Monday, April 21, 2008
Pope Benedict's remarks at youth rally
This was in my neck of the woods, St. Joseph's Seminary in the big YO on April the 19th on a lovely Saturday, would've loved to have gone but watched it on TV just the same. Closed-captioning is wonderful, it helps not just the hard of hearing but all of us. I was able to enjoy a fine cigar outside on the patio while reading Pope Benedict's inspiring words on the screen while looking through the window. One of his main messages to these young people was this era of moral confusion we live in and what he called "the manipulation of the mind" that produces this moral confusion. He did not mention the a-word (abortion) or any other specific word for that matter since he deliberately seems to have cultivated a pastoral style that goes to first principles in a generalized way in the hopes of making us more amenable to the Church's teachings, he wants to get beyond the NO-NO-NO part as he is fond of saying but we all know what he's talking about. One passage in particular struck me and he seems to have purposely evoked the Message of Fatima as his predecessor often did: "The second area of darkness - that which affects the mind - often goes unnoticed and for this reason is particularly sinister. The manipulation of truth distorts our perception of reality and tarnishes our imagination and aspirations...yet freedom is a delicate value. It can be misunderstood or misused so as to lead not to the happiness we all expect it to yield but to a dark arena of manipulation in which our understanding of self and the world becomes confused and distorted by those who have an ulterior agenda." It's as if this is Benedict's own theological explanation for part of the Message of Fatima wherein the Virgin Mary says to Lucia: "Look my child, don't be surprised if, at a certain moment, a certain diabolical disorientation affects the best of minds, a disequlibrium, so that they no longer judge according to the voice of my Son and of Peter." What better way to describe the times we now live in?
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Why doesn't it affect us all equally then, these manipulations of our minds?
ReplyDelete"those who have an ulterior agenda", now critics will say this smacks of conspiratorial thinking on no less than the Pope's part, Bilderberger meetings, the Insiders, the Network, the Invisible Government if you will, he didn't elaborate but population-controllers come readily to mind, Planned Parenthood's international reach and influence but as usual Benedict speaks in generalities and seems to prefer us to fill in the blanks.
ReplyDeleteGood question Beth, I think what he means is that if you're open to too many different points of view you become a relativist. He also brought up drugs at the youth rally, now we all know what drugs do. Conservatives have bedrock principles (or used to) so we're pretty much set in our ways...I hope he speaks on this again. On one TV show they even listed his e-mail or Vatican e-mail address or something, maybe we can ask him Beth more directly, eh?
ReplyDeleteIf the pope gave out his e-mail address, my guess is he's going to be getting a lot of e-mails of the complaining kind, why no women priests and such, best if we wait a while for those to die down before we send one in with a friendly question or two.
ReplyDeleteI remember debating Erik about what I think is the moral decay of our society, and he'd always argue about the terrible things done to people throughout history, slavery and the crusades for example, but I dunno, it just seems like there is a quest to secularize everything and make people think that the government is the answer to all their problems.
Make people dependent on the government, I think you hit the nail on the head, maybe this is the "ulterior agenda" of which Benedict speaks.
ReplyDeleteNow getting back to the BVM's statement to Lucy you can automatically sense it's controversial. First off it brings up the existence of the Devil which, to modern ears is anti-intellectual at best and second, the part about not judging according to "the voice of my Son and of Peter", this is hardly in keeping with ecumenism which pretty much treats all religions as the same.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you say to critics of Catholics who pray to Mary and the Saints when we should only pray to God through his Son Jesus?
ReplyDeleteThis is the thing Protestants have about us. I really don't pray all that much to the Saints but to Mary yes, very much. I don't see the big hangup on praying to Mary ("it ain't in the Bible, Sola Scriptura, it ain't in the Bible"). I've had debates with some of them about this and there's really nothing you can say to them, it's just one of those things.
ReplyDeleteHaving a relationship so to speak with Jesus' mother to me cannot be a bad thing, she comes to us through visionaries because she wants to show us she is here for us. At least that's my take.
ReplyDeleteBut first you have to get through the whole Purgatory thing with them and you go round and round in a circle on this one. Your take on Mary is my take too.
ReplyDeleteAs I've said John Paul II also alluded to the Fatima Message on several occasions as on May 13, 2000 during the beatification ceremony for Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the other two Fatima seers: "The Message of Fatima is a call to conversion alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the dragon whose tail swept down a third of the stars of Heaven and cast them to the earth (Rev. 12:3-4)", "stars of Heaven" being interpreted by many theologians of Catholic prophecy as clergy, might this refer to the recent clergy sex abuse scandal of which Benedict has spoken often during his pilgrimmage here?
ReplyDelete