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All the World's Woes

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K-Mac

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http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3935043

"We must do all we can to overcome suffering, but to banish it from the world is not in our power," Benedict wrote. "Only God is able to do this."

Then why doesn't He?

He also cannot heal amputees. So when fighting a war he failed to prevent, make sure you don't get any limbs blown off.

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<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3935043" target="_blank">http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3935043</a>

"We must do all we can to overcome suffering, but to banish it from the world is not in our power," Benedict wrote. "Only God is able to do this."

Then why doesn't He?

Overcome suffering? I thought suffering was good for us. Why are they trying to overcome it.?

Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized modern-day atheism in a major document released today, saying it had led to some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" ever known to mankind.

Whew, if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black.

Edited by KendallJ
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"Saved by Hope" is a deeply theological exploration of Christian hope in the afterlife - that in the suffering and misery of daily life, Christianity provides the faithful with a "journey of hope" to the Kingdom of God.

"We must do all we can to overcome suffering, but to banish it from the world is not in our power," Benedict wrote. "Only God is able to do this."

In the 76-page document, Benedict elaborates on how the Christian understanding of hope had changed in the modern age, when man sought to relieve the suffering and injustice around him. Benedict points to two historical upheavals: the French Revolution and the proletarian revolution instigated by Karl Marx.

Benedict sharply criticizes Marx and the 19th and 20th century atheism spawned by his revolution, although he acknowledges that both were responding to the deep injustices of the time.

"A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God," he wrote. But he said the idea that man can do what God cannot by creating a new salvation on Earth was "both presumptuous and intrinsically false."

"It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice," he wrote. "A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope."

So, essentially he saying that Marx is right, but hope on this earth is impossible without God, so these revolutions were wrong because they replaced God with something else.

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So, essentially he saying that Marx is right, but hope on this earth is impossible without God

As I recall, the Catholic Church has (or had) a significant problem with its South American nuns and priests going native and becoming Marxists.

JJM

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Am I correct in thinking that he implies that God must be either indifferent or malevolent?

Benedict sharply criticizes Marx and the 19th and 20th century atheism spawned by his revolution, although he acknowledges that both were responding to the deep injustices of the time.

"A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God," he wrote.

If a world marked by that much injustice cannot be the work of a good God, yet the world was marked by that much injustice, doesn't that logically mean that God is not good? It seems so, unless you consider the possibility that God does not exist. Or, if he exists, the world was not the work of God. But since he is the Pope and just blasted Atheism in the same document I think it is safe to say he is assuming that much.

So...According to the pope, god is not good?

*smirk*

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Actually, that quote from the encyclical is not the pope's own view. He is explaining the view of the atheists. Here is his fuller explanation of the atheist argument:

A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope.

See section 43 for more.

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"A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God," he wrote.

Here is the full context of that statement:

The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world.

Benedict was not making the claim, he was asserting that athiests make such claims.

He explains justice here:

God has given himself an “image”: in Christ who was made man. In him who was crucified, the denial of false images of God is taken to an extreme. God now reveals his true face in the figure of the sufferer who shares man's God-forsaken condition by taking it upon himself. This innocent sufferer has attained the certitude of hope: there is a God, and God can create justice in a way that we cannot conceive, yet we can begin to grasp it through faith. Yes, there is a resurrection of the flesh.33 There is justice.34 There is an “undoing” of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgement is first and foremost hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfilment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ's return and for new life become fully convincing.

God created for man a paradise, dont cha know, Adam blew it for all of us. Sin, evil, suffering, death are the results of Adams actions not God's design---as to how the actions of one man could alter God's design...never mind that. Any injustices in this life will be swept away in the next. God's justice, while absent here on earth, has eternal power.

As to his thoughts on communism and why it leads to cruelty and injustice, he says:

Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last for ever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined—good—state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.

I think that he actually sums it up pretty well here.

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I think that he actually sums it up pretty well here.
In that paragraph you quoted, when he refers to "freedom", he means volition, as in "free will". Re-phrased with the right terms, it is pretty close to what an Objectivist would say.

Since man [has free will] and [can easily choose evil], [a good society] will never be [everlastingly and unshakably] established in this world [except by constantly convincing men of the good]. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last for ever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human [volition]. [Men, by their free-will] must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined—good—state of the world, man's [free-will] would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.

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To their credit, the Catholic Church has been consistantly opposed to Communism over the years. I suspect, however, that the church is more opposed to their atheism than their ideology. That would explain how it is that the church lives with the contradiction of embracing virtually every welfare-state program while condemning outright communism.

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