Pope Fails First Written Test
Posted by Anon at 15:47, 26 Jan 2006In his first Encyclical to the Christian world, Pope Benedict XVI, an intelligent man judging by the litany of degrees following his title, misses the mark of his intention to “call forth in the world renewed energy and commitment in the human response to God's love” because he deliberately sends a mixed and conflicting message throughout the two part missive. I use the word ‘deliberately’ based on his academic background and the assumption that he knows what he’s doing when writing an encyclical to the world.
His agenda, I believe, is two-fold. Preach love because it is the requisite thing for a pope to do, while protecting self-interests (the Church’s wealth and power). He kicks off his dialectic of purposeful obfuscation by backpedaling with an apologetic paragraph about semantics. “ . . .we immediately find ourselves hampered by a problem of language. Today, the term “love” has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings.” He never recovers from this weak first parry although he dutifully belabors Eros and agape for several more paragraphs.
How can the pope lose by quoting the Bible, the subservient Catholic would be inclined to think. Benedict loses by pitting conflicting biblical quotes against each other and expecting the reader to remain unphased by the conundrum. He says that the Catholic Church has a duty through its charitable work to influence political leaders to ease suffering and promote justice; while at the same time he rejects the theology which holds that criticizing the oppression of the poor and marginalized should be central to Christian theology.
Benedict conceded that Marxist models of dealing with injustice by trying to provide for social needs did help the poor, which he claims the Liberation theology is based upon, but he feels Marxism was a failed experiment because it could not respond to every human need. Does religion respond to every human need and, if not, is it a failed experiment? How is this entrapping logic not a purposeful dichotomy.
How if “love is free; it is not practiced as a way of achieving other ends” does Benedict justify the influencing of political leaders?
“God is love” yet “God is sometimes associated with vengeance” – mixed messages don’t win converts. If I had to grade his inaugural papal attempt at persuasiveness and clarity: F
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Comments
24 June 2004
4 years 35 weeks
Hi Anon,
I was interested to read the words of the new pope and interested to hear also that JP2 wrote most of it.
It always amuses me when the Vatican preaches love of one's fellow man and charity to the poor when the pope is the very person who keeps so many millions of people enslaved to the church.
If Benedict really wanted to spread love and charity he would announce that birth control is now accepted within the Catholic Church and see the ensuing happiness amongst the world's poorest people when they realise that they can now limit their families.
As far as politics and the Catholic Church goes, the Vatican has always interfered in world politics.
Benedict is being mealy-mouthed in making utterances that have no bearing on reality.
shadows
22 November 2004
2 weeks 13 hours
Marxism claims noble intentions, but there is not a single case where a marxist government has not ended as a simple tyranny, and quickly.
You can grade the pope, I can grade you Anon, just based on your remarks on Marxism: F-
Lets hear it for free speech.
4 May 2004
4 years 28 weeks
However, unless English is your second or third language (re: today’s article about how our native language affects how we perceive reality – and whether speakers of different languages might therefore see the world differently) or you are an albino monk henchman serving papal interests on the internet, it seems you’re simply itching for a counter-parry here.
I’ll take your F- if you can explain to me how referencing Marxism means a person wholeheartedly indorses the philosophy. Your Marxism-generated angst may be warranted, you seem to know more about that philosophy than I do; however, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s an on-going grand experiment designed to have democracy result in simple tyranny – it’s just taking a little more time because the orchestraters have learned from their past mistakes.
If you are of the Opus Dei persuasion, you already know that the pope bears close watching. Seven years ago the cardinal was one of the founding board members of a little known Swiss ecumenical foundation. The charter members of the board were all well-known international religious figures, except for Neil Bush and his close friend and business partner, Jamal Daniel, whose family has extensive holdings in the United States and Switzerland, public records show.
The Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1999 to promote ecumenical understanding and publish original religious texts, however Ratzinger spent his time on the board trying to bury the Vatican's massive pedophilia scandal, according to the London Observer.
In a secret 2001 letter, he ordered Church officials to prevent police from learning about abuse allegations -- a theological innovation more commonly known in the United States as "obstructing justice." Given this criminal high-wire act, perhaps the good cardinal thought it prudent to cultivate some personal ties with a presidential sibling.
Whatever they were up to in Switzerland, Ratzinger repaid their camaraderie with a decisive intervention in brother George's 2004 election, issuing a fatwa that essentially condemned any Catholic voting for John Kerry to eternal hellfire. With the Vatican's iron hand on the scales, Bush reaped an extra six percent of the Catholic vote -- a huge boost in a tight race.
24 June 2004
4 years 35 weeks
Well done.
shadows
22 November 2004
2 weeks 13 hours
I was saying that your comments on Ratzingers comments on Marxism are wrong - he said that Marxism is a failed experiment, and he is correct.
And I do insist that I can critique you, just as you can critique the pope. Or me.
Your particular comments on Marxism do deserver the F-, i'm sorry.
24 June 2004
4 years 35 weeks
Marxism has not worked in the past does not mean it could not work in the future.
shadows
22 November 2004
2 weeks 13 hours
Marxism has NEVER worked, with many many attempts. We should give up on it.
It also blissfully ignores realities, pretending that markets do not exist, and that people will be uniformly altruistic.
Marxism is just an excuse for totalitarian governments, it is no better than facism.