Pope attacks pop culture, 'false idols' at World Youth Day

By Neil Sands AFP - 2 hours 50 minutes ago

this is an excerpt from http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080717/twl-australia-vatican-pope-culture-dc3662d.html

SYDNEY (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday delivered a stinging attack on pop culture, consumerism and "false idols" to 150,000 mainly teenaged Catholic pilgrims gathered in Australia for World Youth Day.

The pontiff reminded the young foreign and Australian pilgrims in Sydney for the Catholic festival of how the apostles stepped forward to "oppose the perversity in the culture around them" when they established the church.

"Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division, of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises," the pope said.

The 81-year-old spiritual leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics said there were numerous signs indicating "something is amiss" in modern society.

"In our personal lives and in our communities, we encounter a hostility, something dangerous; a poison which threatens to corrode what is good, reshape who we are and distort the purpose for which we have been created," he said.

Pope Benedict XVI said alcohol and drug abuse were two of the most prevalent examples of modern ills.

But he reserved his fiercest criticism for sexual degradation and violence masquerading as entertainment on television and the Internet.

"I ask myself, could anyone standing face to face with people who actually do suffer violence and sexual exploitation explain that these tragedies, portrayed in virtual form, are considered merely entertainment?" he said.