This document contains a series of passages from Pope Benedict XVI discussing religion, tolerance, and truth. Some key points: - Relativism excludes the possibility of essential truths and reduces human life to subjectivism without a common vision. - True tolerance comes from humility and inner strength, not external force, as shown by Jesus. Truth proves itself through love, not force. - God redeems through humility and love on the cross, not violence. We must embrace truth and love as Jesus invites us to do. - True community is built on embracing painful truth, not renouncing it. Resigning to truth's absence causes crisis in society.

1. 7. Tolerant and believers
"Is religion a redemptive, healing power, or is it rather an archaic and dangerous power that builds false
universalism with which incites bigotry and terror? Should not religion under the guidance of reason and be
delimited so cautious? However, we immediately raises the question of who can do and how. However, the
general question remains: Is it necessary or not to see the gradual elimination of religion, its passing, as a
necessary progress of mankind, so that it travels the path of freedom and tolerance universal? ".
These questions did Joseph Ratzinger at the Academy of Bavaria before being elected pope. Give us some of
his thoughts about a topic that has always been busy.

2. 1.7 THE MOST TOLERANT OF HISTORY
Is it possible to affirm Christh and be tolerant?
How is it possible to proclaim Christ and talk at the same time? At present there is a dominance of relativism. Relativist who is not someone
think it is intolerant. Think you can understand the essential truth is already seen as something intolerant. But in reality, this exclusion of truth
is a very serious form of intolerance and reduces essential things of human life to subjectivism. Thus, in essential things we no longer have a
common vision. Everyone could and should decide as you can. Lose and the ethical foundations of our common life.
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Jesus as a child tolerant
We need the truth. But certainly, because of our history we are fearful that faith in the truth entails intolerance. If we are assailed by this fear,
which is historically well grounded, we must look to Jesus as we see here ... What we see two images: as a child in the arms of his mother, and
the main altar of the basilica, crucified. These two images of the Basilica tell us this: truth prevails not through external force, but who is
humble and gives the man only by his inner strength, by virtue of being true.
Truth proves itself in love. It is never our property, one of our products in the same way that love can not happen, but you can only receive and
transmit as a gift. We need this inner force of truth. As Christians, we trust this force of truth. We witness it. We must pass this gift in the same
way that we have received, as has been delivered.
Mariazell. Saturday September8
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Jesus as deserving death tolerant
"Show us Jesus." Mary responds, introducing him above all as a child. God became small for us. God comes not with external force, but the
powerlessness of his love, which is its strength. Is placed in our hands. He asks for our love. It invites us to become small ourselves, to come
down from our high thrones and to learn to be childlike before God. He speaks to us. We asks us to trust him and so learn to live in truth and
love.
"Look to Christ": let us look briefly directing the crucifix ... God has not redeemed the world by the sword, but with the cross. In dying, Jesus
extends his arms. This is above all the posture of the Passion: left stick for us, to give his life. Yet outstretched arms are at the same time the
attitude of prayer, a position assumed by the priest when, in prayer, extend your arms, Jesus transformed the Passion, his suffering and death,
in prayer, in an act of love for God and men. Therefore, the outstretched arms of Christ crucified is also a gesture of embracing, that draws us
to himself, who wants to shake his arms with love. Thus is the image of the living God, is God himself, and we can get on your hands.
Mariazell. Saturday September 8
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7.2 WE NEED THE TRUTH!
I do not hesitate to say that the great disease of our time is the true deficit. The success, the result has removed the rule everywhere. The
renunciation of truth and the flight toward group conformity is not a path to peace. This kind of community is built on sand. The pain of truth
is the budget for true community. This pain must be accepted by the day. Only small mature patience of truth within, we become free to
ourselves and to God.
Conversion, penance and renewal, p. 193
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Where is God in contemporary society? Is very marginal. In political life it seems almost indecent to speak of God, as if it were an attack on the
freedom of those who do not believe. The political world follows its rules and its ways, excluding God as something that does not belong to
this land. The same happens in the world of commerce, economy and privacy. God is a margin. However, it seems necessary to rediscover and
ten ¬ existing energies, also the political and economic spheres are in need of moral responsibility, a responsibility that comes responsibility of
man's heart and ultimately ins ¬ tance, must do with the presence or absence of God. A society in which God is completely absent self-
destructs. We have seen in the large schemes tota ¬ tate the last century.
Interview with the newspaper La Republica, November 12, 2004
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We are capable of truth!
Our faith is decisively opposed to the resignation that considers man incapable of truth, as if it were too big for him. I am convinced that this
resignation before the truth is the core of the crisis in the West, in Europe. If for man there is no truth in the background can not even
distinguish between good and evil. Then the great and wonderful knowledge of science are ambiguous: they can open up significant
possibilities for good, for man's salvation, but also, as we see, can become a terrible threat, the destruction of man and the world.
Mariazell. Saturday September 8
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There is also something sinister which stems from the fact that freedom and tolerance are so often separated from truth. This is fuelled by the
notion, widely held today, that there are no absolute truths to guide our lives. Relativism, by indiscriminately giving value to practically
everything, has made “experience” all-important. Yet, experiences, detached from any consideration of what is good or true, can lead, not to
genuine freedom, but to moral or intellectual confusion, to a lowering of standards, to a loss of self-respect, and even to despair.
WYD, SYDNEY, THURSDAY JULY 17, 2008
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3. The truth makes us good and pure
In the discourse on the vine, says to his disciples: "You are pure, the word I have spoken" (Jn 15, 3). And again it appears the same in the
priestly prayer: you are holy in the truth (cf. Jn 17, 17-19). Thus we now find the right structure of the process of purification and purity, is not
we who create what is good - this would be a simple moralism - but is the Truth that we encounter. He himself is the Truth, the Truth in
person. Purity is a dialogic event. Start with the fact that he comes to us - He who is Truth and Love - takes us by the hand, engage with our
being. To the extent that we let ourselves be touched by Him, in which the encounter becomes friendship and love ourselves, from its purity,
pure, and then people who love to love, people who bring other in its purity and love.
Augustine summarized this process in this beautiful expression: Da quod IUBE iubes et quod vis - given what you command and then sends
what you want. This demand we now bring to the Lord and pray yes, cleanse the truth. You know the Truth that makes us pure. Make
friendship with you we become truly free and thus children of God, make us able to sit at your table and spreading in this world the light of
your purity and goodness. Amen.
Liturgical meeting with alumni, 14 September 2009
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Religion constructed on a "measure of each one" basis can not ultimately help us. It is comfortable, but at the time of crisis we are left to
ourselves. Help people to discover the true star which points the way: Jesus Christ!
August 21, 2005
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In his Confessions, Augustine speaks [...] the wrong lifestyle of a life fully oriented material, ways that become habits, habits become chains
needs and finally, to blindness of the heart.
Paths of Jesus Christ, p. 65
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To do site(place) to God in the public thing
The task of witness is not easy. There are many today who claim that God should be left on the sidelines, and that religion and faith, while fine
for individuals, should either be excluded from the public forum altogether or included only in the pursuit of limited pragmatic goals. This
secularist vision seeks to explain human life and shape society with little or no reference to the Creator. It presents itself as neutral, impartial
and inclusive of everyone. But in reality, like every ideology, secularism imposes a world-view. If God is irrelevant to public life, then society
will be shaped in a godless image. When God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose, and the “good” begins to wane.
What was ostensibly promoted as human ingenuity soon manifests itself as folly, greed and selfish exploitation. And so we have become more
and more aware of our need for humility before the delicate complexity of God’s world.
WYD, SYDNEY, THURSDAY JULY 17, 208
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7.3 FALSE TOLERANCES
When religion only makes them feel good
The question of truth is insoluble and is replaced by the question about the healing and purifying effect of religion. [...] We are again
confronted with the question of relativism. Tacitly assumes that, at bottom, all content is equally valid. What has real validity, I do not know.
Each must go its own way, each will be blessed in their own way, as I said Frederick II of Prussia. So, through theories about salvation,
relativism again slip through the back door: the question of truth is excluded from the question of religion and the question about salvation.
The truth is replaced by good intention, religion is still in the ground subjective, because what is objectively good and true, that's not possible
to know.
Faith, Truth and Tolerance, pp. 169 and 177
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When the truth only comes out of laboratories
From the Age of Enlightenment, faith is no longer a common mission in the world, as it was, however, in the Middle Ages. Science has coded a
new perception of reality is considered with the facts so it can be shown as in a laboratory. Everything else, God, morality, eternal life has been
transferred to the realm of expression that is only a 'certain' rationalism.
Interview in Le Figaro Magazine, November, 17, 2001
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When the tolerance becomes a hypocrite
the tenants do not want to have a master - and these tenants are also a mirror of ourselves. We men and women, to whom creation is as it
were entrusted for its management, have usurped it. We ourselves want to dominate it in the first person and by ourselves. We want
unlimited possession of the world and of our own lives. God is in our way. Either he is reduced merely to a few devout words, or he is denied
in everything and banned from public life so as to lose all meaning. The tolerance that admits God as it were as a private opinion but refuses
him the public domain, the reality of the world and of our lives, is not tolerance but hypocrisy. But nowhere that the human being makes
himself the one lord of the world and owner of himself can justice exist. There, it is only the desire for power and private interests that can
prevail. Of course, one can chase the Son out of the vineyard and kill him, in order selfishly to taste the fruits of the earth alone. However, in
no time at all the vineyard then reverts to being an uncultivated piece of land, trampled by wild boar as the Responsorial Psalm tells us (cf. Ps
80[79]: 14).
VATICAN BASILICA, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2005
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4. When the faith is a mere feeling
In today’s liturgy the Church reminds us that, like this altar, we too have been consecrated, set “apart” for the service of God and the building
up of his Kingdom. All too often, however, we find ourselves immersed in a world that would set God “aside”. In the name of human freedom
and autonomy, God’s name is passed over in silence, religion is reduced to private devotion, and faith is shunned in the public square. At times
this mentality, so completely at odds with the core of the Gospel, can even cloud our own understanding of the Church and her mission. We
too can be tempted to make the life of faith a matter of mere sentiment, thus blunting its power to inspire a consistent vision of the world and
a rigorous dialogue with the many other visions competing for the minds and hearts of our contemporaries.
WYD, SYDNEY, SATURDAY JULY 19, 2008
3.7.d
When it hushes up God
Yet history, including the history of our own time, shows that the question of God will never be silenced, and that indifference to the religious
dimension of human existence ultimately diminishes and betrays man himself. Is that not the message which is proclaimed by the magnificent
architecture of this cathedral? Is that not the mystery of faith which will be proclaimed from this altar at every celebration of the Eucharist?
Faith teaches us that in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, we come to understand the grandeur of our own humanity, the mystery of our life on
this earth, and the sublime destiny which awaits us in heaven (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 24). Faith teaches us that we are God’s creatures, made in
his image and likeness, endowed with an inviolable dignity, and called to eternal life. Wherever man is diminished, the world around us is also
diminished; it loses its ultimate meaning and strays from its goal. What emerges is a culture, not of life, but of death. How could this be
considered “progress”? It is a backward step, a form of regression which ultimately dries up the very sources of life for individuals and all of
society.
We know that in the end – as Saint Ignatius of Loyola saw so clearly – the only real “standard” against which all human reality can be measured
is the Cross and its message of an unmerited love which triumphs over evil, sin and death, creating new life and unfading joy. The Cross reveals
that we find ourselves only by giving our lives away, receiving God’s love as an unmerited gift and working to draw all men and women into
the beauty of that love and the light of the truth which alone brings salvation to the world.
WYD, Sydney. Saturday, July 19, 2008
3.7.e
When replacing the truth values
A set of values has taken the place of the missing today concept of God and is at the same time, the unifying formula, above all differences
could, on the one hand, lead to a universal cohesion of men of goodwill (Does anyone object?) and, secondly, lead to a truly better world.
Seem seductive. At that time, "God will have become superfluous? Can supplant these values? But how do we know what is useful for peace?
Where do we take the measure of justice and the distinction between good and evil? And finally, how we discern the time that the technique
meets the requirements of the building that is destroying it? Who holds these values can not ignore that immediately becomes the theater of
ideology and not resist the lack of consistent criteria for the reality of the creation and man. Values can not replace the truth, can not replace
God, who are but a pale figure, and without whose light is not well defined. Back to Top: Without God, the world can be illuminated. The
Church serves the world by God to live in it, being transparent to him, being ready to bring to humanity. This brings us to a practical problem:
How? How can we acknowledge God and bring Him to others? The mission that I see it more urgent for the church in this century is to fight for
a new presence in the understanding of faith. Faith has need ample reason, you need to open, to confess to God the Creator. Without such a
profession of faith, the same Christology would become barren, and only talk about God in an indirect way, referring to a particular religious
experience and the limited force. Experience more and more.
Witnesses to the Light of God, article published in La Razón, March 23, 2001
3.7.f
When the laity turns into dictatorship
The task of witness is not easy. There are many today who claim that God should be left on the sidelines, and that religion and faith, while fine
for individuals, should either be excluded from the public forum altogether or included only in the pursuit of limited pragmatic goals. This
secularist vision seeks to explain human life and shape society with little or no reference to the Creator. It presents itself as neutral, impartial
and inclusive of everyone. But in reality, like every ideology, secularism imposes a world-view. If God is irrelevant to public life, then society
will be shaped in a godless image. When God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose, and the “good” begins to wane.
What was ostensibly promoted as human ingenuity soon manifests itself as folly, greed and selfish exploitation. And so we have become more
and more aware of our need for humility before the delicate complexity of God’s world.
WYD, Sydney. Thursday, July 17, 2008
3.7.g
When we deny the limits of good and evil
"If you eat of it (that is, if you deny the limits, if you deny the measure), then you will die" (cf. Gen. 3, 3). It means the man who denies the
boundaries of good and evil, the internal measure of creation and refuses to deny the truth. He lives in falsehood, unreality. His life is pure
appearance, is under the dominion of death. We also live in this world of lies, non-live, we know to what extent there is this power of death
that makes life itself a denial, a being dead.
Sin and salvation, pp. 97-98
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5. 7.4 LOOK FOR THE SOUL OF EUROPE
Be creative minority
For the world's cultures, the absolute profanity has been formed in the West is deeply weird. They are convinced that a world without God has
no future. Therefore, multiculturalism just call us to come back in ourselves. We do not know what the future of Europe. The Charter of
Fundamental ¬ such may be a first step, a sign that Europe is seeking new and conscious soul. In this requires him right aToynbee: The fate of a
society always depends on creative minorities. Christian believers should be granted ¬ Birse themselves as such a creative minority and help
Europe recover again the best of its heritage and is well in the service of all humanidad.15
Spiritual foundations of Europe, Lecture at the Library of the Senate of the Italian Republic, May 13, 2004
4.7.a
Defend the rationality of rationalism
There are two things we must stand as a great European heritage. The first is our heritage. The first is rationality, which is a gift from Europe to
the world, so dear to Christianity. The Fathers of the Church have been the prehistory of the Catholic ¬ sia not on religions, but in philosophy. ¬
two were convinced that "verbi seminars" were not religious, but because movement started with Socrates, who did not conform with
tradition.
This need for release from prison of a tradition that is no longer valid opened the doors to Christianity. We have something that is
communicable and whereupon the reason that he was waiting to find out. It is communicable because it belongs to our common human
nature. The rationale was, therefore, postulate and condition of Christianity and remains a European legacy to confront, so peaceful and
positive, with Islam and with the great Asian religions.
Contemplating Christ, the meaning of the Jubilee Year 2000
4.7.b
The second point of the European heritage is that this rationality becomes dangerous and destructive to the human being if it becomes
positivist, if it reduces the great values of our being to subjectivity. We do not want anyone to impose a faith that can only be freely accepted
but, as life-giving force of the rationality of Europe, faith is part of our identity. It has been said that we should not talk about God in the
European Constitution not to offend Muslims and followers of other religions. The truth is exactly the opposite: it is offensive to Muslims and
followers of other religions is not talking about God and our Christian roots, but rather the contempt for God or sacred. This attitude separates
us from other cultures, prevents the possibility of meeting: expresses the arrogance of reason diminished, leading fundamentalist reactions.
Europe must defend the rationality, and here also believe we must thank the contribution of the laity, of the Enlightenment, which is to
remain a thorn in our flesh. But the laity must accept the thorn in his flesh: the strength founder of the Christian
religion in Europe.
Conference Center political orientation of Rome, October 25, 2004
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Condition of peace
If peace is the yearning of all people of good will, for the disciples of Christ is standing mandate involves all; is demanding mission that drives
them to proclaim and witness to "the gospel of peace", claiming that recognition of full truth of God is the essential precondition for the
consolidation of the truth of peace. May this always increase awareness so that every Christian community becomes a "ferment" of a
humanity renewed by love.
4.7.d
7.5 THE ONLY CHRISTIAN
In all religions there are fragments of truth
Christ is totally different from all the founders of other religions, and can not be reduced to a Buddha, or Socratees, or Confucius. It is really
the bridge between heaven and earth, light of truth has appeared to us. The gift of knowing Jesus does not mean that there are not important
fragments of truth in other religions. In the light of Christ, we establish a fruitful dialogue with a reference point in which we can see how all
these fragments of truth contribute to deepening our own faith and genuine spiritual communion of humanity.
Murcia, December 12, 2000
5.7.a
What's unique about Christianity
We need this restless heart and open. It is the core of the pilgrimage. Nor just be and think today, in a way, like everyone else. The draft goes
beyond life. We need God, the God who has revealed his face and opened his heart to Jesus Christ. San Juan, rightly says that "he is the only
Son, who is in the bosom of the Father" (Jn 1, 18), and only he, from the intimacy of God himself, could reveal God and reveal who we are us,
where we came from and where we go.
There certainly have been in history many great personalities who have made beautiful and moving experiences of God. However, they are
only human experiences, with their human limitations. He alone is God and therefore he alone is the bridge that really put in immediate
contact with God and man. Thus, although we believe the only true mediator of salvation for all, which affects everyone and which, ultimately,
all they need, this does not mean in any way that despise other religions and to radicalize with pride our thought, only that we have been
conquered by him who has played inside and filled us with gifts, so we can share them with others.
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6. Mariazell. Saturday September 8
5.7.b
7.6 Ecologists
What air is for biological life, the Holy Spirit is for spiritual life; and just as an atmospheric pollution exists that poisons the environment and
living beings, thus a pollution of heart and spirit exists that mortifies and poisons spiritual life. In the same way that one must not become
inured to the poisons in the air and for this reason ecological commitment is a priority today likewise one must not become inured to what
corrupts the mind. On the other hand it seems that it is not difficult to become accustomed to the many products that contaminate both the
mind and the heart and that circulate in our society for example, images which boost pleasure, violence or contempt for men and women. This
is also freedom, people say, without realizing that all this pollutes, and intoxicates the mind, especially that of the new generations and
moreover ends by conditioning their very freedom. The metaphor of the mighty wind of Pentecost makes one think instead of how precious it
is to breathe clean air, physically with the lungs and spiritually with the heart, the healthy air of the Spirit who is love!
ST. PETER´S BASILICA, SUNDAY MAY 31, 2009
6.7.a
Thus, we have discovered an initial answer to the question as to what the Holy Spirit is, what he does and how we can recognize him. He
comes to meet us through creation and its beauty.
However, in the course of human history, a thick layer of dirt has covered God's good creation, which makes it difficult if not impossible to
perceive in it the Creator's reflection, although the knowledge of the Creator's existence is reawakened within us ever anew, as it were,
spontaneously, at the sight of a sunset over the sea, on an excursion to the mountains or before a flower that has just bloomed.
ST. PETER´S SQUARE. SATURDAY JUNE 3, 2006
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What do we discover? Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth: erosion,
deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption. Some of you come from
island nations whose very existence is threatened by rising water levels; others from nations suffering the effects of devastating drought.
God’s wondrous creation is sometimes experienced as almost hostile to its stewards, even something dangerous. How can what is “good”
appear so threatening?
WYD, Sydney, THURSDAY JULY 17, 2008
6.7.c
The world in which we live is the work of the Creator Spirit. Pentecost is not only the origin of the Church and thus in a special way her feast;
Pentecost is also a feast of creation. The world does not exist by itself; it is brought into being by the creative Spirit of God, by the creative
Word of God. For this reason Pentecost also mirrors God's wisdom. In its breadth and in the omni-comprehensive logic of its laws, God's
wisdom permits us to glimpse something of his Creator Spirit. It elicits reverential awe.
Those very people who, as Christians, believe in the Creator Spirit become aware of the fact that we cannot use and abuse the world and
matter merely as material for our actions and desires; that we must consider creation a gift that has not been given to us to be destroyed, but
to become God's garden, hence, a garden for men and women.
In the face of the many forms of abuse of the earth that we see today, let us listen, as it were, to the groaning of creation of which St Paul
speaks (Rom 8: 22); let us begin by understanding the Apostle's words, that creation waits with impatience for the revelation that we are
children of God, to be set free from bondage and obtain his splendour.
ST. PETER´S SQUARE, SATURDAY JUNE 3, 2006
6.7.d
We want to be these children of God for whom creation is waiting, and we can become them because the Lord has made us such in Baptism.
Yes, creation and history - they are waiting for us, for men and women who are truly children of God and behave as such.
If we look at history, we see that creation prospered around monasteries, just as with the reawakening of God's Spirit in human hearts the
brightness of the Creator Spirit has also been restored to the earth a splendor that has been clouded and at times even extinguished by the
barbarity of the human mania for power.
Moreover, the same thing happened once again around Francis of Assisi - it has happened everywhere as God's Spirit penetrates souls, this
Spirit whom our hymn describes as light, love and strength.
ST. PETER´S SQUARE. SATURDAY, JUNE 3, 2006.
6.7.e
One comes to Assisi to learn from St Francis the secret of recognizing Jesus Christ and experiencing him. This is what Francis felt about Jesus,
according to what his first biographer narrates: "He always carried Jesus in his heart. Jesus on his lips, Jesus in his ears, Jesus in his eyes, Jesus
in his hands, Jesus in all his other members.... Rather, finding himself travelling often and meditating on and singing of Jesus, he would forget
that he was travelling and would invite all creatures to praise Jesus" (cf. 1 Cel II, 9, 115). Thus, we see that communion with Jesus also opens
the heart and eyes to creation.
Asís, SUNDAY JUNE 17, 2007
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