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TechnoratiPope Benedict XVI has strongly criticized atheism and blamed it for bringing about the ”greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” ever known in history.
In the second encyclical of his papacy, the head of the world’s one billion Catholics also criticized modern-day Christianity, saying its focus on individual salvation had ignored Jesus' message that true Christian hope involves salvation for all.
In the 76-page document titled ”Spe Salvi,“ or “Saved by Hope,” Benedict said that many people rejected religious faith because they no longer found the prospect of an eternal after-life attractive.
Instead, they had put their faith in human reason and freedom in the hope that the "kingdom of man" would emerge.
In his scholarly analysis, the 81-year-old pontiff said that these ideas had originated during two periods of political upheaval – the French and Communist revolutions.
While Benedict came down heavily on Karl Marx and the 19th and 20th century atheism spawned by his revolution, the pope acknowledged that both were responding to the deep injustices of the time.
Marxism, Benedict wrote, had left behind "a trail of appalling destruction" because it failed to realize that man could not be "merely the product of economic conditions." For man to be redeemed, he also needs God's unconditional love.
"It is no accident that this idea (Marxism/Atheism) has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice, rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim", he wrote. "A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope."
Benedict also cited Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, and the "intermediate phase" of dictatorship that Marx saw as necessary in the revolution.
"This 'intermediate phase' we know all too well, and we also know how it then developed, not ushering in a perfect world, but leaving behind a trail of appalling destruction," the pope wrote.
Commenting on the pope’s latest encyclical, Monsignor Robert Wister, professor of church history at Seton Hall University in the United States, explained that the pope's concern “is that you have secularizing forces that are trying to eliminate religion from public and private life."
"In most countries, political Marxism is dead [but] philosophical Marxism is very much alive and it fuels the secularizing philosophy often seen in Europe and North America," Wister said, according to the Associated Press.
At the same time, Benedict also looked critically at the way modern Christianity had responded to the times, saying such a "self-critique" was also necessary.
"We must acknowledge that modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation," the pope wrote. "In doing so, it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognize sufficiently the greatness of its task."
The Christian concept of hope and salvation, the pontiff stated, was not always so individual-centric.
Quoting scripture and theologians, Benedict said salvation had in the earlier church been considered "communal" — illustrating his point by using the case of monks in the Middle Ages who cloistered themselves in prayer not just for their own salvation but for that of others. Continue »
