We have drifted into a desert of godlessness: Pope gives Good Friday address

Mail Online ^ | 10th April 2009 | Simon Caldwell

[kellynla]

Pope Benedict XVI will tonight attack the rise of aggressive secularism in western societies, warning them that they risked drifting into a 'desert of godlessness'.

The Bavarian-born Pontiff will use his Good Friday meditations to compare deliberate attempts to purge religion from public life to the mockery of Jesus Christ by the mob as he was led out to be crucified. He will say said that 'religious sentiments' were increasingly ranked among the 'unwelcome leftovers of antiquity' and held up to scorn and ridicule. 'We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink,' he will tell the congregation as he meditates on the stations of the cross at an evening ceremony at the Coliseum, Rome.

'Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today – when things that are most holy and profound in the faith are being trivialised, the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode,' he will say.

'Everything in public life risks being desacralised – persons, places, pledges, prayers, practices, words, sacred writings, religious formulae, symbols, ceremonies. Our life together is being increasingly secularised.

'Religious life grows diffident. Thus we see the most momentous matters placed among trifles, and trivialities glorified.

'Values and norms that held societies together and drew people to higher ideals are laughed at and thrown overboard. Jesus continues to be ridiculed.' The Pope, who turns 82 later this month, will pray that Christians would respond to the problem by growing in faith.

'May we never question or mock serious things in life like a cynic,' he will say.

'Allow us not to drift into the desert of godlessness. Enable us to perceive you in the gentle breeze, see you in street corners, love you in the unborn child.'

[kellynla]

ping

[Luke21]

God bless Benedict. No wonder they hate him.

[RobbyS]

Amen to that!

[tioga]

Thanks for the thread.

[Mercat]

18”If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. John 15

[rom]

God bless this Pope! I don't think we'll see him doing this:



I'll always respect JP II for fighting the commies and helping us win!

But now we have:

[mojito]

Bless the Holy Father, he is a great man.

[a fool in paradise]

“Values and norms that held societies together and drew people to higher ideals are laughed at and thrown overboard.”

Question authority. Question the authority of the Communists who insist on tossing out the foundations of our society to usher in “change”.

[NYer]

How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.
HOMILY OF HIS EMINENCE CARD. JOSEPH RATZINGER - Monday 18 April 2005

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[potlatch]

Thank you, I had just sent this article out in email before 3:00pm today - the supposed time of Jesus’ death on the cross.

A solemn day, a time to examine our souls.

[kellynla]

you’re welcome

[Marysecretary]

The Pope has it right. We’re also seeing lawlessness because of godlessness. The two go hand in hand.

[TASMANIANRED]

I got to see most of the Good Friday services before work today.

I pray that Benedict lives to be 120,spry with all his faculties to the last moment.

[potlatch]

I was surprised at the lack of threads ‘honoring’ this day. When I grew up it was a quiet day, no TV, no radio, no loud playing outside. It’s still instilled in me.

[marshmallow]

Good Friday bump!

[cradle of freedom]

Secular humanism is the heresy of this age. It is a subtle and widespread heresy that seeks to destroy Christianity completely. We see it in a more advanced state in Europe but it is advancing quickly in America as well.

Secular humanism is worship of self. Whether the secular humanist is an atheist or someone who calls themself Christian they are the same at the core. Both atheist and pseudo Christians see THEMSELVES as God. The pseudo Christians pay lip service to God and they may even be members of the clergy who are well versed in their religion but the God they profess to believe is subservient to them. These church humanists do not believe in the sovereignty of God, they believe that THEY are sovereign over God.