Gems of wisdom

German television and radio aired an exclusive interview with Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday, August 13. It’s loaded with nuggets of gold from this “firm but gentle” shepherd (what he said he wants to be, and is), and I’m still parsing it, but you can be edified by the whole thing here.

Some highlights:

“Christianity– Catholicism– isn’t a collection of prohibitions,” the Pope told his broadcast audience. “It’s a positive option. It’s very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today.”

…Responding to another question about Church moral teaching, Pope Benedict said t hat “the real problem of our historical moment lies in the imbalance between the incredibly fast growth of our technical power and that of our moral capacity, which has not grown in proportion.”

And on the “dictatorship of relativism” he stated:

“Humanity has rebuilt the world by itself and finding God inside this world has become more difficult.”

CWNews has a good summary, and a link to the transcript.

Some of it surprised me. I’ll fill you in shortly…