Haiku 093009

autumn dawn
his breath joins
lake fog

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Recently, we read the following:

New York Times: “Pope Ends Czech Visit With Warning About Power” by Dan Bilefsky

“Ending a three-day trip here aimed at fighting secularism, Pope Benedict XVI told about 40,000 of the faithful on Monday that the collapse of the Communist system had shown the price paid by those who chase power and deny God.

“ ‘The last century — as this land of yours can bear witness — saw the fall of a number of powerful figures who had apparently risen to almost unattainable heights,’ Benedict, 82, said during an open-air Mass in Stara Boleslav, a town about 15 miles northeast of Prague where the Czech patron St. Wenceslas was slain in the 10th century.

“ ‘Suddenly they found themselves stripped of their power,’ he added, in an allusion to the fall of Communism in 1989.

“The pope came to this decidedly skeptical nation as part of a Continentwide mission to urge the unbelieving out of their collective apathy…”

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And we thought:

…The workings of power and politics, perhaps, should not be boiled down like this, as if it were all a simple matter of believing in God or not. The dynamics of political systems and political change is more complex.

The Pope, being a scholar, knows better. Throughout history, a number of political leaders, although believers, had fallen out of power just the same. The people whom the Pope wishes to draw to Catholicism in a more profound way deserve a more thoughtful and well-reasoned discussion of the nexus between secular and religious matters -- not just a convenient, vaporous sound bite…