Inclement skies over Berlin:
Prospects for the Pope's visit
Translated from
24/03/2011
BERLIN - With Benedict XVI, it seems that raising the bar, 'the harder it is', works for him.
[The context is his apostolic visits abroad where he has always ended reaping blessed success from the media-hyped and -generated minefields of dissent preceding each visit to a secularized nation.]
In September, Germany, his homeland, expects him, with Berlin at the center of this official visit.
This is an enigmatic city, an explosive cocktail of various essences - cold Prussian rigor, Marxist ideology and its existential emptiness, a cultural ferment that is always in protest against tradition, and a kind of countercultural underground that accommodates the proud technology of a city launching itself at full throttle into the future, perhaps because its past is full of disturbing ghosts.
In the context of Catholic history, Berlin has been an emblem of the Kulturkampf (culture war) with its atavistic anti-Roman hostility which has always found especially fertile humus on German soil.
Quite a setting for the coming visit of the Pope born in Bavaria, for the theologian who has unravelled the complex threads of the widespread malaise in society today (malaise which takes very little to generate a torrent of social disasters).
But he wants to go, he knows he has to go to Berlin, precisely. He told his fellow Bavarian peter Seewald, "Yes, the flock there is under pressure, but if the Lord still gives me the necessary strength, I would gladly go".
[This was in their July 2010 interview before the visit in September 2011 was officially announced.]
If we just go by mere sociological analyses, the prospects look desolate. The break from long-established Christian roots is almost scandalous in Germany, the values of 1968 have worked sweeping changes in the family, and the emotion that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall has given way to a savage pragmatism.
German Catholics do not have a clear-minded leadership to counter these tides. Their theologians seem anchored to the controversies of the 1970s, their bishops have found it difficult to change their mission parameters to be more in harmony with the post-Conciliar Popes, and the penetration into society of the relativistic mindset has wrought havoc.
Moreover, it is a time of imminent crucial changes in the German episcopate. Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne (a great friend of the Pope), is nearing retirement, and in Berlin itself, the Archbishop, Cardinal Sterzinsky, had to retire early because of illness.
Difficult decisions face the Pope on the eve of one of his most anticipated trips, because he needs a more compact German episcopate to energize a new mission.
But there still exists a small flock - in the Biblical sense, not numerically - intent on living their faith with fidelity, who adhere simply to the Christian witness of Benedict XVI himself, who already live not as defenders of terrain that is being wrested from them, but simply by continuing to offer the unconsidered novelty of Christianity i a society that no longer knows it. This flock is under pressure, yes, and that is why their shepherd cannot fail them.
But some German Catholics have already started to lay down the explosives they intend to detonate when the Pope comes. First, those German theologians with a manifesto as musty as dirty linen kept too long in the closet. And some Parliament members of the Christian Democratic Union - adult Catholics, of course - who are demanding a special exemption from priestly celibacy for German priests, and some of his hosts like Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit who says he will publicly confront the Pope for his 'closed mind' regarding homosexuality.
Meanwhile, we await the Pope's address to the German Bundestag, which will be an event for the history books on many counts.
But even our Protestant brothers have something to say about the Pope's visit. The chairman of the Lutheran Evangelical Council for Germany, Nikolaus Schneider, wrote the Pope to complain that the current draft of the Pope's schedule only allows an hour for him to meet with the leaders of non-Christian religions in Germany.
The Pope replied in writing to assure Schneider that he will give the appropriate priority to ecumenical affairs during the visit, despite "a program that is already crowded".
In any case, there is much noise and much stirring even now in the months preceding a visit that will likely be a minefield for the Pope.
But even as the powers-that-be seem to mistrust the Pope, a recent survey by the Forsa institute showed that 29% of all Germans have 'great confidence' in Benedict XVI, a figure much higher than the 12 and 18% who trust their economic managers or political leaders, or even the other ecclesiastical authorities in Germany.
Among German Catholics, 50% believe that Papa Ratzinger is 'highly credible' against only 21% who think so of the Church as an institution.
These are figures that should make the reformists and progressivists think twice, since they always claim to represent the faithful who are supposed to be in revolt against Rome.
[I have not had time to check out an executive summary of the Forsa survey, but if 29% of all Germans polled had 'great confidence' in the Pope, one presumes there are also those who answered they had 'confidence' or 'some confidence' in him, which would make the confidence figures greater. Likewise, among German Catholics, if 50% believe he is 'highly credible', there must also be those who think he is 'credible' or 'somewhat credible. Let's say these bring up the 50% to something like 60-70%, conservatively. That would leave about 30-40% who do not believe him at all.
While that is a distressing figure about Catholics in any country, it does not appear to reflect the massive rejection of Catholicism that news reports make it seem whenever they gloat over the number of German Catholics who have officially 'left' the Church (in practical terms, if I understand it right, it means they no longer have to designate part of their tax payment to the Catholic Church). The low approval for the Church as an institution reflects the prevailing liberal-secular mindset that opposes the Church policy on most social issues. And yet, the Pope represents all those issues par excellence!]
Alongside the 'small flock' of Germans who clamor to be confirmed in their faith, the Pope is also thinking of the ordinary people, those whom the intellectuals in vogue do not represent, nor are they reported upon by the dominant media.
These are people whose traditional culture has been eroded mercilessly in the past few decades, but who have not lost the folk instinct to know who is telling the truth, who seeks to light a candle in the midst of darkness.
Those people, given the opportunity, will want to see and hear Benedict XVI in Erfurt, in Freiburg, and even in Berlin.
For them, the Pope will take the risks, known and unknown, because he knows that the cause of faith stands to gain from his physical presence during those four days in September.
Most especially, Benedict XVI moves primarily in the territory of the heart, where the perennial questions of man reside, where there is some presentiment of the truth that it hopes for, where the hunger and thirst for the Infinite have not been washed out by 40 years of pure unadulterated ideological acid.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/03/2011 21:50]