To unite people from every faith, nationality and culture through sport, in a common goal: To help the ones who need it most, especially the marginalized and the disadvantaged, and to encourage everyone to develop their life skills, character, values, and enjoyment of life itself, through sport.
The purpose seemed worthwhile, but since when is the Vatican the proper venue to host such a conference as if the Vatican were a secular conference center to advance a secular purpose, however noble? [3] Were not the merchants at the temple trying to earn a living to support their families noble? Perhaps, but the temple was not the place to be noble, and neither is the Vatican built in the name of God.
On the contrary, both the temple in Jesus' time and the Vatican in the present are places for those who stand upon their grounds to be humble, not noble. In Jesus' words [4]:
“It is written,” [H]e said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’
Were the conference participants along with the pope and his entourage robbers? Not in the sense that they were taking the Vatican Museum's priceless paintings for their own use without permission but in the sense that they were robbing the sanctity of the place that ought to be a place to supplicate before God with deep faith and reverence and to meditate what the Son of God had gone through as man for the salvation of souls.
In this blogger's opinion, the Vatican is not to be a backdrop to advance a social or political cause, a conference center or a place to host a gala reception for secularists and Catholics alike.
The conference was not in the least a religious event nor were the pope's remarks particularly ecclesiastical. The pope did mention God in passing in his statement on October 5, 2016, [5] that opened the conference but did not quite make God the central part of his statement. He ended his remarks by delegating the faith part for God to work on, as reported in the Summary of Bulletin by the Holy See Press Office [6]:
I trust that these days of meeting and reflection will allow you to explore further the good that sport and faith can bring to our societies”, concluded the Holy Father, commending to God this task, its hopes and its expectations.
The pope's hope was that "sport and faith" could be combined to further the good in society by the end of the conference, and that God would help realize that hope, but God did not accept the pope's delegated responsibility. God left women's pre-existing dissatisfaction with the sports world intact the entire time. The conference did, however, provide "[Ms] Ackerman with an audience full of world sports leaders to listen to her message [about gender inequality] — from IOC president Thomas Bach to Arsenal soccer club CEO Ivan Gazidis to New York Giants co-owner John Mara." [7] In regard to the number of women in leadership roles in the sports world, Ackerman said, "To me anything less than 30 is not good, and 50-50 is the ideal. So the hope is that over the next 15 years we can get closer to equality," as reported by Foxnews.com and other media outlets. [8], [9], [10]
Gender equality became at some point an issue at the conference. What is next? Transgender equality, sexual orientation equality, racial equality, religious equality, age equality? When will the pope address all of these secular issues within the walls of the Vatican? Will he simply ignore them? Using a cliché, the blogger thinks that the pope opened "a can of worms" with this conference, and now he does not appear to know what to do with all the worms that have become snakes crawling all over him.
Maybe he will have all this figured out by the second annual sports and faith conference next year, if there is to be a repeat misuse of holy grounds. Or, maybe God will consent to doing the work the pope delegated.
[1] http://www.cultura.va/content/cultura/en/dipartimenti/sport/risorse/gratuity.html
[2] http://www.sportforhumanity.com/2016-conference/
[3] Perhaps the Vatican had been used for secular purposes in the past but having such precedents does not make it right.
[4] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21:12-13
[5] http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2016/10/05/161005e.html#
[6] Ibid.
[7] http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2016/10/07/female-sports-pioneers-carry-message-to-vatican-conference.html|
[8] Ibid.
[9] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/female-sports-pioneers-carry-message-to-vatican-conference/2016/10/07/7cebdd98-8ca2-11e6-8cdc-4fbb1973b506_story.html
[10] http://reviewtimes.com/national-sports/2016/10/07/female-sports-pioneers-carry-message-to-vatican-conference/
No comments:
Post a Comment