BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

How to pilot the Church in a storm

Benedict XVI tells the faithful at a general audience,
against those who call for a new beginning for Christianity, without hierarchy or dogmas.
With St. Bonaventure, he thinks of good governance not just as doing,
but above all, with thinking and praying





ROME, March 18 – Few have noticed it, but in the thick of the storm that has battered the Catholic Church in the wake of the scandal presented to the "little ones" by some of its priests, Joseph Ratzinger has faced the challenge in a way uniquely his own. With a surprising lesson on the theology of history, not without references to his own experience as theologian and Pope.

He gave the lesson to the pilgrims crowding the hall for the general audience on the morning of Wednesday, March 10.

The Pope repeatedly looked up from the written text and improvised. The complete transcript deserves to be read from beginning to end. But a few of its features should be pointed out immediately.

At the center of the lesson stands Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, doctor of the Church, one of the first successors of Saint Francis as head of the order he founded.



Benedict XVI paid homage to Bonaventure in his visit to Bagnoregio near Viterbo on Sept. 9, 2006.

And this is the first of the autobiographical features. Because it was precisely on Saint Bonaventure's theology of history that the young Joseph Ratzinger published, in 1959, his thesis for certification to teach theology, which has recently been republished in Italy.

The novelty of this early text was that it compared, for the first time, Saint Bonaventure's theology of history with the highly influential version of Joachim of Fiore.

Joachim of Fiore has had a tremendous influence on both Christian and atheist thought, in his own century and in later ones, up until our own time. Thirty years ago, the theologian Henri De Lubac dedicated a two-volume study to this influence, entitled La posterité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore.

When today, in reaction to the scandal of some priests, appeals come again for an epochal, radical purification of the Church, a new Council to be a "new beginning and rupture," a spiritual Christianity made up of the bare Gospel without any more hierarchies or dogmas, what is being invoked if not the age of the Spirit proclaimed by Joachim of Fiore?

In his lesson last March 10, Benedict XVI described and made accessible with rare clarity the contrast between Joachim and Bonaventure.

He showed how Joachim's utopia found fertile ground again in Vatican Council II, successfully opposed, however, by the "wise helmsmen of Peter's barque" - Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, who were able to defend simultaneously the novelty of the Council and the continuity of the Church.

It's a small step from spiritualism to anarchy, Benedict XVI warned. That's the way it was in Saint Bonaventure's century, and that's the way it is today.

In order to be governed, the Church needs hierarchical structures, but these must be given a clear theological foundation. This is what Saint Bonaventure did in governing the Franciscan order.

For him, "to govern was not simply a task but was above all to think and to pray. At the base of his government we always find prayer and thought; all his decisions resulted from reflection, from thought illumined by prayer."

The same thing – the Pope said – must happen today in the universal Church: "governing, that is, not only through commands and structures, but through guiding and enlightening souls, orienting them to Christ."

This is the second, decisive autobiographical trait from the lesson on March 10. In it, Benedict XVI said how he intends to govern the Church. He said it with the meek humility that is characteristic of him, putting himself in the shadow of a saint.

Just as for Saint Bonaventure the theological and mystical writings were "the soul of governance," so it is for the current Pope. The soul of his governance is the liturgical homilies, instruction for the faithful and the world, the book on Jesus, in short, "thought illuminated by prayer."

It is there that the hierarchical structure of the Roman Church and its acts of governance find their foundation and nourishment. It is from there that the Church of Pope Benedict draws healing for its children's sins and an answer to the attacks – far from innocent – that reach it from without and from within.

{Magister then reproduces the text of the March 10 catechesis.}