Benedict battles the 'dictatorship of relativism'

“There are some who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse, to privatize it or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty,” the pope said. “Yet religion is in fact a guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every person as a brother or sister.”

Was he actually saying these words with a straight face:“Yet religion is in fact a guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every person as a brother or sister.”...unless you are a woman, gay, one who uses one's own gray matter or in some way not following "Benedict XVI's dictatorship"

How many thousands does Benedict "exclude" for and because of their religious beliefs? I would have thought Benedict would learn something from his monumental blunders (foot in his mouth syndrome): alienating the Muslim world, telling Brazilians that "Indigenous americans were silently longing for Christianity" (I mean who doesn't want to be brutalized and conquered?).
It would be better if he followed the advice often attributed to St. Francis; “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”.....maybe in Benedict's case...never use words

Cheers,

Benedict most likely recognizes dictatorships of relativism so well because that is what the Vatican itself has become.
In his own words:"... whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires,” Ratzinger warned. We forget that religious goals can be as ego driven as obviously worldly goals.
The situation is quite serious because the Vatican thinks it is part of the solution; indeed the entire solution; when in reality it is part of the problem making a solution more difficult to obtain (unless, of course, one prefers the rigorously enforced orthodoxy of the Middle Ages).

From another perspective, we also need to recognize that modern Europe's parental heritage, so to speak, comes directly through hundreds of years of Roman Cathloic heritage directed by the Vatican. Yet we seldom, if ever, hear or read about this history's impact on today's world. So if Rome wants to complain about modern secularism, perhaps it should start with examining its own household history.

and this helps me love my enemy how?

Freemasons are excommunicated latae sententiae primarily because, among other reasons, freemasonry espouses Indifferentism (capital I), which is relativism, aka lukewarmness. Book of Revelation, anyone? Drive down the middle of the road, anyone? Straddle a fence rail, anyone? One can usually spot the lukewarm within the Church and without the Church by their gauzy references to "god" and not the Trinity, the triune God, the Father, the Son, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit. The latter, Holy Spirit, is not synonymous with hearing someone refer the "the spirit", which is usually some earth-muffin construct.

I believe the Popes words were "Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

"As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny."

That according to the BBC.

I suspect that the average Atheist thinks he has much to learn about tyranny, especially against Jews. He only has to look at the History of the Church in the Middle Ages, and even up to 1870, with the case of Edgardo Mortara, for some real lessons on how to be "inclusive"

Does the man think we are stupid?

A few thoughts (some related to this article, others not so much)...

1) Some of these guys who claim "simplicity" in their own priesthood/episcopacy are kings (and queens?; tongue-in-cheek, wink-wink) of "secularism" and "relativism" themselves.
I've often heard the line, "if that's poverty/simplicity, what does celibacy/chastity look like?" How many "priests" (ahem, we're all Priest, Prophet & King) out there own BlackBerries, iPhones, fancy gizmos & gadgets that the "average Joe" could not, or ever, afford?? In their own way, all these guys are not "holier than thou". I know some holier lay folks than some of them. We're all called to "holiness". Don't claim to be something you aren't.

2) Along those lines....we have to look at a deeper question. I've been going back to some of the Philosophy I learned when I was in college at a midwestern Jesuit university. I often wonder if we live in a[n] (post-Christian) Existentialist society. I know the Catholic Church is not a real big "fan" of Existentialism, but when one takes a closer look at what it (Existentialism) is, it's not always a "secular" philosophy. Sure, there are some "secular" Existentialists (e.g., Sartre) and there are some theistic/religious Existentialists (Tillich, Kierkegaard). Personally, I'd be okay with a nice, solid, healthy Kierkegaardean Christian Existentialism. As much as I'm a fan of Existentialism, I don't think we live in a Cartesian ("I think, therefore I 'Am'") world, or at least I hope we don't. :/

But I'm not so sure (not that I know for sure either) if anyone really, truly knows what it really, truly means to be Christian. (I don't think it means equating sexual abuse to women's ordination---that's not very "Christian" to me.) Does it mean doing what Jesus did?
If so, then that means a few things:
-that we are all Jewish people in our own little way
-Infant Baptism is kind of "wrong"...it's very feudal...and I'm not looking at this from a Protestant viewpoint, but from a purely Jewish-Christian, "WWJD?" point of view. If Jesus was God (and I'm not so sure he was; maybe a Great Prophet?), then why was he baptized? Was it merely a ritual cleansing? Maybe Jesus did (looks both ways...) "sin"! Gasp! What is sin anyway? Maybe he was fully human...only.
-that we all should die via capital punishment (Crucifixion or otherwise) b/c that's how Jesus and (some) "Christians" died in the first few centuries.
As we all know, Christianity developed, and I think it is still developing.

I sometimes wonder if the Jewish people have it right? Maybe we Christians are "missing the boat" and not the good Jewish people?? If we say that Christianity has its "roots" in Judaism, then perhaps we should give Judaism a bit more credit? Just a thought.

3) IMO, it's dangerous for an institution (religious or seculuar) to "think", or claim, it's right about nearly everything....theologically, philosophically, politically, sexually(?), psychologically, etc. Maybe they aren't? Does anyone really know?

Finally, here are two quotes for the hierarchy to ponder (if they even read NCR, which, I'm sure, some do):
"Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation." -Henry Ward Beecher
"Make no judgements where you have no compassion." -Anne McCaffrey

P.S. for all of you out there....I'm not an Atheist, Secularist, Jewish, (A)Gnostic, etc. I am Catholic (universal?), I believe in an afterlife with God, I'm not perfect (no one is)...I have Faith in a person (God), but not, necessarily, an institution.

Fire away... ;)

The 65 000 who braved the chilly wind in Glasgow would have been as well going to the Bingo as attempting to decipher whatever Benedict was lecturing on this afternoon.

He certainly wasnt addressing them, his flock. He has all the warmth of a doken grub, the stare of an over-zealous librarian and as John Allen has inadvertantly pointed out above, you'd need to have a doctorate in theology, philosophy and the history of Ratzinger speeches to have the first iota of a clue as to what he was actually talking about.

Benedict, three hundred thousand people got tickets for your predecessor's Mass at the same venue in 1982. Knowing that you dont have his rock star attraction, the Bishops decided that one hundred thousand briefs would just about cover it this time. Only sixty five thousand turned up, many of them to see Susan 'Subo' Boyle.

Did you get the hint? Are you listening to God's people? The people gathered there know that pornography and money and alcohol do not bring them happiness. (Some of your priests dont, mind you.) They have already opted against secularism, atheism and all the other -isms you obsess about.

The empty spaces in Glasgow were not because people have rejected God. They were because they have rejected - you! You have chased out every prophetic voice from our midst - the prophetic voices St Paul encouraged in the very scripture reading you listened to today at Mass. You have crushed every charism out of God's people, every ounce of creativity, spontaneity, diversity, openness and sense of mission.

You continue to elevate mediocrity - yes, Benedict, mediocre, narrow minded, cardboard cut outs, who havent had an original thought since they were in dipers - to positions of authority in our Church.

You have turned orthodoxy into the pornography, money, materialism and alcohol of our time, - a God which cannot bring happiness.

No doubt over the next few days you will reach the hearts and minds of disaffected Anglicans, but today my heart broke for the thousands of Scottish Catholics who were missing, for the tens of thousands of British Catholics and for the millions of Catholics in America and around the world that you - not secularism or atheism or modernism or liberalism, that YOU have chased out of our Church.

May God forgive you because you clearly DO know what you are doing.

The Pope's comments on Nazism and atheism were actually quite shocking.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/?q=6111.4510.0.0

I AM NOT SO sure that Joseph Ratzinger is the esteem thinker, scholar and theologian that he is sometimes touted to be. Many things he says just don’t make sense or they don’t ring true.

Too, I have an uneasy feeling that "secularism" is a bogeyman term used by recent popes to attack obliquely anyone or institution that doesn't pay homage to the Vatican sphere of influence. Ditto for the term “relativism.”

Secularism, whatever that means, does not exist as a religion, ideology, political system, institution or even an anthropologically defined culture. It is not atheism, agnosticism or communism. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary refers to it as “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations.

The pope seems to refer to secularism as the absence of orientation to his religious sphere. He doesn’t criticize modern Turkey as a secularist state. I suspect the pope would prefer that to an Islamic theocracy.

Usually, the “secularist” term gets bandied about when the pope is referring to Western Europe and, at times, the United States.

Now the pope urged the U.K. not to forget “the Christian foundation” of its culture, which he said “underpins its freedoms.” Someone needs to ask him, what freedoms did Christianity encourage in the U.K?

It certainly wasn’t religious tolerance, as Catholics and Protestants alike killed each other for centuries in the U.K. It wasn’t the Magna Carta. It wasn’t democracy (the Catholic Church did not support democracy until the Second Vatican Council). It wasn’t freedom of the press or freedom of thought. It wasn’t suffrage. It wasn’t Freedom of Religion (the Catholic Church did not support that until the Second Vatican Council). It wasn't Freedom of Conscience (the Catholic Church did not support that until the Second Vatican Council. However, I’m not so sure it does today). It wasn’t freedom of the press, or freedom to read whatever one wants, or freedom of speech that Christianity supported. It was scientific enlightenment. Darwinian evolution had a difficult time due to opposition from Christianity.

So what freedom is the pope talking about?

The only freedom that Catholicism gave me was from the Second Vatican Council when I became liberated from the old Catholicism that some Catholics now want to bring back led by Joseph Ratzinger, the current pope.

No thank you!

To a fundamentalist all genuine pluralism or diversity is "relativism." As here, Benedict, as he has often said, wants Christianity to be privileged because it alone is true. Benedict also adheres to the myth of the given, the assumption that the traditional mores of one's culture are divinely ordained, e.g., the second class status of women or the "unnaturalness" of homosexuality. He demands that these things too be privileged in law, especially in nations like the UK where, he says, Christianity is the "foundation" of culture and therefore, supposedly, its "freedoms." Modern nations correctly reject such narrowly ethnocentric and outdated thinking.

You can't have both equality and liberty. That's the classic liberal lie.

Incongruously, His Holiness derides liberalism in one statement, yet espouses the balance of liberty and equality in another statement. Surely he is not channeling God at these speeches, unless God is also a classic liberal. I'm faithful that Benedict's bulls will have more wisdom than Ratzinger's bull.

The fallacy of classical liberalism was illustrated by de Toqueville many years ago: "But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom". I hope His Holiness will stop kowtowing to the politically correct notion of equality, and push for liberty instead.

I think that Benedict et al. are mistaken and imprecise to villanize "relativism."

It does not take much experience having empathy to realize that different people experience the same objective events differently in profound ways. Certainly an improved understanding of our own frames of reference and biases leads to a kinder, more forgiving world. When we become more aware of our relativism, this is felt as an awakening, as knowledge and wisdom. Certainly a lot of what is included under the umbrella of relativism is good and compatible with Christian ethics and thought.

If Catholics call "understanding" one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit of God, it is hard to imagine what the word could mean if it did not take relativism (personal and cultural) into account.

Benedict should say more precisely what he means so that he does not condemn the good aspects of relativism along with whatever aspects he wants to criticize.