Dear Friends,

What do you hope for in 2008 ?  World peace, a lottery win and... (fill in the blanks according to age, energy and inclination...) ?  Or something simpler and more attainable ?

How about `eternal life` ?  If your answer is "Yes, but not yet", then I fear you may have misunderstood the concept of `eternal life`.  And you would be in good company, for I fear that the Pope has too !

On the other hand, he does have some very trenchant things to say in his recent Encyclical, `Spe Salvi`, which do bear much greater consideration.  Benedict XVI says:  "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 for the world."  And this, surely, is only too true.  We see it time and again, in the new possibilities opened up by the manipulation of genes, and in the nuclear and biological sciences.

Now if only the Pope had pursued this line in some other way, but (to my mind) he then totally sidetracks himself by starting to talk about `Purgatory`.  He says that hope does not lie in human progress, but in faith in Christ and in the justice of his Last Judgement.   Then he says that: "Perhaps many people reject faith today simply because they do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive... What they desire is not eternal life at all, but this present life, for which faith in eternal life seems something of an impediment."

Now I am certain that this is an accurate assessment of many in the Western World, including many who call themselves `Christian`.  Benedict says that: "Eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality."  So far, so good, and he goes on to trace the way in which (in recent centuries, and not least through Communism) we have come to believe that mankind could do what no God could do (!) - make ourselves better.  [Modern governments, of course, believe they can do this by legislation... and, instead of living, we are dying under the weight of it]

But then he retreats into the medieval labyrinth of purgatory, with its belief that all those (the great majority) who do not go straight to heaven or hell will have to undergo some indeterminate period of `purging`, usually involving fires... and that he (the Pope) has the power to reduce this period by granting `indulgences` for various meritorious acts.

A great pity.  For it distances him from the Orthodox, and creates a great gulf between Rome and the Protestant Churches.  Yet his central thesis, about our need for `Hope` and its attachment to renewing our moral focus and having faith in the ultimate purposes and goodness of God, about attaining eternal life ("something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction") - which is something that can begin in this life - is something worth pursuing.  So...  how about hoping for eternal life in 2008 - and then working to see what that means for us today, and in the future (but not in some medieval past) ?