Something is amiss, pope warns
2008-07-17 11:39
Sydney - Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday delivered a stinging attack on pop culture, consumerism and "false idols" to 150 000 mainly teenaged Catholic pilgrims gathered in Australia for World Youth Day.
The pontiff reminded the young foreign and Australian pilgrims in Sydney for the Catholic festival of how the apostles stepped forward to "oppose the perversity in the culture around them" when they established the church.
"Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division, of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises," the pope said.
The 81-year-old spiritual leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics said there were numerous signs indicating "something is amiss" in modern society.
"In our personal lives and in our communities, we encounter a hostility, something dangerous; a poison which threatens to corrode what is good, reshape who we are and distort the purpose for which we have been created," he said.
Fierce criticism
Pope Benedict XVI said alcohol and drug abuse were two of the most prevalent examples of modern ills.
But, he reserved his fiercest criticism for sexual degradation and violence masquerading as entertainment on television and the internet.
"I ask myself, could anyone standing face to face with people who actually do suffer violence and sexual exploitation explain that these tragedies, portrayed in virtual form, are considered merely entertainment?" he said.
The pope urged his young audience to reject consumer society.
"Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty and subjective experience displaces truth," he said.
The pontiff also blamed consumerism for the environmental problems facing the planet.
He condemned modern society's moral relativism, which rejects the concept of absolute truth, saying it led to confusion, a lowering of standards, a loss of self respect and even to despair.
The pope defended the church's right to speak out on public issues, saying it could not remain on the sidelines and allow secularism to dominate society.
While the pope railed against modern society's ills, World Youth Day organisers have deployed many pop culture tools to promote the event as a hip experience for young worshippers.
They send out a daily text message from Pope Benedict XVI, or BXVI as he is known to cellphone users.
'Happy party'
Festival organisers have also set up a social networking website similar to Facebook to help pilgrims get in touch with each other while in Sydney.
They staged a pop concert after the event's opening mass on Tuesday and observers have likened the vast gatherings of tens of thousands of pilgrims to a rock concert.
A conservative order of Catholics this week criticised World Youth Day as nothing more than a "happy party" and said it would not help pilgrims prepare for heaven.