"Jesus’ beatitude tells us that peace is both a messianic
gift and the fruit of human effort. In effect,
peace presupposes a humanism open to transcendence.
It is the fruit of the reciprocal gift, of a mutual
enrichment, thanks to the gift which has its source
in God and enables us to live with others and for
others. The ethics of peace is an ethics of fellowship
and sharing. It is indispensable, then, that the various
cultures in our day overcome forms of anthropology
and ethics based on technical and practical
suppositions which are merely subjectivistic and
pragmatic, in virtue of which relationships of coexistence
are inspired by criteria of power or profit,
means become ends and vice versa, and culture and
education are centred on instruments, technique
and efficiency alone. The precondition for peace
is the dismantling of the dictatorship of relativism
and of the supposition of a completely autonomous
morality which precludes acknowledgment of the
ineluctable natural moral law inscribed by God upon
the conscience of every man and woman. Peace is
the building up of coexistence in rational and moral
terms, based on a foundation whose measure is not
created by man, but rather by God."
Pope Benedict XVI
