Actually, no, it was not a slow week at all. There will be elections in two weeks, and the political bickering is at the climax, plus Italy's national airline is nearing bankrupcy (among the other happenings of this week...), so supposedly there are better things for the press to work on. Quite simply, as Darth Servo already pointed out, in my country everything mr. Ratzinger (or any bishop high-ranking enough, for that matters...) says about anything is automatically top news, at least for a good part of the press. Also, as I already told in another thread, the vatican is throwing its weight in the current Italian electoral campaign more than I can ever remember, and so this declaration (and the longer speech that was around it) must be seen in a political (or, better, electoral) way. This was one of the points I wanted to raise: the fact that the vatican is getting involved in the politics of some countries (Italy mainly, but according to what I've read also the electoral campaing in Spain saw heavy interventions by the local bishops, fortunately with little success...), and in a much more direct way than in the past.wjs7744 wrote:As has been pointed out already, this isn't really a suprise. What does surprise me on the other hand is that this apparently was considered headline news in Italy. Guess it must have been a slow week or something.
And ShadowRider? I think you messed up here. Claiming that Jesus really happened is hardly fundamentalist stuff.
As for the subject of the speech, the point that interested me was that, as far as I can remember, for the historical existence of Jesus (and specially for his resurrection), the priests did not use to insist too much on the whole 'we have evidence and documentation' issue. Whenever the subject of the 'historical accuracy' was brought up (and they rarely brought it up themselves, probably because they knew they were walking on the eggs by discussing that...), the standard answer was something like "Oh, yes, well, there are evidences pro and con, but, you know, it is not the point. The point is that we believe in it, against any possible evidence of the contrary. That is what make us believe". I remember bringing up the point with the religion teacher in HS, and after some debate, this was the conclusion. And, incidentally, it was part of what they called "mistery of faith". Please note that, on some level, this answer implied that actual historical evidence could be against Gospel tale, but believers simply chose to believe the tale. The fact that now the vatican is strongly bringing up this point and claiming to have strong evidences that everything happened as in the Gospels strikes me as fundamentalist: if evidences point to Jesus' resurrection, then everyone who doubts or denies it is misinformed - or willingly lying. Also, it seems significant to me that, after years of 'mistery of faith', the vatican seems to feel that faith alone is no more enough to keep their 'flock' together, and that they need 'fact' and 'evidence' to back it up. Seems to me also that they are trying to polarize their following: the most ignorant and misinformed of believers (who, experience says, are more prone to embrace more fundamentalist positions, like creationism) will blindly follow the vatican, while the more open-minded and informed of believers (who are more difficult to control) will find themselves marginalized.
In this way, Ratzinger's declarations strike me as fundamentalist. They may appear as not that much fundamentalist in themselves, not yet, but appear to me as laying down the foundation for more and worse things...
This is to clarify why I tought this was interesting enough to open a thread on it. By the way, it is not the first hint of the vatican's radicalization, but seems to me that it is getting more and more evident, and anyway, it was the first chance I had to bring up the topic here.
Anyway, as I already told, since it appears that I misjudged and that this thread is actually of no interest for anyone other than me, please just ignore it. If the moderators can lock or delete it, it is better. I wasn't even going to write this post, but I thought better to clarify the reasons for which I opened this thread, so to avoid further misunderstandings.
