Democracy without values = totalitarianism.Vatican City Vatican City (văt`ĭkən), independent state (2005 est. pop. 900), 108.7 acres (44 hectares), within the city of Rome, Italy, and the residence of the pope, who is its absolute ruler. -- In Pope Benedict's January 30, 2006, address to the leaders of the Christian Associations of Italian Workers, he warned again that "as history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism totalitarianism (tōtăl'ĭtâr`ēənĭzəm), a modern autocratic government in which the state involves itself in all facets of society, including the daily life of its citizens. ." The Pope emphasized: "The defence of life--from conception to natural end--wherever it is threatened, offended, or trampled underfoot, is the primary duty of an authentic ethic of responsibility, and this may be coherently extended to all other forms of poverty, injustice, and exclusion." He spoke about the potential for totalitarianism wherever natural law is rejected, as in the case of homosexual unions. This warning had been expressed a number of times by his predecessor John Paul II John Paul II, 1920–2005, pope (1978–2005), a Pole (b. Wadowice) named Karol Józef Wojtyła; successor of John Paul I. He was the first non-Italian pope elected since the Dutch Adrian VI (1522–23) and the first Polish and Slavic pope. , most notably in the latter's Encyclical encyclical, originally, a pastoral letter sent out by a bishop, now a solemn papal letter, meant to inform the whole church on some particular matter of importance. Benedict XIV circulated the first known encyclical in 1740. The Gospel of Life (1995). The trend can be observed yearly in Europe and Canada. |
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