Art. 3.

Among the specific tasks of the Council are particularly the following:

1º. to examine in depth the theological and pastoral meaning of the new evangelization;

2º. to promote and to foster, in close collaboration with the Bishops’ Conferences concerned—which may establish ad hoc organisms—the study, dissemination, and implementation of the Papal Magisterium related to topics connected with the new evangelization;

3º. to make known and to support initiatives linked to the new evangelization that are already being put into practice in various particular Churches, and to promote the realization of new projects by actively involving the resources present in Institutes of Consecrated Life and in Societies of Apostolic Life, as well as in groups of the faithful and in new communities;

4º. to study and to encourage the use of modern forms of communication as instruments for the new evangelization; 

The text of "Ubicumque et Semper Extracts"

Given below are extracts of "Ubicumque et semper", the Apostolic Letter "Motu Proprio data" by which Benedict XVI establishes the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation.

  "The Church has the duty to announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ always and everywhere. ... Over history this mission has assumed new forms and methods, depending on place, situation and historical moment. In our own time, one of its most singular characteristics has been that of having to measure itself against the phenomenon of abandonment of the faith, which has become progressively more evident in societies and cultures that were, for centuries, impregnated with the Gospel.

  "The social transformations we have seen over recent decades have complex causes, the roots of which are distant in time and have profoundly modified our perception of the world. ... If, on the one hand, humanity has seen undeniable benefits from these transformations and the Church received further stimuli to give reasons for the hope she carries, on the other, we have seen a worrying loss of the sense of the sacred, even going so far as to call into discussion apparently unquestionable foundations, such as faith in the God of creation and providence; the revelation of Jesus Christ our only Saviour, the shared understating of man's fundamental experiences like birth, death and family life, and the reference to natural moral law".

  "Among the central themes examined by Vatican Council II was the question of relations between the Church and the modern world. In the wake of this conciliar teaching, my predecessors dedicated further reflection to the need to find adequate forms to allow our contemporaries to still hear the Lord's living and eternal Word".

  "Venerable Servant of God John Paul II made this demanding undertaking one of the pivotal points of his vast Magisterium, summarising the task awaiting the Church today in the concept of 'new evangelisation' (which he systematically developed in numerous occasions), especially in regions of age-old Christianity".

  "Thus, in my turn, sharing the concern of my venerated predecessors, I feel it appropriate to offer an adequate response so that the entire Church, allowing herself to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, may present herself to the modern world with a missionary vigour capable of promoting a new evangelisation".

  "In Churches of ancient foundation, ... although the phenomenon of secularisation continues its course, Christian practice still shows signs of possessing vitality and profound roots among entire peoples. ... We also know, unfortunately, of areas which appear almost completely de-Christianised, areas in which the light of faith is entrusted to the witness of small communities. These lands, which need a renewed first announcement of the Gospel, seem particularly unreceptive to many aspects of the Christian message".

  "At the root of all evangelisation there is no human project of expansion, but the desire to share the priceless gift that God wished to give us, sharing His life with us".  (Emphasis added.)

PRESENTATION OF COUNCIL FOR NEW EVANGELISATION

"VATICAN CITY, 12 OCT 2010 (VIS) - This morning in the Holy See Press Office Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the newly-founded Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation, explained the contents of "Ubicumque et semper", the Apostolic Letter "Motu Proprio data" by which Benedict XVI establishes the new dicastery.

  "The theme of new evangelisation has been the subject of deep reflection by Church Magisterium over recent decades", said Archbishop Fisichella. "It is immediately clear that this goal represents a challenge to the entire Church, which must ... find adequate ways to renew her announcement to many baptised people who no longer understand what it means to belong to the Christian community, and are victims of the subjectivism of our times with its closure in an individualism that often lacks public and social responsibility. The 'Motu Proprio' directly identifies those Churches of ancient tradition which ... require a renewed missionary spirit, one capable of helping them make a forward leap to meet the new requirements which the current historical situation imposes". ' ' '

  Among the tasks entrusted to the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation is that of promoting the use of the Catechism of the Universal Church. "The Catechism is indeed", the prelate noted, "one of the most mature fruits to emerge from the directives of Vatican Council II. It is an organic compilation of the entire heritage of the development of dogma and is the most complete instrument to transmit the unchanging faith in the face of the constant changes and questions the world poses to believers".  (Emphasis added.)  (Cf.  Catechism of the Catholic Church - The Church Is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic;  Can non-Catholics be saved, according to the Roman Catholic Church?)

[It is clear that Vatican Council II was a case of "Come into the parlor said the spider to the fly."  It is a mystery why the Protestant religious leaders, and especially the Seventh-day Adventists, who attended did not see the web of ensnarement.  It may have been blindness pure and simple, or that they had already travelled so far on the road back to Rome that they were ready to be snared.  It may also be an object lesson on the danger of entering upon enchanted ground.]

eucharistandmission

Here  is the text of the ex cathedra dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus which was the basis of mission for Catholics down  the centuries.

 1. “There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.” (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215). Ex cathedra.

 2. .“We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302.).Ex cathedra.

 3. “The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.” (Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441.) Ex cathedra – from the website Catholicism.org and “No Salvation outside the Church”: Link List, the Three Dogmatic Statements Regarding EENS

Ad Gentes 7,Vatican Council II has the same message.

Therefore, all must be converted to Him, made known by the Church's preaching, and all must be incorporated into Him by baptism and into the Church which is His body. For Christ Himself "by stressing in express language the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mark 16:16; John 3:5), at the same time confirmed the necessity of the Church, into which men enter by baptism, as by a door.-Ad Gentes 7,Vatican Council II.'  (Emphasis added.)

"SECULARISM AND SECULARITY

It is a real pleasure to be visiting the University of Navarra again. This great university is truly a beacon for those of us who believe that faith and reason must work together if we academics are to do our part in advancing what John Paul II called the civilization of love. And I congratulate Professor Alvira and his associates for having launched this project on Religion and Civil Society, a venture that directly confronts the challenges facing the world’s democratic experiments.

With regard to the topic that I have been asked to discuss— secularism and secularity—let me begin by noting two recent developments that many people have found surprising. The first is the fact that one of the central themes of the current leader of the Catholic Church has been his praise of secularity. The second is the growing chorus of prominent atheists or agnostics who are expressing concern about the ability of their societies to remain free, democratic and humane without the support of habits and attitudes grounded in Biblical religion.

Both of these developments are signs of a more general ferment relating to the role of religion in a secular state. Until relatively recently, most people in western countries have regarded the position of religion in the polity as substantially settled along the lines of one or another of the two principal models of secularity that emerged, respectively, from the French and American revolutions.

Over the past few decades, however, all previous understandings about religion in society have [been] thrown into turbulence. The pressures come from several directions: There are developments in biotechnology posing moral dilemmas that could not have been imagined by previous generations; there are the well known changes in behavior and attitudes in the areas of marriage, family life, and human sexuality; and in many countries there has been a marked increase in religious diversity due to migration. In addition, as even political "realists" have had to acknowledge, religion is playing an important role in shaping events in our increasingly globalized and interdependent world.

The retreat from rigid secularism on the part of many intellectuals and public figures is a remarkable sign of how these changes are affecting long-held attitudes. In the case of Jürgen Habermas, it was concern about biological engineering and the instrumentalization of human life that led him to conclude that the West cannot abandon its religious heritage without endangering the great social and political advances that are grounded in that heritage. Habermas stunned many of his followers a few years ago by announcing that, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

No less significant were the remarks of French President Sarkozy when he greeted Pope Benedict in 2008. Referring to the Christian religion as France’s “living patrimony,” Sarkozy added that “it would be crazy to deprive ourselves of the contributions of that patrimony to intellectual and cultural life.” One can imagine Voltaire turning in his grave when Sarkozy went on to say, "For this reason, I am calling for a positive secularism. A positive secularism offers our consciences the possibility to [reflect on] the meaning we want to give to our lives….Positive secularism is an opportunity, an encouragement, a supplementary dimension to the political debate. It is an encouragement to religion, as well as to all currents of thought."

And consider the case of Tony Blair who never discussed his faith while he was Prime Minister of England because, he said, people would consider that to be "weird". But in a speech in Italy last year, Citizen Blair criticized such negative attitudes towards religion for allowing "the aggressive secularism in part of the West to gain traction." Persons of faith, he said, should "show how faith is standing up for justice, for solidarity across peoples and nations." He added that one thing he learned as Prime Minister was that "a society to be truly harmonious, to be complete, requires a place for faith."

Meanwhile, Italian Senator Marcelo Pera, a professed agnostic who is also a prominent philosopher, published a book last year with the provocative title: "Why we should call ourselves Christian." The preface to that book is a letter written by none other than Pope Benedict, who earlier, as Cardinal Ratzinger, had entered into a dialogue with Pera that was published under the title"Without Roots," a reference to Europe's neglect of its cultural foundations.

Clearly something important is happening when even the leader of France--the country that most strenuously defends the principle of the secular state--calls for a "positive secularism," echoing the very terms that Pope Benedict so often uses in his own calls for a “new reflection on the true meaning and importance of laïcité.” Something is happening when the former head of the British Labor government says he wishes he had spoken more in public about his faith. Something is happening when the leader of the Catholic Church and a prominent Italian agnostic begin singing duets.

[What Professor Glendon describes above is a process of convergence of interests between the Christian world and secular leaders of thought - atheists, agnostics, and professed individuals of faith alike.  This is not surprising in these eschatological times.  The apostle Paul wrote of these times in the following terms]:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.  Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?  And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.  For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.  And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:  Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,  And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.  And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:  That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
(2 Thess: 1-12)  (Emphasis added)

[This is the time of the gathering of the nations in final rebellion against God and His Truth revealed in the Bible]:[This is the time of the gathering of the nations in final rebellion against God and His Truth revealed in the Bible]:

Satan, the archenemy of God, is working behind the scenes to bring Atheists, Agnostics, Papists, and Christian apostates of all stripes into final and fatal confrontation with Almighty God.]

These developments inevitably have re-focused attention on the old French and American models of secularity—and they support the distinction made in the title of this section of our program: Secularity does not necessarily entail secular-ism. What both the French and American models had in common, in their 18th century origins—and what set them apart from countries with official state churches—was their commitment to a secular, non-denominational state.

The principal feature that differentiated them from each other was that the French model, at the outset, was marked by hostility to Christianity in general and to the Catholic Church in particular: to Christianity because it was thought by many to be an obstacle to the creation of a free and rational society; and to the Catholic Church because it was thought to have had excessive temporal power.

The American model was more hospitable to religion because the descendants of Protestant Dissenters who had fled English persecution wanted a state where the various Protestant sects could live peaceably with one another. The English experience caused them to be more concerned about the threat that the State posed to religion than vice versa. In other words, the branch of the Enlightenment that was essentially anti-clerical and irreligious had little influence in America at the time of the Founding—except where the minority Catholic religion was concerned. Thus, it is commonly said that the American model of secularity was devised to protect religion and churches from government, whereas the French model, and the systems that followed it, were designed to protect government from religion and churches. It needs to be kept in mind, however, that the model contained a strong strain of anti-Catholicism that persists to this day.

Nevertheless, Pope Benedict has often praised what he calls the “positive” American understanding of secularity, contrasting it with the "negative" form of secular-ism inherited from the French Revolution. He has even gone so far as to say that the American version could be a "fundamental model" for Europe, in that the United States is a place “where the religious dimension, with the diversity of its expressions, is not only tolerated but appreciated as the nation’s ‘soul’ and as a fundamental guarantee of human rights and duties.”

Pope Benedict's assessment of the American understanding of "secularity" must never be mistaken for approval of all aspects of what he calls a "fundamental model" for Europe.  His views, and those of his predecessor, conform to the vision of Pope Leo XIII.  They view religious freedom from a unique perspective, which was summed up by A. T. Jones in his 1895 General Conference Sermon on "The Papacy":

The papacy is very impatient of any restraining bonds; in fact, it wants none at all. And the one grand discovery Leo XIII has made, which no pope before him ever made, is that turn which is taken now all the time by Leo and from him by those who are managing affairs in this country--the turn that is taken upon the clause of the Constitution of the United States: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Leo has made the discovery that the papacy can be pushed upon this country in every possible way and by every possible means and that congress is prohibited from ever legislating in any way to stop it. That is a discovery that he made that none before him made and that is how it is that he of late can so fully endorse the United States Constitution.

We all know of course that that was intended to be the expression of the American people always, that religion should have no place in governmental affairs and no connection whatever with it. But the papacy is never satisfied without taking possession of everything in the government and running it in the interests of the church and Leo XIII has found out that this can all be done under the cover of that constitutional statement which was intended to prevent such a thing forever.

Thus the papacy in plain violation of the Constitution will crowd herself upon the government and then hold up that clause as a barrier against anything that any would do to stop it. And every one that speaks against this working of the papacy, behold! He "is violating the Constitution of the United States" in spirit, because the constitution says that nothing shall ever be done in respect to any religion or the establishment of it. When a citizen of the United States would rise up and protest against the papacy and all this that is against the letter and the spirit of the constitution, behold! He does not appreciate "the liberty of the constitution. We are lovers of liberty; we are defenders of the constitution; we are glad that America has such a symbol of liberty" as that.  Indeed they are.

The major part of Protestant America, including the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, are either unsuspecting of this chicanery or actually endorsing it because they are enamoured of the idea of shaping the morality of this nation by the enactment of religious laws.]

Models and Reality

As we social scientists know, however, reality is always more complicated than any model. The fact is that the so-called French model has long contained some elements of positive secularity, while the American model, increasingly, has drifted in the direction of negative secularism

In present-day France, for example, a notable instance of "positive secularity" is the generous program of subsidies for the (mostly Catholic) religious primary and secondary schools that are attended by 17 percent of French schoolchildren--something that would be clearly unconstitutional in the United States—and in any case would never be approved by the non-Catholic majority . I would also note that France, like most European nations, has laws in many controversial areas—such as abortion, experimentation on embryos, reproductive technologies, and same-sex adoption—that are closer to the teachings of the major religions than the laws of the U.S.

As for the United States, elements of negative secularism have been introduced through a series of Supreme Court decisions that, beginning in the 1940s, have cast doubt over the constitutionality of nearly every form of public cooperation and accommodation with religious institutions.

Now I come to a sign of the times that should claim the attention of our project: it is that negative secularism in Europe and the United States alike has accelerated in the wake of the sexual revolution. That era of social experimentation saw the rise among opinion makers of open disdain for religious believers and open hostility toward religious institutions—especially those religions that make strong truth claims and strong demands on their members. Not surprisingly, that period also saw the appearance of new legal rights in the areas of abortion, assisted reproduction, sexual orientation, and embryonic experimentation--rights that clash with the religious beliefs of many citizens. Today, there is powerful resistance to laws protecting the conscience rights of individuals and the autonomy of religious institutions. Religious freedom increasingly is coming into conflict not only with various "new rights", but with the interests of powerful lobbies such as the sex industry, the abortion industry, the population control lobby, and the assisted reproduction industry.

[This passage conceals a snare for those who cherish religious liberty based on biblical principles of morality.  Because of an abhorrence of immorality and depravity there is a natural inclination to favor laws enforcing moral standards.  How can one oppose the enactment of such laws?  And yet, active support of the political crusade against those practices enumerated above that are clearly violations of biblical principles (some scientific procedures are not) involves alliance with the spiritual power that is opposed to the sovereignty and righteousness of God Almighty.  One is reminded of the words of warning from Ellen G. White, "[Satan] has grown more artful. His plans are laid deeper, and are more covered with a religious garment to hide their deformity." (2 SG,  p. 277.)  Christianity should lead by demonstrating godliness through the power of the gospel, and not by forcing its laws upon the ungodly through the power of the State,  It is no coincidence that the religious body which is foremost in agitating for laws enforcing "family values" is rife with homosexuality, child abuse, and even abortion to cover up the sins of errant priests.  It is Rome who conceived the destructive hermeneutic of "higher criticism" which has swept through the Protestant world and neutralized the Bible as the Word of God.  In these times there are Christians who are ignorant of what the Word has to say about homosexuals, fornicators, and adulterers.  How much more ignorant are the millions in the secular world!!  The  blame for the moral corruption in the world today must be laid squarely at the feet of the "Christian religionists" and not the secular State.]

As a leading U.S. expert on religious liberty has put it, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was originally designed to limit government, has been increasingly interpreted by the Supreme Court to constrain religion and to relegate it to the private sphere. There are, of course, exceptions to these trends, some of which, like the exemption of religious institutions from taxes, are very important. But it is not an exaggeration to say that the present situation in the U.S. can best be described as one in which positive and negative models of secularity are engaged in a fateful struggle

The eruption in 2002 of what has come to be known as the clerical sexual abuse crisis fell like a bomb into that volatile situation. There can be no doubt that incalculable harm was done to the cause of promoting secularity over secularism in the American model.

This brings me to an important, if obvious, point: There is no pure example of either positive or negative secularity in the world today. Each nation’s system of Church-State relations is constantly being shaped and reshaped by complex political compromises. And let me follow that observation with another point that should be obvious: no country's system can serve as a model for another if by "model" we mean something that can be copied.

Each nation’s system of church-state relations is the product of its own distinctive history and circumstances. Most of the continental European systems were decisively shaped by confrontations between Enlightenment secularism and Roman Catholicism, against the background of religious conflict. The American system was initially shaped by the desire to protect the various Protestant religions from the State, and to promote peaceful co-existence among Protestant confessions. That is why the Pope said, when he praised the American model: “Certainly, we in Europe cannot simply copy the United States; we have our history." What he meant when he referred to the U.S. system as a "model" is that the U.S. experience shows that a secular state need not necessarily be hostile to religion.

On his trip to the United States in 2008, he clearly demonstrated his awareness that the American model was in need of attention. He took the occasion to warn us that the erosion of the positive form of secularity would have serious implications for liberty as well as for religion. “The preservation of freedom,” he said, "calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility toward the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one’s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and must constantly be won over for the cause of good.”

The question of the relationship between religion and freedom brings us to the heart of the project that we are gathered to discuss. What is the role of religion in sustaining a free and humane society?

The classic analysis of that question still begins with the two propositions about religion and freedom advanced by Tocqueville in the preface to Democracy in America. One of those assertions flew in the face of everything that was held to be true by most devout Christians at that time. It was that freedom would be good for religion. The second proposition seemed equally preposterous to enlightened skeptics like most of Tocqueville’s friends. It was that religion would be beneficial for emerging democratic societies.

Tocqueville was emphatic in advising his skeptical friends to get over their prejudices against religion if they hoped for the success of free and democratic government. “Lovers of liberty,” he said, “should hasten to call religion to their aid, for they must know that one cannot establish the reign of liberty without that of mores [by which he meant the habits and attitudes of citizens and statesmen], and mores cannot be firmly founded without beliefs.” Religion, he wrote, “is the guardian of the mores, and the mores are the guarantee of the laws and pledge for the maintenance of freedom itself.” In other words: Culture is prior to politics and law, and religion is at the heart of culture.

For a long time, however, many intellectuals clung to the belief that the free society could get along just fine without religion, and that the sooner we got rid of religion the freer we would be. They did not dispute that the preservation of a free society depends on citizens and statespersons with particular skills, knowledge, and qualities of mind and character. But a number of political philosophers, of whom John Rawls is perhaps best known, contested Tocqueville’s assertion that the democratic experiment was dependent in crucial ways on a culture nourished by Biblical religion (by which he meant religion based on the Hebrew Scriptures and the Apostolic Writings). Rawls and others maintained that the experience of living in a free society was sufficient in itself to foster the civic virtues of moderation and selfrestraint, respect for others and so on, that a decent society requires.

That faith in the ability of democracy to generate the virtues it needs in its citizens has been shaken, however, in the social and cultural upheavals of the late 20th century. With families, schools, religious groups, and other institutions of civil society in distress, non-believers like Habermas and Pera are starting to express concerns about the political effects of the breakdown of so many habits and customs that once provided cultural supports for liberal democracy. They have begun to ask, for example: Where will people learn to view others with respect and concern, rather than to regard them as objects, means, or obstacles? What will cause most men and women to keep their promises, to limit consumption, to answer their country’s call for service, and to reach out to the unfortunate? Where will a state based on the rule of law find citizens and statesmen capable of devising just laws and then abiding by them? Habermas has gone so far as to assert that the good effects that Rawls and others attributed to life in free societies may well have had their source in the “legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love."

In this new situation, there are really no models to follow because so many of the challenges are so new. But to say there are no models is not to say there is no wisdom and experience on which to draw. Historical experience indicates that there is a high correlation between religious liberty and the maintenance of a democratic state that respects individual freedom, equality, and the rule of law, and that attends to the needs of its least advantaged members. Conversely, there is a high correlation between the denial of religious liberty and the denial of other basic freedoms.

In 2009, the non-partisan Pew Forum reported on the growing body of empirical evidence that underscores the contribution of religious freedom to democratic governance, domestic tranquility, economic development, women's advancement and international peace. A Pew researcher found, after conducting research on 200 nations around the world that "the presence of religious freedom in a country mathematically correlates with the longevity of democracy" and with the presence of other goods, including civil and political liberty, women's income, press freedom, literacy, lower infant mortality, and economic freedom."

[Professor Glendon's glowing praise of religious liberty and democracy fails to recognize that in the United States these have been the product of secularism.  As she stated above, "What both the French and American models had in common, in their 18th century origins—and what set them apart from countries with official state churches—was their commitment to a secular, non-denominational state."  Religious liberty and democracy will most certainly be destroyed when Rome achieves "positive secularity."]

So, how do things look for the civilizations of Europe and the Americas as they face the challenge of protecting religious liberty within a secular state? In a sense, we would seem to be wellequipped. Despite many differences, we all are the beneficiaries of a common cultural inheritance in which religion and liberty are inextricably intertwined. It is an inheritance that includes the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome, the Hebrew Scriptures and the Apostolic Writings, the explosive energies of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the concept of the rights of man, and so much more.

But under present circumstances, it will take great wisdom and prudence on the part of citizens and statespersons in free societies to find ways to keep the public square open to religiously grounded moral viewpoints, and to protect the intermediate institutions that compose each country's “moral ecology.”

Equally, if not more decisive will be the response of religious individuals and groups themselves. As we all know, it took a long time for mainstream Christianity to accept that liberty would be good for religion. For the Catholic Church, the major turning point was the Second Vatican Council where the Church officially declared the acceptability of a secular state in which Christianity, while fairly treated, enjoyed no special legal status. It is a remarkable sign of how far we have traveled that a Catholic Pope is now able to say as Benedict XVI has done, that, “It is necessary to welcome the real achievements of Enlightenment thinking— human rights, and especially the freedom of faith and its exercise, recognizing these as elements that are also essential for the authenticity of religion.”

I conclude with this thought: If the calls from various quarters to develop more healthy and positive forms of secularism are to succeed, the challenge for religions will be as great as the challenge to governments. It will be up to religions to encourage their members to the responsible exercise of freedom. It will be up to them to teach their members to advance their religiously grounded moral viewpoints with reasoning that is intelligible to all men and women of good will. It will be up to them to reject ideologies that manipulate religion for political purposes, or that use religion as a pretext for violence. And it will be up to them to find resources within their own traditions for promoting respect and tolerance. (That, of course, was Pope Benedict’s main message in the famous Regensburg address, a message almost completely obscured by the controversy that followed.)

The stakes are high. For who can doubt that the progress of free societies is being closely watched by the eyes of persons who respect neither liberty nor the religions that have supported it and flourished under it? Today, there are still places in the world where neither of Tocqueville’s propositions is accepted, and where religious freedom in all of its dimensions is regularly, and often brutally, denied. Whether those societies will find the resources within their traditions to promote the synergy between religion and freedom—and how long that process will take--is a fateful question that hovers over the human future."  (Cf. ASTONISHING DIMENSION OF ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT.)