Christianity Today

How many churches got the kind of plain speaking on "playing God" that the pope shared in his Good Friday meditation?

Listen to this report in the secular press—from the London Sunday Times:

The Pope has launched a devastating attack on scientists meddling with genetics to create designer babies.

Benedict XVI accused them of eliminating the family and poured scorn on a society he condemned as "satanic, narcissistic and filthy".

In a strongly worded message during the traditional Good Friday Stations of the Cross service in Rome, he attacked modern values as a "slick campaign of propaganda" which was spreading an "inane apologia of evil, a senseless cult of Satan".

He spoke of the "filth around us" and how "entertainment has become a drug", calling on God to "free us from our decadent narcissism"—and he was scathing about attempts to clone "virgin birth" embryos with no father.

"Surely God is deeply pained by the attack on the family," he said.

"Today we seem to be witnessing a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family.

"There is a move to reinvent mankind, to modify the very grammar of life as planned and willed by God."

It's worth reading part of what he actually said, because it was in the form of a meditation:

Surely God is deeply pained
by the attack on the family.
Today we seem to be witnessing
a kind of anti-Genesis,
a counter-plan, a diabolical pride
aimed at eliminating the family.

There is a move to reinvent mankind,
to modify the very grammar of life
as planned and willed by God. (Gen. 1:27, 2:24)

But, to take God's place, without being God,
is insane arrogance,
a risky and dangerous venture.

It could hardly be better put.

The Latest Stem CellingJames Thomson, the Wisconsin ...

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