Progress without God benefits few and oppresses many, says Spanish cardinal

Madrid, Spain, Dec 11, 2007 / 10:27 am

The Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal Agustin Garcia-Gasco, said this week that the ideologies of modern times, especially of the 20th century, “seek to build a perfect society by radically rejecting God,” and they hold that “the path to the future entails the expulsion of God from the human city.”

“This craziness only leads to new attacks against humanity, especially against those who are most defenseless: genocide, terrorism, nuclear weapons, torture, the killing of the unborn, genetic manipulation, etc,” the cardinal said during Mass on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

“When human progress aspires to expel God, it ends up being the ‘progress’ of a few and the oppression of many.  It’s a fraud,” he said.

“Man needs God,” he said, “otherwise he is left without hope.”  “Science can contribute much to the humanization of the world and of humanity” but “it needs friendship with God in order to continue giving human meaning to progress.”

But science can also “destroy man and the world if it is not guided by external forces.  Man is not redeemed by science.  Man is redeemed by love,” the cardinal emphasized.

Likewise, Cardinal Garcia-Gasco encouraged the faithful to “give brave and humble witness to the love of God that leads to the hope of a full and happy life,” and he prayed that the Virgin Mary would help believers to “say no to the deceptions of power, money and pleasure and to corruption, hypocrisy, selfishness and violence.”

The feast of the Immaculate “helps us to discover the error and malice of those seek to introduce into humanity distrust of friendship with God” and “foster the false pretension of learning about the world while disregarding God,” he added.