It is the love of God, not material progress, that truly satisfies us

Ido not recommend watching the evening news. It will depress you. The war in Ukraine continues with no resolution in sight. China threatens to invade Taiwan, potentially triggering World War III. Inflation continues to make the cost of living soar, while reducing the worth of the dollar.

The level of the national debt is unsustainable, but our leaders appear impotent to address it because it would be political suicide. The vast majority of Americans do not want a rerun of the last presidential election, while both parties appear poised to renominate the same candidates.

More importantly, our moral culture continues to decline. A female Supreme Court Justice, as well as many legislators and executive branch cabinet officials, cannot define the meaning of the word “woman.”

Violent crime plagues many of our cities. A large number of children are growing up without their biological father present in the home. Even though we live more comfortably than any society in world history, our young people suffer from loneliness, anxiety and depression. According to recent studies, Americans are less religious and less patriotic than previous generations.

The preceding is hardly a comprehensive list of all of the negative cultural trends, but you get the picture. St. Peter instructed the early Christian community:

ARCHBISHOP JOSEPH F. NAUMANN

“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Pt 3:15).

The late Pope Benedict XVI wrote his second encyclical letter on the virtue of Christian hope. Pope Benedict contrasted Christian hope with some of the false notions that are prevalent in the secular world. One of these false notions is faith in progress. The remarkable successes of science that resulted in amazing technological advancements fostered a false hope that a new paradise could be realized by the ability of human reason to direct the natural world.

Pope Benedict described the transition in modernity from the Christian notion of redemption, won by the death and resurrection of Jesus, to a redemption experienced in scientific and technological progress. “The recovery of what man had through the expulsion from Paradise was expected from faith in Jesus Christ: herein lay redemption. Now, this redemption, the restoration of the lost

Life Will Be Victorious

Paradise is no longer expected from faith, but from the newly discovered link between science and praxis (the application of scientific knowledge). It is not that faith is simply denied; rather, it is replaced onto another level — that of purely private and other worldly affairs — and at the same time becomes irrelevant for the world” (“Spes Salvi,” 17).

Part of this belief that scientific progress and economic reforms can provide an earthly paradise comes from failed philosophical ideas. Sadly, in many of our universities, Marxism has been resuscitated. Pope Benedict defined the fundamental error of Marxism in this way: “He (Karl Marx) forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and man’s freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: Man, in fact is not merely the product of economic conditions and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a

Blessed Carlo Acutis’ relics coming to area

Blessed Carlo Acutis touched the world with his devotion to Christ in the Eucharist, documenting eucharistic miracles around the world and cataloging them on a website he created.

This week, the relics of the teenager who died of leukemia in 2006 will make a stop in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.

The national Eucharistic Revival tour also contains the relics of St. Manuel Gonzales Garcia, a Spanish bishop who cared for children in need and also had a love of the Real Presence.

The relics will be available for veneration at the following parishes and schools:

May 5

• Divine Mercy Parish in Gardner from 6-9 p.m.

May 6

• Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Seneca from 5-8 p.m.

May 7

• St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Leawood from 7:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

• Church of the Ascension in Overland Park from 7-10 p.m.

May 8 favorable economic environment” (21).

• Mother Teresa Parish in Topeka from 5-8 p.m.

Pope Benedict believed that the experience of modernity had revealed clearly that merely scientific and material progress without a corresponding moral and ethical progress is not only insufficient but actually quite dangerous. Our late Holy Father wrote: “To put it another way: The ambiguity of progress becomes evident. Without doubt, it (scientific progress) offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil — possibilities that formerly did not exist. We have all witnessed the way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man’s ethical formation, in man’s inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and the world” (22).

Is it real progress to increase the capacity of weapons going from the sling shot to the atomic bomb? Is our computer technology really an advancement, if it addicts children to spend endless hours stimulated by the flood of alluring images, constant information and perpetual entertainment on screens, while impeding the development of authentic friendships? Is it real progress to be so dependent on computer technology that our national enemies can by cyberattack threaten our energy supply or collapse our economic system? Is it progress that we allow a predatory pornography industry to addict defenseless children to sexually provocative and perverse images under the guise of freedom of expression?

Bad ideas have consequences. Karl Marx died a tragic figure. Two of his three children that lived beyond childhood ended their lives by suicide. Friedrich Nietzsche, who advanced the ideology that God is dead and human beings can will themselves to be whatever they desire to be, spent the last decade of his life insane. Yet,