See preceding page for earlier posts on 3/8/12.
For an economist, Dr. Gregg always makes a compelling commonsense 'theological' analysis when he writes about Catholic subjects. This is one great introduction to an appreciation of Benedict XVI's first seven years as Pope (of which I hope we will get many excellent ones. Articles, I mean, but in a different sense, many more wonderful years with B16 as our Pope...
Benedict XVI and
the irrelevance of 'relevance'
by Samuel Gregg
March 8, 2012
Over the soon-to-be seven years of Benedict XVI’s papacy, it’s been instructive to watch the shifting critiques of this pontificate.
Leaving aside the usual suspects convinced that Catholicism should become what amounts to yet another liberal-Christian sect fixated with transitory politically-correct causes, the latest appraisal is that “the world” is losing interest in the Catholic Church.
A variant of this is the claim that the Irish government’s 2011 decision to closing its embassy to the Holy See reflects a general decline in the Church’s geopolitical 'relevance'.
[And you'd think a veteran Vatican observer like John Allen - who is also a sort of self-appointed expert on world Catholic affairs, since no one else is doing what he does, taking snapshots of the state of the Church worldwide bu visiting some key capitals to talk to the locals - would be one of those who would not respond with this knee-jerk banal commonplace, but that was exactly what he led off with last year, commenting on the Irish government's decision! Not one of the Italian Vaticanistas made that almost non-sequitur leap of logic! Clearly, Irish PM Kenny's government wanted to twist into its backstab on the Church to make it hurt more, and that's the only reason one should give. No other country has followed Ireland's example in the months since, even if the financial crisis drags on, so where does that out the 'irrelevance' claim?]
Whenever one encounters such assertions, it’s never quite clear what’s meant by 'relevance'. On one reading, it involves comparisons with Benedict’s heroic predecessor, who played an indispensable role in demolishing the Communist thug-ocracies that once brutalized much of Europe.
[And those who argue this completely ignore that the global picture is radically different today from what it was when the free world was still fighting the 'evil empire', and terrorism as a daily political instrument was only in its beginnings, only becoming 'routine' after 9/11/2001. Islam was not the active threat for global hegemony that it is today via its surrogates who rule the Muslim countries.]
But it’s also a fair bet that 'relevance' is understood here in terms of the Church’s capacity to shape immediate policy-debates or exert political influence in various spheres.
Such things have their own importance.
Indeed, many of Benedict’s writings are charged with content which shatters the post-Enlightenment half-truths about the nature of freedom, equality, and progress that sharply constrict modern Western political thinking.
But Benedict’s entire life as a priest, theologian, bishop, senior curial official and Pope also reflects his core conviction that the Church’s primary focus is not first-and-foremost “the world,” let alone politics.
Rather, Benedict’s view has always been that the Church’s main responsibility is to come to know better — and then make known — the Person of Jesus Christ. Why? Because like any orthodox Christian, he believes that herein is found the summit and fullness of Truth and meaning for every human being.
Moreover, Benedict insists the only way we can fully comprehend Christ is through His Church – the ecclesia of the saints, living and dead.
These certainties explain the nature of Benedict’s long-standing criticisms of various forms of political and liberation theology. His primary concern was not whether such movements reflected some Catholics’ alignment with the left, or the liberationists’ shaky grasp of basic economics.
Instead,
Benedict’s charge was always that such theologies obscured and even distorted basic truths about the nature of Christ and His Church. [And those who claim otherwise simply parrot the totally unfunded media stereotype of Joseph Ratzinger as the pedantic, dogmatic and robotic enforcer of orthodox Catholic teaching - without once reading what he has actually written and said about liberation theology.]-
There is, of course, a 'relevance' dimension to all this.
Unless Catholics are clear in their own minds about these truths, then their efforts to transform the world around them will surely run aground or degenerate into the activism of just another lobby-group amidst the thousands of other lobby-groups clamoring to be considered 'relevant'.
Which brings us to another great 'relevance' of Benedict’s pontificate: his desire to ensure that more Catholics understand the actual content of what they profess to believe.
It’s no great secret that Catholic catechesis went into freefall after Vatican II. It’s true that much pre-Vatican II catechesis was characterized by rote-learning rather than substantive engagement with the truths of the Faith.
But as early as 1983, Joseph Ratzinger signaled his awareness of the lamentable post-Vatican II catechetical state of affairs in two speeches he gave in Paris and Lyons.
Much to the professional catechists’ displeasure — but to the delight of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger and every young priest present — Ratzinger zeroed in on the huge gaps in the catechetical text-books then in vogue.
Two years later, the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops suggested that a new universal catechism be published.
[Every time this is brought up, I cannot resist adding that in George Weigel's account of that Synod in his biography of John Paul II, it was the later much-maligned Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston who put forth the suggestion for the Catechism during that 1985 Synod. It doesn't make up, of course, for his terrible judgment lapses in almost coddling abusive priests in his diocese, but he does earn a positive footnote in history for this.]
This bore fruit in the 1992
Catechism of the Catholic Church produced under Ratzinger’s supervision. Significantly, it followed precisely the fundamental structures he had identified in his 1983 addresses as indispensable for sound catechesis.
Fast-forward to 2012. Now Benedict is launching what’s called “a Year of Faith” in his apostolic letter
Porta Fidei to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Vatican II’s opening.
Reading this text, one is struck by how many times Benedict underlines the importance of Catholics being able to profess the Faith. Of course you can’t really profess — let alone live out — the truths of the Catholic Faith unless you know what they are. Nor can you enter into conversation with others about that Faith unless you understand its content.
Hence, as one French commentator recently observed, at least one sub-text of Benedict’s Year of Faith is that “doctrinal break-time” for the Church is over.
This point was underscored by the recent Note issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Along the other practical suggestions it gives for furthering the Year of Faith, the Note emphasizes “a profound bond between the lived faith and its contents” (i.e., true ortho-praxis can only be based on ortho-doxy).
It also stresses that Catholics need to
know the content of the Catechism and the actual documents of Vatican II (rather than, sotto voce, the ever-nebulous
[and rather noxious] “spirit of Vatican II” that seems indistinguishable from whatever is preoccupying secular liberals at any given moment in time.
[Documents which, it would seem, the liberal progressivist spiritists have not really read, or bothered to read, judging by the untruths and half-truths they have been spewing abundantly in the past four decades, passing off their own ideas of what they would like the Church to be, as the 'spirit of Vatican II'. Until Benedict XVI became Pope, few contested them at all!
Just start with all the inventions they stuck on the Mass, many of them never mentioned in Sacrosanctum concilium(SC), the Vatican II constitution on the Liturgy (e.g., sidelining the tabernacle and tearing out the old altars to give way to bare tables -with the corollary of celebrating the Mass ad populum; receiving Communion in the hand), and some directly contradicting SC (e.g., eliminating Latin completely from the Mass, allowing all sorts of profane music -instruments and lyrics - instead of SC's encouragement of Gregorian chant, religious texts (preferably Scriptural) for lyrics, and organ music; and worst of all, using Vatican II as an excuse for any priest to say and do as he pleases when saying Mass, instead of sticking to the ritual and the words that make a Mass a Mass. None of everything that has made a Novus Ordo Mass objectionable as commonly practised since 1970 is to be found in SC!]
The predictable retort is that this proves that, under Benedict, the Church is turning in upon itself. Such rejoinders, however, are very short-sighted. To paraphrase Vatican II, Benedict understands the Church can only have a profound ad-extra effect upon the world if it lives its ad-intra life more intensely and faithfully.
Far from being a retreat into a ghetto, it’s about helping Catholics to, as the first Pope said, “be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15).
And therein lies the Church’s true contemporary significance, as understood by Peter’s present-day successor. It’s not to be found in turning the Catholic Church into something akin to the Episcopal church of America (otherwise known as the preferential option for self-immolation).
It’s about bringing the Logos of the Lord of History into a world that lurches between irrationality and rationalism, utopianism and despair, so that when we die, we might see the face of the One who once called upon Peter to have faith in Him and walk on water.
And what, after all, could be more relevant than that?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/03/2012 03:46]