In his speech at the XIV World Congress of Families (WCF) [full text in video here in Spanish], Cardinal Gerhard Müller sharply criticized transhumanism as an offspring of anthropological nihilism that leads to destruction and death:
“Friedrich Nietzsche is the prophet of nihilism. After the death of God he proclaimed the superman who is his own God and creator for himself. All the gods are dead. Now we long for the superman to live. In our days, the historian Yuval Harari offers us a new edition of this program of self-perfection of man as the creator of a superior biotechnical hybrid. In his book Homo Deus, man is his own god. Why does Harari or Friedrich Nietzsche succeed? Why do thinking adults willingly have their bodies dissected or inflate their egos so much that they threaten to explode even as they become cynical gods? The theological answer is simple: anthropological nihilism has its home in the pride of the creature who wants to become like God and establish for himself the difference between good and evil, true and false.”
This ideology is reflected in culture and zeitgeist in many ways: on the one hand, there is gender ideology, which “combines identity and cultural-political aspects.” Abortion also follows logically from the self-deification of man. The utilitarian “euthanasia, the so-called mercy killing”, also goes along with it. Selective abortion and euthanasia resemble “the Nazi era” in Germany because human life loses value. All ideological currents of this kind are fruits of “anthropological nihilism”.
“The fiction of a free choice of sex is a denial of God’s will for the human person. God created us as male or female. And that is a good thing. Every human being exists in his or her bodily nature, whether male or female. Gender ideology, which certainly comes under the heading of anthropological nihilism, deprives both men and women of their own possibilities.”
“The change of sex is an inspiration of the devil. This is the first principle of Christian anthropology. We cannot imagine man as a creature who defines himself. Only modern nihilism can and does,” Cardinal Müller added.
“The culture of anthropological nihilism will end in the collective suicide of humanity. Atheism is always nihilism, an antihumanism. The fruit of the culture of death is death. Christ overcomes the culture of death, a death that is against the life of children, against marriage and against love. Faith in God opens us to a culture of life in the love of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Why are we freed from the slavery of the perishable to the freedom and glory of the sons and daughters of God? This is the Christian faith,” the Cardinal ended to sustained applause.
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