Pope Benedict XVI on Relativism

Posted by: Good Samaritan
on April 19, 2005 @ 02:02 PM EST

Some of Benedict XVI's (formerly Cardinal Ratzinger's) positions are too conservative for me, but I like this:

Benedict XVI, however, has been critical of progressive Catholicism. In a homily delivered at Monday's Eligendo Summo Pontifice Mass before the cardinals began the conclave, he warned against "relativism, which is letting oneself be 'swept along by every wind of teaching.' (It) looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism, which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."

Quite so. The philosophical materialism which is widespread in our day, popularized by association with the advance of science, compels the denial of free will and ethics. While it is impossible to suppress our awareness that free will and ethics are real (propositions for which we have introspective evidence), materialism leads people to feel that their moral impulses are merely psychological and they are free to discard them. In the haunting, prophetic words attributed to Dostoyevsky, "if God does not exist, then everything is permitted." Lenin and Stalin shortly proved him right.

My take on truth and relativism here.

Congratulations to Benedict XVI and to the Church. The battle is joined. The most important battle of all.

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