Notes on Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures by Pope Benedict XVI
INTRO
2 Theses:
1. Unity between Science and Scripture2. Separation between the sphere of scientific research and the sphere of religious salvation
- They carry a price that we are paying today above all: marginalization, the triumph of subjectivity, and the imprisonment of the divine, of the sacred, and of God in a ghetto.
- Enlightenment gives us the principle of free speech that has Christian origin; we are made in the image and likeness of God but later has a great advance that resulted in problems that are difficult to solve- abortion and bioethics
- Proposal outside the Church: Even one who does not succeed in finding the path to accept the existence of God ought nevertheless to live and to direct one's life as if God did indeed exist
- God is the fundamental act of Christian existence
- This is a wager: the stake we invest in our own commitment, and the winnings are our salvation
- Enlightenment gives us the principle of free speech that has Christian origin; we are made in the image and likeness of God but later has a great advance that resulted in problems that are difficult to solve- abortion and bioethics
- Proposal outside the Church: Even one who does not succeed in finding the path to accept the existence of God ought nevertheless to live and to direct one's life as if God did indeed exist
- God is the fundamental act of Christian existence
- This is a wager: the stake we invest in our own commitment, and the winnings are our salvation
REFLECTIONS ON CULTURES THAT ARE IN CONFLICT TODAY
- Possibilities of self-manipulation-he has investigated the farthest recesses of his being and now he is able to construct man on his own. This means he enters the world, no longer as a gift of the Creator, but as a product of our activity
- The image of God no longer shines upon this man, his splendor is the power of human capabilities.
- The true and gravest danger of the present moment is precisely this imbalance between technological possibilities and moral energy
- Since morality belongs to a different sphere, it disappears as a specific category, nowadays, morality is based on calculations
- In this way, the category of good vanishes
- Its starting point is that liberty is a fundamental value and the criterion of everything else: the freedom of choice of any kind
- The problem of the culture of enlightenment and secularism
- The image of God no longer shines upon this man, his splendor is the power of human capabilities.
- The true and gravest danger of the present moment is precisely this imbalance between technological possibilities and moral energy
- Since morality belongs to a different sphere, it disappears as a specific category, nowadays, morality is based on calculations
- In this way, the category of good vanishes
- Its starting point is that liberty is a fundamental value and the criterion of everything else: the freedom of choice of any kind
- The problem of the culture of enlightenment and secularism
SIGNIFICANCE & LIMITS OF TODAY'S RATIONALISTIC CULTURE
- Man's knowledge on building things even bad, makes them build them for it is something demanded by his own liberty.
- Man's self-authorization
- The real antagonism typical of today's world is not that between diverse religious cultures; rather, it is the antagonism between the radical emancipation of man from God, from the roots of life, on the one hand, and the great religious cultures, on the other.
- The refusal to refer to God in the Constitution is not the expression of a tolerance that wishes to protect the non- theistic religions, rather it it the expression of a consciousness that would like to see God eradicated once and for all from the public life of humanity and shut up in the subjective sphere of cultural residues from the past.
- Thus, relativism begun that becomes dogmatism that believes itself in possession of the definitive knowledge of human reason
- This means that we have need of roots if we are to survive and that we must not lose sight of God if we do not want human dignity to disappear.
- Man's self-authorization
- The real antagonism typical of today's world is not that between diverse religious cultures; rather, it is the antagonism between the radical emancipation of man from God, from the roots of life, on the one hand, and the great religious cultures, on the other.
- The refusal to refer to God in the Constitution is not the expression of a tolerance that wishes to protect the non- theistic religions, rather it it the expression of a consciousness that would like to see God eradicated once and for all from the public life of humanity and shut up in the subjective sphere of cultural residues from the past.
- Thus, relativism begun that becomes dogmatism that believes itself in possession of the definitive knowledge of human reason
- This means that we have need of roots if we are to survive and that we must not lose sight of God if we do not want human dignity to disappear.
