Benedict XVI & The New Totalitarianism

The Italian journalist Antonio Socci writes about something Benedict XVI said to his biographer Peter Seewald. Excerpts from Socci’s piece:

The crucial question placed by Seewald to Ratzinger is this:



One phrase from your first homily as pope has remained particularly impressed in our memory: “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.” Had you perhaps foreseen what awaited you?

The pope replies that this was not an allusion to the problems of the Vatican (such as Vatileaks), as many thought. Benedict XVI explains:

The true threat for the Church, and thus for the Petrine service, does not come from this sort of episode: it comes instead from the universal dictatorship of apparently humanistic ideologies. Anyone who contradicts this dictatorship is excluded from the basic consensus of society. One hundred years ago, anyone would have thought it absurd to speak of homosexual matrimony. Today those who oppose it are socially excommunicated. The same holds true for abortion and the production of human beings in the laboratory. Modern society intends to formulate an anti-Christian creed: whoever contests it is punished with social excommunication. Being afraid of this spiritual power of the Antichrist is all too natural, and what is truly needed is that the prayers of entire dioceses and of the world Church come to the rescue to resist it.

Anyone who contradicts this dictatorship is excluded from the basic consensus of society, said Benedict XVI — and he went on to associate this with the power of Antichrist.

This photo was taken of St. Peter’s Basilica on the day Pope Benedict announced his resignation:

The American Conservative.