You're missing his point. The fact that someone would be concerned about the safety of his or her health or that of his or her sɛҳuąƖ partner is a sign of some moral awareness. I would again refer you to what the pope is using, Kohlber's Stages in Moral Development.

Moral development goes through stages. We don't all go through them at the same rate or even in the same order. Yet, we all go through the same stages without realizing it.

Consciousness of some kind of responsibility is a good sign, even when the act it immoral. If it is an indication that something good is at work. It does not mean that the person has arrived. But at least, he or she is moving in the right direction.

It is to this sense of responsibility that the Holy Father is speaking. This tiny sense of responsibility is a good thing. The whole situation is wrong, but there is one tiny glimmer of good in the midst of it. His statement, if you read the book, is that this tiny glimmer is a sign of hope.

Have you read the book yet? If you have not, then this information would not be available to you through the medial.

Pope Benedict does tend to speak way above the heads of most people. That's why his public addresses: sermons, talks and others are written by a staff and then given to him to edit. When he speaks spontaneously, he is usually very profound and the average person does not always get what he's thinking. This is a man who is very well versed in theology and in the humanities. Remember what happened when he lifted the excommunication of the SSPX bishops. He had to go back and explain what he had written in the first pronouncement. The same thing happened when he lectured at Regensburg University and quoted some ancient emperor on Islam. He had to go back and explain. In both cases, he was communicating without a script and people were upset. But their reactions were due to a lack of undersanding.

These interviews are usually done in writing. The interviewer gives him a list of questions to answer. He writes the answers. Then the interviewer comes back and asks for clarification on points: 9, 15, 27 and 53, because he believes that he understood the rest. This may or may not be the case. But that's the way of the world of interviews. You try to take up as little of the person's time as possible.

He did say to Fr. Lombardi that he knew this was going to be a bomb. He was OK with this. This is not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to him since he bacame pope. He is on a campaign to make Catholics think and rise to a more intellectual level of faith. He has made this very clear everytime that he speaks of the importance of faith and reason working together.

I've been reading the book and he also goes into great detail to explain how he is trying to keep going what Pope John Paul began. In the book he identifies three things in particular: outreach to the young, the outreach to the Muslims and the restoration of intellecutalism to the daily life of the Church. This way of communicating is certainly consistent with that third goal. Catholics have to think about what he says. We may even have to crack open some philosophy and psychology books.

To me, this is part of the movement toward a more intellectual Catholic mind. There is a principle in philosophy, that says that secondary effect is not a sin, if it's not intended. For example, the removal of a fallopian tube with a living child inside, is not an abortion or murder, even though the child will die. The intent is not to kill the child. The removal of a cancerous uterus is not sterilization, even though that's the outcome. However, it's not the desired outcome. Moral theology calls it the principle of double effect.

He MAY be thinking along these lines. We won't know, because he did not go into that much detail. That was not the question on the table.

But as I said above. He's clearly using the epigenetic stages of moral development in his statement. One of the stages is the ability to foresee and try to avoid harm to self or another. It's not mature moral reasoning, but it's far more advanced moral reasoning than no awareness or concern for the welfare of another. The highest level in the stages is the ability to choose right, because it's good and to reject wrong, because it's evil. At that stage the person is not concerned with consequences, but with pure right and wrong and is evaluating the difference between the two. Not everyone is there. Many people are somewhere between total indifference and total altruism. Pope Benedict is acknowledging that there is moral movement in the right direction and that it is legitimate to acknowlege it. It is also a sign of hope.

"Pope Benedict does tend to speak way above the heads of most people."

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The saints and Doctors of The Church did not speak way above the heads of most people.

There is nothing laudable about gobbledeegook V2-speak that makes no sense.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 2004, p. 349: “It now becomes clear that the real heart of faith in the resurrection does not consist at all in the idea of the restoration of bodies, to which we have reduced it in our thinking; such is the case even though this is the pictorial image used throughout the Bible.”

 

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p. 353: “The foregoing reflections may have clarified to some extent what is involved in the biblical pronouncements about the resurrection: their essential content is not the conception of a restoration of bodies to souls after a long interval…”

 

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity,  2004, pp. 357-358: “To recapitulate, Paul teaches, not the resurrection of physical bodies, but the resurrection of persons…”

 

As opposed to:

 

Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, ex cathedra: “…all of whom will rise with their bodies which they now bear…” (Denz. 429)

 

Pope Gregory X, Second Council of Lyons, 1274, ex cathedra: “The same most holy Roman Church firmly believes and firmly declares that nevertheless on the day of judgment all men will be brought together with their bodies before the tribunal of Christ to render an account of their own deeds.” (Denz. 464)

 

Pope Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus, Jan. 29, 1336, ex cathedra: “Moreover, we declare that… all men with their bodies will make themselves ready to render an account of their own deeds before the tribunal of Christ…” (Denz. 531)

What happens when a cannibal eats a person (like what really happened in the 1993 movie "Alive").  The matter of one person's body becomes the matter of the other person's body - who gets the matter in the resurrected body?


This is a real and serious dilemma!

I did not say that the physical body is not raised... and neither did the pope!


My point is that you may not have the full understanding of the process nor of what Pope Benedict is writing!

I hate to say that this is getting old, but...


"restoration" and "resurrection" are NOT the same thing!!


Thankfully, our bodies will not be restored, they will be resurrected!!


Since the human person is body and soul - that will be what is resurrected - as the pope says that the person will be resurrected in the last truncated quote.

Like I said before, please don't send me any more of this nonsense... I have defended the Vicar of Christ and one of the greatest Theologians on the planet enough for one day and then some!!

You do not actually read anything the pope has written, like his recent book, Jesus of Nazareth... you just drag and drop papal quotes out of context from protestant anti-papal websites and it is then my job to find the quote, read it in context and explain it to you.  At which time you find more quotes and I am expected to do the same thing again.  I've done that with other protestants before.  It is a lot of work and rarely produces any discernible good results.  I'm off of that hampster spinning wheel now.  I can find better uses of my time!!

On the resurrection quotes - I explained that "restoration" is NOT "resurrection" (which 2 of the 3 quotes mentioned) and you gave no comment.  And the 3rd quote is NOT EVEN AN ENTIRE SENTENCE - it that the "full context" you speak of??  I mean, REALLY??

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You do not actually read anything the pope has written, like his recent book, Jesus of Nazareth... you just drag and drop papal quotes out of context from protestant anti-papal websites and it is then my job to find the quote, read it in context and explain it to you.  At which time you find more quotes and I am expected to do the same thing again.  I've done that with other protestants before.  It is a lot of work and rarely produces any discernible good results.  I'm off of that hampster spinning wheel now.  I can find better uses of my time!!