Word: benedict
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Defeated, Marxism is no longer the incarnation of evil in our midst, but rather the perfect (vanquished) foil in Benedict's ongoing intellectually driven sermon that Christian faith is history's only true answer. But the Pope is not ready to declare victory. The Church's current foe, as he sees it, is still in the heart of Europe and still atheist in nature: a sort of post-Socialist, anything-goes brand of Utopia that Benedict calls "relativism" - and disparages as the root of everything from loose sexual mores to a breakdown of the traditional family to runaway capitalism...
...Benedict traces relativism back to 16th-century English philosopher Francis Bacon and his godless idea of "faith in progress." In Benedict's reading of history, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution that followed paved the way for Marx; his ideology may have eventually been discarded but his influence still lingers in modernity?s false hope of life without suffering. "We can try to limit suffering, to fight against it, but we cannot eliminate it," Benedict writes. "It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort...
About midway through his sharply written and widely referenced 73-page encyclical released on Friday, Benedict takes his first shots at Marxism (he has attacked it before, in his first encyclical written in December 2005), which he argues was doomed from the moment it triumphed in Russia in 1917. "Together with the victory of the revolution, Marx's fundamental error also became evident. He showed precisely how to overthrow the existing order, but he did not say how matters should proceed thereafter. He simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power...
...Benedict argues that Marx was flawed, above all, because he misunderstood the human condition. "He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favorable economic environment...
Still, even while expounding on the shortcomings of Marx's theories, Benedict goes out of his way to laud the philosopher for his "incisive language and intellect... precision and great analytic skill." Indeed it may be the final nail in the coffin for Communist ideology that the head of the Catholic Church feels safe in giving Marx his props as a great thinker. Swiss-born Cardinal George Cottier, a prominent Vatican theologian, who presented the encyclical to the Rome press corps, smiled as one reporter asked about the kind words. "Yes, I was surprised by the Holy Father's almost...