c. 1998 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II told U.S. bishops Friday (Feb. 27) that trendy solutions intended to fulfill people’s spiritual needs and desires while marginalizing the Roman Catholic Church are failing because they are”exhausted”and”implausible.” At the end of the millennium, he said, the Catholic church will remain standing, offering the most potent”truth”in helping people live in the modern era.

John Paul’s comments, made to 10 visiting prelates from New York, marked his latest offense against what he has characterized as hollow bromides for those seeking a full spiritual life while being battered by the forces of modernity, especially in the materially rich Untied States and other developed nations.

He has been particularly critical of rampant consumerism, the quest for wealth and the appeal of sects and cults he contends have come to graphically symbolize life in the United States at the end of the 20th century.”People seek to satisfy this (spiritual) hunger in many ways,”John Paul told the Americans.”But the failure of many proposed solutions, be they philosophies, ideologies or fashions, has led to a great unease, if not a current of despair, in contemporary culture.” John Paul’s comments dovetail with the conclusions of the monthlong synod of American bishops at the Vatican which ended last December. At that meeting, the bishops from North and South America criticized what they called an”aggressive secularism”that seeks to marginalize religious men and women and erect barriers to spreading the gospel.

The pontiff is expected to visit the United States sometime this year to issue his”apostolic exhortation”on the synod meeting, a message meant to chart the church’s priorities in the coming millennium.

In his session with New York clergy on Friday, the pope belittled attempts to cast Catholicism as just another religion and the Bible as”merely a `text’ to be analyzed.””The challenge of radical skepticism can lead to the assumption that the church is marginal to contemporary life,”he said.”Accepting this assumption, in turn, can lead to the notion that Catholicism, and indeed Christianity as a whole, is merely one form among many of the generic human reality called ‘religion.'” He called on the church to demonstrate that”the world can understand its history and its aspirations most adequately, most truthfully, through the gospel. If this is the truth we proclaim, then the church is never marginal, even when she seems weak in the eyes of the world.” But many Catholics contend the church is itself responsible for its placement on the edge of society by turning its back on the reforms begun in 1965 with the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council and as it has become more strident and less tolerant of dissent.

The pope has denied the charge, and has repeatedly said he fully supports the council’s central message, which he helped craft as bishop of Krakow, Poland.

In issuing his challenge to American Catholics to”proclaim with renewed vigor”the word of Christ, John Paul acknowledged the difficulty of succeeding”in a cultural climate, many of whose most powerful elements doubt the existence of the objective, absolute truth and reject the very idea of authoritative teaching.”The challenge is enormous, but the time is right,”he added.”For other culture-forming forces are exhausted, implausible, or lacking in intellectual resources adequate to satisfy the human yearning for genuine liberation _ even if those forces still manage to exercise a powerful attraction, especially through the media.”

DEA END HEILBRONNER