Pope: "GAWD GAWD GAWD" Czech: "Cool story bro."
Pope Benedict XVI warned some 120,000 worshipers at a Mass here on Sunday of the dangers of a society without God, forging ahead with his fight against secularism on the second day of a three-day trip to the Czech Republic.
Later, in an address to Czech academics in Prague, the pope inveighed against the perils of relativism. He also underlined the need to mend “the breach between science and religion.”
Celebrating Mass in this southern city in the country’s Catholic heartland, the 82-year-old, German-born pope said that “history had demonstrated the absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices and actions.” He added: “Your country, like other nations, is experiencing cultural conditions that often present a radical challenge to faith and therefore also to hope.”
While the pope received a warm and enthusiastic reception from the crowd - a large number of whom appeared to come from neighboring Poland, Germany and Slovakia - religious observers lamented that the Czech nation as a whole seemed unmoved.
Czech secularism was conditioned during decades of Communism, when the Roman Catholic Church was suppressed. In a recent survey by Stem, a research group, nearly half of respondents professed not to believe in God.
“We are a calm nation that drinks beer and eats dumplings, and we have strong antibodies to any kind of religious persuasion because of our history,” said the Rev. Ales Opatrny, a lecturer at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. “I believe that after the pope’s visit most Czechs will act like nothing happened.”
Some attendants of Sunday’s Mass observed that Benedict had less outward charisma than his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, but others argued that the decidedly bookish and sober Benedict was a fitting pope for these difficult times. They said he appealed to the intellectual streak in many Czechs, who themselves are not known for conspicuous displays of emotion.
“I think this pope can actually do a lot in bringing people like Czechs back to the faith,” said Tomas Vana, 23, a political science student from Prague who said he had been camping out since Saturday to see the pope.
In a meeting with religious leaders on Sunday, the pope emphasized that Europe had been deeply shaped by its Christian roots. Invoking his own background as an academic, he warned the Czech academic community against allowing a modern-day preoccupation with reason to cancel out faith.
“What will happen if our culture builds itself only on fashionable arguments, with little reference to a genuine historical intellectual tradition, or on the viewpoints that are most vociferously promoted and most heavily funded?” he asked.
Some young Christians said they felt alienated by a socially conservative pope, who appeared more intent on preserving the church’s traditions than on adapting it to modern times.
Daniel Barton, 25, a youth leader in the country’s largest Protestant denomination, argued that Benedict’s “moral absolutism” made him, in some ways, more conservative than Jesus.
“A pope’s visit should energize all Christians, but I find his social conservatism quite ridiculous,” he said. “The Vatican and this pope have been absolutizing the traditions of the past without thinking of the reasoning behind these rules, which is what Jesus was fighting against.”
source.
Later, in an address to Czech academics in Prague, the pope inveighed against the perils of relativism. He also underlined the need to mend “the breach between science and religion.”
Celebrating Mass in this southern city in the country’s Catholic heartland, the 82-year-old, German-born pope said that “history had demonstrated the absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices and actions.” He added: “Your country, like other nations, is experiencing cultural conditions that often present a radical challenge to faith and therefore also to hope.”
While the pope received a warm and enthusiastic reception from the crowd - a large number of whom appeared to come from neighboring Poland, Germany and Slovakia - religious observers lamented that the Czech nation as a whole seemed unmoved.
Czech secularism was conditioned during decades of Communism, when the Roman Catholic Church was suppressed. In a recent survey by Stem, a research group, nearly half of respondents professed not to believe in God.
“We are a calm nation that drinks beer and eats dumplings, and we have strong antibodies to any kind of religious persuasion because of our history,” said the Rev. Ales Opatrny, a lecturer at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. “I believe that after the pope’s visit most Czechs will act like nothing happened.”
Some attendants of Sunday’s Mass observed that Benedict had less outward charisma than his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, but others argued that the decidedly bookish and sober Benedict was a fitting pope for these difficult times. They said he appealed to the intellectual streak in many Czechs, who themselves are not known for conspicuous displays of emotion.
“I think this pope can actually do a lot in bringing people like Czechs back to the faith,” said Tomas Vana, 23, a political science student from Prague who said he had been camping out since Saturday to see the pope.
In a meeting with religious leaders on Sunday, the pope emphasized that Europe had been deeply shaped by its Christian roots. Invoking his own background as an academic, he warned the Czech academic community against allowing a modern-day preoccupation with reason to cancel out faith.
“What will happen if our culture builds itself only on fashionable arguments, with little reference to a genuine historical intellectual tradition, or on the viewpoints that are most vociferously promoted and most heavily funded?” he asked.
Some young Christians said they felt alienated by a socially conservative pope, who appeared more intent on preserving the church’s traditions than on adapting it to modern times.
Daniel Barton, 25, a youth leader in the country’s largest Protestant denomination, argued that Benedict’s “moral absolutism” made him, in some ways, more conservative than Jesus.
“A pope’s visit should energize all Christians, but I find his social conservatism quite ridiculous,” he said. “The Vatican and this pope have been absolutizing the traditions of the past without thinking of the reasoning behind these rules, which is what Jesus was fighting against.”
source.