From the website Courageous Priest is this interesting list of quotations from Pope Benedict XVI for your perusal: http://www.courageouspriest.com/future-world-stake?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+courageouspriest%2FqTKF+%28Courageous+Priest%29
The following are a set of quotes from the Holy Father regarding the times in which we now live.
Only if there is such a consensus on the essentials can constitutions and law function. This fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage is at risk… In reality, this makes reason blind to what is essential. To resist this eclipse of reason and to preserve its capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake.
The most terrifying sign of the times… [for now] there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view.
The tyranny of mammon [...] perverts mankind. No pleasure is ever enough, and the excess of deceiving intoxication becomes a violence that tears whole regions apart – and all this in the name of a fatal misunderstanding of freedom which actually undermines man’s freedom and ultimately destroys it.
Moral consensus is collapsing… Consequently the forces mobilized for the defense of such structures seem doomed to failure. However, the grave challenges confronting the world at the start of this new Millennium lead us to think that only an intervention from on high, capable of guiding the hearts of those living in situations of conflict and those governing the destinies of nations, can give reason to hope for a brighter future