Some Papal Sound Bites

Relativism

In his recent book, God's Choice, George Weigel comments on the expression, "dictatorship of relativism," which Pope Benedict XVI deplored in his homily at the Mass that preceded the conclave that elected him Pope. Weigel notes that relativism means "there is only "your truth" and "my truth", and nothing we can understand as "the truth". "If we are the only measure of ourselves, if I am the only measure of me, then the horizon of aspirations has been drastically foreshortened. And, the spiritual boredom that comes from self-absorption and ultramundane aspirations can be lethal to a culture, no matter how materially wealthy it is."

The Holy Father said, "Today, having a clear faith based on the creed of the Church is labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine" (Ephesians 4:14), seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's ego and desires. We, however, must have a different goal, the Son of God, the true Man. He is the measure of true humanism. An adult faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty. A mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from the truth."

Conscience

One of the many confusions in our modern world, and sometimes also among Christians, arises from a misunderstanding and misuse of an appeal "to conscience". In his great encyclical letter The Splendor of Truth, Pope John Paul II addressed some elements of this issue. "In the case of a correct conscience, it is a question of the objective truth received by man. In the case of an erroneous conscience, it is a question of what man mistakenly, subjectively considers to be true. It is never acceptable to confuse a subjective error about moral good with the objective truth rationally proposed to man in virtue of his end or to make a moral value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience equivalent to the moral value of an act performed by following the judgment of an erroneous conscience. It is possible that the evil done as a result of invincible ignorance or a non-culpable error of judgment may not be imputable to the agent, but even in this case it does not cease to be evil, a disorder in relation to the truth about the good."

Commenting on that encyclical of his predecessor, our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, says, "We must rediscover the authentic meaning of conscience. In order to do this we must overcome modern subjectivism. For modernity the realm of religion and morality has been confined to the subjective sphere, since there is no trace of objective religion or morality in an evolutionistic conception. Religion and morality are reduced to complete subjectivism. Beyond the subject, no roads or further horizons open up. The ultimate competence of the subject, who cannot transcend himself and remains closed within himself, is thus expressed in a certain conception of conscience, according to which man is the measure of himself. As much as he might make use of aids and criteria outside himself, in reality his subjective conscience is what has the last and decisive word. The subject thus becomes really autonomous, but in a dark and terrible way, because he lacks the light that could really give his subjectivity value. This conception of the self-enclosed subject who is the ultimate criterion of judgment can only be overcome by the classical conception of conscience, which expresses, on the contrary, the human being's openness to divine light, to the voice of the Other, to the language of being, to the eternal Logos (Word) perceptible in the subject's very interior. It seems to me, then, that it is necessary to return to this vision of the human being as openness to the infinite, in whom the infinite light shines through and speaks."

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