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April 19, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI
By now, everyone knows that Roman Catholic Christianity has a new leader. The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, leader of the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was elected Pope today. He has taken the name Benedict XVI.
His role as a conservative force in the church is well known. His disagreements with his mentor, his fellow countryman and liberal theologian Hans Kueng are legendary. I have read and heard the many concerns about him: blaming gays for their own persecution, unmovable birth control foe, rigidly doctrinaire . . . On the other hand, he is an extremely learned man and as head of the Congregation of the Faith continued to endorse the Church's stand in support of modern scientific explanations of the natural world (i.e. evolution). His Nazi affiliation, while literally true, is likely the result of time and place rather than personal allegiance. It is reported that he defected during World War II.
Perhaps the thing that bothers me most is the false dichotomy between "creed" and "relativism." In remarks made to the Cardinals on Monday, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said,
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 toward 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.
Anyone who has studied theology and presumable ethics knows that there are non-relativistic ethical options that are not based on religion. His failure to recognize this does not bode well for how his Church will manage in this world. There are even, more or less, "relativistic" ethical systems that would have prevented untold numbers of deaths due to AIDs that the Church let happen because of their creeds concerning birth control.
Having said this, how one functions in a leadership capacity and how one functions in a advisory capacity are not always the same. The day to day contingencies of decision making in the face of ambiguous data and unclear doctrine often has have a liberalizing effect. I hope that is the case with Pope Benedict XVI.
His choice of name may be a signal that he wants to portray a more conciliatory image than his current reputation supports.
If Ratzinger was paying tribute to the last pontiff named Benedict, it could be interpreted as a bid to soften his image as a doctrinal hard-liner. Benedict XV reigned during World War I and was credited with settling animosity between traditionalists and modernists, and dreamed of reunion with Orthodox Christians. [from AP story]
Posted by DuaneSmith at April 19, 2005 07:55 PM | Read more on Current Events |
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