When Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyons (France) was asked recently about the coming Conclave, he replied that "After Benedict XVI, there are no giants left...But it doesn't matter that his successor will not be a giant like the two who preceded him - the office does not necessarily require giants". At about the same time, Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, who had been a doctoral student of Professor Ratzinger, called Benedict XVI 'the last of the giants', which is the reference picked up by Carl Olson in this essay written on the day Benedict XVI's Pontificate ended.
Benedict XVI:
Last of the giants?
by Carl Olson
Editor
February 28, 2013
This morning, as I watched live video of Pope Benedict XVI flying from the Vatican to the Castel Gandolfo, I felt, for the first time really, a deep sense of sadness. As the Holy Father stepped from the helicopter, his fatigue and frailty appeared quite obvious, even while his gaze seemed as focused and intent as ever. Then, a few moments later, he appeared on the balcony to make his final, brief address as pontiff.
“You know that today is different from others”, he said, “as of eight pm I will no longer be the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church. I will simply be a pilgrim who is beginning the last part of his pilgrimage on earth.”
Those familiar with the writings Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI will recall the collection of his essays,
Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion (Ignatius Press, 2005), presented to Cardinal Ratzinger on the occasion of his 75th birthday.
The title and subtitle captures, in just eight words, an essential focus of the thought and work of Ratzinger. In his final general audience, given two days ago, Benedict thanked those who had written him notes in recent weeks, reflecting on the meaning of those gestures of love and support:
In this you can touch what the Church is—not an organization, not an association for religious or humanitarian ends, but a living body, a communion of brothers and sisters in the Body of Jesus Christ who unites us all.
Experiencing the Church in this way and being able to almost touch with our hands the strength of His truth and His love is a reason for joy at a time when many are speaking of its decline. See how the Church is alive today!That passage came to mind as I watched the FOX broadcast of events at the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo. One of the reporters, who was obviously a Catholic, was asked a question about the heart of the Catholic Faith: what is it?
She referenced the Church’s rich intellectual tradition and the Church’s stand for human rights, but she never mentioned the person of Jesus Christ. This stood out to me because Benedict himself, since announcing his resignation, has spoken several times about the relationship between Jesus Christ and his Church, a relationship that is all about a communion of life and love.
Perhaps the best example of this can be found in his lengthy and fascinating address to priests and clergy on February 14th, a talk that might be described as a papal history of Vatican II:
Yet only after the Council did an element come to light – which can also be found, albeit in a hidden way, in the Council itself – namely this: the link between People of God and Body of Christ is precisely communion with Christ in Eucharistic fellowship. This is where we become the Body of Christ: the relationship between People of God and Body of Christ creates a new reality – communion.
After the Council it became clear, I would say, that the Council really discovered and pointed to this concept: communion as the central concept. I would say that, philologically, it is not yet fully developed in the Council, yet it is as a result of the Council that the concept of communion came more and more to be the expression of the Church’s essence, communion in its different dimensions: communion with the Trinitarian God – who is himself communion between Father, Son and Holy Spirit – sacramental communion, and concrete communion in the episcopate and in the life of the Church.
[I still feel levitated when I think back on that truly amazing lectio magistralis. I dare anyone of the leading Vatican II 'spiritists' to match the clarity, cogency and linearity of that extemporaneous 45-minute 'history and essence of Vatican II' presentation, a brilliant and breathtaking example of what Joseph Ratzinger's students called his 'print-ready' lectures on theology that he delivered without notes. Here is an exceptional scholar retiring at age 86 with his mental powers as sharp as ever even if his physical abilities have waned so fast.]
II.
Eucharist. Communion with Christ. Communion with the Trinitarian God.
If I had to list the top three reasons that I entered the Catholic Church on Easter Vigil 1997, those would more than suffice. These are realities that suffuse the work of Joseph Ratzinger and the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, and they should, it goes without saying (but needs to be said, sadly) be the realities that suffuse the lives of every Catholic.
I've never met Ratzinger/Benedict in person, but I first encountered him through two books: one short and reflective, the other long and doctrinal. The first was
Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Beliefs (Ignatius Press, 1983), a book that impressed with me its biblical erudition, to the point that I could only conclude the author not only knew Scripture, he truly lived and breathed it. Needless to say, that conclusion has only deepened over the years, especially in light of the three
Jesus of Nazarethbooks, as well as the important 2010 apostolic exhortation,
Verbum Domini. [Olson has been one of the very few secular commentators who have appreciated
Verbum Domini for the masterpiece that it is, perhaps even greater than Benedict XVI's other great doctrinal Apostolic Exhortation,
Sacramentum caritatis.]
The second book was the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, of which he was co-editor. It was, after the Bible, the most important book for my wife and I in making the journey into the Catholic Church.
It cleared away many misconceptions and deepened my understanding of the organic connections, if you will, between the many beliefs and practices of the Church. The Catechism is notable at this moment because it was, in so many ways, a marvelous example of how Bl. John Paul II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger worked together to proclaim and explain Catholic doctrine and practice, as well as to carry out the real mission of the Second Vatican Council,
which both attended as theological experts. [No, Mr. Olson - Karol Wojyla was a Council Father, being the Archbishop of Cracow at the time, while Joseph Ratzinger was 'only' one of the many expert consultants to the Council Fathers.]
If Cardinal Ratzinger had not been elected Pope, he would still be recognized as one of the most significant Catholic theologians of the past half-century. The many discussions of Benedict’s pontificate must take into account, without doubt, his numerous pre-papal writings, which are the (unplanned, of course) foundation and framework for the many writings and addresses of his relatively short pontificate.
For example, Benedict’s motu proprio opening the way for the common, widespread celebration of the extraordinary form of the Latin Mass did not come out of thin air, as a reading of his
Spirit of the Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 2000) amply indicates.
His many and varied examinations of secularism, modernity, and relativism were not reactionary or out of character, but the fruit of decades of study and reflection, as can be seen in books such as
Introduction to Christianity (orig. 1968) and
Truth and Tolerance (Ignatius Press, 2004).
In a similar way, his
Jesus of Nazareth books pick up and flesh out themes found in the 2000 declaration,
Dominus Iesus, issued when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
[The occasion was the Great Jubilee of 2000, celebrating two millennia of Christianity.]
III.
After Benedict’s election in 2005, it was clear that few journalists and pundits had seriously read and studied his pre-papal writings. So it wasn’t a surprise, I suppose, that most weren’t sure how to handle something such as
Deus Caritas Est, which puzzled one
New York Times journalist so much that he wrote, as if stunned, “The encyclical, titled ‘God Is Love,’ did not mention abortion, homosexuality, contraception or divorce, issues that often divide Catholics.” Shocking!
How could it be that a man who had written learned books and essays on Church history, Augustinian thought, Enlightenment philosophy, post-modernism, Scripture scholarship, liturgical renewal, ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, eschatology, ecclesiology, the sacraments, faith and reason, political philosophy, and Church-state relations fail to live down to media expectations? Puzzling, without a doubt.
The general state of affairs hasn’t changed much, especially when the Times trots out Hans Küng for another round of narcissistic papal bashing:
In 2005, in one of Benedict’s few bold actions, he held an amicable four-hour conversation with me at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo in Rome. I had been his colleague at the University of Tübingen and also his harshest critic. For 22 years, thanks to the revocation of my ecclesiastical teaching license for having criticized papal infallibility, we hadn’t had the slightest private contact. … For me, and indeed for the whole Catholic world, the meeting was a sign of hope. ut sadly Benedict’s pontificate was marked by breakdowns and bad decisions. [Kueng deliberately frames his statement such that any reader unfamiliar with his story would conclude it was Joseph Ratzinger who revoked his license to teach Catholic theology, when in fact, it was revoked by the CDF in 1979, three years before Joseph Ratzinger came to Rome to head the CDF.]
“For the whole Catholic world”? Really? Being accused of insular thinking and “breakdowns” by Hans Küng is like being accused of doping by Lance Armstrong. Especially since Küng plays very loose with facts and misrepresents a number of serious things, such as when he writes,
“There was the widespread sexual abuse of children and youths by clergymen, which the Pope was largely responsible for covering up when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.” [I've always suspected that Kueng stopped saying Mass decades ago, or perhaps does not even go to Mass at all. Because if he did, he would not be lying as flagrantly and as frequently as the odious Obama!'
That is simply slanderous, but give Küng credit: he knows his audience isn’t into facts, but into reacting, fuming, venting, and even hating. And then there is this wishful claim:
“One shouldn’t be misled by the media hype of grandly staged papal Mass events or by the wild applause of conservative Catholic youth groups. Behind the facade, the whole house is crumbling.”
Benedict, of course, has a different perspective. His perspective is not different because he is a company man, or because he is power hungry, or because he is a hater, but because he, unlike Küng, places his faith in Someone greater than himself (I’m not sure Küng can envision such a person). As he told the College of Cardinals this morning:
I have let a phrase of Romano Guardini help me. It was written in the very same year that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council approved the Constitution Lumen Gentium. In his last book, Guardini says, the Church “is not an institution conceived and built in theory... but a living reality.... She lives through the course of time, in becoming, like every living being, in changing.... And yet in her nature she remains ever the same, and her heart is Christ”.
It seems to me that this was our experience yesterday, in St. Peter's Square: seeing that the Church is a living body, enlivened by the Holy Spirit and which is really brought to life by God's power. She is in the world but not of the world: she is of God, of Christ, of the Spirit. We saw this yesterday.
That is why Guardini's other famous saying is both true and eloquent: “The Church reawakens in souls”. The Church is alive, she grows and is reawakened in souls who – like the Virgin Mary – welcome the Word of God and conceive it through the action of the Holy Spirit; they offer to God their own flesh.
It is precisely in their poverty and humility that they become capable of begetting Christ in the world today. Through the Church, the Mystery of the Incarnation lives on for ever. Christ continues to walk through the epochs and in all places.
In June 1970, Fr. Ratzinger gave an address in Munich titled, “Why I Am Still in the Church” (published in Fundamental Speeches from Five Decades [Ignatius Press, 2012]).
It is essential reading, but one point will suffice: Ratzinger argues that the modern obsession with remaking the Church in our image, in accord with our desires and agendas, finally comes down to one key problem: “the crisis of faith”. He said,
There is ultimately no opposition between Christ and the Church. … I am in the Church for the same reasons that I am a Christian in the first place. For one cannot believe alone. One can believe only as a fellow believer.
… Faith is ecclesial, or it is not faith. … A faith of one’s own devising is an oxymoron. For a self-made faith would only vouch for and be able to say what I already am known anyway; it could not go beyond the boundary of my ego. Hence a self-made Church, a faith community that creates itself, that exists by its own graces, is also an oxymoron. Although faith demands communion, it is the sort of communion that has authority and takes the lead, not the sort that is my own creation, the instrument of my own wishes.
For eight years, Benedict XVI consistently pointed toward the Church and her head, Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, Hans Küng and Company play pointless games in the sandbox. And the sand is running out.
IV.
Judging Benedict XVI’s pontificate is a difficult thing to do, hardly possible on the day it has ended. The key question is: what criteria will be used to judge, and who will do the judging? With that in mind, I conclude this essay with two quotes, both from Mark Brumley, President of Ignatius Press, from whom I learned so much about John Paul II’s thought (when Mark was my professor in the late 1990s) and who has worked so tirelessly to bring the writings of Ratzinger/Benedict XVI to English-speaking readers throughout the world.
First, in a 2005 interview with ZENIT, Mark was asked, “What will Pope Benedict XVI bring of himself and his theological interests to the pontificate?” He replied:
Although Ratzinger the prefect is distinguishable from Ratzinger the theologian, we are blessed in Pope Benedict XVI with a theologian and pastor who has thought and prayed long and hard about Jesus Christ, the Church and her mission to the world.
He will, I believe, continue the twofold task of Vatican II -- renewing the inner life of the Church and reinvigorating the Church's mission in the world. He is committed to a renewal of biblical studies and a deepening of ordinary Catholics' appreciation of and participation in the sacred liturgy.
He staunchly proclaims the universal call to holiness of Vatican II. He understands the importance of dialogue among Christians and dialogue with world religions and seekers, while he upholds the integrity of Catholic faith and insists on a renewed missionary drive to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.
And he knows that in the areas of morality and social justice, the Christian message has not been tried and found wanting, as G.K. Chesterton noted, but has been found difficult and left untried. Furthermore, he sees the threat of radical relativism and many other "isms."
And today, in a press release, Mark states:
Although Pope Benedict's pontificate has been relatively short, he has accomplished a great deal amidst profound challenges, both within the Church and in the world.
By stressing the "hermeneutic of reform" in contrast to the "hermeneutic of rupture," he has shown the way forward in clarifying the relationship between the Second Vatican Council and the Church's Tradition.
He has presented clearly, forcefully, thoughtfully, and winsomely "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3), and he has strengthened the Church's efforts to evangelize the world.
He has sought to deepen the renewal of the Church's worship and sacramental life by fostering a recovery of "the spirit of the liturgy."
He has appointed and elevated men to the episcopate who perceive the importance of an authentic understanding of the Second Vatican Council, in light of the Church's Tradition and the "joy and hope, the grief and anguish" of our world (cf. Gaudium et Spes, no. 1).
Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, in reflecting on the (now completed) pontificate, spoke of Benedict as the “last of the giants”, referencing the great
ressourcement theologians — De Lubac, von Balthasar, Danielou — who had so much to do with Catholic theology in the twentieth century and in shaping the work of the Council.
I think it is an apt description, for Ratzinger is certainly a theological giant. But, as with John Paul II, what continues to impress most is his deep and obvious love for Christ and the Catholic Church. Few of us will be great theologians or popes, but all of us can love the Lord and his Mystical Body.
Again, that is what it is all about: Eucharist. Communion with Christ. Communion with the Trinitarian God.
May God bless His Holiness Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus of the Catholic Church!
I have been rather random in posting the tributes to Benedict XVI and the assessments of his Pontificate - I continue to be rather dysfunctional because of inability to cope with a situation that I had accepted immediately but which I am having trouble to truly assimilate. So in the case of Mr. Olson, I must add here his first formal reaction to the 'great renunciation' in an editorial for CWR.
Benedict XVI steps onstage for his last meeting with the clergy of Rome on February 14, 2013.
A figure of impossibility
The pontificate of Benedict XVI has been a short,
bracing, and often surprising journey in discipleship.
Editorial
by Carl Olson
February 16, 2013
“The rejection of the primacy of St. Peter has driven men on to a slippery course, where all the steps are downwards.”— Lord Acton
It has been quite a week. My head is still spinning, and I'm sure that only half of it is due to the flu, fever, and medication I've been fighting, enduring, and imbibing (respectively) since last Sunday afternoon.
I.
Where to start? How about with the head of the Catholic Church?
Consider: He is brilliant, yet enigmatic. Some find him inspiring; others think he is frightening. Some insist his reign is the result of mythology, superstition, and ignorance. Others claim he is the personification of humility, service, and true charity.
In some corners, he is rejected for his politically incorrect views about marriage and sexuality, and his insistence that only certain men, no women at all, can be priests or bishops. His talk of sin and of eternal judgment has upset many, but his call to discipleship, sacrifice, and humble worship resonates with countless millions.
But there has often been talk of scandal. One of those closest to him betrayed his trust, exposing him to ridicule. There was even talk of arrest and prosecution. Some within his inner circle have apparently been more interested in pursuing power than in service. He is, in short, controversial—a lightning rod for debate, discussion and, sadly, division.
Yes, I think you get what I'm getting at and the man I am describing: Jesus of Nazareth, The Head of the Catholic Church. He is central to the events of the past week for many reasons, not least because he established the Church, founded the papacy upon the
petra of the flawed fisherman Petros, and promised to preserve the Church against the gates of Hades, never mind the flailing assaults of clueless pundits and minor heretics.
This same crucified and risen Jesus, of course, is central to the thought, work, and life of his current Vicar of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI. It’s not that previous pontiffs haven’t loved Christ deeply and fully—far from it.
But, to give just one obvious example, Joseph Ratzinger’s
Jesus of Nazareth “trilogy”, written during his eight short years as Pope, was a rather unusual enterprise. It tells us something essential about the man, to the degree that Fr. James Martin, SJ, suggests, with merit, that the three books may prove to be Benedict’s “greatest legacy”.
There has already been much talk of Benedict’s “legacy”. I suspect that many Americans think of a legacy in terms of “what something or someone means to me”, that is, in ways mostly subjective, personal, and quite immediate.
There is a partial truth to this perspective, but by itself it misses the deep sense of continuity and inheritance implicit in the word “legacy”, which derives from the Latin words (legatia, legatus) referring to a body of persons — ambassadors — sent on a particular mission.
The word “mission” is a significant one in Catholic theology, used to refer to the missions of the three Divine Persons, supernatural and saving missions “which are continued in the mission of the Church” (CCC, 257). Mission, in other words, flows from Trinitarian communion, which in turn shapes the communion of the Church, which then goes forth with her
missio, sent to proclaim the Gospel and to make disciples of all nations.
In short, the greatest legacy of any Pope is that he upholds, promotes, carries out, encourages, explains, desires, seeks, and proclaims this mission, which is simply the constant, insistent invitation to accept God’s freely offered gift of “the glory of his blessed life” (CCC, 257; cf. 1), that is, communion with the Triune God. Or, as the Holy Father put in his final homily, given on Ash Wednesday:
May the invitation to conversion, to “return to God with all our heart”, resonate strongly in us, accepting His grace that makes us new men and women, with the surprising news that is participating in the very life of Jesus.
This legacy, it goes without saying, is not of much interest to the networks and the news shapers.
II.
My point is that
if we begin by accepting the criteria of the world, we will not only see Benedict’s pontificate through warped and soiled lenses, we will struggle to see the bigger picture, not just the panorama of Church history, but of salvation history.
The Church certainly struggles today, as she has struggled every single day since her founding. But the Church also thinks in terms of decades and centuries. More importantly, the Church truly lives for and, finally, in eternity. Only the faithful can read and savor and marvel at this startling passage:
Christians of the first centuries said, “The world was created for the sake of the Church.” God created the world for the sake of communion with his divine life, a communion brought about by the “convocation” of men in Christ, and this “convocation” is the Church.
The Church is the goal of all things, and God permitted such painful upheavals as the angels’ fall and man’s sin only as occasions and means for displaying all the power of his arm and the whole measure of the love he wanted to give the world… (CCC, 760)
I emphasize the above because, having now read far too many pieces about Benedict’s renouncement of the papal office, I am fairly resigned (pun intended!) to the fact that most of the talk and conversation — certainly in the secular media — will be about intrigue, scandal, secrecy, power, politics, and so forth. It’s expected; it doesn’t surprise me and, surprisingly, it doesn’t even really upset me (yes, that’s how under the weather I am). What else but personalities, politics, and power will pundits discuss when all they know are personalities, politics, and power?
Sadly, even those who should know better apparently do not. In an essay, “As Vatican leader Pope Benedict never had a chance” (Feb. 11, 2013), John Moody, Executive Vice President and Executive Editor at Fox News, broke the shocking news that Benedict XVI “was not John Paul II.” This was, he insists, “an insurmountable problem”, ramping up a strange and wildly skewed game of “JPII vs. B16” (no word yet about a possible phone app).
Among Benedict’s alleged failures: “He did not unite the conservative and progressive wings of the Catholic Church.” Perhaps I missed it, but neither did Blessed John Paul II, and his pontificate was a bit longer than Benedict’s.
More to the point, there is the reality of the Church itself — the matter of the wheat and tares, a deeply meaningful image that dates back to a man who prayed for unity among his disciples (Jn 17) but also said he came to “set the earth on fire” and to establish “division” (Lk 12:51ff).
Establish division? Would a meek and mild and cajoling Jesus ever do such a thing? Of course not. But the true and living Jesus Christ surely would, and did, and does.
Moody’s piece, in the end, is a disturbing exercise in the cult of personality, as obsessed with John Paul II’s obvious external abilities as he with Benedict’s supposed failure to develop a winning smile:
“His smile, though genuine, looked somehow sinister, as if he were about to bite his audience.” [The man is clearly mad. How can a smile so cherubic and angelic and truly 'sweet' be sinister?]
The usual news pieces made certain to highlight controversies and criticisms. Nothing wrong with that, but the tone in some suggests that any hint of controversy or actions drawing criticism is bad form. One wonders:
has there ever been a Pope and papacy free of controversy or criticism? (I, for one, hope not!)
[No, but from reading the run-of-the-MSM-mill, one would think everything bad about the Church originated in his Pontificate! And this, not just among the openly hostile, biased and uninformed media, but even among many Catholic writers who think that they are thereby being 'objective'!] ]
One bit of Benedict’s history that has now been worked into a well-polished media nugget is the Regensburg Address, which is presented as a heady pontiff failing to appreciate the sensitivities of the time. For example, from a February 12th
Wall Street Journalpiece:
Pope Benedict's efforts to address the cultural divisions between Islam and Christianity briefly stirred controversy in 2006 when the pontiff delivered an academic speech that quoted a Byzantine emperor making deprecating remarks about the Prophet Muhammad. A wave of deadly riots washed across the Muslim world, prompting an apology from the Pope.
The address was about culture, but it was about much more: the theological and philosophical roots of culture, and how flawed understandings of God’s nature have far-reaching and often serious, even deadly, implications.
And Benedict’s apology was a small revelation in itself, for he didn’t retract anything he had said: “At this time, I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.”.
Unfortunately, the violent actions of various Islamic groups following the address only validated Benedict’s argument — a point ignored by virtually all non-Catholic news outlets.
In many cases, Benedict could never “win”, and I doubt he was ever blind to his difficult situation. Throughout his pontificate, he has been criticized by many for being heavy-handed and authoritarian. Then again, he has been derided for being weak, timid, and incapable of handling the reins of the wild steed named “the Vatican”.
Surely only a man of diverse and inscrutable talents could be both so powerful and so weak! Most people have been fed a series of images—either visual or painted with words—portraying Benedict XVI as out of touch, backwards, narrow-minded, reactionary, anti-woman, and so forth.
As Ryan N. S. Topping notes in his exceptional new book,
Rebuilding Catholic Culture (Sophia, 2012), “Each age nurses its own vices; one of ours is to substitute images for ideas. … But the study of doctrine, to reduce principles merely to politics would be simply to miss a great deal. … Theology is, ultimately, the study not of personalities but of reality — in fact the most real reality of all.” That "real reality" has always been Benedict's focus; it's hardly his fault that the world is overrun by hordes of delicately scented barbarians who care not one whit about the same.
III.
I’ve learned over the years that more than a few people who express a vague admiration for John Paul II actually know little or nothing about his writings and teachings. They are attracted to him — or to a particular image of him they have obtained through one media source or another. But, then, the rich young ruler was also attracted to Jesus. The essential question, always, is: will you take up the Cross? Will you follow the Master?
Following an attractive image with your eyes for a few moments is not the same as following Christ to the very end. Which is one reason why the public death, so to speak, of John Paul II was such a profound witness: the once handsome and dynamic Pope did not shy away from showing his feeble, anguished figure and face to the world. Benedict has taken a different route. Why? Fr. George Rutler offers some beautifully expressed insights:
As everyone dies, it was important that John Paul defied the aimless Culture of Death by showing how to die, but that witness also came at the cost of care of the churches. There were times then when the Church Militant seemed in freefall, and the man who then was Cardinal Ratzinger must have anguished much in silence.
… A most attractive charism of Benedict XVI has been his desire to vanish so that the faithful might see only Christ: “cupio dissolvi.” He strengthened the papacy by vaulting sanctity over celebrity. In a grand paradox, nothing in him has become so conspicuous as his desire to disappear.
Cardinal Francis Arinze put it more directly, but just as well. “Our faith is not in thePpope,” he said shortly after Benedict’s announcement, “it is in Christ… So this event can help all of us to be deeper in our faith. To be, shall we say, less sentimental.”
The last bit is more important than it might appear initially. Benedict XVI is, by all accounts, a very warm and personable man, but I’ve never heard the word “sentimental” associated with him. The fact is, we live not in the Information Age, but in the Sentimental Age, driven not by good thinking, tested prudence, or treasured wisdom, but by sentiments, feelings, emotions. Everywhere we turn, there are voices and texts and tweets flooding us with feelings and opinions.
But what of truth? Of reason? It says volumes (literally, if printed) that the greatest champion of reason today, the Vicar of Christ, is judged and mocked as “unreasonable” by a world that scorns reason like a junkie scorns rehab.
Those who deny the transcendent and who wish to make (or re-make) man in their own image cannot and will not engage with this voice of reason for the simple reason that they will not stand to be exposed for the charlatans they are. As Samuel Gregg put it in an excellent post, “Benedict XVI: Reason’s Revolutionary”:
But we need to remember that Benedict XVI is arguably the most intellectual pope to sit in Peter’s Chair for centuries — even more so than his saintly predecessor, who was certainly no slouch in the world of ideas.
And if there is one single thing that stands out in Benedict’s papacy, it’s this: his laser-like focus on the root-cause of the intellectual crisis that explains not only Western culture’s present wallowing in facile relativism that’s on full display in the content-free rhetoric of your average EU politician, but also the trauma that explains the violence and rage that continues to shake the Islamic world and which Islam seems incapable of resolving on its own terms.
And that problem is one of reason. As Benedict spelt out in four key addresses that repay careful re-reading — the famous 2006 Regensburg lecture, his 2008 address to the French intellectual world, his speech to the Bundestag in 2011, and his remarks to the world of British politics in 2010 in Westminster Hall (the site, not coincidentally, of St Thomas More’s show-trial in 1535)—man, especially Western man, has lost confidence in reason’s power to know more-than-empirical truth.
Personally, I have benefited most deeply from Benedict’s explication of Scripture and his analysis of the current intellectual and spiritual crises. I don’t see the two as somehow separate from another; on the contrary, I find Benedict’s penetrating and nuanced apprehension of the failings of our age to be rooted in a deeply biblical vision of God and man, creation and society, family and politics, Church and state.
The first Ratzinger book I ever read was
Daughter Zion, and after reading it, I realized the author did not just know Scripture, but breathed it. He is a man who loves and lives the Word of God.
IV.
"The figure of Peter is an impossibility, made possible only by the will of the One who created him.” So wrote Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar in The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church (Ignatius, 1986).
At some point, in some way, we have to distinguish between the man and the office. Every man who has been given the office has had flaws and failures; some of them, we must admit, have been rogues and even vile sinners. But the Petrine office, gifted by Jesus Christ, endures precisely because of the grace and power of the Head of the Church. And what does Christ ask of Peter? “Simon, do you love me?” (Jn 21).
In a May 2006 audience, Benedict XVI remarked on the thrice-repeated question from Jesus, saying, “Simon understands that his poor love is enough for Jesus, it is the only one of which he is capable, nonetheless he is grieved that the Lord spoke to him in this way. He thus replies: ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you (filo-se)’.” And:
From that day, Peter "followed" the Master with the precise awareness of his own fragility; but this understanding did not discourage him. Indeed, he knew that he could count on the presence of the Risen One beside him.
From the naïve enthusiasm of initial acceptance, passing though the sorrowful experience of denial and the weeping of conversion, Peter succeeded in entrusting himself to that Jesus who adapted himself to his poor capacity of love. And in this way he shows us the way, notwithstanding all of our weakness. We know that Jesus adapts himself to this weakness of ours.
Benedict has recognized his weakness and, without any sentimentality or political posturing, is handing the office back to the One who founded it.
He knows that he was Peter for a while only by the will of the One who created him, and he trusts completely that the Church, however battered and embattled today, will carry on toward the eschaton precisely because of the will, grace, and love of Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/03/2013 14:08]