Relativism

Relativism

Relativism is the belief that there is no absolute or objective truth.

Instead, the relativist believes that truth is subjective and that what is true should be based on the culture, time, place, or even the individual.

Relativism is incompatible with the teaching of the Catholic Church about God’s laws regarding man’s relationship with Him and with his fellow man and the virtues that make good relationships possible.

In creating his own reality, man creates his own self-centered God and deprives himself of knowing the one true God.

Relativism also undermines morality because the individual cannot be the final judge of what is good, right, or true.

Truth never changes:

Relativism is making up reality:

So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

John 18: 37-38

God is both truth and love:

The truth is one or there is no truth:

Reality is the measure of truth:

Man tends by nature toward the truth. He is obliged to honor and bear witness to it: “It is in accordance with their dignity that all men, because they are persons . . . are both impelled by their nature and bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth once they come to know it and direct their whole lives in accordance with the demands of truth.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church 2467

Morality is attached to belief in God:

Without God there is no absolute:

As a result of that mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is “a liar and the father of lies”, man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols, exchanging “the truth about God for a lie”. Man’s capacity to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it is weakened. Thus, giving himself over to relativism and scepticism, he goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself.

Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, August 6, 1993

Relativism is not logically consistant:

Relativism has been around for a long time:

The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church

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