It's Thursday, which is when I check what Bruno Mastroianni has to say this week...
Wojtyla and Ratzinger:
Apostles of
'The living Church that carries
the future of the world'
Translated from
December 31, 2009
At the start of a new year, one needs to look at the future more than assessing what is past. Perhaps, even starting from an action by Papa Ratzinger carried out in the final days of 2009: formally proclaiming the heroic virtues of John Paul II.
It is a gesture full of significance for the future. Papa Wojtyla was not just a beloved Pope. He represented a turning point: the end of Christianity's inferiority complex in the face of the secularist Enlightenment persuasions of the modern era.
With time, it has become clear that papa Ratzinger is the worthy heir* of this sea change. The work of both Popes, in fact, going beyond their differences in style, is marked by a continuity of spirit: the awareness that Christianity is not a doctrine in defense of something but the true response to the yearnings of mankind in search of fullness and completion.
As Benedict XVI underscored once again in his Christmas message to the Roman Curia, the Church has the task of keeping alive the quest for God by man, including those who are far from the faith.
John Paul II was fearless in confronting Communism because he knew that, as a Godless way, it was destined to fail. Benedict XVI, with the same tranquillity, is facing the
agnostic impasse* in which the modern spirit has found itself bogged in.
Wojtyla's "Do not be afraid - open wide your doors to Christ" finds vigorous echo in Ratzinger"s "living Church that carries in it the future of the world", as he has projected it since the start of his Pontificate.
*
It's more than just an agnostic impasse. Agnostics, in general, appear to be reasonable, simply saying "I do not know if God exists", and keeping it their private belief, not proselytizing others.
But the newly strident (and best-selling) apostles of atheism do not only proclaim that 'There is no God' but also, illogically, an active hatred and contempt for God and all those who believe in God.
If you don't believe in God, then what/who is there to hate? Just live your atheist life, without creating all sorts of petty but malicious nuisances - which add up to massive exasperation - for people who do believe in God.
One has to find God first to believe in God. So, no one can rule out that atheists, too, individually, may yet get to meet God in this life, and then, they will know what it means to believe in God.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/12/2009 16:27]