The Pope’s speech to priests and nuns did not fail to include some soul searching about the road that has been covered so far: "Over the last few years, consecrated life said Benedict XVI has been re-appreciated with a more evangelical, ecclesial and apostolic spirit; but we cannot deny that a few factual choices have failed to offer to the world the real life-giving face of Christ". "In fact acknowledges the Pontiff – a laicised culture has seeped into the minds and into the hearts of quite a few consecrated people, who see it as a form of access to modernity and a method of approach to contemporary world. The result is that, along with an undoubted generous surge which is capable of testimony and total devotion, consecrated life is now threatened by the snare of mediocrity, bourgeoisification and a consumeristic attitude". Hence the need of "brave choices at a personal and community level, which will impart new discipline to the lives of consecrated people", for whom the "prerequisite" is "renunciation, detachment from everyone" thanks to "free, unbound men and women, who know how to give up everything to follow Him". "In an increasingly dazzled and confused world", threatened by "a multitude of snares" concluded Benedict XVI consecrated people are called to "look at this time of ours with the eyes of faith", to eschew the "influence of the immanentist and technocratic mentality" and make men "freer before the enticement of the false idols which the world is dazzled by".
