tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7343546954225003627.post2187844912068343922..comments2024-02-02T02:32:58.560-06:00Comments on Opinionated Catholic: “Without justice – what else is the State but a great band of robbers?”, Pope Benedict to German Parliament (Full Text)James Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00406049343115557137noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7343546954225003627.post-76371839949375082912011-09-23T09:31:17.341-05:002011-09-23T09:31:17.341-05:00Actually, it gets better than that. Did you catch...Actually, it gets better than that. Did you catch this:<br /><br /><i><br />"Where positivist reason considers itself the only sufficient culture and banishes all other cultural realities to the status of subcultures, it diminishes man, indeed it threatens his humanity. I say this with Europe specifically in mind, where there are concerted efforts to recognize only positivism as a common culture and a common basis for law-making, so that all the other insights and values of our culture are reduced to the level of subculture, with the result that Europe vis-à-vis other world cultures is left in a state of culturelessness and at the same time extremist and radical movements emerge to fill the vacuum. In its self-proclaimed exclusivity, <b>the positivist reason which recognizes nothing beyond mere functionality resembles a concrete bunker with no windows, in which we ourselves provide lighting and atmospheric conditions, being no longer willing to obtain either from God’s wide world</b>. And yet we cannot hide from ourselves the fact that even in this artificial world, we are still covertly drawing upon God’s raw materials, which we refashion into our own products. The windows must be flung open again, we must see the wide world, the sky and the earth once more and learn to make proper use of all this."<br /></i><br /><br />Positivism -- that is, secular humanism -- as a "concrete bunker with no windows." And Papa Benny is saying this literally footsteps from a more infamous concrete bunker -- the one under the Reichkanzleri -- that was destroyed in 1945.<br /><br />You can bet your boots that the MPs in the Bundestag understood that reference!<br /><br />I love Papa Benny!<br /><br />That money quote in the original: "Die sich exklusiv gebende positivistische Vernunft, die über das Funktionieren hinaus nichts wahrnehmen kann, gleicht den Betonbauten ohne Fenster, in denen wir uns Klima und Licht selber geben, beides nicht mehr aus der weiten Welt Gottes beziehen wollen."HV Observernoreply@blogger.com