disappointed http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7523254/
On Monday, Ratzinger, who was the powerful dean of the College of Cardinals, used his homily at the Mass dedicated to electing the next pope to warn the faithful about tendencies that he considered dangers to the faith: sects, ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and relativism — the ideology that there are no absolute truths.
“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism,” he said, speaking in Italian. “We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism, which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”
My comments:
Note the package deal of relativism and egoism, as though it is impossible to recognize one's own life as the highest value objectively, and that relativism leads to valuing one self. In addition, there is no distinction made between subjective and objective desires thus implying that all desire is subjective and based on one's own whims. So the choice that he sees is that of an objective truth which states that our lives are not own, that we should not regard them as our highest value, that desire is sin, OR that we value our own lives, seek to fulfill our desires (which must be evil) and that it is all based on our belief that truths aren't absolute.
Actually, both are two sides of the same coin: both points of view reject reason as our means of gaining knowledge and both points of view reject an objective standard to morality which can provide objective moral guidance for one's own desires.