For the enemies that he has already made, Pope Benedict XVI merits the admiration of Christians everywhere. Rarely has bile been so refreshing. My only regret is that our Orthodox Patriarchs are not hated so shrilly and with so much reason.
Quid timent? What are they afraid of? Andrew Sullivan comically pretends to tremble for freedom itself:
It would be hard to over-state the radicalism of this decision. It’s not simply a continuation of John Paul II. It’s a full-scale attack on the reformist wing of the church. The swiftness of the decision and the polarizing nature of this selection foretell a coming civil war within Catholicism. The space for dissidence, previously tiny, is now extinct. And the attack on individual political freedom is just beginning.
Sullivan’s insinuation that the new Pope is hostile to political freedom is easy to debunk. Amusing is his notion of the ogre’s modus operandi:
He is a creature of theological discourse, a man of books and treatises and arguments. He proclaims his version of the truth as God-given and therefore unalterable and undebatable. His theology is indeed distinguished, if somewhat esoteric and at times a little odd. But his response to dialogue within the church is to silence those who disagree with him. He has no experience dealing with people en masse, no hands-on experience of the challenges of the church in the developing world, and complete contempt for dissent in the West.
So “a man of books and treatises and arguments” refuses to debate “his version of the truth”? The man whom Sullivan slanders as a “Grand Inquisitor” has been as vigorous a debater as any prelate of the past century. How many bishops or theologians give book-length interviews to mainstream journalists or have huge bibliographies?
What the instantaneous anti-Benedictines fear is not that the Vatican will suddenly devise tools to suppress freedom of thought – how many policemen has the Pope? – but that a vigorous, intellectual Pope will argue effectively for a Faith that is far more reasonable than its contemporary challengers.
In his pre-election homily, the then-Cardinal highlighted the central weakness of modernist concepts of religion and morality: their abandonment of natural reason in favor of “truths” founded on private feelings. That sort of self-created doctrine can give no account of itself. At its roots, it is irrational and unsustainable.
We should not remain infants in faith, in a state of minority. And what does it mean to be an infant in faith? Saint Paul answers: it means “tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery” (Eph 4, 14). This description is very relevant today!
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.
However, 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, Saint 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 Cor 13,1).
There can be no attitude more egotistical and unloving than the insistence that our personal convenience and desire be validated by the Church, regardless of whether it conforms to what Scripture, Tradition and Natural Law teach. If a man believes that the Church is the Body of Christ, his reaction to disagreeable-seeming teachings ought to not to be, “Jettison them!” but “What can I learn from them? Am I so certain that my impulses are right and the voice of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church wrong?”
A Pontiff who hammers home the theme that moral relativism is a form of tyranny, in which we make ourselves slaves to desire and refuse liberation by reason, is a threat to the ascendancy of comfortable irrationality. The call to become adult children of the Father is disturbing to those who, as
Men in red dresses all met at the Vatican.
Giddy with pleasure “We get to be bad again!”
Wining and dining with others in frocks
Hoping to rub against each others’…socks.
Then the smoke rose!
Who will it be?
Who is the next pope?
A fellow named Ben, a former Nazi!
Another old pudgy dope!
Me: How nice to have my point made for me. And what are YOU afraid of, Sir Moonbat?
Posted by: anon | Wednesday, April 20, 2005 at 07:56 PM