Jul

26

Co-Workers of the Truth 7/26

Posted By reynor | Filed Under Co-Workers of the Truth, Pope Benedict XVI 

 

Benedict XVIJournalism is meaningful only when it helps us to learn the truth. It can be a genuine calling only when there is a truth that is good. Then it is right and necessary to help this truth to find its proper expression.  The fundamental certainty that Good does exist and that we are created for it is not an obstacle to the work of the journalist, but rather makes it possible.  It must be the first pillar of genuine journalistic ethics.  Non-Christians, too, can find this fundamental certainty.  We must admit, to our shame, that today it is often more alive and less impaired among non-Christians than in nations that were formerly Christian.  But it finds its deepest foundation and its greatest affirmation in the Person of Jesus Christ. It is he who gives us a certainty.  God loves us so much that he himself became one of us.

The ecce homo, which today shows primarily the dregs of humanity, receives from him its true meaning.  Ecce homo- today, for the most part, that means: Behold, here is yet another specimen of this miserable humanity.  Even Pilate, the sceptic, wanted to say something of this kind.  But without intending it, he revealed to us something quite different: man is such that God’s presence among us shines always in this disfigured countenance.  Hence we must always try to see humanity, not through the eyes of Pilate, but through the eyes of Jesus himself.  Then we serve truth.  Then we serve humanity, the humanness of man as such.  Granted, we always stand in need of the courage to criticize abuses openly in order that they may be remedied.  But today we have almost more need of the courage to make visible the goodness that resides in humanity and in the world.  Only in that way can we restore to humanity the courage to be itself, the courage to exist, without which all other courage falls into a vacuum.

From: L’Osservatore Romano 14, no.6 (1984), p. 5

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