The modern Czech flag has the words Veritas Vincit. Truth is victorious. Benedict tells us from Prague that spiritual evils are far more dangerous than material temptations. Europe is a "home" wherein our consciences can be formed in the tradition of reason and revelation speaking to each other. The truth is what sets us free. The public not only has a need to hear such truth, but its heart will be restless until it does. This latter restlessness is not a theory about the future but a record of the same past we all share. To choose to make a better social order we first need to change our souls. There is no other way. Plato had already told us this. We often do everything we can not to accept this basic truth. But the Pope went to Prague, in the heart of central Europe, to tell us that we have roots that stretch to eternity. "Man must be saved from the evils that affect his spirit." Technology cannot do this. Politics cannot do this. There is a "right way to order human affairs." We cannot be overly surprised in following Benedict in Prague to find that this "right order" begins with what we think our end as human persons is. It is the function of the papacy to speak of ultimate things, even to the Europeans, even in, especially in the beautiful ancient capitol of the Bohemians.
Link (here) to Fr. Schall's full article posted at Ignatius Insight
Photo (here) is of Pope Bennedict kneeling in front of the Infant Jesus of Prague.
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