CNA Newsroom, Sep 5, 2022 / 07:18 am (CNA).
The director of the Benedict XVI Institute in Regensburg, Germany, says a “healthy defense of the Faith” is necessary if Catholics are to credibly spread the Gospel in contemporary societies.
Evangelization draws on “the beauty and radiance of faith,” Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg told CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, in an interview published Sept. 1.
“However, it needs to go hand in hand with a ‘healthy’ form of apologetics, insofar as the proclamation of the faith has never, and certainly not today, taken place in a merely benevolent and affirmative atmosphere.”
Apologetics “should demonstrate the reasonableness of faith and the hope the Faith can give in the face of critical inquiries,” Voderholzer, a professor of dogmatics, said.
“The central questions at stake are: Is it meaningful to speak of God? Can God have revealed himself in Jesus Christ? Is this revelation recognizable, and is it liberating for me? What does grace mean? How do grace and freedom go together? Are faith in creation and a scientific approach to the world compatible?”
Voderholzer emphasized that these questions are shared by most Christians and also expressed “in the commitment to the protection of life, such as in the March for Life.”
He said there was a specific canon of scandals that Catholics often find themselves confronted with: “The Crusades, witch trials, the Galileo case, colonialism, complicity in totalitarian systems, corruption of the Jesus tradition, and recently especially sexual abuse.”
Apologetics does not mean a “defiant denial of the dark sides of the Church, or dogmatism at any price,” the theologian warned.
“What matters is a knowledge of history, discernment, and the understanding that the ‘holiness of the Church’ does not mean the moral blamelessness of all its members, but the gift of the Lord to communicate His presence, His salvation, precisely in fragile vessels.”
Asked about role models for a “healthy form of apologetics,” the German prelate said he thought of Irenaeus of Lyon, Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal, John Henry Newman, Henri de Lubac, and also Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI.
“They all know that the revelation of God, which is handed down to us in the Holy Scriptures and the faith of the Church, is self-evident,” he said.
Voderholzer is the founding director of the Pope Benedict XVI Institute, which was created in 2008 to compile and make available both published works and unpublished writings of the theologian, bishop and pope emeritus. The 16 volume series of Benedict’s collected works is also slated for publication in English by Ignatius Press, according to the institute’s website.
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Over a year ago, Bishop Voderholzer proposed a revised script for the German “synodal path,” and was stiffed by the clericalists. Refreshing news, here, to find a German bishop speaking common sense, as if the truth mattered and still exists. The pygmies should have listened. They’ve been upstaged by one of the adults in the room.
Yes, forward (!) to the “central questions”: “Is it meaningful to speak of God? Can God have revealed himself in Jesus Christ? Is this revelation recognizable, and is it liberating for me? What does grace mean? How do grace and freedom go together? Are faith in creation and a scientific approach to the world compatible?”
Yes, one of the few outstanding German bishops. “They all knew that the revelation of God is self evident” (Voderholzer). That truth, Christ revealing of his Father’s essence is divine love, pure love, infinite, the supreme truth. It requires no supporting arguments, or proofs. We assent to what cannot be denied.
One German bishop who has something to say.
“Are faith in creation and a scientific approach to the world compatible?”
For 100 years, science has known that the universe does not exist without a conscious observer, who we know to be Adam kind, in it. It takes a conscious observer to physically experience the universe, which causes ‘wave collapse’, for a physical universe to exist. When man is not experiencing the universe, a physical universe no longer exists. This is non-intuitive, meaning, scientists could never have imagined this to be the case, until scientific data proved that this is the case.
The actual scientific data at the quantum level, is on the side of the Christian Believer. Scientifically, there can be no physical universe before Adam opened his eyes to look, touch, smell, hear, taste, and experience his Reality of their being a universe.
Neils Bohr, “It is meaningless to assign Reality to the universe in the absence of observation; in the intervals between measurement, quantum systems truly exist as a fuzzy mixture of all possible properties.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YqgPAtzho
Why does the world not know that there can be no physical universe before Adam opened his eyes? Because atheist scientists don’t want you to know about it. So once the truth comes out about how the universe does not exist before Adam opens his eyes as a conscious observer, Christian Creationists are justified as the correct interpreters of when Creation happened. Creation happened on the week Adam was made. This will be a strong shot in the arm for the Christian faith.
Neils Bohr VS Albert Einstein.
Neils Bohr says that there is no universe when a conscious man is not looking at it. Albert Einstein says, “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it.” After over a century of fierce debate and mountains of scientific research to settle the debate, Neils Bohr’s ‘ ‘Peek A Boo’ universe, a universe which does not exist when man is not looking at it, is dominating the debate, over Albert Einstein’s “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it.” By the end of the following video, the narrator indicates that there is only a slim chance that Albert Einstein’s ‘Realism’ can be salvaged. Proven science says there is no universe when Adamkind is not looking at it and experiencing it.
https://youtu.be/tafGL02EUOA
Neils Bohr
“Nor is it our business to prescribe to God how He should run the world.”
Scientists are up to sending 800 atom molecules through the double slit experiment. There is a, seen by man, 800 atom molecule coming out of the particle gun, but then there is only a fuzzy mixture of all possibilities going through the double slit, provided man is not looking at it, and then there is an 800 atom molecule, seen by man when hitting the screen. In other words, the 800 atom molecule exits, coming out of the gun with man looking at it, then does not exist when man is not looking at it going through the double slit, and then the 800 atom molecule is seen by man on the screen it hits. An 800 atom molecule just popping in and out of existence. Wow!
Not only does God know our every thought, hear our every prayer, know our soul, but our individual universe is completely controlled by God. When two people have different, individual Realities, the two Realities collapse into one, common Reality, when they discuss with one another their different Realities. Wow!
Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/
So what proven science is telling us, is that Adam kind is at the center of all that physically exists, and that God can select from all possible Realities, what an individual human being will experience as their Reality. Talk about having a personal relationship with our God! Wow!
When a subatomic particle is in wave form, it possesses all possible properties, which can be chosen from by God, to become all possible outcomes. All of these, ‘all possible outcomes’, are bouncing off one another to produce the wave effect, when traveling through the double slit. When man goes to experience his individual Reality, now only one, of ‘all possible outcomes’, is selected by God, to become a specific physical particle, with specific properties, in a specific place, and the rest of the ‘all possible properties’ no longer exist. In the case of a star, infinite subatomic particles make the wave collapse simultaneously, with all particles taking their single specific property, in their specific place, in their specific atom, in their specific molecule, in their specific star. Then when man is no longer looking at the star, all the infinite subatomic particles immediately return back to being a soup of all possibilities again. Wow! It is only God Who has the Power to do something like this! It is God’s miraculous, great Power selecting the property, and position that all, infinite, subatomic particles will transition into, from their wave state of all possible properties, when man looks at a star and triggers wave collapse. Wow! Wow! Wow! And when a man looks at a star, he is usually looking at a sky full of our one septillion stars!
There is no way a universe which only exists when man is looking at it, can come in and out of existence, without the miraculous power of God making it so! I believe the reason God allowed mankind to see His miraculous work at the quantum level, is that God is waving to atheist scientists, the world, and we His Church on earth. The atheist scientists are doing everything in their power, especially through Scientism, to silence our God’s miraculous Presence at the quantum level. The actual scientific data at the quantum level, is on the side of the Christian Creationist Believer.
Grasping the reality and seriousness of abortion, or, contraception, and trying to share it in your parish and community, is not “doing politics”. Four points about this:
1. It goes back to the first Council, the Council of Jerusalem: you are not “tearing up the seamless garment of the Church” when you preserve it. Look out; because people can try to demean you and belittle the subject matter, “calling it out” via wrong senses, like, “being controversial”, or, “doing heavy-duty evangelizing”, or, “running for office”/”want to stand out”, or, “stuck on ethics”.
2. What is happening today is not 3 abortions every 5 years by teens sneaking out to the malpractice doctor. It is a widespread phenomenon carrying ideological affects and developing alongside an organized industrial enterprise extracting and manipulating human flesh -all highly publicized and integrally promoted and defended.
3. We laypeople are meant to be in politics as well as apostolate.
4. There are and will continue to be attempts from many sides, to diminish and even snuff out pro-life politics as well as apostolates; but also trying to find ways to neutralize/anasthetize them.