The Pope Reprimands the Obama Administration
by  Fritz Wagner

Pope Benedict XVI has publicly condemned the attempt of the Obama Administration to impose "radical secularism" on the American people. 

On January 19th, 2012, the Pope addressed a delegation of visiting American Bishops from the Washington D.C. area. The address is couched in tranquil language, but the meaning is plain. We quote the sixth paragraph of the address:

. . . it is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come 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.

 

Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices.

 

Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.

Pope Benedict is making a thinly veiled reference to the mentality of the Obama Administration which has expressed itself in the attempt to force Catholic employers to offer insurance for abortion and to force Catholic hospitals and doctors to perform abortions.

It appears to us that the Obama administration is staffed at the upper levels by individuals who do not feel safe so long as the majority of the American people allow their consciences to be formed by Christian values.

The Pope ended his address on a hopeful note, suggesting the American clergy and a new generation of laity are in the process of renewing the Church's presence in American culture.        

The entire address, which is not too long, and which many will find worth reading,  may be found HERE.       

Fritz Wagner is Executive Editor at VoegelinView.

 

 

Progressivist Hubris
The Example of Obamacare

  by  Fritz Wagner

Elsewhere at VoegelinView may be found Scott Segrest's essay, "Richard Rorty and the Core of Progressivism," which deals with the presuppositions and programs of contemporary American progressivism as exemplified in the thought of Richard Rorty.

As pointed out there, coercion is a tool of the progressivist program. If ordinary people don't like what the progressives offer, they will nevertheless have to learn to like it for their own good. An example is the recently passed "Obamacare law" (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, effective from March 23, 2010),  The passage of this law offers a wonderful example of progressivist hubris and illustrates what can happen when progressives take over a political party, as they currently have taken over the Democrat Party.

The Scandal of Divine Presence 

by  Jerry L. Martin

"I Will Be There with You"

One of the most extraordinary moments in the history of revelation is God’s response to Moses’ question:  “They will say to me:  'What is his name?' –what shall I say to them?”  The question is one of credentials.  Moses cannot just do this on his own, in his own name.  “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah, that I should bring the Children of Israel out of Egypt?”  They will want to know for Whom he is speaking.

For God’s response, the most illuminating translation is by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig:  “I will be-there with you and this is the sign for you that I myself have sent you.”  God will be present, and it is precisely God’s presence that certifies his mission.

Beneath the Southern Cross

Why I am not a fan of Charles Darwin

by Olavo de Carvalho

Olavo de Carvalho is a Brazilian philosopher, teacher, and journalist, and an exponent of Aristotle and Eric Voegelin.  We present here a commentary that appeared in Diário do Comércio, São Paulo,  on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.

The splendid festivities commemorating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth make some essential facts about the life and works of this man of science momentarily invisible.

To begin with, Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution: he found it ready-made under the form of an esoteric doctrine, in the work of his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, and as a scientific hypothesis in innumerable mentions scattered in books by Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Goethe, among others.

All he did was to venture a new explanation for that theory–and his explanation was wrong. No one else, among the self-proclaimed Darwin disciples, believes in “natural selection.” The theory in vogue, the so-called neo-Darwinism, proclaims that, instead of a selection mysteriously oriented toward the improvement of the species, all that happened were random changes.