So it's a good thing we have Cardinal Ratzinger doing the heavy lifting for us, from Truth and Freedom, 1996:
"Ye shall be as gods." This promise is quite clearly behind modernity's radical demand for freedom. Although Ernst Topitsch believed he could safely say that today no reasonable man still wants to be like or equal to God, if we look more closely we must assert the exact opposite: the implicit goal of all of modernity's struggles for freedom is to be at last like a god who depends on nothing and no one, and whose own freedom is not restricted by that of another.
"Once we glimpse this hidden theological core of the radical will to freedom, we can also discern the fundamental error which still spreads its influence even where such radical conclusions are not directly willed or are even rejected. To be totally free, without the competing freedom of others, without a "from" and a "for"—this desire presupposes not an image of God, but an idol.
"The primal error of such a radicalized will to freedom lies in the idea of a divinity conceived as a pure egoism. The god thought of in this way is not a God, but an idol. Indeed, it is the image of what the Christian tradition would call the devil—the anti-God—because it harbors exactly the radical antithesis to the real God.
"The real God is by his very nature entirely being-for (Father), being-from (Son), and being-with (Holy Spirit). Man, for his part, is God's image precisely insofar as the "from," "with," and "for" constitute the fundamental anthropological pattern.
"Whenever there is an attempt to free ourselves from this pattern, we are not on our way to divinity, but to dehumanization, to the destruction of being itself through the destruction of the truth. The Jacobin variant of the idea of liberation (let us call the radicalisms of modernity by this name) is a rebellion against man's very being, a rebellion against truth, which consequently leads man—as Sartre penetratingly saw—into a self-contradictory existence which we call hell."
Because I'm a nuanced commentator I'll just say this, nails it.
Best,
LSP
10 comments:
Being as God, requires that we emulate Jesus Christ in all that we do. That our lives reflect his teachings. There is a nobility, a selflessness, a goodness that pervades godliness and we can see that in others. There is no compulsion, there is no coercion. It's an expression of free will. "Be ye therefore perfect," is an invocation to us all to choose perfection. I don't know that it's possible to "arrive" because all of that is a process, that is arrived at without compulsory means.
The Satanic option is that the progressive requires that we bend knee to the "government" or the "imam" or to Beelzebub and accept their form of perfection which always leads to destruction. It's compulsion, and as Orwell put it, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." The Satanic plan in a nutshell.
Christ cast out demons. And human beings can invite demons to dwell in them. It's not all that difficult to see that when you meet them. There are a lot of them in the seats of power. A lot of the narcos in Mexico are in that position. I have seen it with my own eyes. They suck the light out of the room. The Stalins, the Maos, the Hitlers, all made a choice to embrace Satan and all that comes with it. Earthly power and eternal damnation.
A humble and contrite heart, striving to forgive others as God forgives us, and a determination to love one another as He loves us is the cure and the foil to Satan and as we do it, we draw close to God and become like God.
Sorry, it's 4 am and I got carried away.
Ilsa Koch. The new face of the Democrat party?
We definitely seem to be on the way to dehumanization.
Come Back Ratzinger. Please! Save us from Francis the Talking Pope.
No need to apologize, LL, I totally agree.
Have a look at Ratzinger's paper, if you get the time, and see what you think. He makes a similar point to you.
Freedom, for him, is lived out in relationship to others in the image of God. Abortion is the antithesis of this, an infernal triumph of the will whose end, which you've seen, is death.
This is tyrannous and killing the weakest is its sacrament. We stand against that evil.
Jim, she's the poster girl. Sorry, that'd be Ocasio.
Stand by the Faith, Linda. It will win.
Infidel, Ratzinger's a step above. C'mon, Francis, live up to your namesake in the right way.
Francis the Talking Pope.
How apt.
Ed, I know...
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