Acta Benedicti Pp. XVI 315

poses a particular problem: it allows for professing belief in God, and respects

the public role of religion and the Churches, but at the same time it can

subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator. Faith be-

comes a passive acceptance that certain things ''out there'' are true, but

without practical relevance for everyday life. The result is a growing separa-

tion of faith from life: living ''as if God did not exist''. This is aggravated by

an individualistic and eclectic approach to faith and religion: far from a

Catholic approach to ''thinking with the Church'', each person believes he

or she has a right to pick and choose, maintaining external social bonds but

without an integral, interior conversion to the law of Christ. Consequently,

rather than being transformed and renewed in mind, Christians are easily

tempted to conform themselves to the spirit of this age.20 We have seen this

emerge in an acute way in the scandal given by Catholics who promote an

alleged right to abortion.

On a deeper level, secularism challenges the Church to reaffirm and to

pursue more actively her mission in and to the world. As the Council made

clear, the lay faithful have a particular responsibility in this regard. What is

needed, I am convinced, is a greater sense of the intrinsic relationship be-

tween the Gospel and the natural law on the one hand, and, on the other, the

pursuit of authentic human good, as embodied in civil law and in personal

moral decisions. In a society that rightly values personal liberty, the Church

needs to promote at every level of her teaching - in catechesis, preaching,

seminary and university instruction - an apologetics aimed at affirming the

truth of Christian revelation, the harmony of faith and reason, and a sound

understanding of freedom, seen in positive terms as a liberation both from the

limitations of sin and for an authentic and fulfilling life. In a word, the Gospel

has to be preached and taught as an integral way of life, offering an attrac-

tive and true answer, intellectually and practically, to real human problems.

The ''dictatorship of relativism'', in the end, is nothing less than a threat to

genuine human freedom, which only matures in generosity and fidelity to the

truth.

Much more, of course, could be said on this subject: let me conclude,

though, by saying that I believe that the Church in America, at this point

in her history, is faced with the challenge of recapturing the Catholic vision of

20 Cf. Rom 12:3.