Knitting a Conundrum

Pope Benedict said something that, although addressed to Europe, is something all folks might want to consider:

Is it not a cause for surprise that today’s Europe, while striving to position itself as a community of values, seems more often to contest the idea that there are universal and absolute values? Does not this remarkable form of “apostasy” from itself, even before [apostasy] from God, perhaps induce it to doubt its very identity?

This ends in the spread of the conviction that the “weighing of benefits” is the only method of moral discernment, and that the common good is synonymous with compromise. In reality, if compromise can constitute a legitimate balancing of different particular interests, it becomes a shared ill whenever it involves agreements that are harmful to the nature of man.

A community that constructs itself without respect for the authentic dignity of the human person, forgetting that every person is created in the image of God, ends up by not being good for anyone. (source)

And this is the post modern world we are entering...when weighing the benefits becomes the only real criteria, man is reduced to a cost/benefits formula and loses much more than he gains...and the attack on the value of the individual, as a thing worthwhile in and of his or her own self becomes meaningless. Just another part of the machine, not a child of God to be respected for at least that reason alone. And the world is made poorer.

Labels: Values