Sunday, November 21, 2004
When the Established Religion is Secularism....
In an interview with the newspaper La Reppublica, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that "there is an aggressive secular ideology which is worrying."
"In Sweden," he said, "a Protestant pastor who had preached about homosexuality, based on a line from Scriptures, went to jail for one month. Laicism is no longer that element of neutrality which opens up spaces of freedom for all."
"It is being transformed into an ideology which is imposed through politics and which does not give public space to the Catholic or Christian vision, which runs the risk of becoming something purely private and thus disfigured," he added.
"In this sense, a struggle exists and we must defend religious freedom against the imposition of an ideology which is presented as if it were the only voice of rationality, when it is only the expression of a 'certain' rationalism," the cardinal clarified.
Following are excerpts from the interview, reported by the Vatican Information Service.
Q: For you, what is laicism?
Cardinal Ratzinger: A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.
Q: Where is God in modern society?
Cardinal Ratzinger: He has been put on the sidelines. In political life, it seems almost indecent to speak of God, as if it were an attack on the freedom of those who do not believe.
The world of politics follows its norms and paths, excluding God as something that does not belong to this world. The same in the world of business, the economy, and private life. God remains marginalized.
To me, its seems necessary to rediscover -- and the energy to do so exists -- that even the political and economic spheres need moral responsibility, a responsibility that is born in man's heart and, in the end, has to do with the presence or absence of God.
A society in which God is completely absent self-destructs. We saw this in the great totalitarian regimes of the last century.
In an interview with the newspaper La Reppublica, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that "there is an aggressive secular ideology which is worrying."
"In Sweden," he said, "a Protestant pastor who had preached about homosexuality, based on a line from Scriptures, went to jail for one month. Laicism is no longer that element of neutrality which opens up spaces of freedom for all."
"It is being transformed into an ideology which is imposed through politics and which does not give public space to the Catholic or Christian vision, which runs the risk of becoming something purely private and thus disfigured," he added.
"In this sense, a struggle exists and we must defend religious freedom against the imposition of an ideology which is presented as if it were the only voice of rationality, when it is only the expression of a 'certain' rationalism," the cardinal clarified.
Following are excerpts from the interview, reported by the Vatican Information Service.
Q: For you, what is laicism?
Cardinal Ratzinger: A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.
Q: Where is God in modern society?
Cardinal Ratzinger: He has been put on the sidelines. In political life, it seems almost indecent to speak of God, as if it were an attack on the freedom of those who do not believe.
The world of politics follows its norms and paths, excluding God as something that does not belong to this world. The same in the world of business, the economy, and private life. God remains marginalized.
To me, its seems necessary to rediscover -- and the energy to do so exists -- that even the political and economic spheres need moral responsibility, a responsibility that is born in man's heart and, in the end, has to do with the presence or absence of God.
A society in which God is completely absent self-destructs. We saw this in the great totalitarian regimes of the last century.
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