Pope Decries 'Pleasure at All Costs'

[Fash]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071216/D8TIOMG00.html

ROME (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI warned Sunday against seeking happiness in drugs or other "artificial paradises" and the self-centered quest for "pleasure at all costs."

Instead, the pope held up Mother Teresa - the Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to serving the poor in India and elsewhere - as an example.

"Every day, she lived next to misery, human degradation and death," the pope told thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square. "Yet, she offered the smile of God to everybody."

The pope, speaking during the traditional Sunday noon Angelus prayer, said real happiness cannot be found in cultures "that put individual happiness in the place of God, a mentality that has its emblematic effect in the quest for pleasure at all costs, in the spread of the use of drugs as an escape, a shelter in artificial paradises, which turn out to be completely illusory."

In an annual tradition, children came to St. Peter's Square bearing Nativity figures of baby Jesus for the pontiff to bless.

Earlier Sunday, Benedict consecrated a new church on the outskirts of Rome, blessing the parish's children.

Just curious what the real Christians on the board think about this...

[Fairweather Pure]

Sounds like he and every other high ranking catholic should practice what he preaches.

[Sabek]

I am not sure that this is really a religion issue as much as it is a common sense issue. As such I don't know why the Pope really needs to put out an edict about it.

Before the "drug culture" here starts flaming me, I don't care if you want to do drugs or think drugs are A-OK etc. What you do is up to you, but I think no one can argue that someone with an addiction to anything be it drugs, games, eating, or hatever is a good thing for that person.

[Fairweather Pure]

I just think it's funny to hear the pope say people should live like Mother Teresa, when he lives about as far away from that concept as one could imagine.

[Sueven]

I think his point is generally correct.

When religion started dying a couple of hundred years ago, humanity was presented with an amazing opportunity to remake our vision of the world in an ideal form. Suddenly, our visions of the good no longer had to be constrained by some ridiculous commitment to monotheism, or to potential interpretive adherence to one religious vision or another. We had an opportunity to affirmatively put forth a new vision of human relationships, interaction, and society.

We failed miserably. Some individual people have replaced religion with a personal ethical system (this is how I like to think of myself). That's great for us personally, but it doesn't help society-- many less introspective people aren't going to spend time crafting their own ethical systems, and will simply latch on to what's available, whether that be religion or a secular alternative.

So most people, freed from the bonds of living their lives in accordance with religious ethical edicts, have turned to the only thing that's available in mass society, the vision of humanity that religious figures tend to refer to as the 'cult of self.' It's a selfish ideology that takes capitalism, converts it from an economic system into a normative ethical system, combines it with the worst parts of the selfishness-as-a-virtue ideology as most despicably articulated by Ayn Rand, and leaves people thinking that they have no obligation to anybody outside of themselves. It leads to drug use, sure, which I agree is often a negative (although I could argue for ages about drug use as a civil right... another thread). It also leads to other far more destructive consequences, the most significant of which is the dominance of a self-centered worldview in which people don't conceive of themselves as having any responsibilities to other people, society in general, or the planet as a whole, beyond those that they have affirmatively agreed to take on.

Our society desperately needs a dialogue about the appropriate nature of post-religious ethical life.

The most advanced people in our society now are those that are actively trying to build a post-religious, secular, ethical vision. Next in line are those post-religious individuals who have crafted a distinct, personal system of secular ethics. Next are those who have adopted an ethical vision posited by one religion or another. Trailing in the rear-- the dregs of humanity-- are those atheists who have determined that all ethical visions are contingent and socially constructed (which is true) and concluded that therefore they owe no ethical obligations and are free to live their lives in pursuit of selfish desires (which is not the correct conclusion).

[Sylvus]

Before the "drug culture" here starts flaming me, I don't care if you want to do drugs or think drugs are A-OK etc. What you do is up to you, but I think no one can argue that someone with an addiction to anything be it drugs, games, eating, or hatever is a good thing for that person.

No flames forthcoming, but I would like to point out that the "bad" issue you mention is addiction, not any of the individual things that one can be addicted to. Any of those things can be enjoyed recreationally and responsibly without addiction ever entering the picture, and all of them are enjoyed as such by many people throughout the world.

I totally agree that if you let anything become the focus of your life to the exclusion of all else, that is bad. Even if said focus is God. Sorry Pope!

[Sabek]

Before the "drug culture" here starts flaming me, I don't care if you want to do drugs or think drugs are A-OK etc. What you do is up to you, but I think no one can argue that someone with an addiction to anything be it drugs, games, eating, or hatever is a good thing for that person.

No flames forthcoming, but I would like to point out that the "bad" issue you mention is addiction, not any of the individual things that one can be addicted to. Any of those things can be enjoyed recreationally and responsibly without addiction ever entering the picture, and all of them are enjoyed as such by many people throughout the world.

I totally agree that if you let anything become the focus of your life to the exclusion of all else, that is bad. Even if said focus is God. Sorry Pope!

Understandable and that's why I clearly called out the addiction thing and gave things other than just drugs. I personally have never done drugs and really don't see a reason why I would want to. However I am not saying someone else might not do drugs and be happy as all get out.

My mother used to have a saying that is really true in just about all instances.

Everything in moderation.