Church and Benedict XVI confronting heart of secular world, archbishop states

Madrid, Spain, Jun 1, 2009 / 18:39 pm

Archbishop Francisco Gil Hellin of Burgos, Spain said last week that it has become increasingly evident that both the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI are confronting the “center of the secular world, made up of significant elements of the European Union, the United Nations, and more recently, the United States.”

“This center has shown itself incapable of accepting anything that is not part of its own values. And thus, despite scientific proof, the Pope has been irrationally criticized in the name of reason, and the faith and morals of the Catholic Church have been treated irrationally,” the archbishop said in his weekly reflection.

Archbishop Gil Hellin warned his audience that, “The world runs the risk of embracing a new dictatorship: the dictatorship of relativism.”

He went on to analyze the recent attacks against the Pope for his statements about condom use. “If the Pope’s comments were off the mark there would be some justification. But what the Pope said is shared by the international scientific community, Catholic or not. What we are facing is a secularism that is increasingly more radical, which gives no value to Christian ethics or is willing to include Christianity when it comes to finding solutions to the very serious problems that are affecting our society.”

Archbishop Gil Hellin alerted people to the way that “radical secularism has been incubating in Europe during the last few decades. But it has become especially acute since the fall of the Berlin Wall.” “The United States had maintained itself more or less outside this reality. This is explains why the Pope saw in it a more hopeful and less hostile secularism.”

“In fact, although not quite as strongly as in Europe, secular forces have become more emboldened in the United States, seeking to marginalize the church and label her teachings on marriage and life as outdated, if not fanatical,” the archbishop said.

He also argued that “hostility towards the Church has also grown in the media.” As an example, the archbishop stated that “key U.N. officials from some European nations and the international media with connections in the United States and Great Britain rapidly assumed that Benedict XVI was wrong about condoms.”