April 19, 2005
Plowing deeper
Germany's Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has been chosen as the new Pope -- Benedict XVI. Speaking as a non-Catholic, it seems like a splendid decision.
Here are his first words as Pope:
Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope, John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard.The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers
In the joy of the resurrected Lord, we go on with his help. He is going to help us and Mary will be on our side. Thank you.
Here is the always thoughtful Michael Novak:
My prediction had been the 3rd [ballot], based on a deep intuition about the lesson taught at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. All that piety, prayer, devotion, seriousness of those crowds -- it wasn't enthusiasm that moved them, it was conversion of life. After people met JPII, they did not pray as they had before; they plowed deeper into the waters. They may not have transformed all their habits, or shed all their sins, but they kept trying, determined not to be afraid.Munich is the city of the monks, and Ratzinger the scholar is never happier than in the monastic life of study and prayer and quiet. For him, service to the church is onerous labor. He has taken heart in the past from the image of a bear being turned into a beast of labor. He several times tried to resign from Rome and go back to teaching. By all reports, he is a superb teacher, open and challenging, deep and memorable, and everlastingly accessible to his former students. They all still meet yearly--or when they can.
He is a shy man, who draws back when others approach. He speaks very softly. He smiles easily, but his habitual look is that of someone in thought.
Compare and contrast that with the wretchings of a very distraught Andrew Sullivan:
This was not an act of continuity. There is simply no other figure more extreme than the new Pope on the issues that divide the Church. No one. He raised the stakes even further by his extraordinarily bold homily at the beginning of the conclave, where he all but declared a war on modernity, liberalism (meaning modern liberal democracy of all stripes) and freedom of thought and conscience. And the speed of the decision must be interpreted as an enthusiastic endoprsement of his views. What this says to American Catholics is quite striking: it's not just a disagreement, it's a full-scale assault.For American Catholics, I foresee an accelerating exodus. But that, remember, is the plan. The Ratzingerians want to empty the pews in America and start over. They will, in that sense, be successful.
We can expect much more along those lines from the Left and others who demand that the Catholic Church and all other Christians must accomodate their world vs. the other way around.
For the record, here is an excerpt from the homily preached by Cardinal Ratzinger to the Conclave on Monday, which Sullivan labeled a declaration of "war on modernity, liberalism (meaning modern liberal democracy of all stripes) and freedom of thought and conscience."
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 St. Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 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.Posted by Alan at April 19, 2005 05:15 PMHowever, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an "Adult" means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. We must become mature in this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - which creates unity and takes form in love. On this theme, St. Paul offers us some beautiful words - in contrast to the continual ups and downs of those were are like infants, tossed about by the waves: (he says) make truth in love, as the basic formula of Christian existence. In Christ, truth and love coincide. To the extent that we draw near to Christ, in our own life, truth and love merge. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like "a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal" (1 Corinthians 13:1).