Pope Benedict XVI Chastises Europe in Book

By NICOLE WINFIELD
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 21, 2005; 7:53 AM

ROME -- Pope Benedict XVI rails against Europe in his first book published since becoming pope, chastising a culture that he says excludes God from life and allows innocent lives _ the unborn _ to be taken from God through legalized abortion.
-abortion one of the most contentious issues in first world society - must answer the obvious question, when does one become a person?

"The Europe of Benedict: In the crisis of cultures" was written when the pope was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's guardian of doctrine, and serves as a strong indication of issues that will be priorities in his pontificate.
-I expect that due to his past position, we will begin to see a lot more spiritual direction for everyday life from this pope

The book covers many of the themes Benedict has already focused on in his two months in office: the role of Christianity in Europe and the need to respect life from conception to its natural death. It also explores faith and what it means to be Christian.
-Christianity in Europe is in peril except for Eastern Europe which is embracing it, a place to build on indeed.

It's an easy, 149-page read, written in Italian in 1992, 1997 and earlier this year, according to the Cantagalli publishers, which was releasing the book along with the Vatican's publishing office, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, at a ceremony Tuesday.

Parts of the book were made available to The Associated Press on Monday.
Ratzinger takes as a starting point the decision of European Union leaders to exclude a reference to Europe's Christian roots from the preamble of the proposed EU constitution, whose future remains uncertain following its rejection by French and Dutch voters in recent referendums.
-the ultimate irony is that the atheistic socialistic EC may never fully develop.

The Vatican had campaigned to have the reference included, part of its attempts to stem what it sees as a continent of increasingly empty churches that is often hostile to religion.
-state sanctioned atheism as anthesis to religion

"Europe has developed a culture which, in a way never before known to humanity, excludes God from public conscience, either by being denied or by judging his existence to be uncertain and thus belonging to subjective choices, something irrelevant for public life," Benedict writes.
-agreed, because they believe that socialism and atheism/humanism will fulfill all of humanity's needs

He dismisses arguments that inclusion of the reference would have offended Jews and Muslims, saying they are more offended by Europe's attempt to deny a historic fact.
-not aware that it offended them before? even if it did, there is no reason why other faiths cannot be mentioned, seems to be an excuse to remove any faith based system from mention

"It's not the mention of God that offends the followers of other religious, but precisely the attempt to build a human community absolutely without God," he writes.
-agreed

He says Europe needs more people like St. Benedict of Norcia, the fifth and sixth century monk who is a patron saint of Europe. The Benedictine order that followed his teachings became the main guardian of learning and literature in Western Europe during the dark centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.
-the church was the centre of knowledge and culture but it was good for all when this became freely available in a secular environment too

The "Benedict" in the title of the book apparently refers to the saint.
Looking at current culture in Europe, Ratzinger acknowledges it would be easy to resign oneself to the fact that abortion is a legal right in much of Europe. But he concludes that there is no such thing as a "little homicide" and that when man loses the respect for life, "inevitably he ends by losing his own identity."
-Europe has become a culture in love with living yet ignoring what life' really is, when it begins and the obligation of all of us to preserve it

He criticizes parents who think their rights to freedom trump the rights of the unborn child, saying "they become blind to the right to life of another, of the youngest and weakest who don't have a voice."
-All the same, an unwanted child is a cursed child and a poor life can be worse than waiting for a better life later

"Accepting that the rights of the weakest can be violated, means that you accept also that the right of force prevails over the force of rights," he writes.
-it is all the struggle of the physical vs the metaphysical in the end, one is far greater than the other

The pope, a world-renowned theologian who has written dozens of books, recently turned over his copyrights to the Vatican publishing house, an undertaking the publisher said was "mountainous."
-sounds like this is the start of many books to come

By comparison, Pope John Paul II's literary output was relatively modest: He wrote five books during his 26-year pontificate.
-didn't know that pope's in general were voluminous writers, although in the past unable to travel, it makes sense that they would publish a lot of directive material

Cantagalli officials said there were no immediate plans to translate Benedict's book into other languages.
-I would expect translation into several languages