Thursday October 14, 2010
Terrorism, Drugs and Attacks on Marriage, Chastity “False Divinities that Must be Unmasked”: Pope Benedict
By Hilary White
ROME, October 14, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In unscripted remarks in his opening day address to the Synod of Bishops of the Middle East on Monday, Pope Benedict XVI denounced “forms of life touted by the public opinion today for which values like marriage count for nothing” as “false divinities that must be unmasked” and thrown down.
Pope Benedict linked the destruction of marriage with religiously-motivated terrorism and drugs. “Today, marriage does not count and chastity is no longer a virtue,” he said. “The power of terrorist ideologies that carry out violence in the name of god, anonymous (financial) capitals that dehumanize man, drugs … These ideologies that dominate and that are imposed forcefully are false divinities that must be unmasked, because they are not God,” the pope said.
“These gods must fall, and must become what is written in the letter to the Ephesians: Dominion and powers fall and become subjects to the one Lord Jesus Christ.”
Benedict is well known for frequently adding off-the-cuff remarks in his addresses that experienced Vatican watchers have learned often reflect the pope’s most essential ideas.
He warned the assembled Middle East Catholic bishops, “Outward foundations falter because the inner foundations falter, the foundations of moral and religious faith from which the right way to live follows. And we know that faith is the foundation and, ultimately, the foundations of the earth can not falter, if faith, the true wisdom, remains firm.”
Pope Benedict added a warning that the process of rejecting these false divinities will not be without cost. “The process of transformation of the world,” he said, “costs blood, costs the suffering of the witnesses of Christ. And, if we look closely, we can see that this process never ends. It is achieved in various periods of history in ever new ways; even today, at this moment, in which Christ, the only Son of God, must be born for the world with the fall of the gods, with pain, the martyrdom of witnesses.”
He closed his brief remarks with a reference to Psalm 81, saying, “And then the psalm says, ‘Rise up, Lord, and judge the earth.’ So let us also say to the Lord, ‘Rise up in this moment, take the earth in your hands, protect your Church, protect humanity, protect the earth.’”