Let us try to identify the new faces of violence and discord more closely. It seems to me that, in broad strokes, we may distinguish two types of the new forms of violence, which are the very antithesis of each other in terms of their motivation and manifest a number of differences in detail. Firstly there is terrorism, for which in place of a great war there are targeted attacks intended to strike the opponent destructively at key points, with no regard for the lives of innocent human beings, who are cruelly killed or wounded in the process. In the eyes of the perpetrators, the overriding goal of damage to the enemy justifies any form of cruelty. Everything that had been commonly recognized and sanctioned in international law as the limit of violence is overruled. We know that terrorism is often religiously motivated and that the specifically religious character of the attacks is proposed as a justification for the reckless cruelty that considers itself entitled to discard the rules of morality for the sake of the intended “good”. In this case, religion does not serve peace, but is used as justification for violence….
If one basic type of violence today is religiously motivated and thus confronts religions with the question as to their true nature and obliges all of us to undergo purification, a second complex type of violence is motivated in precisely the opposite way: as a result of God’s absence, his denial and the loss of humanity which goes hand in hand with it. The enemies of religion — as we said earlier — see in religion one of the principal sources of violence in the history of humanity and thus they demand that it disappear. But the denial of God has led to much cruelty and to a degree of violence that knows no bounds, which only becomes possible when man no longer recognizes any criterion or any judge above himself, now having only himself to take as a criterion. The horrors of the concentration camps reveal with utter clarity the consequences of God’s absence.
Yet I do not intend to speak further here about state-imposed atheism, but rather about the decline of man, which is accompanied by a change in the spiritual climate that occurs imperceptibly and hence is all the more dangerous….
The thoroughness and clarity of this elderly man’s thoughts are always
amazing.
Yes, #1, and the man’s thoughts have been incisive and comprehensive like this since he was much younger. It’s likely why he was hand-picked as a young priest-academic to serve as a sort of ‘bishop’s assistant brains’ at Vatican II at 35, and why he held professorial chairs throughout his academic career and was also a university administrator, before being made a bishop, and then shortly Cardinal, and named head of a Vatican office (CDF) at 54. It’s why his many books on the catholic Christian faith sell millions of copies and have engendered with their earnings the Ratzinger Foundation to sponsor new theological research.
He is a gift from God to the Church, also blessed with a sense of humor that led him to joke in addressing the German Parliament last month that he was glad to discover (in reference to another academic’s thought development) that rational thought was indeed still possible at age 84! Parliamentarians laughed heartily.
He ‘took’ the Assisi III meeting last Thursday as if it were a large colloquium of post-graduates in ‘religion and peace’, first reviewing their assignment (the 13-minute video of the previous Assisi’s and related events), then facilitating presentations the participants had prepared, and then summing up masterfully the state of progress and research into the topic (in the address which is posted here). Innovatively, he had expanded the class to include a previously unrepresented group, those who claim not to believe in God at all or to be unsure of His existence, but seek peace nonetheless.
Aside from one rather impudent Nigerian native-religionist who was ‘contained’, no other synchretism broke out in the public forum, and the Assisi 2011 ‘colloquium’ was greatly edifying for all participants and spectators.
And Dr. Harmon is to be greatly commended for two excellent posts summing up that day’s proceedings.