I think it will be some years before we understand how great a legacy Pope Benedict XVI will be leaving us.
Part of that legacy to be especially treasured will be the Pope’s reflections on the dangers of the increasingly aggressive secular state.
His warning: In the West, and now especially in the United States, the state is increasingly pushing a secular agenda. Pushing that agenda through means driving the Church, not just out of the public square, but out of the culture. The threat to religious liberty is very, very real.
In January 2012, Pope Benedict addressed U.S. bishops from Baltimore, Washington and the Archdiocese for the Military Services during their ad limina pilgrimage to Rome, telling them, "It is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States comes to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms: the freedom of religion."
At about the same time that the Pope was warning the U.S. bishops (and, indirectly, all Americans) about the threat to religious liberty by radical secularists, the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services was busily illustrating it.
That very January, the secretary of the HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, delivered a mandate informing all religious institutions — especially Catholic universities and hospitals — that they would have to provide contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilization in their insurance plans.
The HHS mandate is not an isolated incident, but part of a larger, longer campaign by the secular-minded in Europe and America to shrink the presence and influence of Christianity in the world until it finally disappears from history, thereby reversing the effects of the Church’s 2,000-year evangelization.
The Pope’s call for a New Evangelization — a redoubling of Pope John Paul II’s efforts — is made in the face of this very real threat. The fate of the Church in the third millennium depends in large part on our response to the active secularization that has done so much to erase Christianity during the final two centuries of the second millennium.
In order to respond prayerfully, we need to comprehend the real scope of the secular threat.
Benedict is a man deeply read in history, and so he understands very clearly that aggressive secularization has been gaining political ground since the horrors of brutal de-Christianization during the French Revolution. It happened in France; it happened in Russia and the Soviet satellites; it happened in other ways, with the imposition of the pseudo-religion of Nazism that took over his homeland, Bavaria; it continues today in all of Europe’s liberal democracies.
And, as the Pope warned, secularization has come to the United States of America.
Take down the Ten Commandments. No Bible reading in schools. No public prayer. Clear away the crèche. No "Merry Christmas." Affirm "gay marriage." And, as we’ve seen with the HHS mandate, "Thou shalt participate in the sexual revolution."
The message of all such radical secularism is clear: "You will bend the knee before the state."
The secular state often puts the message in more inviting terms, terms which should sound like a very familiar temptation: "If you will bend the knee before me, then I will give you all the splendor and pleasures of the world."
Secularism is, by definition, the affirmation of this world and the rejection of the next. It is historically rooted in a materialism that denies the existence of God, the angels, the soul and the afterlife. Its fundamental "this-worldliness" is the source of secularism’s antagonism to the Church.
As Pope Benedict has warned, this antagonism is often disguised as a beneficent affirmation of plurality. But when contemporary secularists preach tolerance, they practice what the Pope has called a "negative tolerance," a "new intolerance," complete with "standards of thinking that are supposed to be imposed on everyone" — what we in America call "political correctness."
The result, the Pope has noted, is actually the "abolition of tolerance, for it means, after all, that religion, that the Christian faith, is no longer allowed to express itself visibly."
That result is, of course, the real aim of secularism: the removal of Christianity from culture.
The seemingly beneficent affirmation of plurality has, as Pope Benedict noted, a deeper manifestation — the promotion of relativism. Relativism says with a kindly smile, "Let us affirm all views as equally good; all ways of living as equally admirable; all thoughts as equally true."
But again, hidden beneath the extended velvet glove of affirmation is often an iron hand ready to impose what the Pope has rightly called "a dictatorship of relativism."
As he warned the conclave that would end up electing him to the papacy, "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires."
That "egoism" is inherent in the secular denial of God and the materialist reduction of good and evil to personal physical pleasure and pain.
With no God to define good and evil, people become their own little gods, creating their own moral rules that maximize this-worldly satisfactions.
In response, Pope Benedict has issued a call "for an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity, endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture and with the courage to counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society."
That call was given directly to the visiting U.S. bishops in January 2012 as an essential task of the New Evangelization, one that also includes "a convincing articulation of the Christian vision of man and society" as the true alternative to radical secularism.
Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D., is a speaker and author of 10 books, his latest being
Worshipping the State: How Liberalism Became Our State Religion.
His website is BenjaminWiker.com.
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Secularism actually means equidistance from all religions. But in effect secularism practiced by some countries in nothing but a hatred towards religions, an agenda to demolish religions in due course. No one can deny that majority of the people of the world have faith in one or other religion. Religion is not only faith for them, but a way of life handed down from generation to generation. Just stamping our ancestors and all those who believe in religion as ignorant fools is too much of foolishness. Really secularism must mean respect for all religions and an attitude to adjustments without detriment to generally accepted morality or principles. There may be necessity to draw lines and control if in the name of religion unpatriotic, immoral or illegal activities are carried on. Secularism should give satisfaction to all, even to atheists and religious people.
Pope Emeritus Benedict sounded a clarion call. God bless him for it. Let’s not forget it.
KC- Appreciate your comments!
I already miss him terribly! God Bless you, dear Holy Father Pope Emeritus Benedict!
If Wiker played baseball, he’d be scouted by the top teams and offered a huge signing bonus for his ability to consistently hit homeruns. This article is just another one of these. His warnings re. the rise of secularism is further supported by the French who-give them credit for openess- have proposed to make secularism a religion and do so through legislation. I wonder if infallibility will be one of its central tenets?
The ‘high priests’ in the White House seem to have already decided in favour of it but lacking the openess of the French, choose rather to use the euphemism “mandate” to hide their own pracising of inerrancy when it comes to whatever they promulgate.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
—Arthur C. Clarke
Yes, Wendy, that’s obviously what is happening with the Progressives in Washington.
Viva Cristo Rei!
To me it seems Obama is seeking secularism and we are letting him take away our religious freedom. He is dismantaling all our sacred priviledges in america because is is basically a non christian.
Either way Christianity or rather the Papal supremacy must be eliminated. That has been the agenda of the prince of lies. Before secularism was born from the European Enlightenment illegitimately; in name of liberating mankind from innate conscious of natural law, Islam with its ideology has been waiting , even in modern society, to replace the Incarnate religion of Christianity with its agenda of sheer sharia law. The forces of evil from the both sides are rampant and apparent in the West.In some part of England Muslims complained that the sound tolling of the Churches’ bells are annoying, while Christians never objected the howling from the minaret. Many sincere Muslims believe that the coercive submission to sharia law by non Muslims is God’s commandment.If one is not around the other will come.
Secularism does not give satisfaction to all. It wants to relegate religious expression to the private sphere—so that it does not appear that God exists in the public sphere. We were founded as a Nation “under God”—with freedom for all to express their religion in public as well as in private; and atheists can express their non-religion in public as well.
Satan is smiling because Catholics voted to re-elect he who attacks the Catholic Church. Pray for the mis- informed and/or the mis-lead! Arnold Toynbee once said “Of the 22 civilizations that have appeared in history, 19 of them collapsed when they reached the moral state in America is in today. Toynbee died in 1975 and our moral state has only gotten worse. GOD have mercy on us all!
I miss Pope Benedict! And pray we are blessed with another HOLY and traditional pope!
This may be why he “seemed” to want Cardinal Dolan to be a Cardinal and maybe follow him - just a thought - as Dolan is tough and out spoken. He says his next step is to be a Saint. Seriously. We will see what the Holy Spirit does. Maybe someone has to get into the US and fight a bit . . . well, we knew that, but I mean really cause a ruckus. Someone said they had ordered caskets and guillotines - is that true? If so, one will have my name on it - at 80 + I won’t have a following but . . . remember this . . . when all is said and done: “Rome has spoken, the matter is closed.” St Augustine!
Lin….But just think how wonderful it is to know that our Pope Benedict XVI, Emeritus, is still with us on this earth and we can unite our prayers with his—for the Church on earth….Only God knows the height and depth of his prayer—and suffering for the Church!
Dolores Wharton, you’re not a wee bit judgmental, are you?
No doubt about it, we (the United States) is on the wrong track these days. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said something like this: “No nation can survive that kills it’s children.” And what would she say today, were she here, about the homosexual agenda that is taking hold of the culture at large, and even most Catholics? Pope Benedict XVI decried “moral relativism.”
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If we read Pope Benedict’s writings, we will see that the Emeritus Pope does not say secularists believe everything is equal in the public sphere, but rather, as the author of the article wrote: “His warning: In the West, and now especially in the United States, the state is increasingly pushing a secular agenda….through every means driving the Church, not just out of the public square, but out of the culture. The threat to religious liberty is very, very real.” Secularism wants manifestations of religion and what is rightly called “Natural Law” kept private. Look at the HHS Mandate re. contraceptives, abortion, etc. In effect, we are being told: You can have your religion, but keep it inside the 4 walls of your Church—Your hospitals are not churches, so they must perform abortions, etc. As for Same-sex Marriage, it belongs in the in the public sphere; as for you, you must forget about what is natural for the child./ On the other hand, the truth is that the “fruit of the womb,” is conceived via one man and one woman”—a “mother” and “father” together with the “breath of life” that our Creator infuses. The fact that we are playing God in petri dishes today doesn’t change the Divine Will/Plan, the truth, for procreation stated in Genesis 1&2. But that is not acceptable in the public sphere, we must bow to the State—whatever the State says. That’s called the “Dictatorship of Moral Relativism” (Pope Benedict)—that’s not tolerance—or everything is equal. (In this realm, there’s no way “everything” can be “equal.”) We are seeing the last days of the United (note “united”) States of America. We cannot much longer endure on the path we are on as a Nation—and we will see increasingly (we already see) more-or-less subtle religious persecution because our Nation, in the person of our Elected Officials is denying the fundamental tenets (the Ten Commandments) for the survival of any and every Nation! Every nation, sooner or later, stands or falls on these most fundamental tenets ordained and planted by God deep in the very “nature” of man and woman at the time of our creation!
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/pope-benedict-xvi-vs.-secularism#ixzz2Nz8oJO5j
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