Pope Benedict is carrying on the great work carried by Pope John Paul II.
A new work, published recently, called 'Saved by Hope' addresses many of the issues peculiar to atheists and communists.
The sad truth is, although well meaning, many atheists do substantial harm to themselves and others.
An article is in the comments section.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
A Christian Message Of Salvation
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Atheism is cruel, says the Pope
from news.com.au
POPE Benedict XVI strongly criticised modern-day atheism in a major document, saying it had led to some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" ever known to mankind.
In his second encyclical, Benedict also critically questioned modern Christianity, saying its focus on individual salvation had ignored Jesus's message that true Christian hope involves salvation for all.
Saved By Hope is a deeply theological exploration of Christian hope in the afterlife: that in the suffering and misery of daily life, Christianity provides the faithful with a "journey of hope" to the "Kingdom of God".
"We must do all we can to overcome suffering, but to banish it from the world is not in our power," Benedict wrote. "Only God is able to do this."
In the 76-page document, Benedict elaborates how the Christian understanding of hope had changed in the modern age, when man sought to relieve the suffering and injustice around him. Benedict points to two great historical upheavals: the French Revolution and the proletarian revolution instigated by Karl Marx.
Benedict sharply criticises Marx and the 19th and 20th century atheism spawned by his revolution, although he acknowledges that both were responding to the deep injustices of the time.
"A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God," he wrote.
But he said the idea that man can do what God can not by creating a new salvation on Earth was "both presumptuous and intrinsically false". He wrote: "It is no accident this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice.
"A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope."
He specifically cited Lenin and the "intermediate phase" of dictatorship that Marx saw as necessary in the revolution.
"This 'intermediate phase' we know all too well, and we also know how it then developed, not ushering in a perfect world, but leaving behind a trail of appalling destruction," Benedict wrote.
At the same time, Benedict also looks critically at the way modern Christianity had responded to the times, saying such a "self-critique" was also necessary.
"We must acknowledge that modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has, to a large extent, restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation," he wrote.
"In doing so, it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognise the greatness of its task."
Saved By Hope, which Benedict largely penned this past northern summer while on vacation, follows his first encyclical, God Is Love, released last year.
How am I harming myself? And how am I harming others?
I think you'll find the Pope stance on birth control to be more harmful than anything I've managed.
Not understanding does not suggest that it follows you are in the right.
The atheist position has it as dogma that 'religion is responsible for all wars' and that 'religion is the triumph of the irrational.'
However, while the dogma might be asserted, the most facile of investigations unearth how the dogma is not true. Maybe I'll analyze that for you some time.
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The Pope's position on birth control is legitimate. You might not agree with it. The position is not a threat to anyone living, but those that wish to have authority over life and death find it inconvenient.
Column - Be sad for Jessica’s lost life
from Andrew Bolt
LACHLAN de Crespigny has at last outed himself as the doctor who killed baby Jessica. Yet even after seven years he doesn’t seem to understand quite what he did.
It was de Crespigny, an obstetrician and associate professor, who told a mother from a very different culture that the child she was carrying could be a dwarf.
The woman was deeply superstitious and, it seems, not mentally strong. She believed giving birth to a dwarf would bring her terrible luck and was so distraught that she threatened suicide if the girl was not aborted.
But the girl, later named Jessica, was already 32 weeks old in the womb, and healthy. She could have been born alive and adopted out.
Instead, de Crespigny injected Jessica’s heart with potassium chloride, and two minutes later she was dead. And then this: when the baby’s body was expelled, a nurse noted, with apparent surprise, “On delivery, the baby doesn’t look small.”
This, I thought, was a killing so shocking that it would give worry even passionate defenders of abortion.
After all, didn’t this girl, fully formed, have a right to her life? Was enough done to save her, or at least check she was really a dwarf?
It’s true the Royal Women’s Hospital has since held an inquiry, although almost all the findings have been kept from the public.
It’s also true the State Government has since promised to change the laws so anyone killing a late-term baby as de Crespigny did will have no legal process to fear.
That cannot be the right reaction of a healthy society. Jessica surely deserves a better memorial.
How quickly people have averted their eyes from this central fact of this tragedy: that a baby was deliberately killed, a couple of weeks from birth.
I see that same averting of gaze from not just de Crespigny but the Age reporter to whom he gave his story.
She wrote: “But he is conscious of the fact that, in speaking out, he risks adding to the distress of the woman, the biggest victim of all.
“Eight years on, his blues eyes are still filled with sadness - not because he regrets helping the woman, but because of all the things that happened afterward.”
Actually, the biggest victim of all was not the mother, or de Crespigny. It was the girl, Jessica. She was killed. And if blue eyes must fill with sadness, let them fill with sadness for her.
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