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Posted on 12/31/2010 1:13:04 PM PST by NYer
A new Dark Age on the horizon?
Catholics, Protestants, Agnostics... the vast majority of conservatives of every stripe would agree with this almost non-reported speech made by Pope Benedict XVI on 20 December, 2010.
In a speech to Papal representatives from all over the world, the Pope spoke in the context of a the near total collapse in the Western world of any moral consensus rooted in Christian ethics and heritage.
In comments aimed directly at the secularization and abandonment of God by the West, Benedict stunned those in a attendance when he stated;
"Alexis de Tocqueville, in his day, observed that democracy in America had become possible and had worked because there existed a fundamental moral consensus which, transcending individual denominations, united everyone.
Only if there is such a consensus on the essentials can constitutions and law function. This fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage is at risk wherever its place, the place of moral reasoning, is taken by the purely instrumental rationality of which I spoke earlier.
In reality, this makes reason blind to what is essential. To resist this eclipse of reason and to preserve its capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake."
And another shot across the bow of Western civilization's growing quest for instant gratification, His Holiness stated;
"No pleasure is ever enough, and the excess of deceiving intoxication becomes a violence that tears whole regions apart – and all this in the name of a fatal misunderstanding of freedom which actually undermines man’s freedom and ultimately destroys it."
Benedict even forcefully spoke of the destruction from within that has polluted the Catholic Church since the implementation of the "spirit of Vatican II" and the abandonment of moral absolutes by many, many Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals;
"In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children.
This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself.
Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist.
The effects of such theories are evident today."
This is an example of what I meant by the Pope criticizing the RCC. Maybe Pope Benedict should be banned from FR?
Those that live in glass houses (perverted priests) shouldn’t.......
I knew I liked this Pope.
The Pope explains exactly what caused that problem -- unfettered 'rationality' and the license of the 70s - both religious and sexual. The two go together -- it was the goofy kumbaya bishops who allowed homosexuals to take over seminaries and get ordained, at the same time they were abandoning Catholic doctrine.
This pope has done more to clean out the homosexual chicken hawkers than anybody else, both now and when he was a cardinal. And he's getting the Church back to being Catholic, instead of Unitarian wannabes.
That will solve the problem (and in fact has gone a long way already).
ping
Many of the senior bishops in the US should be purged, imo.
There's a book that describes the some of the problems the Boston
archdiocese inflicted on the faith. I think it's called "The Faithful
Departed". I heard the author on a radio show about a year ago
or so.
“Those that live in glass houses (perverted priests) shouldn’t.......”
I’m not Catholic, but statistically, Catholic priest sex abuse is at the same rate as every other large organization or denomination. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/07/mean-men.html
Seems like the more secular, liberal, anti-Christian media and experts attack the Church, the more I respect it.
Catholic leaders are consistently pro-life and willing to stand up for cultural morals against the tide.
That's his job.
Also - he's motivated by a desire to purify and renew the Church, which Some Others apparently are not.
“This is an example of what I meant by the Pope criticizing the RCC. Maybe Pope Benedict should be banned from FR?...”
This statement shows a stunted understanding of what PBXVI states. He was criticizing the loss of a sense of Christian morality among Western Civilization, which he conceded had also entered into the very center of the RCC. Thus, he admits that the Church also became vulnerable to this moral collapse, and it resulted in a failure to rectify the problem - which was a total lack of morality among some of the clergy, and the subsequent lack of rapid corrective action in the church.
Anyone who sees this as a specific criticism of the RCC has not really grasped the enormity of the problem he is addressing. Our entire Western Civilization is at stake per Pope Benedict XVI.
Cleaning house?
When are Law and Mahony scheduled to be cleaned?
Only if there is such a consensus on the essentials can constitutions and law function. This fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage is at risk wherever its place, the place of moral reasoning, is taken by the purely instrumental rationality of which I spoke earlier.
In reality, this makes reason blind to what is essential. To resist this eclipse of reason and to preserve its capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake."
Dang, who knew? The pope is a Freeper!
I love this guy.
He retires next year, but the Pope already named his successor last April and he has been installed as auxiliary bishop.
To say this is . . . unusual . . . is an understatement.
Mahony set the seal on his own destruction when he threatened to take his archdiocese into schism if he was interfered with. I don't know how he thought that would help him, but he may have been desperate. In any event, he is gone in all but name.
Law was removed (or his resignation was accepted) back in 2002. He was kicked upstairs to a titular position at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where he essentially has no independent authority over anything at all.
Getting rid of long-entrenched, high profile prelates ain't easy, but this pope has taken care of it.
The effects of such theories are evident today."
&&&&&
This is so chilling!!!
I have been reading an absorbing book about the history of housing in Baltimore, "Not in My Neighborhood", which details how segregation, blockbusting and white flight, and predatory practices of money lending shaped the city's housing patterns during the 20th century.
When I got to the chapter about the Sixties, black unrest, Martin Luther King's murder, riots, etc, the author mentioned Saul Alinsky's methods of community organizing becoming popular.
Then my jaw dropped! As background about Saul Alinsky, the author wrote "In the spring of 1958 Alinsky received a peculiar invitation, his first from overseas. The Italian cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, archbishop of Milan, wanted his advice on a thorny problem."
Five years later Cardinal Montini was Pope Pius VI and "the Catholic Church began a massive community organizing drive in the United States. It hired Alinsky as its conceptualizer, an appealing proposition because the church provided two essentials for successful organizing: people and money." The following paragraphs just made my skin crawl.
All I could think was no wonder the Church lost its way in the Sixties; and I wonder if Glenn Beck would like to know this.
I am stunned!!!
Pray for Pope Benedict to continue to speak out with strength. We could easily enter a new Dark Ages, which is where the Western world is headed now.
Well said and the Pope is correct. May the Lord have mercy on us all.
BTTT
Gumdrop - take a look at AnAmericanMother’s post. She gets it.
The Pope *IS* being critical of the Church. That ‘subsequent lack of rapid corrective action’ was not a result of the moral decay, but it was a result of the institutionalized denial that exists in the Church. Witness how some FReepers circle the wagons when they’re subject to critique! Now imagine Bishops and Cardinals reacting to major problems. Their predictable reaction is to hush it up and hope it goes away - thus we so so many sexual assault lawsuits settled out of court and the plaintiffs sworn to silence. That’s WRONG.
When the Church spends upwards of over $1 billion to settle out these lawsuits don’t the people who provide that money deserve an accounting of what they paid for?
If the RCC wants to operate in secrecy and its members, as we see on FR, also want it to hide painful truths, then us non-Catholics have no obligation to play along. For that matter, the more difficult thing for the RCC right now is it seems your Pope doesn’t like this crap, either.
Good for him.
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