Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sep 1, 2010 / 19:54 pm
Bishop Juan Ruben Martinez of Posadas, Argentina said the Church must conserve her identity when reaching out to non-believers, as “openness” as a Church, does not mean falling into relativism.
“To be open is to love, to dialogue, to listen, to change, to contribute, to learn and to recover, without losing one’s own identity,” the bishop said. “To be open is not to mix everything together into some sort of syncretism or mixture of good and evil, values and anti-values,” he explained.
He noted that since her beginnings, the Church has “had a missionary openness to the pagan nations and St. Paul called himself the ‘Apostle of the pagans’.” For this reason, he urged Argentineans not to confuse being “open” with being “relativistic.”
The Church is called to guard the revelations of Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit, he added. “The treasures of the Church are the poor and those left out, and in our choices, they are the guarantee that we are seeking to practice the Gospel. Nourished at the Eucharistic banquet at Mass, as the Gospel points out, we must go out as disciples and missionaries,” he added.
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