The Catholic world has spent the last few weeks in Rome. The long hospitalization of Pope Francisand its consequences for the development of what seem to be the final stages of his pontificate, have brought the Church to the forefront of the news on half the planet.
There are many questions that the situation of these days has left on the conscience of many Catholics. Among them, the fact that what today we call the personal testimonyThe first thing to consider is whether we are truly convinced that the light of faith is capable of illuminating all aspects of our life and bringing it to fullness in such a way that we are able to propose a solid philosophical reflection that arises from a Christian perspective, translated into an active and critical presence in the spaces where the ideas that guide our societies are constructed.
It is not a question of building a Christian society on the margins of the present one, or even in opposition to it, but rather that the Catholic condition should not be an obstacle but rather an impulse for decisive public action and the transformation of society.
In these years, we have lived through a pontificate in which, from the consideration of God as the father of all, the Pope has placed at the center what he called the existential peripheriesThe poorest of the poor, those who have no homeland, no place to return to, no care to live in, and so on. Fruits of a throwaway society that has discarded, in the first instance, God from its principles and, therefore, from all its creation.
Secularism has gained ground, and with it, a vision of the world that leaves aside the Christian roots that, for centuries, have given meaning to reflection on the human. A secularism that is also present, in practice, in institutions of Christian inspiration and that, on many occasions, is filled with philosophies that are not only far removed from the Christian tradition, but are even opposed to it.
Perhaps it is not necessary for the life of the Church to make the front page of a newspaper, beyond the "extraordinary" news like the one we are experiencing these days, but it is urgent that Christian ideas resume their place in public debates, in universities, in the media and, above all, in the daily life of citizens. Not as an add-on or a "cloak" of Christianity, but as the source of dialogical reasoning. Only then will the missionary option be real. "capable of transforming everything" Pope Francis called for in Evangelii GaudiumHis "pontificate program" does not end with the end of an era.
