Cardinal Ratzinger’s classically Christian homily

Liberals are besides themselves in fury and despair at the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger as pope. For example, Andrew Sullivan writes:

… I am still in shock. 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…. 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.

As soon as I read Sullivan’s words of anguish, I avidly searched for Cardinal Ratzinger’s homily. Below are excerpts. The first quoted paragraph is the one that so antagonized Sullivan and other liberals. I don’t see what is particularly alarming about it, from any genuinely Christian point of view. Ratzinger is simply attacking the modern liberal belief that the ego and its desires are the highest reality. Would one really expect any Catholic prelate or pope to say anything else?

Well, yes, one would, if the name of the pope was John Paul II. Reading the future Benedict XVI’s sermon, I am thunderstruck by the absolute difference between it and every pronouncement by John Paul II that I have ever read. It is, very simply, the language of classic, orthodox Christianity, the language of Christ and the Gospels. There’s nothing in it about the human person and his rights, nothing about the “Gospel of Life” and the notion that the physical life of every single human person is an “incomparable value” and that the main moral object of Christianity to to protect victimized humanity from oppression, nothing about the religion of man, nothing about the idea that all humans have been automatically divinized by the advent of Christ. Instead, it is a call to each of us to follow and live through Jesus Christ as our true guide and our true self.

This, by the way, is the kind of homily that Fr. Andrew Mead of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York City gives all the time, and that I have heard from very few other Episcopal priests. If you read the pronouncements of the great Church Fathers, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, or of pre-Vatican II popes, such as Pius XII, you will find a similar flavor and outlook, but it is not, in my admittedly sketchy but not altogether superficial acquaintance with the Church, and with the exception of a handful of priests such as Fr. Rutler in New York City, the kind of thing I have heard in my adult lifetime from Catholic priests and popes.

Here are the excerpts of the homily, which I found at Hugh Hewitt’s site:

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).

The second element with which Jesus defines friendship is the communion of wills. For the Romans “Idem velle—idem nolle,” (same desires, same dislikes) was also the definition of friendship. “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (Jn 15, 14). Friendship with Christ coincides with what is said in the third request of the Our Father: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. At the hour in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus transformed our rebellious human will in a will shaped and united to the divine will. He suffered the whole experience of our autonomy—and precisely bringing our will into the hands of God, he have us true freedom: “Not my will, but your will be done.” In this communion of wills our redemption takes place: being friends of Jesus to become friends of God. How much more we love Jesus, how much more we know him, how much more our true freedom grows as well as our joy in being redeemed. Thank you, Jesus, for your friendship!

The other element of the Gospel to which I would like to refer is the teaching of Jesus on bearing fruit: “I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain” (Jn 15, 16). It is here that is expressed the dynamic existence of the Christian, the apostle: I chose you to go and bear fruit….” We must be inspired by a holy restlessness: restlessness to bring to everyone the gift of faith, of friendship with Christ. In truth, the love and friendship of God was given to us so that it would also be shared with others. We have received the faith to give it to others—we are priests meant to serve others. And we must bring a fruit that will remain. All people want to leave a mark which lasts. But what remains? Money does not. Buildings do not, nor books. After a certain amount of time, whether long or short, all these things disappear. The only thing which remains forever is the human soul, the human person created by God for eternity. The fruit which remains then is that which we have sowed in human souls—love, knowledge, a gesture capable of touching the heart, words which open the soul to joy in the Lord. Let us then go to the Lord and pray to him, so that he may help us bear fruit which remains. Only in this way will the earth be changed from a valley of tears to a garden of God.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 19, 2005 09:21 PM | Send