if they had nothing to learn from history, which is a teacher of life'. The
consultation and publication of diaries, memories and correspondence of
important figures who participated in Vatican Council II has already
contributed to the development of an
hermeneutic of the Council; ... that 'hermeneutic of reform in continuity'
identified by Benedict XVI as the way to ensure authentic ecclesial
interpretation.
"In this light", Fr. Ardura added, "we have begun researching the private
archives of the Council Fathers, in order to identify and catalogue the
documents they produced: diaries, notes on the various meetings of commission,
... and all the documents
that may help us to understand how the Council Fathers experienced the great
event, how they viewed it and how they reacted to the various opinions
expressed".
The current conference is to be the first of two events on Vatican Council
II. It aims to "present the current state of research and to highlight, for
example, the difficulties encountered in searching the archives". Of the
Council Fathers, 2,090
were from Europe and the Americas, while 408 were from Asia, 351 from Africa
and 74 from Oceania. A large number of the latter came from mission lands and
belonged to missionary institutions, for which reason much of their
documentation is held in
convents. Moreover the 'cult of the archive' which is habitual in Europe and
America is not equally widespread in Asia and Africa, although the archives of
the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples do, to some extent, make up
for these
shortcomings".
Fr. Ardura explained that "the intention of the Pontifical Committee is to
promote, in the light of the Holy Father's Magisterium and following a strict
historical-critical methodology divorced from any ideology, a pondered and
academically grounded
historiographical re-reading of what was undeniably 'the great event' of
Vatican Council II".
The conference will begin with a documentary prepared by the Vatican film
library, and an opening address by two speakers. The first of these will be
Cardinal Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan, Italy, who will focus on the
months between the
announcement and the opening of the Council because, Fr. Ardura said, "the
preparatory period offers many keys to understanding the subsequent
development of the Council". The other opening speaker will be Professor
Philippe Chenaux himself, who will
discuss historiography with relation to Vatican Council II. In order to recall
the ecumenical dimension, "strongly underlined" by Blessed John XXIII, one
representative from the Patriarchate of Moscow and one from the Protestant
churches will also
attend the conference.
The results of the research of recent years, and of the conference, "will
be a preliminary inventory of the Council Fathers' archives. This will be fed
into an online database which may be consulted free of charge on the website
of the Pontifical
Council".
For his part, Philippe Chenaux explained that "the attempt to write a
history of Vatican Council II involves not only research into the sources, ...
but also interpretation, the so-called conciliar 'hermeneutic'. In other
words, the historians who
devised this project of the history of Vatican II have 'excogitated' the
Council, whence have emerged two interpretative criteria which guided their
work: the Council as 'event' and the Council as 'rupture'".
"The fundamental challenge for historians of the Council is, then, how to
reconcile these two opposing readings of Vatican II and its decisions. This
does not mean writing a 'counter history' of Vatican Council II. Rather, more
modestly, it means
resuming historical research on the basis of the widest possible documentation
and with no ideological bias. It means avoiding the manipulation of conciliar
history for ends other than the history itself, in order to achieve a more
balanced and shared
understanding of the event and its decisions. 'Starting again from the
archives', that is the challenge underlying the great research project of into
the archives of the Council Fathers", he concluded.
RESPECTING THE JURIDICAL MECHANISMS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Vatican City, 2 October 2012 (VIS) - Archbishop Dominique Mamberti,
secretary for Relations with States, yesterday spoke before the sixty-seventh
General Assembly of the United Nations, which has as its theme: "Adjustment or
settlement of
international disputes or situations by peaceful means".
In his address the archbishop highlighted how "loss of faith in the value
of dialogue, and the temptation to favour 'a priori' one of the sides in
regional and national conflicts, threaten respect for the juridical mechanisms
of the United Nations.
However, the pre-eminence of the values contained in the Charter should lead
to the adoption of all possible means to ensure the protection of the most
vulnerable, the promotion of respect for the rule of law and the rights of
man, and the safeguarding
of centuries-old cultural and religious balances".
The secretary for Relations with States went on: "The urgency of the
situation is even more evident with respect to current events in the Middle
East, and in particular in Syria. A solution is impossible if it fails to
respect the rules of
international and humanitarian law, or falls outside the mechanisms
established in the United Nations Charter. All interested parties should not
only facilitate the mission of the special envoy of the United Nations and the
Arab League, but also ensure
humanitarian assistance to the suffering peoples. The international community
must unite its efforts so that all sides replace the race to arms with
negotiation, just as it must insist on effective respect for religious
liberty, human rights and all
fundamental freedoms".
"Only an international community strongly anchored in values that are truly
concordant with human dignity will be capable of suggesting feasible solutions
to new types of conflict. These include transnational groups which diffuse a
hegemonic,
pseudo-religious ideology that fails to respect the rights of persons and
civil peace. We are thinking of recent terrorist attacks in certain parts of
Africa and Asia, and of the collusion between drug trafficking and terrorism
in other parts of the
world".
"It is of vial importance", Archbishop Mamberti concluded, "to reach an
effective outcome in the debate about the reform and improvement of the
working of the United Nations Organisation, in order to revive its capacities
to foresee conflicts and to
resolve then using peaceful means".
Per ulteriori informazioni e per la ricerca di documenti consultare il
sito: www.wisnews.org e www.vatican.va Il servizio del
VIS viene inviato soltanto agli indirizzi di posta elettronica che ne
hanno
fatto richiesta. Se per qualunque motivo non si desidera continuare a
riceverlo, si prega di visitare nostra pagina dinizio: http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vi
/italinde.php
Copyright (VIS): Le notizie contenute nei servizi del Vatican
Information Service possono essere riprodotte parzialmente o totalmente
citando la fonte: V.I.S. - Vatican Information Service.
--Boundary_(ID_iaDMDdUmGxlNuuUwSEQ/vA)--
--- NetMgr/2 1.0y+
* Origin: NetMgr+ @ Sursum Corda! BBS Meridian MS USA (1:396/45)
