The pope says:
The 81-year-old voiced strong regret that these resources were
in danger and warned Earth's natural resources were being
squandered to fuel "insatiable consumption".
And though the images of his arrival were being broadcast to an
international audience of more than 1billion people, he had a
warning for the internet and television generation. "In our
personal lives and in our communities we can encounter a hostility,
something dangerous, a poison which threatens to corrode what is
good, reshape who we are, and distort the purpose for which we have
been created.
"Examples abound, as you yourselves know. Among the more
prevalent are alcohol and drug abuse, and the exaltation of
violence and sexual degradation often presented through television
and the internet as entertainment."
He told the young people not to be fooled by those "who see you
as just another consumer in market of undifferentiated
possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps
beauty and subjective experience displaces truth."
---------------
"Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division,
of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses and the pain
of false promises."
- from here
wow - something we can agree on! It may be that he considers the Buddha images we have in our home 'false idols'... but I think the meaning he expresses here of capitalism and exploitation are the real false idols... yay for him. The shows I watched on his life the other evenings, gave me a feeling of a reluctant Pope. I made a lot of assumptions about him.. and is so easy to mock him.. I think the whole Catholic thing gets the press and people generally going. The organisation is enormous - it does have a lot of money.. it does have a lot of power... but I guess a lot of people get a lot out of it in a personal sense. It is extremely conservative - but I think there can be a middle ground. I read a blog and listen to a podcast called 'Urban Dharma', run by a Buddhist monk in Los Angeles called Reverend Kusala. He really is engaged in cross faith and cross clergy dialogue.. it is fascinating what he has to say about the similarity of experience being a monk or nun across the faiths...
I'm at home today, busily editing, writing, freaking out. :-) I must NOT procrastinate!