Pope Benedict whacks 'hypocritical' secularists
Calls those who want to exclude God from public life intolerant
Posted: October 2, 20054:37 p.m. Eastern

In a message to over 250 Catholic bishops at the Vatican today, Pope Benedict XVI said it was hypocritical to exclude God and religion from public life.

"A tolerance which allows God as a private opinion but which excludes him from public life, from the reality of the world and our lives, is not tolerance but hypocrisy," the pope said in the homily he gave at a three-week-long synod's opening mass in St Peter's Basilica. "When man makes himself the only master of the world and master of himself, justice cannot exist. Then, arbitrariness, power and interests rule." the rest


Papal Homily at Opening of Synod
"Lord: Help Us to Be Converted!"

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 2, 2005

(Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the homily Benedict XVI gave today at the opening Mass of the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, held in St. Peter's Basilica.

This Sunday's readings, taken from the prophet Isaiah and the Gospel, present us with one of the great images of sacred Scripture: the image of the vineyard.

In sacred Scripture, bread represents everything man needs for his daily life. Water gives the earth fertility: It is the fundamental gift that makes life possible. Wine, on the contrary, expresses the exquisiteness of creation, it gives us the feast that goes beyond the limits of daily life: Wine "gladdens the heart."

In this way, wine and with it the vine have also become the image of the gift of love, in which we can have a certain experience of the taste of the divine. And so the reading of the prophet, which we just heard, begins with a canticle of love: God created a vineyard, image of his history of love with humanity, of his love for Israel which he chose.

The first thought of today's reading is this: God has infused in man, created in his image, the capacity to love and, consequently, the capacity to love him, his creator. With the prophet Isaiah's canticle of love, God wanted to speak to the heart of his people and also to each one of us.

"I have created you in my image and likeness," he tells us. "I myself am love and you are my image in the measure that the splendor of love shines in you, in the measure in which you respond to me with love." The rest here