"...our actions always remain human..." - Pope Benedict XVI

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

There is so much in Pope Benedict XVI’s “Charity in Truth” . He sees deeply, sharing his insights with us:

1. The challenge … today is closely linked to technological progress… Technology … is a profoundly human reality, linked to the autonomy and freedom of man. In technology we … confirm … spirit over matter. “The human spirit, ‘increasingly free of its bondage to creatures, can be more easily drawn to the worship and contemplation of the Creator’”. Technology enables us to exercise dominion over matter…to improve our conditions of life. It touches the heart of the vocation of human labour: in technology, seen as the product of his genius, man recognizes himself and forges his own humanity. Technology is the objective side of human action whose origin and raison d’etre is found in the subjective element: the worker himself. … technology is never merely technology. It reveals man and his aspirations … it expresses the inner tension that impels him gradually to overcome material limitations. Technology, … is a response to God’s command to till and to keep the land (cf. Gen 2:15) … a covenant that should mirror God’s creative love.
2. Technological development can give rise to the idea that technology is self-sufficient when too much attention is given to the “how” questions, and not enough to the many “why” questions … The process of globalization could replace ideologies with technology, allowing the latter to become an ideological power that threatens to confine us … that holds us back from encountering being and truth. Were that to happen, we would … evaluate and make decisions about our life situations from within a technocratic cultural perspective to which we would belong structurally, without ever being able to discover a meaning that is not of our own making. The “technical” worldview that follows from this vision is now so dominant that truth has come to be seen as coinciding with the possible. … when the sole criterion of truth is efficiency and utility, development is automatically denied. … Even when we work through satellites or through remote electronic impulses, our actions always remain human, an expression of our responsible freedom. Technology is highly attractive because it draws us out of our physical limitations and broadens our horizon. But human freedom is authentic only when it responds to …technology with decisions that are the fruit of moral responsibility. Hence the pressing need for formation in an ethically responsible use of technology. … we must reappropriate the true meaning of freedom, which is not an intoxication with total autonomy, but a response to the call of being, beginning with our own personal being.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your Faithful, kindle in us, the Fire of Your Love.
Jesus, we trust in You!
Mary, Mother and Model for the Church, pray for us.