Vatican aide says Europe squeezing out God

[sr_pacifica]

ROME - Freedom of religion is being threatened in Europe by an aggressive secularism which has made the mention of God “almost indecent,� a top adviser to Pope John Paul said in an interview published on Friday.

“We have gone from a Christian culture to an aggressive secularism with intolerant traits,� Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told la Repubblica daily.

“It has started to become an ideology which imposes itself through politics and does not cede public space to the Catholic and Christian vision,� said the powerful head of the Vatican department in charge of safeguarding and interpreting doctrine.

“A struggle exists and we must defend the freedom of religion against the imposition of an ideology that presents itself as the only voice of reason,� the German cardinal added.

<snip>

“In the political sphere it seems almost indecent to talk about God, almost as though it were an attack on the freedom of those who don’t believe,� Ratzinger said in the interview.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6530603/

All I could think of when I read this was how the the country where it is definitely "decent" to talk about God---the U.S.---is the one country that has aggressively pursued war against Iraq, yet Europe, for the most part, has opposed the war. When it comes to morality, which area of the world is practicing what are supposed to be "christian" values? Apparently, the secularists.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. And this is a PROBLEM? Oy!

[schultzee]

29. The Catholic Church would love to see feudalism restored so it

can reagain its lost power, but what they don't know is that the fundi's think Catholics are pagan papists and won't share. We don't need any Cheneying religions in our government.

[3days]

2. I thought this was a midirected Porn investigation post

[BeyondThePale]

3. Good.

About time. Maybe we could try squeezing out God in the good old U-S-of-A.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. Considering Europe's long, bloody history...

of the dangerous mix of religion and politics, I'd say they were being damn smart!

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

5. I don't think they are squeezing out God ...

I think Europeans don't wear their religion on their sleeves like Americans do . Its more of an issue to each individual , kept private . But then again that starts the whole debate of God vs Religion . What is forgotten is that Religion has nothing to do with God , Religion was something created by " man " ( along with money ) .

[blackhorse]

41. Bingo

... there are plenty of churches in Europe and plenty of people going to them. But most people I've met in Europe don't really care what religion another person has.

I have noticed, though, an upswing in fundie-style evangelism in the last few years. Lots of fish decals on cars as well, a kind of "wear it on one's sleeve" display. Makes me wonder if the Vatican realizes who the real challenger for their power in Europe is!

BH

[GoBlue]

6. Perhaps when Christians stop

equating their religion with God, and starting talking TO God instead of about God, they might just discover that God isn't being silenced. Period.

Religious "leaders" can be such foolish twits at times it just makes me want to smack'em up side da head.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

14. My point exactly ! Well stated GoBlue .

[readmylips]

7. Vatican sqeezing themselves out...

out of touch all men dictatorship. I'm a Catholic and the Vatican has shit to say to me. They're a bunh of lunatics living in a different planet. I don't give one penny to my stupid republican church.

[Roland99]

8. They're pulling their own Angels and Demons upon themselves

[Roland99]

11. dp

[Dulcinea]

49. The Catholic Church lost me a long time ago.

I was raised Catholic, had First Communion, Confirmation, the whole nine yards. Spiritually, it did nothing for me. It left me cold.

In my teens I figured out their social agenda, & that stopped me from going to church entirely.

The Catholic Church refused to marry my pregnant friend & her now-husband. We later found out that it was because they both came from working-class families & they weren't giving the church enough money, as far as the diocese was concerned.

The Catholic Church also refuses to baptize my children in my parents' church because we're not parish members (or financial contributors), even though my parents have been churchgoers their entire lives. They don't care about saving souls; it's all about the Benjamins. That's why I become more agnostic as I get older.

Organized religion is a business & should be taxed as such.

[yellowcanine]

9. After their history the Vatican has some nerve to talk about freedom of

religion, imo. Need we remind them of how many times they have tried to ram their brand of Christianity down everyone's throats? A little humility is in order I think. As far as I can tell the European secularists have never tortured anyone to try and get them to recant their religion. That is more than you can say about the European religionists.

[AJ BENDER]

10. So Long Yahweh !

Hope the door doesn't hit your ass on the way out !

[fairfaxvadem]

12. Oh Yeah, the "rampant secularism" issue..

read a story not long ago about the Vatican saying basically, "sure, Darfur is awful, and the War in Iraq is just unacceptable, but what REALLY has us concerned is this rampant secularism in Europe."

Unbelievable...

[jobycom]

13. Well, when the pope condemns a war and then

welcomes the murdering tyrant who started it, even giving a tacit approval to his election, I think one can assume the pope is squeezing God out of his decisions.

Not to mention pedophila, and the hypocrisy of Catholic officials in America opposing a candidate who believes in abortion but supporting candidates who believe in the death penalty, etc.

Churches, whether Catholic or otherwise, are the last places a person should go to find God, no matter what God means to that individual. All you find in churches is self-serving greed, and weak excuses for it.

[Liberal Veteran]

15. Europe is smart enough to know religions and politics...

...are the societal equivalent of fire and gasoline.

[AzDar]

16. Yeah, well..I squeezed out a 9 lb. baby, and I'm OK. n/t

[sr_pacifica]

19. LOL

The Vatican could learn a lot from mothers!:P

[sniffa]

17. decLare war on the vatican!

we need to squeeze them outta europe

[chiffon]

27. Most recent surveillance reveals they have WMDs

[Skidmore]

18. It's Europe's turn now.

The Catholic church is seeking to return all nations to the Dark Ages.

[Malva Zebrina]

20. Ratzinger has been connected to Opus Dei

This accusation demonstrates nothing more than fear and that fear takes on the mantle of fundamentalism. The assumption is that if we could go back in time, when Christianity ruled, wthout the annoying secularism or the annoying challenges to \it's dogma, we well certainly be better off. Ignored of course, are all the abuses done in the name of Christianity, and all the abuses of secularism are concentrated upon. The Vatican has been losing it's faithful and it's power, especially in the United STates, although I do not know much about it's status in Europe.

http://www.opusdei.org/art.php?w=32&p=3621

Opus Dei was founded by Jose Escriva, a man with fascist ideas who spung up during the reign of Franco and was a supporter of Franco, although great lengths are gone through to deny this.

Information about Opus Dei:

http://www.odan.org/

[PurityOfEssence]

21. Newton's Second Law of Squirmodynamics

For every sensible action, there will be an equal and opposing bit of folly. Fear not, as Europeans squeeze it out, we're busily squeezing it in over here.

[fshrink]

22. Squeeze it out then pinch it off! eom

[dkofos]

58. sounds like shit to me

[AP]

23. Once they take it out of Government and put it back in churches, people

might start going back to churches.

[Chicago Democrat]

24. Go Europe! God had no place in politics....

[arwalden]

25. GREAT!!! FANTASTIC!!! OUTSTANDING!!! --- Gods Are Obsolete!!

And so is religion.

[Zerex71]

26. Screw the Pope. He's on his way out.

Irrelevant and doddering old man. The times, they are a-changin'.

Mike

[PhuLoi]

28. Careful boys and girls, you are going to upset the New Dems,

We simply have to make nice and accept the New Dark Age...sorry that would be Age Noir Neuveau. It is after all the will of the New America. New America def: Old America unencumbered by messy democracy or the confusion attendant with a free press.

[ElectroPrincess]

30. Gee, move "The Vatican" to the USA?

[schultzee]

31. We need to purge the DLC new dems from our party.

[Endangered Specie]

32. "the mention of God [is] almost indecent"

Funny, around my place mentioning the Pope is 'almost indecent'. ;)

[Arianrhod]

42. Maybe something like,

"Brennen Sie sie weg im Namen des Lords durch!"

"Brennen" actually means "burn", but it's close. :)

[allemand]

33. Écrasez l'Infâme...

:evilgrin:

[Kellanved]

34. Sometimes I really feel embarassed

Ratzinger tried a cheap shot against the gay-marriage being legalized in many traditional catholic countries. The Catholic Curch needs to realize that the Governments have taken over their traditional duties, including marriage. The process started about 70 years ago, the catholic church seems to be the only respected organization that wants to go back there.

[thedailyshow]

35. good for Europe!

[hatrack]

36. Yes, 350 years after half of Germany died in the 30 Years' War . . .

110 years after the Dreyfus Affair revealed the anti-Semitic rottenness at the core of French society, 60 years after the Nazis took that same emotion into the abyss, after 35 years of Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants blowing each other to bits in a melange of politics, economics and religion and less than 10 years after we got to enjoy the spectacle (one more time!) of Muslims & Christians chopping each other up in Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia, maybe Europe has finally gotten a clue.

[saigon68]

44. BRILLIANT COMPACT ANALYSIS

for "THOSE WHO DON'T GET IT" or were never taught about it.

In the year 637 the armies of Islam lead by the Caliph Omar conquered the city of Jerusalem, the center of the Christian world and a magnet for Christian pilgrims. The city's Muslim masters exhibited a certain level of religious tolerance.

The Turks swarmed westward out of Central Asia overrunning all that lay in their path. Jerusalem fell to them in 1076. The atmosphere of tolerance practiced by the followers of Omar was replaced by vicious attacks on the Christian pilgrims and on their sacred shrines in the Holy City. Reports of robberies, beatings, killings, degradation of holy sites and the kidnapping for ransom of the city's patriarch made their way back to Europe. To the Europeans the Holy Land was now in the smothering grip of the Infidel and something must be done.

In response, Pope Urban II called a conference at the city of Clermont, France in 1095, concluding the eight days of deliberation with one of history's most influential speeches. Mounting a lofty scaffold, the Pope exhorted the assembled multitude to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of the Infidel and assured them that God would absolve them from any sin associated with the venture. His words fell on receptive ears as the crowd responded with cries of "It is the will of God!", "It is the will of God!". The Crusades had begun.


The Crusades were a series of military campaigns during the time of Medieval England against the Muslims of the Middle East. In 1076, the Muslims had captured Jerusalem - the most holy of holy places for Christians. Jesus had been born in nearby Bethlehem and Jesus had spent most of his life in Jerusalem. He was crucified on Calvary Hill, also in Jerusalem. There was no more important place on Earth than Jerusalem for a true Christian which is why Christians called Jerusalem the "City of God".



The First Crusade : 1096 to 1099

The Second Crusade : 1147 to 1149

The Third Crusade : 1189 to 1192

The Fourth Crusade : 1201 to 1204

The Fifth Crusade : 1218 to 1221

The Sixth Crusade : 1228 to 1229

The Seventh Crusade : 1248 to 1254

The Eighth Crusade : 1270

WE ARE NOW IN THE NINTH CRUSADE.

[Anakin Skywalker]

37. Didn't Europa Squeezed Out Zeus?

I have forgotten my mythology now :( Which is the god that popped from somebody's zit on the forehead? :)

[Arianrhod]

43. Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, sprang fully formed from

the forehead of Zeus.

Europa was either seduced or raped by Zeus, depending on how you read the story. :)

[aneerkoinos]

38. News to Vatican

Intolerance begets intolerance. What do you expect people to say about God who's sole mission seems to be oppress women and knowledge?

So listen up, Pope, free yourself and your flock from slavery to Yaldabaoth and check out what Jesus really said, then we can talk.

[reality based]

39. God Can Handle It

Don't know about the Vatican

[trueblew]

40. If an almighty God lets this happen...

then isn't it God's will? How can an almighty being be squeezed out of anything? He's almighty, he wills when and what he wants. Unless it is a she.

[Spock_is_Skeptical]

45. Freedom FROM religion, that'd be nice to have here...

know what I'm sayin'???!!!

[rman]

46. complete fabrication

on which planet does this guy live?

[Swamp Rat]

47. So is Bush... from between his ass cheeks.

:hurts:

[ElectroPrincess]

48. The Vatican needs to re-focus on "the poor" and "destitute"

The Vatican would be well served to read the publications of Dorothy Day and act accordingly:

To fight war we must fight conscription, the acceptance of conscription. To this fight THE CATHOLIC WORKER PLEDGES ITSELF AS LONG AS WE ARE PERMITTED TO EXIST.

We must face the fact that conscription of the press and the radio, also is what we have to look forward to. If we oppose government measures our groups will be broken up, our press suppressed. If we try to get out pamphlets and leaflets they will be confiscated. The authors of articles opposing the course of the government takes will be arrested and jailed.

Now is the time to stress our principles of personalist action, our pledge of personal responsibility. We will expect our Catholic Workers to oppose, even alone and single-handed, if necessary, wherever they happen to be, in factories, on ships, in offices or in homes, the militaristic propaganda of wartime. We must prepare ourselves for this fight and pray for strength and perseverance.

Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, September, 1939

http://www.cjd.org/paper/roots/rfight.html

[Deja Q]

50. Let's see, Pope: America embraces god and greed and violence prosper.

Europe, having a brain, thinks for itself, and they seem to be doing better, using more energy efficient appliances, has less crime, isn't as racist...

Europe is to thinking Americans what current America is to the Mexicans looking to flee their country because their leadership ruined it.

[bullimiami]

51. Maybe they should have thought of that during the inquisition

during the pogroms
during the middle ages
during the salem witch trials
when they killed joan of ark
when they were covering up pedophilia and protecting their beloved preists
down throught the ages and right now in amerika

the vatican has built a 2 millenium evil empire on the body of jesus and all of those killed and killing in his name.

They are a long way from making right what they are responsible for.

The church has made god indecent.

[Politicub]

52. The EU is doing just fine

It's a postmodern arrangement that appears to be superior to our own founding documents. Don't get me wrong - America was founded as secular. If god was intended to be part of our founding documents, s/he would have been explicitly addressed.

Religion should be freely practiced, but not used as the guiding principal of government. That is the essence of the EU view, and something with which I strongly agree.

[leesa]

53. Good for them!

[Massachusetts]

54. Squeezing out God....

I hear a good diet of fruit and nuts can help....:hurts:

[BiggJawn]

55. Hey, Cardinal Joe, Freedom OF Religion also means Freedom FROM it, too.

He wants to get back to those thrilling days when he could have "heretics" burned at the stake, doesn't he?

[emad]

56. Ratzinger might think otherwise when the Roberto Calvi murder

trial in Rome resumes and his so called intellectual capacities are scrutinised in public along with those of other members of the notorious P2 Lodge, including Cardinal Marcinkus (who got a carte blanche from Poppy for immunity from prosection after the Banco Ambrosiano $400million collapse in 1982) and their chief honcho JP2, whose personal involvemebt in the Lodge is discussed in great detail in Piers Compton's excellent book The Broken Cross.
See:
http://www.rense.com/general49/cross.htm


In April this year City of London Police submitted 70 previously unavailable boxes of intelligence on the P2 Lodge, its members, protogees, criminal records and political affiliations.

Not good news for Junior or his Poodle in London.

[emad]

57. Addendum: editorial from today's telegraph:

Persecuted Christians
(Filed: 20/11/2004)

Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is perhaps the only man alive of whom it might be said that he is more Catholic than the Pope. Even though his enemies caricature him as the most bigoted of grand inquisitors, he knows John Paul II like nobody else. Among the college of cardinals, he is one of the few likely successors who is the ailing pontiff's intellectual equal. His long interview in yesterday's La Repubblica is thus an authentic reflection of the consensus inside the Vatican. It makes for disturbing reading.

The cardinal sees Europe as a continent in the grip of a demographic and spiritual crisis. A falling birthrate is "altering the ethnic composition of Europe", as Muslim immigration transforms the ancient heartlands of Christendom. Churches are emptying as Christian culture is threatened by an "aggressive secularism, even an intolerant one". This new secularism is no longer neutral, but hostile to public manifestations of Christianity, which is being marginalised and privatised. "We must defend religious freedom against the imposition of an ideology that is being presented as if it were the only voice of rationality, whereas it is only the expression of a narrow rationalism."

The incident that occasioned such anguish is the case of Rocco Buttiglione, who was dropped from the European Commission merely for refusing to deny his Catholicism, in the private rather than the public sphere. For Cardinal Ratzinger, the implication is that anybody who defends Christian orthodoxy is now excluded from public life. He cites the example of a Protestant pastor in Sweden who was imprisoned for a month for preaching against homosexuality. Christianity has come full circle since the days of its persecution under the Roman Empire: an established Church no longer, it is now once again a persecuted band of the faithful.

If the Cardinal's grim diagnosis is accurate, then the logic of the Christian predicament points towards ecumenical unity. The Vatican has sometimes spoken as if non-Catholic churches were mere sects. Yet the fastest-growing forms of Christianity are the evangelical movements emanating from America. The Catholic Church cannot lead the "struggle" against secularism unless its leaders can acknowledge the sufferings and merits of their fellow Christians. If Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope, it is safe to assume that the reconversion of Europe would be his aim. But is this guardian of Vatican orthodoxy ready to consider compromise on matters of doctrine for the sake of a united Christian front against secularism and jihad? It is an enticing prospect.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/11/20/dl2002.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/20/ixnewstop.html

[Spazito]

59. The vatican might want to concentrate on cleaning out the ...

pedophiles from their ranks before they say anything. The Catholic church is as corrupt as Enron, imo. I am what the church would call a 'lapsed' catholic and I am lapsed because of their corruption and hypocrisy.