BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

The New Oxford Review is a Berkeley(US)-based monthly journal of orthodox Catholicism which began as an Anglo-Catholic magazine in 1997 but became Roman Catholic in 1983. It takes its name from the New Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church of the early 19th century of which Blessed John Henry Newman was a leading member before he converted to Catholicism.

The Pope's 'problem':
He does not communicate in sound-bites
by Andrew M. Seddon

Issue of April 2011

Even popes have problems. And Pope Benedict XVI is no exception.

His Regensburg lecture raised the ire of the Muslim world and provoked spasms of violence when he quoted the words of a Byzantine emperor.

More recently, the comments the Holy Father made about condom use in Light of the World, a book-length interview with Peter Seewald, elicited outbursts of concern throughout the Western world.

Yes, the Pope has a problem: He expects something from his listeners and readers.

As a professor and theologian of many years’ standing, he’s accustomed to addressing educated audiences — audiences able to employ logical and rational skills, audiences that grasp subtleties and interpret remarks within their proper contexts, that take the time to evaluate and consider comments at length and don’t resort to knee-jerk reactions.

Pope Benedict realizes his problem. In Light of the World, he said, “I had conceived and delivered the [Regensburg] lecture as a strictly academic address without realizing that people don’t read papal lectures as academic presentations, but as political statements.”

In the case of his Regensburg lecture, Benedict was addressing an academic audience — he was speaking on the campus of the university where he had been a professor of dogmatics for nearly a decade.

He quoted the words of Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus in conversation with an educated Persian Muslim. The emperor, a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, didn’t dare attack Islam directly, but rather posed questions in the context of an educated dialogue.

But when Benedict’s words were reported outside that venue, the context was lost, and Muslims, acting on truncated news reports, reacted with outrage and violence toward what was perceived as a gratuitous insult.

Benedict, instead, was making the point that faith and reason are connected, and that violence has no place in reasoned religious discourse. He was calling the Islamic world to examine its attitude and actions in this regard.

But to the hypersensitive Muslim mind, any critique — such as the Regensburg lecture or the Danish cartoons — is perceived as a direct attack on Islam. Frequently, the result is unconscionable violence. People who had neither the inclination nor ability to examine the Pope’s remarks in context ironically proved his point that Islam needs to take a deep, introspective look at its relationships to reason and violence.

The second case, that of condom use, provoked letters to the editor in various magazines from Catholics concerned that the Pope was reversing the Church’s longstanding moral teaching. Many either did not read his words accurately or again relied on media reports condensing and misinterpreting his remarks.

The Pope was commenting on the “fight against the banalization of sexuality,” and in this context noted that use of a condom by a male prostitute could be “a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.”

He was not saying that prostitution with a condom was somehow less sinful than prostitution without. Prostitution is sinful either way.

The situation is perhaps analogous to a criminal who commits armed robbery of a bank with an empty gun. The underlying crime — bank robbery — is unchanged. But by having an empty gun, the robber indicates that he possesses at least something of a moral conscience by making sure that he doesn’t commit murder in the course of the robbery.

“Come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” Alas, we are apt to rely overly on emotion and preconceived judgments. We feast on chunks of fast food rather than digesting a proper meal.

Anybody who’s read any of Pope Benedict’s books knows that he doesn’t communicate in sound bites. Unfortunately, that’s what public discourse has been reduced to today.

Many magazines have folded as people prefer quick snippets to extended arguments. The constant TV flashing from scene to scene, and from item to item, appeals to a viewership that has lost its power of extended concentration.

Educational standards are no longer what they used to be. Far too many high-school graduates have no grounding in history, logic, the classics — things that used to be considered foundational to education. Across the Atlantic, Europe seems to be endeavoring to erase any acknowledgment of its Christian heritage from public consciousness.

These trends don’t bode well for the future.

And among Catholics, how many are familiar with — or have even read — the Catechism of the Catholic Church? How many have more than a sound-bite knowledge and understanding of Church doctrine and teaching? All too many people, in this day and age, are poorly catechized and have only a nodding acquaintance with the faith.

Most of us aren’t academics. We aren’t professional theologians or philosophers. We aren’t conversant with academic literature. But we should at least be able to follow arguments written by scholars intended for popular audiences. We should know better than to rely on the often inadequate reports of the secular media for information related to aspects of our faith.

Yes, the Pope expects something from his readers. And we owe it to ourselves — and to our society and our world — to make full use of our intellectual faculties. The future of the faith depends on it. We cannot rely on the sound bites that now pass for public discourse. If we do, then it is not only the Pope who has a problem.

Andrew M. Seddon, a native of England, writes both fiction and nonfiction, with over one hundred publication credits, including three novels: Red Planet Rising (Crossway Books, 1995), Imperial Legions (Broadman & Holman, 2000), and Iron Scepter (Xlibris, 2001). He is co-author of the devotional Walking With the Celtic Saints (Crossroad, 2004). He was editor of articles and columns for Christian Library Journal from 1998-2003; contributing editor of The Christian Communicator from 1998-2000; a book reviewer for Ethics & Medicine; and is a current member of the Authors’ Guild. Dr. Seddon is a family-practice physician in Billings, Montana.


The 'problem' faced by a teacher-catechist like Benedict XVI in a sound-bite world is best illustrated by his largely off-the-cuff catechesis yesterday on the Paschal Triduum. The OR headline for it today, 'Human poverty raised to the level of God' (which I modified in translation to 'Christ brings human poverty to the level of God', is too generic even if it is a quotation from the catechesis, and it can only be understood in its fullness if one reads the entire catechesis from which it is lifted [I posted a full translation in the preceding page in the GA post].

It is a masterpiece of catechesis and preaching - particularly awesome when one listens to it as he delivered it, so fluidly and cohesively in a language that is not his own! It does not take long to read - none of the Pope's homilies or catecheses do - and it reads easily because his thought flows linearly and clearly, and he is able to convey the theological, spiritual and practical import of his reflections on Christ in everyday language.

The bishops, priests and catechists of the world owe it to the faithful to pass on the Pope's teachings in his own words because no one today can shed more light on Gospel and Scripture than he does.