Turning Point for Europe, 2nd Ed.

by Pope Benedict XVI

Publisher:

Ignatius

, 1994

Overview

Cardinal Ratzinger addresses the challenges and responsibilities that both the Church and society in Europe face after the collapse of Marxism. Both liberalism and Marxism have denied religion the right to have any influence on public affairs and the common future of humanity. Since there is also a great spiritual emptiness growing in the West with the increased secularization, consumerism and hedonism, Ratzinger’s comments apply as much, if not more, to the United States as well.

With the downfall of Marxism, religion has been discovered anew as an ineradicable force for both the individual and society. While there is renewed interest in religion, the dangers also exist to lay hold of religion as an instrument to serve various political ideas. Ratzinger, whose theological work has often dealt with the “reasons for our faith,” reflects upon the various problems facing humanity at this turning point of our history and offers genuine hope based upon a deep Christian faith. He also addressed the critical role that the Church has in relationship to the world and the essential task of bringing Christ back into our culture.

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Key Features

• Addresses challenges that the Church faced after the collapse of Marxism
• Reflects upon the various problems facing humanity
• Provides profound biblical teaching for both Protestants and Catholics

Contents

• Breaking Down and Starting Out Afresh: Faith’s Answer to the Crisis of Value
• Peace and Justice in Crisis: The Task of Religion
• Faith and Social Responsibility
• Paths of Faith in the Revolutionary Change of the Present Day
• Europe—Hopes and Dangers Preliminary Reflections: Phenomenology of Today’s Europe
• A Turning Point for Europe?

Top Highlights

“Faith is not the resignation of reason in view of the limits of our knowledge; it is not a retreat into the irrational in view of the dangers of a merely instrumental reason. Faith is not the expression of weariness and flight but is courage to exist and an awakening to the greatness and breadth of what is real. Faith is an act of affirmation; it is based on the power of a new Yes, which becomes possible for man when he is touched by God.” (Page 110)

“We have earlier attempted to grasp its political and historical essence by portraying it as the connection of belief in progress with absolutized scientific-technical civilization and political messianism. The remarkable thing about this strange trinity is, however, that this structure now replaces the concept of God and necessarily excludes it, since it takes its place.” (Page 130)

“Science in the narrower sense of the term refers to the realm of the necessary, which can be reduced to strict rules and leads in this way to objectively verifiable certainty. But this means that science, so understood, cannot deal with the realm of what is free, that is, with the genuinely human dimension of man and his social bonds.” (Page 92)

“There are differences in detail within this knowledge shared by the great cultures, but stronger than the differences is the great common area that presents itself as the primal evidential character of human life: the doctrine of objective values expressed in the Being of the world; the belief that attitudes exist that correspond to the message of the universe and are true and therefore good, and that other attitudes likewise exist that are genuinely and always false because they contradict Being.” (Pages 35–36)

Product Details

• Title: A Turning Point For Europe?
• Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Translator: Brian McNeil, C.R.V.
• Edition: 2nd
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Publication Date: 2010
• Pages: 187
• Christian Group: Catholic
• Resource Type: Monographs
• Topic: Creeds, Councils, Confessions, and Catechisms

About Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI was the 265th pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the head of the Roman Catholic Church. He was elected on 19 April 2005 in a papal conclave, celebrated his Papal Inauguration Mass on 24 April 2005, and took possession of his cathedral, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, on 7 May 2005. A native of Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI has both German and Vatican citizenship.