The end of civilization as we know it

Can't pass this one up: I just don't get the hysteria over gay marriage, especially how it is going to cause an "anthropological catastrophe." This one is right up there with an earlier Vatican official's fear that same-sex marriage might lead to a new form of Nazism. And, really, just what is an "anthropological catastrophe." Come on, boys, haven't you noticed the AIDS pandemic? Genocide in Darfur? War in Iraq? Anyway, from our friends at Zenit, who really know how to write a headline:

Cardinal Warns of "Anthropological Catastrophe"
Sees Danger Behind Moral Relativism
MURCIA, Spain, NOV. 8, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Jozef Tomko warned about the dangers of ethical relativism, which he said might cause an "anthropological catastrophe."

The president of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses aired that warning today in his address at the opening of the academic year of the Catholic University of St. Anthony in Murcia.

The school will organize the first International University Eucharistic Congress this Wednesday through Sunday. In his address, the cardinal analyzed the crisis of Western societies. In particular, he addressed the cultural situation in Spain, where homosexual marriages now have legal status.

This "traditionally Catholic country," said the retired prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples "today sees how in its public life a whole series of moral, social, family and religious values is put in crisis, which touch profoundly the concept itself of the person and his relations, conscience and personal and social ethics."

This crisis, stated Benedict XVI's special envoy to Murcia's university congress, stems "also from the nation's public institutions themselves, with the danger of inducing in coexistence a moral relativism and ethical permissiveness capable of undermining the very foundations of the fundamental values of personal life and civic coexistence."

"When the human values of freedom, coexistence, respect for inalienable rights, family values, and correct education are at stake," Cardinal Tomko added, "if there is no enlightened and courageous testimony that is transmitted in an appropriate manner, including through the media, one runs the risk of causing an anthropological catastrophe, as has already happened in other places and other 20th-century political systems."