In checking out the previous article, I came across this one from Dr. Rowland, who is arguably one of the leading scholars of Ratzingerian thought today. She wrote this for the diocesan newspaper of Perth not too long ago.
Ratzinger the rift healer
by Tracey Rowland
29 October 2010
Since his election to the papacy, Ratzinger has published three encyclicals,
Deus Caritas Est (God is Love),
Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope) and
Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), and one apostolic exhortation
Sacramentum caritatis (the Sacrament of Charity).
[Since this article was written, another Apostolic Exhortation, Verbum Domini, which has been sidelined, alas and alack, by the Second Condom Controversy as a topical issue before it had been adequately ventilated and commented upon!]
Derided by critics as a divisive figure, Benedict XVI has spent the best part of his pontificate trying to bring outsiders back into the fold, reaching out to traditional Catholics and the Orthodox Churches. He has also published the first of a several volume series on the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
A recurring theme in these publications is the idea that Christianity is primarily about a person’s participation in the life and love of the Trinity, mediated through Sacraments, particularly the Eucharist.
For Benedict, the reduction of Christianity to the status of an ethical code is an impoverished representation of true Christianity.
He also emphasises the significance of the virtues of faith, hope and love, and argues that these virtues have become mutated by various secularist ideologies.
For example, he believes that faith is coming to mean trust in technology or scientific reason, hope is becoming hope in material progress, and love has become truncated to eros (sexual desire) without a telos (higher end).
He is concerned that for many people these virtues no longer have anything to do with Christ.
In
Caritas in Veritate, Benedict engages with various modern philosophies, pointing out the limitations of the secularist notion of development.
Benedict argues that when cultures no longer serve the deepest human needs and actually narrow the spiritual horizons of people, the result is a loss of strong self-identity and even depression.
The remedy, the Pope believes, is to grasp the fact that truth is something which is given as a divine gift, and that it is not something self-constructed. Benedict also observes that truth is not determined by majority opinion.
This papacy has also put a lot of energy into mending historical rifts. Foremost among these have been the rift with the traditionalist Catholics who regard Vatican II as the work of the devil, and the rift with sections of the Catholic Church in England which started in 1533 when Pope Clement VII excommunicated King Henry VIII for purporting to divorce Queen Catherine of Aragon.
In part to heal the rift with the traditionalists, but also because of his own liturgical concerns which are evident in
Sacramentum Caritatis, Benedict has lifted all the barriers to priests saying the traditional Latin Mass.
Diplomatic channels are opening with leaders of the traditionalist movement and attention is now focused on the doctrinal aspects of the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
In order to prepare the diplomatic ground for these negotiations, Pope Benedict lifted the decrees of ex-communication against four Bishops who had been illicitly consecrated without the permission of John Paul II.
After the event, Benedict discovered that one of the men denied the holocaust and the Pope was forced to write a deeply apologetic letter to the Bishops of the world.
[The letter was not so much about the Williamson case itself, nor even an explanation of why the excommunications were lifted - which was a straightforward canonical move that should not have to be explained to a bishop - but an opportune wake-up call to the bishops of the world that they are losing sight of their priority which must be to keep God and his presence ever present among men and keep the flame of faith burning.]
On the Anglican front, he has responded to requests from groups such as the Traditional Anglican Communion to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church by establishing an Anglican Ordinariate.
This is a canonical framework by which Anglicans can join the Catholic Church in whole parish communities, rather than on a person by person basis, and can retain their own liturgy and be served by their own clergy. Energy has also been expended improving relations with the various Eastern Orthodox communities, especially the Greek and the Russian.
These initiatives are generally regarded as successful and the Russians have established the Gregory Nazianzen Foundation to help all Christians, Eastern and Western, to defend the faith from attacks within Europe.
Nonetheless, there is a general sense that Benedict XVI’s papacy is encountering wave after wave of opposition.
In a book recently published in Italy called
Attacco a Ratzinger, the authors argued that the attacks are coming from three separate sources: from social elites across the Western world who are in favour of secularism and see Benedict XVI as a significant source of intelligent opposition; from elites within the Catholic Church who support the ‘hermeneutic of rupture’ reading of Vatican II; and from the incompetence of the Vatican’s own officials, many of whom, it seems, don’t even know how to Google.
[It's hard to imagine that the Curial heads do not have any auxiliary staff who are computer-savvy. The irony of this 'failing to Google' fallback excuse is that Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who was for almost 20 years the Vatican's pointman-liaison with the Lefebvrians, prided himself in and had always been hailed by Vaticanistas, before the Williamson fracas, for his hi-tech skills. And yet, no one, to my knowledge, brought it up after the snafu! Computer or not, after 20 years of dealing with the Lefebvrians, one might have thought Castrillon whould at least have had an inkling of Williamson' unacceptably eccentric views about the Holocaust! This - and the fact that no Vaticanista looked into these obvious questions at all - is one riddle I cannot explain!]
In the medium term, his papacy is likely to be judged by how well it contends with these forces of opposition and incompetence rather than by reference to the solid intellectual framework he has steadily built to support Christianity into the 21st century.
Nevertheless, Benedict’s holiness and desire to preach the gospel of the God of Love shine through in his writings as Pope and through these he is able to reach many millions of his faithful.
[As it shines through in LOTW, and Peter Seewald put it best: "He has seen the Light of the world and he reflects it".]
The question of 'curial incompetence really bothers me, because I think our perception of it is mostly due to journalistic incompetence and neglect. And of course, unfortunately, to the repeated clumsy and embarassing communications fiascos that seem to reflect an underlying substantive flaw in decision-making by the officials concerned.
And yet, the academic credentials and pastoral-administrative experience of curial #1 and #2 men are quite obvious - they would not have been appointed to their positions otherwise. Just read their individual biodata. Why then does a collection of eminently qualified individuals seem to turn into bureaucratic jelly in the general opinion as articulated and shaped by the media? These are no ninnies but they are widely portrayed and perceived as such! Intellectually, most of them tower above the journalists who presume to judge them.
I suspect much of the media portrayal of the Curia is a reflex expression of long-standing prejudice expressed in cliches like 'the creaky Vatican bureaucracy' or 'the proverbially snail-footed Vatican' which 'thinks in centuries, not in the here and now'... But why has no Vatican reporter taken the initiative to do a dicastery-by-dicastery study of the Curia to see how fit they are for their tasks in the contemporary world? It is a task that cries out to be done, starting with the Secretariat of State. Such a study, by simply exposing facts, might do more to 'revolutionize' the Curia - and public perception of it - than any moves or maneuvers originating from the Pontifical Apartment.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/12/2010 11:11]