Karl Cardinal Lehmann

Cardinal Karl Lehmann Bishop of Mainz was born in 1936. For 21 years, to spring 2008, he was chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference – the public face and voice of the Catholic Church in Germany. He is an advocate of ecumenical dialogue and is regarded as upbeat, devout and optimistic. Cardinal Lehmann is also a professor of philosophy and theology. He sees it as his church’s mission to deepen people’s experience and knowledge of faith in what has become a pluralistic and often somewhat meaningless society. He has called for Christians to have the courage to carry out mission and pastoral care and become more involved in helping the needy in a world increasingly scarred by globalization.

The church, according to Cardinal Lehmann, should not be permitted to lose its tangible and direct relationships with people: “What we want as a church and as Christians needs to be clearly highlighted. I am convinced that society needs Christians more urgently than ever before.” Today, large institutions like churches are losing members and their integrative power. At the same time, there is a growing sense of insecurity about social values. In his Metaphysics of Morals the philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that in the realm of end purposes everything either has a price or it has dignity – something that has a price can be replaced by something equivalent; but something that has no price admits of no equivalent and thus has its own special dignity. Taking Kant’s postulate as his starting point, Cardinal Lehmann will talk about how concepts of value are both inadequate and irreplaceable today.