Pope’s book urges nonbelievers to consider their lives

In his first book to be published since he became leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI challenges nonbelieving Europeans to live as though God does exist.

“Even he who does not succeed in finding the way to the acceptance of God must try, however, to live and to address his life ‘veluti si Deus daretur,’ as if God were,” Benedict writes.

The book, titled “The Europe of Benedict in the Crisis of Cultures,” is a collection of three talks by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, before he was elected pope on April 19.

Laying out his views on the clash between religion and secularism in Europe, the new pontiff warns that carried to their logical extremes, the freedoms embodied in European secularism threaten church teaching on abortion, homosexuality and women’s ordination.

“I am not a believer, but I recognize myself in the historic, civil, cultural and religious tradition of the Western Christian,” said Italian Senate President Marcello Pera, who wrote the introduction to the book. The Italian edition will appear on Tuesday, with editions in English and other languages planned in coming months.