'Benedicto de Europa'
by Alejandro Muñoz-Alonso
Translated from
Nov. 8, 2010
Munoz-Alonso is Professor of Public Opinion at Madrid's Universidad Complutense and at the Universidad San Pablo CEU.
Benedict XVI's visit to Spain, as quick as it was fraught with significance, confirms the mission that Joseph Ratzinger had imposed on himself long before he became Pope.
And that is, nothing less than to prove that there is no incompatibility between faith and reason, between Christianity and modernity, between the Catholic Church and democratic society.
[I think that is something of a mis-statement, because, of course, there are incompatiblilities between those binomials, but there are common elements, too, that can be reconciled, for which dialog is possible and necessary if they are to co-exist. And this has been Benedict xVI's point.]
He also underscores that in such an undertaking - so difficult and complex that it might well be considered 'titanic' - Europe plays an essential role. The Europe that Ratzinger knows and understands better than anyone as his writings, ectures and discourses have shown.
In this respect, I found particularly excellent a lecture he gave in Berlin in 2000 and which he partially used later when he addressed the Italian Senate in 2004, and it was published with the title, "Europe: Her spiritual foundations, today and tomorrow".
For Ratzinger, Europe has been 'emptied from within" because it allowed itself to lose "the primordial certainties of man about God, himself and the universe". And this has led the West to the strange situation of trying "to open itself to understanding alien values, at a time when it has stopped loving itself, and sees only what is despicable and destructive in her history, without perceiving what was great and pure".
Benedict XVI affirms that "in order to survive, Europe must come to a new accceptance of herself, critical certainly, and humble", and warns against multi-culturalism which, much too often, is nothing but "the abandonment and negation of what is one's own".
The depth and the accuracy of the Pope's thinking cannot, of course, be expressed in the few words cited, but nonetheless, they give an idea of sustained reflection which explains both the identity of Europe - or, if one prefers, of the Western world or civiilization - and the causes of the existential crisis which has afflicted it for some time.
It is a crisis that began with the dawning of the contemporary world as one of the sub-products of that great movement known as the Enlightenment, which the Church certainly was slow to grasp and to react to.
It meant the first attacks from a radical secularism which frequently expressed itself as raging anti-clericalism or militant atheism, in the face of which the Church folded in on itself, closed to every innovation, distrusting reason, and somnolent in the equivocal formulas of Throne and Altar and the temporal power of the Papacy.
The Church restored its dialog with the world with Popes like Leo XIII, Benedict XV and Pius XI.
Meanwhile, Europe had hurled itself into the abyss of the totalitarianisms and of 'statolatry', which are inconceivable without rejecting God, and are incapable of understanding that human dignity itself is laid aside when atheism imposes itself.
The dialog of the Church with the world culminated in John XXIII, who was open, as he said himself, "to the signs of the times", and who would launch the great reformist experiment that was the Second Vatican Council.
Convinced of the indispensable role of Europe and the urgency of recovering her identity, Ratzinger chose for his papal name that of St. Benedict of Nursia, patron of Europe since 1964 by proclamation of Paul VI - who did this in recognition of the fundamental role of the Benedictine monks, whose order was founded by St. Benedict in the 6th century, in safeguarding the classical and Christian legacy of Europe through the convulsions that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire and the barbarian kingdoms that succeeded it.
To those who had easily accepted the idea of an atheist Europe - or at least, a secular one - and who imagined a Church that would henceforth dedicate itself almost exclusively to the Third World and Latin America, the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope was a warning sign: For him, the 're-evangelzization' of Europe, as he spoke of it in Compostela, is a priority .
Benedict XVI is ever aware that although Christianity was born in the Middle East, Christianity as we know it today took shape in Europe
[even as it shaped Europe] and that during the thousand years of the misnamed Middle Ages, the Europe we know today had another name by which it was more commonly referred to - Christendom.
And so the Church cannot allow the loss of a Europe now disoriented by its emptiness within, denying its most obvious Christian roots, and victim to tha aggressive and destructive secularism which seeks to eradicate every trace of Christianity.
Benedict XVI has taken up and potentiated what was already of obvious concern to John Paul II.
The secularism denounced by the Pope is not that practiced, for example, by the Founding Fathers of the United States, who decreed the separation of Church and State, but who reconciled it with their own profound religiosity and had no hesitation about proclaiming "In God we trust" as the national motto.
The secularism/anti-clericalism that Benedict XVI denounces is the aggressive and destructive kind that came out of the French Revolution, and which took its own forms in Spain - perpetrating myths like friars giving out poisoned candy to children, and the radical anti-clericalism of pamphlets that aimed to systematically discredit the Church during the Second Republic and led to the orgy of priest killing during the Civil War.
In an article entitled 'Sectarianism' published here in June 2010, we said that 'anti-clericalism is in the DNA of socialism'. Benedict XVI did not, of course, come to that, but answering a question posed to him on the flight to Compostela, he simply stated irrefutable historical fact in describing the situation in 1930s Spain.
Not that Zapatero and his government would have wanted to be identified closely with that sad period in our history.
One year ago, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg made the outrageoous ruling in favor of a Finnish woman married to an Italian that the crucifix in the Italian classrooms is "contrary to parents' rights to educzate their children in line with their own convictions and to children's right to freedom of religion". The ruling has been appealed by Italy and seven other European nations.
But on that occasion, I posted two commentaries which resonate with Prof Munoz's article above but go far beyond its scope and are even more relevant today, so I am re-posting them here.
Perhaps no other living personality today, or even in the decades since the end of World War II, has commented more often, more analytically and more consistently about the crisis of Europe - in its cultural identity, in its demographic reality, in standing up to the overt challenge of Islam and the risk of becoming 'Eurabia' - than Joseph Ratzinger before and since becoming Pope.
His passionate personal concern, as well as the Church's own institutional concern, about this issue, has virtually made him the Prophet of Europe, and unquestionably had to do with his choice of his papal name in homage to St. Benedict who saved Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. He may well be Europe's 'new Benedict' - and once again, it is remarkable that it takes a man of God, and not any one of the world's self-trumpeting intellectuals and political leaders, to defend a way of life that is primarily 'temporal' after all, to the secular mind.
This article comes from Avanti, the official daily newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party since 1896.
The successes of Benedict XVI
and the 'blindness' of Europe
by ANDREA CAMAIORA
Translated from
November 11, 2009
Do religion and spirituality have any political fallout? Are they somehow related to political reasoning? The late don Gianni Baget Bozzo thought so, and his entire life and thinking demonstrated that.
On the other hand, all who believed - and one thinks especially of the defeated Communist regimes of eastern Europe - that they could simply cast out God and man's tendency to seek the Infinite, have been proven wrong by the irresistible power of Catholicism, embodied by the unique figure of John Paul II.
But there are those on the left who, even if they do not advocate the materialistic culture, pre-and post-Communist era, continually see a political content in anything that the Church of Rome does under the Pontificate of Benedict XVI.
That is the case with Massimo Faggioli, a scholar of religious history, who had an article on oct. 28 in the Partito Democratico's newspaper
Europa, entitled "The PD and Benedict's Latin".
[The PD is a political party formed earlier this year by leading Catholic leftists under the former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, and was soundly defeated by Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition in the April parliamentary elections.]
For Faggioli, "the theological debate over the Second Vatican Council directly affects 'democratic Catholicism' and its culture as an important and not simply residual part of the political scenario".
In effect, Faggioli has noted how Benedict XVI's Magisterium is demolishing the cultural assumptions of that 'democratic Catholicism'
[i.e., leftist Christian Democrats, in the term more commonly used] , which flourished under the Pontificate of John XXIII and then through part of Paul VI's.
Naturally, Faggioli - who also writes editorials for the PD organ - defends the artifices resulting from Vatican-II and condemns the present Pope because "even if the Vatican-II fathers had no political objectives in mind when they debated the documents that 'updated' the Catholic Church, every step back taken by the church of Benedict XVI from the acquisitions of Vatican-II launches, in fact, a political message".
It looks like ultimately,
Europa and the PD have not learned their lesson. They are concerned for the 'democratic Catholicism' of the politicians who describe themselves as 'adult Catholics' because the Pope 'has put them aside'
[when it was the voters who did], and therefore, it is the Pope who has erred.
The truth is that spirituality, culture, politics are all inter-related. Baget Bozzo's lesson has still not been learned by the left, which continues unperturbed to make mistakes.
However, the issue raised by
Europa deserves to be pursued, looking at Benedict XVI's Pontificate and how it has progressed so far.
Within the space of a few months, Joseph Ratzinger has been able to cross over the threshold of Hope: for a Christianity that may once more be united around the primacy of Peter.
In this respect, only a theologian like Hans Kueng, who calls himself 'Catholic', could criticize Benedict XVI as harshly as he did upon the announcement of a rapprochement between traditional Anglicans and Rome.
Kueng claims that the Pope's only intention is to 'restore the Roman empire", or to maintain 'Rome's medieval centrality'.
It is sad to note the biased attitude of the Swiss theologian, though his article has been published integrally so far only in
La Repubblica and
The Guardian [also Le Monde], which perhaps says something.
How can Kueng not see reality? In a few months, Benedict XVI - with his openings to the Lefebvrians and the Anglicans - has made different signals that point to only one direction. As
L'Osservatore Romano said in an editorial: it is "to reconstitute the unity desired by Christ and to acknowledge the long and effortful ecumenical journey that has been achieved so far for this end".
Of course, the Pope's work does not end here. He has other thresholds to cross. One is in the north, the other east.
The German evangelicals have chosen a woman to continue dialog with the Catholics from a strong common platform: a value-driven intransigence on bioethical issues.
And in the east, the theological dialog with the Orthodox Churches is on track
[having now arrived at discussing the role of the Pope in a reunified Church]. Even in this, how can one miss the hand of Benedict XVI?
The recent theological session in Cyprus marked an important step, looking to an extraordinary resumption in Vienna next year
[the sessions have always been biennial, every two years, since they began in 1980]. where their host will be Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn who is closely associated with Benedict XVI.
It is incumbent on the Italian government - which is doing fairly well in its European relationships
[except for Brussels and Strasbourg constantly trying to oppose Italian practices and laws based on the country's Catholic traditions, which date to the beginnings of the Church] and its relations with Russia - to take note of Benedict XVI's successes.
[Perhaps an unnecessary suggestion, since both President Napolitano and Prime Minister Berlusconi have certainly been very attentive to what the Pope says and does. Perhaps the writer meant Italian politicians in general, such as the obstinate PD.]
Now, how serendipitous is it that having commented in my introduction to the above article on Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as the 'Prophet of Europe' and 'the new Benedict for Europe', there was this article today that developed that very theme!
A ‘different Benedict is here’:
Benedict XVI and the new missionary age
The voices of those who wanted to place him in a terminological box have receded.
This is a prophetic Pope with an inspired and historic mission that has only just begun.
By Deacon Keith Fournier
11/12/2009
Catholic Online
History shows that the earliest days of a Papacy often send a signal for the watchful observer. We are told by some to pay attention to the name chosen by the new Pope and the content of their first messages. I vividly recall the first days of our current Pope’s service to the Church and the world. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger chose the name Benedict.
One of the young priests who commentated on this choice during the televised coverage of those extraordinary days noted that the new Pope had visited Subiaco before all the events even began. Subiaco is the home of the Benedictine monastic movement. It symbolizes the Christianization of Europe during the First Millennium.
Saint Benedict was born around the year 480 in Umbria, Italy. He is the father of Western Monasticism and co-patron of Europe (along with Saints Cyril and Methodius).
As a young man, Benedict fled a decadent and declining Rome for further studies and deep prayer and reflection. He gave his life entirely to God as a son of the united Catholic Church. He traveled to Subiaco. That cave became his dwelling, the place where he communed deeply with God.
It is now a shrine called "Sacro Speco" (The Holy Cave). It is still a sanctuary for pilgrims, including Pope Benedict XVI, who visited that very same place of prayer right before his election to the Chair of Peter.
St. Benedict lived a life of prayer and solitude for three years and studied under a monk named Romanus. His holiness drew other men and women and soon, twelve small monasteries were founded. He later traveled to Monte Cassino, where he completed his "Rule for Monks." From those Benedictine monasteries, an entire monastic movement, a lay movement in its day, was birthed and the world was changed through it.
It was this movement which led to the evangelization of Europe and the emergence of an authentically Christian culture. This Culture was the fertile soil for the birth and flourishing of the academy, the arts and the emergence of what later became known as Christendom.
In April of 2005, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, a man of letters, professor and ardent student of Church history assumed the Chair of Peter as Pope Benedict XVI. Shortly after this momentous event, I wrote a lengthier article on the possible implications of his election containing a quotation from the philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre, taken from his book
After Virtue:
It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the Epoch in which the Roman Empire declined into the Dark Ages.
Nonetheless, certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman Imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of the Imperium.
What they set themselves to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness.
If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.
And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament.
We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another - doubtless very different - St. Benedict.”
I speculated that Pope Benedict XVI - who has since reminded us that the Church is a “creative minority” - was a response to the need expressed by MacIntyre for a “different Benedict”. I am even more convinced of it now.
In an age which has witnessed a decline in Christianity on the European continent, Pope Benedict XVI boldly calls for a rebirth of Christianity in Europe.
In an age which has been beset by disunity in the ranks of those who bear the name Christian, he has undertaken an extraordinary mission of Church Unity.
His prophetic and pastoral response to Anglicans seeking full communion in the safe harbor of the Catholic Church is one among several courageous and prophetic actions taken by this quiet, diminutive, and humble “servant of the servants of God”.
Others include his offer of reconciliation with the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre; his encouragement of the lay movements and ecclesial communities, the “monastic movement” of this Third Millennium; and his extended hand of communion toward the Orthodox Church which has as its goal the full restoration of ecclesial and Eucharistic communion which recognizes legitimate diversity within such a renewed communion.
This is a prophetic Pope who understands that there is no “Plan B”, the Church is the only hope for the recovery of a devastated West. Indeed she is the only hope for the whole world because she continues the redemptive mission of her head, Jesus Christ. She is His Body.
He will soon visit Europe [What on earth does Fournier mean?] in a series of
near non-stop apostolic visitations [????] during his short tenure in office.
St. Augustine of Canterbury was sent to what became England by another great Pope St. Gregory, in 669, to bring freedom to the inhabitants of that beautiful land through the proclamation of the full Gospel of Jesus Christ as found within the Catholic Church.
Now, in the Third Millennium, the successor of Gregory is making the trip himself. The timing of the release of
Anglicanorum Coetibus, the Apostolic Constitution establishing Personal Ordinariates for returning groups of Anglican Christians, is no accident. Nor is it the only historic overture toward authentic unity which this Pope of Unity will offer during his service.
The voices of those who wanted to place him in a terminological box have receded. This is a prophetic Pope with an inspired and historic mission that has only just begun.
Pope Benedict XVI participated in the Second Vatican Council. He not only understands the authentic teaching of that Council but has led the way in its proper implementation in many areas of life, both within the Church and in her mission to the contemporary age.
He also understands the way that the Council was hijacked in some circles, disregarded in others and misinterpreted in still others. However, his is a voice calling for a dynamically orthodox and faithful Catholic Christian faith, practice, worship and life that does not want to move us back but forward and toward.
In his homily prior to the convening of the conclave where he was chosen to fill the Chair of Peter, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger gave a prophetic insight into the challenges of the age:
How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking...
The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth.
Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching," looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards.
We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
Some attempted to misuse this prophetic insight to paint him as rejecting the modern world and somehow seeking to “turn the clock back”. That was nonsense.
What he rejects is the emptiness of what is called “modernity” and “post modernity”. What he proposes is a path to authentic progress; a road leading not to the past, but to a future of hope.
Authentic liberation can only be brought about through a new missionary age and a Rebirth of the Church. The Gospel - as taught by and lived in its fullness within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church - is the only saving truth that redeems and brings about human flourishing, true freedom and authentic cultural recovery.
To proclaim this Gospel in its fullness to this Third Christian Millennium requires that the Church breathe with both of her lungs, East and West.
That is why Benedict is unqualifiedly dedicated to such a full communion of the Church, East and West. He calls it his “impelling duty”. He is the “Pope of Christian Unity” and he is the Pope of a new Missionary Age.
He knows that the "two lungs" on the One Body of Christ must breathe together again in order to animate this new missionary age with the full breath of the Holy Spirit which is needed to renew the Church and reform the world again in Christ.
Pope Benedict, like his namesake St. Benedict, has a vision for the Evangelization of Europe and the West. A “different Benedict” is here and a new missionary age has begun.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/12/2010 13:46]