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Benedict Warns of Desire To "Be Like God"[2011-04-18][Engleză]In his Palm Sunday homily -- in an oblique reference to the Fukushima nuclear disaster -- the Pope warns that our great technological prowess can only bear good fruit "if we abandon the pride of wanting to become God"By Robert Moynihan, from Rome The sun streamed down like honey on a beautiful, cool spring day in Rome as Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square this morning on the day after his 84th birthday. In his homily, the Pope focused on the danger of pride and the need for humility at this critical moment in human history, when science has provided mankind with tremendous powerful and technological capabilities, but also threatens to harm mankind, and mankind's future, unless it is used with wisdom -- with the wisdom which comes from humility. I take the Pope to be referring, at least in part, to the nuclear reactor accident in Japan, in Fukushima, which has not been resolved and which continues to leak radioactive material into the environment. Here is the central phrase in this homily: "Mankind has managed to accomplish so many things: we can fly! We can see, hear and speak to one another from the farthest ends of the earth. "And yet the force of gravity which draws us down is powerful. "With the increase of our abilities there has been an increase not only of good. Our possibilities for evil have increased and appear like menacing storms above history. Our limitations have also remained: we need but think of the disasters which have caused so much suffering for humanity in recent months... "The great achievements of technology are liberating and contribute to the progress of mankind only if they are joined to these attitudes if our hands become clean and our hearts pure, if we seek truth, if we seek God and let ourselves be touched and challenged by his love." In spiritual terms, the Pope's words are a call for conversion. He does not wish man to reject science, to turn away from an effort to study and understand the forces and energies of our world. He blesses this effort, in fact. But he makes clear that he fears a proud science, a science which engages in its search for knowledge without a certain humility, one might almost say, a certain piety. Again, here are the Pope's words: "The great achievements of technology are liberating and contribute to the progress of mankind only if they are joined to these attitudes if our hands become clean and our hearts pure, if we seek truth, if we seek God and let ourselves be touched and challenged by his love." It is, in a sense, a call for a spirituality of science. And a warning against a science without spirituality. Can scientists hear this call? Or perhaps I should ask: Can scientists begin to hear this call, now that Fukushima has begun to poison the earth? Can they hear this call, now that the world's oceans are beginning to be contaminated with our pollution? We are critical of the medievals, of the alchemists and, we say, of the obscurantists, because we feel they held mainland back from penetrating into the inner sanctums of nature's secrets. But, will future generations look back upon the scientists of our time, and with sorrow and execration say, "Woe unto us, that you scientists of the 21st century, as you entered into knowledge of some of the more intimate secrets of nature, in knowledge of the power of the atom, and of the genetic code, did not display some of the piety toward nature, and nature's God, which was felt by the ancients and the medievals, for you modern scientists, though you learned much, and produced much, also destroyed much, and have left behind the legacy of a polluted, damaged world, filled with dangers to humanity that you yourself have created, in your heedless pride." This I take to be one of the themes of the Pope's homily today. Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com Contor Accesări: 924, Ultimul acces: 2026-08-06 07:24:07
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