Prayers and Devotions

(The following article that is from Pope John Paul II's Prayers and Devotions)

September 20  Faith and Culture, a Constructive Dialogue

Where agnostic ideologies, hostile to the Christian tradition, or even explicitly atheist ideologies inspire certain leaders of thought, there is a greater rugency for the Church to interlace a dialogue with cultures, so that man of today many discover that, far from being's man's rival, God gives him the means to realize himself fully, in God's image and likeness. Man actually knows how to surpass himself infinitely. Evident proof of this is to be seen in the efforts which so many creative geniuses make in order to incarnate transcendental values of beauty and truth lastingly in works of art and thought, values which are more or less momentarily perceived as expressions of the absolute. So, encounters with cultures today are a terrain for privileged dialogue among people committed to the search for a new humanism for our time, beyond the divergencies separating them...

On the other hand, it is urgent for our contemporaries, particularly Catholics, to interrogate themselves seriousely on the conditions which are the basis of the development of the peoples. It is ever more evident that cultural progress is closely bound up with building a more just and more fraternal world...

Consequently, by virtue of my apostolic mission, I feel the responsibility incumbernt on me, at the heart of the collegiality of the Universal Church, and in contact and accord with local churches, to intensify the Holy See's relationships with all achiements of culture, also by maintaining a fresh relationship in fruitful international collaboration, within the family of nations, that is of the great "community of men united by diverse bonds, but above all essentially by that of culture."