A short summary of Papal Themes

Papa Benny has been visiting a lot of Uni's lately. He must like the environment!

This time it was at the Lateran University in Rome, where he made a speach that resembled a series of "sound bites" summarising his favourite themes rather than a completely new topic. In this short piece I identified the following themes that reoccur regularly in his teaching:

1) "the theme of the crisis of culture and identity, which in these decades dramatically places itself before our eyes"
2) "The contemporary context seems to give primacy to an artificial intelligence that becomes ever more dominated by experimental techniques, and in this way forgets that all science must always safeguard man and promote his aspiration for the authentic good."
3) "To overrate "doing", obscuring "being", does not help to recompose the fundamental balance that everyone needs in order to give their own existence a solid foundation and valid goal."
4) The illusion (and accompanying hybris) of freedom (illustrated by the myth of Icarus)
5) "To make the theme of truth central is...a vital question in order to give a more profound identity to personal life and to heighten responsibility in social relations"
6) "God is the ultimate truth to whom all reason naturally tends"
7) "To live in the world "veluti si Deus daretur""
8) "this God has a Face and that once for all, with Jesus Christ, he has drawn near to each man."

Each of these is a re-occuring theme in Benedict XVI's writing. Nice of him to put it all in one place for us.