Thursday, February 7, 2008

Pope Benedict XVI on Church, State, and Elections

Okay, there's more than one reason why Pope Benedict XVI is the coolest guy on the planet!

As you all know, Super Tuesday was this week and many people made it out to vote. Now we're only months away from the election of a new president who is sure to be nominating a new supreme court justice. This is the time to remember to protect life and family and to reject that which is intrinsically evil (like abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and homosexual marraige).

I could type for days on this, but I'll let Pope Benedict XVI get some words in:

“As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable."

The pope then talks about the intrinsically evil actions I mentioned above and the principles which are fundamentally opposed to them. Moving on, he writes:

"These principles are not truths of faith, even though they receive further light and confirmation from faith; they are inscribed in human nature itself and therefore they are common to all humanity. The Church’s action in promoting them is therefore not confessional in character, but is addressed to all people, prescinding from any religious affiliation they may have. On the contrary, such action is all the more necessary the more these principles are denied or misunderstood, because this constitutes an offence against the truth of the human person, a grave wound inflicted onto justice itself.”

This last quote hits it on the head: Catholics who reject pro-choice politicians do so not for "confessional" reasons but for the reason that abortion goes against human nature. While the Faith rejects these things as intrinsically evil, it does so in part because these things can be known to be evil through the use of human reason alone without divine revelation.

We live in a war between two views of the human person: Christianity holds the highest view, atheist humanism holds the lowest. With Christ, atheist humanism does't have a chance - we need to remember that, fear not, and fight for the truth!

Viva Benedict XVI!

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