Benedict XVI, the man who never backs off
In Lebanon, the presence alone of the Pope had a powerful psychological impact.
Reflections on the Pope's physical, intellectual and spiritual courage.
Translated from
September 18, 2012
The day after Benedict XVI's apostolic visit to Lebanon, which I covered for
La Vie, the phrase kept coming back like a leitmotiv to those whom I asked for their assessment - from the diplomat in the ecclesiastical hierarchy to the mother who came to the Papal Mass in Beirut held under a leaden sun: "He came, he was not afraid, he did not shy away".
Up to the very eve of the trip, fears had persisted about whether it was feasible at all. Benedict XVI's determination to make the trip was known, but the crucial question was that of security. With the civil war in Syria, and its repercussions on adjoining Lebanon, some did not believe he would make the trip at all until they saw him going down the airplane steps in Beirut.
The psychological reverberation of his trip is immense, in the current context of great tension in the region. The fact that the Pope had come in flesh and blood is a source of hope that is difficult to imagine in France.
In Lebanon, it was a national event, a true feast in this country, where men habitually live holding their breath for fear of the resurgence of any inter-community conflicts.
But the psychological relief also extended even to those who are in Lebanon for other reasons. I think of Editha, a Filipina Catholic who was at the Mass.
"I am a domestic servant for a Lebanese family. I am here to earn a living for my family. I have not seen my children for six years. May last child was only a year old when I had to leave. Coming to this Mass by the Pope is like balm for my heart".
Joseph Ratzinger has never been a man to back off. At the end of the 1950s, when his dissertation
[to earn his Habilitation as a professor qualified to teach in German universities] was drastically cut down by a hostile professor and his professional career seemed in peril, he went around the obstacle by re-fashioning his work from a different angle that would render it impregnable to his adviser's challenge.
Since 1982, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he became, for the media, a negative symbol of the institutional Church. Others may have cracked under the constant burden this meant,but not he, who went on humbly carrying out his tasks without worrying about his image.
Since 2000, Joseph Ratzinger knew that his public image as one who sought to 're-frame' rebel theologians into orthodoxy was behind him, when his desk began to pile up with files about priests accused of committing sex offenses against minors and children.
Though it was also a time of
omerta [silence imposed, Mafia-like, on criminal matters] - since those around John Paul II did not wish to expose figures like Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ - the cardinal prefect knew the Church was dealing with a ticking time-bomb.
He availed of a window of opportunity, as John Paul II drew closer to his final days, to sound the alarm in public about the 'filth' in the Church, particularly among some priests, denouncing this in the meditations he prepared for the Good Friday Way of the Cross in March 2005. Never before had a curial cardinal broken the taboo to point out what seemed to be a blind spot for the Church.
Nor did he back off when his peers elected him Pope at age 78. The global message of the cardinals to him was clear: "Joseph, you are apparently the only one who knows the extent of the damage. Please clean it up for all of us". The cardinals were not foolish - and Joseph applied himself to the task.
And so, he has not backed off either from the problems of the Middle East. To launch a Synodal Assembly on the Middle East was frankly not an easy task, considering the complexity of the Eastern Catholic Churches themselves which are divided, and the overall context of the region itself.
The Middle East was never really the theologian Ratzinger's domain.
[But his lifelong appreciation for what Christianity owes Judaism and the unique bond that will always link the two religions has always set him apart, and has been a thread running through his ecclesiological and theological thinking]]
But what matters is that the Pope launched the dynamic of the 2010 Synodal assembly, which saw its culmination in Beirut this weekend.
His courage was physical, to begin with. His program, crammed into about 48 hours, was quite packed. During his public events, Benedict XVI had to endure the infernal heat of late summer in Beirut while under the permanent glare of TV lights.
He devoted individual attention to hundreds of prelates and laymen who lined up to greet him at each event. He was focused on what the leaders of Lebanon (secular as well as ecclesial) had to tell him at their private meetings during which every word he said could have unforeseen consequences.
At age 85, it was quite a feat. He has become visibly more frail, and now moves about more often with a cane to keep his balance, but those who had the opportunity to see him up close say that his memory and his sense of humor remain sparkling as ever.
In Lebanon, the Pope made public the text of his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation,
Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, which he himself described as a road map for the future of Christians in the Middle East.
But in it, he does not hesitate to go against the grain and reproach the Christians of the region for certain faults. For instance, the text devotes a considerable part to tracing the Jewish origins of Christianity.
As we know, in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is on everyone's mind all the time. To recall he importance of Judaism to the Christian faith was thus an act of courage in itself. It is proof that Rome, through the Pope, brings another point of view, and is willing to re-open some wounds in order to better heal them. One can doubtless see in this the essence of the Petrine ministry.
The other 'anti-demagogic' element of the Exhortation is Benedict XVI's position about secularism. In the Middle East, secularism is largely seen as a foil, an ailment of French origin which has contaminated the West and led it to break off its attachments to God (and which explains why the Western powers have no interest at all in the fate of the Middle Eastern Christians).
But Benedict XVI advocates the virtues of 'healthy secularity': "(It) means liberating faith from the weight of political considerations and enriching politics with the contributions of faith, while maintaining the necessary distance, clear distinction and indispensable collaboration between both... Such a secularity guarantees that politics can function without instrumentalizing religion, and gives religion the ability to live freely without being weighed down by politics dictated by special interests and sometimes hardly in conformity with - or even, directly opposed to - belief".-
This is a recommendation which, in the Middle East, strikes at the manifold confusions between religion and politics.
In Beirut, the Pope used unsettling words to appeal for peace, evoking the urgency for forgiveness and for the conversion of hearts in front of an audience of political and religious leaders:
We need to be very conscious that evil is not some nameless, impersonal and deterministic force at work in the world. Evil, the devil, works in and through human freedom, through the use of our freedom. It seeks an ally in man. Evil needs man in order to act... But it is possible for us not to be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with good. It is to this conversion of heart that we are called... True, it is quite demanding: it involves rejecting revenge, acknowledging one’s faults, accepting apologies without demanding them, and, not least, forgiveness. Only forgiveness, given and received, can lay lasting foundations for reconciliation and universal peace.
Words that could well glide away like water on oilcloth in our postwar European societies where, in a long time, we have not known civil war, nor families decimated by bomb attacks, nor the fear of being abducted and disappearing without a trace (which continues to be very real in the Middle East today).
And in Lebanon? "Forgiveness is not that obvious for Lebanese or Syrians," commented Jesuit priest Samir Khalil Samir to me the day after the Pope left Beirut. "To accept that the murderer of someone in your family is a brother one ought to love and forgive is very difficult".
Forgiveness of offenses committed against you and your loved ones and the conversion of individual hearts constitute a truly great challenge
[The Pope underscored, in the same address, "True, it is quite demanding..." but following Christ was never supposed to be an easy task], especially in the Mediterranean culture which is marked by subjection to one's religious or familial clan, by the logic of vendetta, and by so-called 'codes of honor'. The Lebanese, in particular, are imprisoned by a fundamental fear which is principally for their physical survival.
This 'particularly demanding conversion' is asked not only of those int he Middle East. It has resounded in everything this Pope ha ssaid over the past seven years. It will be at the heart of the coming Year of Faith which begins in a few weeks.
A prophet in Lebanon through his words and by his physical presence, Benedict XVI is more and more the Pope of interior freedom.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/09/2012 18:53]