Here's the thing you were talking about <link> What he said recently I'll just let everybody find on their own.
Yes, what of it? These professors and students are having a breakdown over an interview Ratzinger gave in 1990 concerning Galileo and related material. And the interview itself is not even controversial! It’s splendid, even to many science figures who have commented on it. So what in the world is the problem? At the end of my post here is a link to the interview, but I print one person paraphrase of the interview which reads a little easier. I think even Galileo would give it his imprimatur.
I note you didn't address the fact of what this pope did in the years before he waltzed into the office in his Bruno Magli shoes. You care to comment on what this 'holy man' did previous to his present appointment?
Comment: I would have a much easier time defending Cardinal Ratzinger in his most difficult position of the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith especially during the trials of the sex cover ups than I would the Catholic Church or Rome itself. There are some allegations of Ratzinger that are patently false concerning the handling of these sex scandals. The infamous BBC program “Sex crimes and the Vatican” aired in 2006 clearly sets the new pope as its target and some allegations are patently false concerning him. One of its main points is Ratzinger’s backing a 1962 Vatican document that secretly protects priests from their sexual misgivings. However, the Church points out that document’s focus is on proceedings in the confessional and the grave importance of protecting the penitent from revelation, be it priest or lay man. Matter such as that are used to besmirch Ratzinger.
The cover up by many bishops itself is indefensible and a high crime that wreaks to heaven. But is that what we are discussing here?
I hate to break it to you but God doesn't have anything to do with your church. The Jews are not his chosen people…
I am waiting to see your evidence for this.
… and 99% of the Christian organizations of today would crucify Christ again because they wouldn't recognize him and therein lies the interesting feature of clothing over corpus... you can't color or drape the truth but you need to to make it palatable.
Do not understand?
I thank God for one thing especially ...AFTER the gratitude I feel for the presence and the insights. I am grateful for the protection from what might appear to everyone else to be real big and powerful but would run at the sight of my defenses. There is nothing on Earth to equal the living literal truth of actually being able to walk through the valley of the shadow.
Therein is the test my friend. What I call 'the demons of the deep thing'
You never see who walks among you. You never see the sun for what it is or that everything is living and that nothing ever dies. You can't convert the mist of morning into the blessed synergistic energy of heaven and earth nor walk with impunity among all things wild and tame. Until you can well, "Rave on MacDuff."
I take great caution with personal revelation most especially if it contradicts the dogma or moral teachings of the Church. So whatever you saw, or whatever you felt, well, at best it was meant for you and you alone. I do not deal well with esoteric ramblings or poetic dogmas. Absolutely, metaphysics has its good spirits and its evil spirits, and evil often is cloaked in benign images or ideas. “Do as thou wilt” claims Anton Levay’s book, that doesn’t sound too bad does it?
What are you trying to say anyway? The Catholic Church is false, Judaism is false, Christianity is false because the god you’ve experienced told you so?
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<link>
Benedict & Galileo
Submitted by graphicus on January 16, 2008 - 7:27pm.
For what it's worth, here is a paraphrase of Cardinal Ratzinger's (now Pope Benedict XVI) address in more plain English.
"I have noticed that the modern world is not as confident as it once was about the ability of science to explain every mystery and to control the whole of Nature. Recent events have taught us to be more humble about the limits and proper place of science in the progress of humanity. A key symptom of this change is the way in which the Galileo case is now being re-evaluated even by secular thinkers.
"No one was much interested in the Galileo episode in the hundred years after it happened, but 19th century atheists turned it into a myth, with Galileo representing all that is free, enlightened and progressive, and the Catholic Church standing for everything dark, superstitious and oppressive.
"Today things have changed.
"For example, Ernst Bloch (a 20th German Marxist inspired philosopher) said that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has shown that it is just as true to say that the earth goes round the sun as it is to say that the sun goes round the earth. Galileo’s argument can no longer claim to be the ‘real’ truth simply because there is no absolute centre to space.
"Bloch argues that since all movements in space are relative anyway, it just depends what you chose as your fixed point. You could as easily think of the earth as the fixed point, in which case the sun does indeed goes round it. The only issue is that it’s a bit more complex for us to work out the math when we think of it that way round, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
"I find it interesting that it was a neo-Marxist who was the first to challenge the received version the Galileo case? He did this precisely because he (Bloch) was a truly modern materialist who suggested that neither view of the solar system is objectively better, just that one (Galileo’s) is more mentally convenient.
"So far Bloch is simply being consistent with the modern way of doing science. But his ultimate conclusion is a real surprise. He says that once you accept Relativity, then you can rightly say that the Christian world view should be kept out of issues like measuring the movement of the heavenly bodies in relation to one another. This is best left to science with its somewhat over-simplified, but convenient working presumption that the earth goes round the sun. But, by the same token, he says that Christianity is right to carry on seeing the earth as the moral centre of the cosmos, because it sees human dignity as the central value in creation. Religion is concerned with human activity, with shaping human history and human behaviour, and it is perfectly rational that it should be faithful to that perspective.
"Once you understand how scientists and theologians have different areas of competence, that they should stay within their rightful boundaries and follow their proper ways of working, each recognizing their own limits and rights, then an even more dramatic conclusion about this whole matter does begin to make some sense. This is the conclusion of Paul Feyerabend - an agnostic and sceptical Austrian/American writer (1924 – 1994) about the Galileo episode. He said that the Church had a reasonable and valid point to make in the Galieo affair, because the wider implications of Galileo’s position went far beyond astronomy. According to Feyerabend it was really about the social and ethical effects of ceasing to regard human beings as the central value in the world. Feyerabend said that those who have rewritten history to ignore this point have done so for their own political motives rather than from any truly objective view.
“Then we have Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker - who was part of the German Nuclear Energy Project during World War II that tried to develop the first nuclear bomb – who was even more speciifc in his judgment. He said that the Atomic Bomb was an inevitable eventual consequence of rejecting the absolute value of human diginty implied by uncritically accepting Galileo’s inverted world view.
“In fact, when I (Cardinal Ratzinger) was interviewed about this subject recently (1990), far from being quizzed about the Church’s supposed opposition to science, I was asked the exact opposite: why did the Church not foresee and do more to prevent all the miseries that have followed from the post-Galileo view of human beings as expendable and secondary to the march of material progress?!
“Now, we have to be careful not to lose our balance here. We must not over react and start producing hasty and ill thought out positions on this issue. Faith is not served by irrational and emotional responses. In fact faith confirms reason, but it also allows us to see things from the perspective of a higher Mindset…
"All I am doing here is highlighting one example that shows how science and technology themselves are causing the modern world to doubt its own secular outlook and agenda."
