Vatican City, Mar 10, 2008 / 08:24 am
On March 8, Pope Benedict XVI told a conference organized to address the increasingly secularized state of the world, that he thinks believers are being conditioned by a “culture of images which imposes contradictory models and impulses” and that these images replace the need for God.
"Today more than ever", the Holy Father said to the attendees, "reciprocal openness between cultures is an important field for dialogue between men and women committed to seeking authentic humanism, over and above the differences that separate them".
Secularization, he said, "invades all aspects of daily life and causes the development of a mentality in which God is effectively absent, entirely or in part, from human life and conscience".
The threat from this void is far-reaching, and the Church is even affected. This "is not just an external threat to believers,” the Pontiff said, “but has for some time been evident in the bosom of the Church herself".