My post defending the Catholic Church from allegations of injustice is so far the most popular post in this blog. Like any blogger, I am flattered of course by the attention, but at the same time, I believe that the comments were made by people inflamed by the encyclical Spe Salvi, released last November 30, where Pope Benedict XVI made some comments about atheism. I pasted the controversial portion below:
The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world’s suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world.
Understandably, atheists were offended by this remark, after all, no one killed anyone in the name of atheism. And I agree. Atheism is not an ideology or a religion, it is merely a denial. The terms simply describes the denial of faith in a higher being. In this case, the Pope states that the denial of faith is the beginning of a slippery slope where men seek to fill the void with their own contraptions. The immensity of this task, not to mention the denial of the Christian moral code, provides justification for the worst excesses.
Reading the passage, I don’t see the Pope referring to Benj and saying that he’s going to be a mass murderer. Rather, I see it merely as a call to the faithful to well, remain faithful. The passage condemns Communism, an ideology that is atheistic by nature, and this atheism as well as the sense of purpose of belonging to the leading wave of history, plunged billions of people into a miasma of atrocities.
However, despite this, I don’t think that the Catholic Church will stop in its opposition to secularism and atheism, as these ideas chip away at its moral foundation. That will defeat the very purpose of its existence.
No Comments Yet
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
