On the Religion Report talking about Benedict's encyclical

You can listen to a discussion I had with the ABC's Stephen Crittenden on Benedict XVI's latest encyclical here. It is about 44 mins into the programme.

Benedict XVI proves my point...

The pope's latest encyclical, whose title is 'In hope we are saved', proves my point about the renewed interest in martyrdom:

Certainly, in our many different sufferings and trials we always need the lesser and greater hopes too—a kind visit, the healing of internal and external wounds, a favourable resolution of a crisis, and so on. In our lesser trials these kinds of hope may even be sufficient. But in truly great trials, where I must make a definitive decision to place the truth before my own welfare, career and possessions, I need the certitude of that true, great hope of which we have spoken here. For this too we need witnesses—martyrs—who have given themselves totally, so as to show us the way—day after day. We need them if we are to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we face each day—knowing that this is how we live life to the full. Let us say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity. Yet this capacity to suffer depends on the type and extent of the hope that we bear within us and build upon. The saints were able to make the great journey of human existence in the way that Christ had done before them, because they were brimming with great hope

Benedict XVI on faith and politics

Great stuff from Ben 16, even if he doesn't want to acknowledge me as any but a separated bro:

...Faith does not make reason superfluous, but it can contribute evidence of essential values. Through the experiment of a life in faith, these values acquire a credibility that also illuminates and heals reason. In the last century (as in every century), it was in fact the testimony of the martyrs that limited the excesses of power, thus making a decisive contribution to what we might call the convalescence of reason. Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 29

So long as they aren't Protestant martyrs, I guess..!

I think this idea of faith healing reason is quite a contribution. Martyrs, by showing in extremis that human power is relative, temporal and not as powerful as it thinks it is, actually contribute to general human flourishing. That is, they are not anti-social, but rather help politics learn its true meaning for the greater human good.

Benedict XVI on changing things...

I bet the Pope uses a Mac. He likes everyone to be the same everywhere... He has even brought back the Latin mass. That's regress for you!

Politicians of all parties take it for granted today that they must promise changes - naturally, changes for the better. The once mythical radiance of the word 'revolution' has faded in our days, but far-reaching reforms are demanded and promised all the more insistently. This must surely mean that there exists in modern society a deep and prevailing sense of dissatisfaction precisely in those places where prosperity and freedom have attained hitherto unknown heights. The world is experienced as hard to bear. It must become better. And it seems that the task of politics is to bring this about. So since the general consensus is that the essential taks of politics is to improve the world, indeed to usher in a new world, it is easy to understand why the word 'conservative' has become disreputable and why scarcely anyone views lightly the prospect of being called conservative, for it appears that what we must do is not preserve the status quo but overcome it. Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 11

Change is the one constant of political discourse it seems...