Hope From The Pope

For Christmas I also received a copy of Pope Benedict's second encyclical, Saved in Hope. I have found it to be very nourishing and refreshing. I was particularly struck by his insights regarding "faith in progress." (Pastor Bo's recent sermons on freedom served as a helpful groundwork here):

The nineteenth century held fast to its faith in progress as the new form of human hope, and it continued to consider reason and freedom as the guiding stars to be followed along the path of hope.

He then develops how technical innovation and industrialization gave rise to gross class inequalities which would in turn lead to the Marxist revolution. Concerning Marx, he makes some observations which have a very contemporary ring given the current national focus on economic concerns.

He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man, and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains freedom also for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism; man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favorable economic environment.

While recognizing the ways in which progress may benefit humanity, Pope Benedict closes the section with an appropriate caution:

Without doubt, [progress] offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil - possibilities which did not formerly exist. We have all witnessed the way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.