I've been asked to write a Lenten article for the Times-Picayune on the theme, "secularism diminishes culture."
Thought I'd based the article on two paragraphs from JPII's 1995 encyclical, Evangelium vitae:
20. [. . .] To claim the right to abortion,
infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means
to attribute to human freedom a perverse
and evil significance: that
of an absolute power over
others and against others.
This is the death of true freedom: "Truly, truly, I say to you,
every one who commits sin is a slave to sin" (Jn
8:34).
21. In seeking the deepest roots of
the struggle between the "culture of life" and the "culture
of death", we cannot restrict ourselves to the perverse idea of
freedom mentioned above. We have to go to the heart of the tragedy
being experienced by modern man: the
eclipse of the sense of God and of man,
typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism,
which, with its ubiquitous tentacles, succeeds at times in putting
Christian communities themselves to the test. Those who allow
themselves to be influenced by this climate easily fall into a sad
vicious circle: when the
sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of
man, of his dignity and his
life; in turn, the systematic violation of the moral law, especially
in the serious matter of respect for human life and its dignity,
produces a kind of progressive darkening of the capacity to discern
God's living and saving presence.
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