Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Is there no middle ground?

There is nothing either fundamentally good, nor anything fundamentally evil; everything is relative, relative to our point of view…This point once established, it is extremely possible that something, perfectly indifferent in itself, may be indeed distasteful in your eyes, but may be most delicious in mine; and immediately I find it pleasing, immediately I find it amusing, regardless of our inability to agree in assigning a character to it, should I not be a fool to deprive myself of it merely because you condemn it?

—The Marquis de Sade from The 120 Days of Sodom

Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching," looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.

—Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI)
Homily at the Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff, April 18, 2005

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