http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2011/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20110922_reichstag-berlin_en.html
Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI gave a very interesting speech to the members of the German Parliament, choosing as his theme “The Listening Heart: Reflections on the Foundations of Law.” His title was taken from the words of Solomon in reply to God’s invitation to make a request as he began his reign. Solomon asked for “a listening heart so that he may govern God’s people, and discern between good and evil” (cf. 1 Kg 3:9). And the Pope’s purpose, it seems, was to press on the legislators some of the ultimate questions presupposed by their work:
To serve right and to fight against the dominion of wrong is and remains the fundamental task of the politician. At a moment in history when man has acquired previously inconceivable power, this task takes on a particular urgency. Man can destroy the world. He can manipulate himself. He can, so to speak, make human beings and he can deny them their humanity. How do we recognize what is right? How can we discern between good and evil, between what is truly right and what may appear right? Even now, Solomon’s request remains the decisive issue facing politicians and politics today.
Majority rule is not a sufficient criterion, he went on: “everyone in a position of responsibility must personally seek out the criteria to be followed when framing laws,” a task more difficult than ever today, not least of all in democracies: “In terms of the underlying anthropological issues, what is right and may be given the force of law is in no way simply self-evident today. The question of how to recognize what is truly right and thus to serve justice when framing laws has never been simple, and today in view of the vast extent of our knowledge and our capacity, it has become still harder.”
Christianity, he says, never tried to derive a juridical order directly from revelation but looked to “nature and reason as the true sources of law–and to the harmony of objective and subjective reason, which naturally presupposes that both spheres are rooted in the creative reason of God.” From this derives “the juridical culture of the West” and its articulation and defense of human rights. The Pauline association of law written on hearts and conscience (Solomon’s “listening heart”) led to a notion of natural law that was a common consciousness but in the last half-century has come to be widely dismissed as simply “a specifically Catholic doctrine” of no special worth in the larger debate. The Pope traces this to a positivist, merely functional understanding of nature from which no “ought” can be derived. And this is echoed in a positivist notion of reason as the only scientific one, with ethics and religion assigned to the real of the merely subjective.
Pope Benedict acknowledges that positivism “is a most important dimension of human knowledge and capacity that we may in no way dispense with,” but maintains that it cannot yield “a sufficient culture corresponding to the full breadth of the human condition.” And he fears that the result is that “Europe vis-à-vis other world cultures is left in a state of culturelessness and at the same time extremist and radical movements emerge to fill the vacuum.” Then, in a move that may prove politically controversial, he adduces the ecological movement as an example of listening to nature and to its demands. “Young people had come to realize that something is wrong in our relationship with nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the earth has a dignity of its own and that we must follow its directives.” But if now the importance of ecology is commonly acknowledged, the Pope proposes that “there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.”
That, of course, is Europe’s cultural heritage:
The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history.
Among the things I find interesting about the Pope’s speech is that it does not take on the controversial issues of the day nor offer advice or give orders to Catholic politicians, but rather asks the legislators to reflect on and take responsibility for their own criteria for determining what is right and what is wrong. A defender of positivism changed his mind late in life (“I find it comforting,” the Pope said in an aside, “that rational thought is evidently still possible at the age of 84!”) but still maintained that to find norms in nature would presuppose a Creator God, whose will had entered into nature” and that “any attempt to discuss the truth of this belief is utterly futile.” To which Benedict replies: “Is it really? – I find myself asking. Is it really pointless to wonder whether the objective reason that manifests itself in nature does not presuppose a creative reason, a Creator Spiritus?” And he leaves them with that challenge.
For myself I think that the key question is what the Pope calls an “ecology of man,” that man has a nature that he must respect and cannot manipulate. There is a tension is between two of his statements: “Man is not merely self-creating [selbst machende] freedom,” and “Man does not create himself [Der Mensch macht sich nicht selbst].” The adverb of the first sentence does not appear in the second. There is, after all, a sense in which human beings do make themselves, and this necessary, unavoidable task of self-making, self-constituting, is precisely what characterizes the nature that God has created. That we cannot reasonably and responsibly ignore crucial elements of the beings that we are is, I think, the Pope’s point, and I think it needs stressing, but all the work lies in trying to determine which of the laws of nature yield precepts of the natural law.
Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI gave a very interesting speech to the members of the German Parliament, choosing as his theme “The Listening Heart: Reflections on the Foundations of Law.” His title was taken from the words of Solomon in reply to God’s invitation to make a request as he began his reign. Solomon asked for “a listening heart so that he may govern God’s people, and discern between good and evil” (cf. 1 Kg 3:9). And the Pope’s purpose, it seems, was to press on the legislators some of the ultimate questions presupposed by their work:
To serve right and to fight against the dominion of wrong is and remains the fundamental task of the politician. At a moment in history when man has acquired previously inconceivable power, this task takes on a particular urgency. Man can destroy the world. He can manipulate himself. He can, so to speak, make human beings and he can deny them their humanity. How do we recognize what is right? How can we discern between good and evil, between what is truly right and what may appear right? Even now, Solomon’s request remains the decisive issue facing politicians and politics today.
Majority rule is not a sufficient criterion, he went on: “everyone in a position of responsibility must personally seek out the criteria to be followed when framing laws,” a task more difficult than ever today, not least of all in democracies:
In terms of the underlying anthropological issues, what is right and may be given the force of law is in no way simply self-evident today. The question of how to recognize what is truly right and thus to serve justice when framing laws has never been simple, and today in view of the vast extent of our knowledge and our capacity, it has become still harder.
Christianity, he says, never tried to derive a juridical order directly from revelation but looked to “nature and reason as the true sources of law–and to the harmony of objective and subjective reason, which naturally presupposes that both spheres are rooted in the creative reason of God.” From this derives “the juridical culture of the West” and its articulation and defense of human rights. The Pauline association of law written on hearts and conscience (Solomon’s “listening heart”) led to a notion of natural law that was once a common consciousness but in the last half-century has come to be widely dismissed as simply “a specifically Catholic doctrine” of no special worth in the larger debate. The Pope traces this to a positivist, merely functional understanding of nature from which no “ought” can be derived. And this is echoed in a positivist notion of reason as the only scientific one, with ethics and religion assigned to the real of the merely subjective.
Pope Benedict acknowledges that positivism “is a most important dimension of human knowledge and capacity that we may in no way dispense with,” but maintains that it cannot yield “a sufficient culture corresponding to the full breadth of the human condition.” And he fears that the result is that “Europe vis-à-vis other world cultures is left in a state of culturelessness and at the same time extremist and radical movements emerge to fill the vacuum.” Then, in a move that may prove politically controversial, he adduces the ecological movement as an example of listening to nature and to its demands. “Young people had come to realize that something is wrong in our relationship with nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the earth has a dignity of its own and that we must follow its directives.” But if now the importance of ecology is commonly acknowledged, the Pope proposes that
there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.
That, of course, is Europe’s cultural heritage:
The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history.
Among the things I find interesting about the Pope’s speech is that it does not take on the controversial issues of the day nor offer advice or give orders to Catholic politicians, but rather asks the legislators to reflect on and take responsibility for their own criteria for determining what is right and what is wrong. A defender of positivism changed his mind late in life (“I find it comforting,” the Pope said in an aside, “that rational thought is evidently still possible at the age of 84!”) but still maintained that to find norms in nature would presuppose a Creator God, whose will had entered into nature” and that “any attempt to discuss the truth of this belief is utterly futile.” To which Benedict replies: “Is it really? – I find myself asking. Is it really pointless to wonder whether the objective reason that manifests itself in nature does not presuppose a creative reason, a Creator Spiritus?” And he leaves them with that challenge.
For myself I think that a key question is what the Pope calls an “ecology of man,” that man has a nature that he must respect and cannot manipulate. There is a tension is between two successive statements of his: “Man is not merely self-creating [selbst machende] freedom,” and “Man does not create himself [Der Mensch macht sich nicht selbst].” The adverb of the first sentence does not appear in the second. There is, after all, a sense in which human beings do make themselves, and this necessary, unavoidable task of self-making, self-constituting, is precisely what characterizes the nature that God has created. That we cannot reasonably and responsibly ignore crucial elements of the beings that we are is, I think, the Pope’s point, and I think it needs stressing, but all the work lies in trying to determine which of the laws of nature yield precepts of the natural law. I think the Pope passes over this question.
Thanks for this post, Fr. Komonchak. I’ll limit my reactions to two small excerpts (and hope that I am not misconstruing the Pope’s meaning by taking his words out of context:
1 – “The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law.”
Without in any way diminishing the importance of “Jerusalem, Athens and Rome” and their significance in shaping European history and culture, I’d advance the thesis that without Cairo and Baghdad, Europe’s culture would be profoundly different. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, Egypt (and by extension, Africa) is a place of wisdom and knowledge. Later, it was the Muslim caliphates that kept alive the ancient intellectual traditions for several centuries during which they effectively vanished from European Christendom.
In addition to providing a fuller understanding of Europe’s history, such an acknowledgment may also assist with navigating the complex currents of the renewed encounter between Europe and the peoples and nations of its former colonies.
2 – “Europe vis-à-vis other world cultures is left in a state of culturelessness”. In this I hear an echo of the “culturelessness” of white middle-class suburban America. (Even as I write these words, I’m aware that they reflect my own experiences and culture more than Benedict’s. Nonetheless, I think there is a connection.)
Everyone has a culture. However, it’s often only when one’s culture encounters a different culture that it becomes apparent. For the past five hundred years, Europe exported its culture and people—largely regardless of the wishes of indigenous residents elsewhere. Also for the past five hundred years, Europe largely imported other cultures and peoples only on Europe’s terms. In practice this meant very few people, lots of material goods, and just enough of other cultures to add a little spice and exoticism to European life.
Now, in a post-colonial era, as Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe and other writers have said, “The Empire Writes Back”. What had been largely a monologue is increasingly a dialogue and indeed, an at times a raucous conversation with multiple competing voices. The fact that other cultures now have enough power to push back at Europe doesn’t make Europe “cultureless”; it just means that Europe is not as hegemonically powerful as it once was.
By Europe’s “culturelessness” I think the Pope means the collapse of its historical and traditional culture. In an empirical sense, of course, no people is without a culture.
JAK –
This is Benedict at his provocative best. But what does he mean by “subjective reason” v. “objective reason”?
One criticism: i’m not at all sure that the equality of all men cannot be known apart from belief in God. History shows that it was the essentially agnostic Enlightenment (its “God” was hardly a person Himself) that emphasized and turned into law the proposition that there are no degrees of being human — one either is or isn’t and therefore all require equal basic respect.
Luke –
True, the Muslims preserved the ancient cultures, but so did the Irish to some extent. But what did they also *invent* that is part of the European heritage? Yes, there were some towering Muslim metaphysicians, physicians and astronomers, but how did their world-views contribute to European one?
Luke –
It just occurs to me that the Muslim interest in empirical science might have contributed to the begininnings of Western science. But I’ve not seen any studies of this. I wonder if St. Albert the Great and Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon knew the writings of any Muslims? Hmmm.
I agree that the Pope’s point is eminently clear, a point that he makes with some frequency. But I think that Luke Hill has raised several important considerations which at least call into question the standing-ground of the Pope’s view, and particularly its ability to engage the reality of present-day Europe. The glories of the past must ever be celebrated and acknowledged. Yet eventually, it seems to me, the moment comes to move forward, building on those achievements, not petrifying them.
John: What did you see in the Pope’s speech that “petrified” the achievements of the past? I didn’t read it as a laudatio temporis acti. I particularly liked the modesty of his plea: that they consider whether debate about ultimate issues is futile, as the positivist maintained.
Ann: Are you familiar with the recent work by Brian Tierney and others that shows that the idea of subjective rights is not a discovery of the Enlightenment but is present already in the medieval canonists.
I would love to see someone study whether the axiom “Error has no rights” was current in the Middle Ages. Berlin certainly shows it present in the Enlightened advisers to the Enlightened monarchs of the eighteenth century who were certain, of course, that their prescriptions were what Reason demanded and that the views of ordinary folk, when they disagreed, were not to be accorded any respect because there can be no rights against Reason. If, in fact, the formulation was an Enlightenment thesis, then this would not be the only case in which the Church wound up borrowing more from its opponents than it ever imagined. J.C. Murray argued that the ideal of a Catholic confessional State which is to be protective of the Church, even, if need be, by the use of force, owed a lot more to eighteenth-century absolute monarchy than it did to any medieval theory or practice.
Ann: This article only briefly touches on your question, and I’m insufficiently familiar with the material to make any judgement on the author’s conclusions, but it’s nonetheless fascinating:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science
JAK: My own, admittedly limited, reading leads me to concur with you on the earlier origin of subjective rights. As for the rise of the confessional state, see Anthony Marx’s Faith In Nation, which places its origin two centuries earlier. William T Cavanaugh’s recent Migrations of the Holy looks at some of this history as well and overthrows the Enlightenment argument that the nation state graciously saved Europe from the ravages of “religious” war. See also Charles Tilly’s work on the rise of the nation state as a warmaking enterprise.
JAK –
Benedict uses the phrases “subjective reason” and “objective reason”. I’ve never seen that distinction before and don’t know what he means by the terms.
No, I don’t know the work of Tierney. I was taught a long time ago that the notion of individual rights goes back to the Middle Ages. John of Salisbury (12th cent.) even posited a right to tyrannicide when necessary. The notion was highly developed by the late medieval Dominican School of Salamanca and the Jesuits who followed them.
Father Joe Komonchak
I read the speech yesterday, and should have looked at it again before commenting. I was very much helped by your analysis and reflections.
I liked especially the Pope’s beginning and ending with the Book of Kings and the choice of gifts presented to Solomon.
My concern comes at the end. Luke Hill has already made a partial reference to the same passage:
“The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome — from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgement of the inviolable dignity of every human person, it has established the criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history.”
I understand that the Pope couldn’t say everything. It was a speech, not a treatise But in the final sentence, already long to be sure, could there not have been some very brief recognition of the sad lapses in Europe’s history in the application of these criteria? Lapses that Pope John Paul II acknowledged in the Jubilee Year. Perhaps even just a few words between commas. And, at the end, a call not only to “defend,” but, as I said in the post above, to “build on” this achievement “at this moment in our history”?
(It would have taken TWO sentences! But perhaps not in German.)
Brian V. –
Yes, fascinating, and it makes sense to me. But it’s scary. How will they ever change?
About the Arab development of science. True, there was some experimentation, but their forte seems to have been observation, which is only the first part of scientific method. Given that the Muslms thought that all causality was causality by God and thoroughly contingent, it is not surprising that they would not have looked for causal regularities caused by creatures themselves.
(But I do wonder why he includes Maimonides among the Arab philosophers. Granted, he was from Cordoba, but . . . Hmmm.)
Ann: I think the Germans would know what is meant by “objective” and “subjective” reason, the former referring to the rationality in things, the second the reason that discovers the first. I believe that both “logos” and “ratio” had both references, too.
Brian: Murray was not arguing that the confessional State arose in the 18th century–he knew about “cuius regio eius religio”, but that the idea that the State had dominion over all areas of national life, including religion, was the ideology of the absolute monarchs, and that allegedly Catholic States in the 19th and even into the 20th century held the same view of the omni-competence of the State–as, for that matter, did revolutionary France, for example.
JAK — Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I can see the logos, ratio interpretation.
Good for Benedict for complimenting the German green movement. They were pioneers, and the issues are enormous. Would that the other bishops would also speak out.
Of course, without a divine lawgiver, all law is arbitrary. In that sense, the democratic West is running on empty, the only criteria for right and wrong the will of the most forceful political factions. That could easily, it seems to me, lead to the gradual disintegration of democracy.
I look forward to reading the Pope’s speech. Thanks.
Just read it. I wonder about this:
If the majority are informed only by a positivist view of morality, their “lesser” actions could, I’d think, undermine the rest.
Thanks for these wonderful highlights Fr. Komonchak
I realize I’m off on a tangent here, but I want to recommend (for anyone who might be interested) a couple of books I’ve read recently that I’ve both enjoyed and found illuminating. One is Tamim Ansary’s “Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes”. Ansary, an Afghan-American writer, gives the reader a sense of how the history of the past 1400 years (or so) looks if one’s viewpoint is, say, Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo (as opposed to, for example, Paris, London and Rome).
Another is Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen’s collection of essays, “The Argumentative Indian”. Among other things, Sen explores the Indian roots of political democracy, mathematics, scientific inquiry and religious pluralism (e.g., India has the 3rd largest Muslim population of any nation today)—roots as old as, if not older than, those in Europe.
Another is Iranian-American Reza Aslan’s “No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam” in which he argues that Islam today is in the midst of its own Reformation—a period analogous to the Christian Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries.
From Fr. Komonchak’s reflections, it seems that Pope Benedict’s speech was both an example of drawing from the wells of European culture for a deeper understanding of Europe today, and of encouraging public officials to reflect on their own responsibilities (rather than telling them what those responsibilities are). A good example for all of us. Again, thanks to Fr. Komonchak for bringing it to our attention.
LUke –
In my very limited understanding of Islam, the Koran is said to include passages that require (not just permit) violent conversion, and Muhammad himself became a military leader who used violence to convert. Also, while many say that “jihad” means the spiritual battle to overcome one’s pesonal obstreperous inclinations, others Muslims disagree and see it as a religious requirement to institute forced conversions. Certainly the Muslim conquest of the lands to the south of the Mediterranea plus the conquest of Spain indicate that this at leaset was a common interpretation of their Book..
Do you know if the current Muslim attempts to accommodate historical Muslim teachings to the modern world find any encouragement in the Muslim sacred texts? I just don’t see how the aggresive factors in Islam can be tamed unless some foundation for peaceful co-existence can be found in the Muslim texts themselves.
@Ann Olivier (9/24, 4:57 am) My (limited) understanding is that they do (find encouragement in the Quran). Aslan, for example, argues that, basically, all factions of what he sees as the current, ongoing Islamic Reformation appeal to scripture as a, if not the, basis for their views. He says that’s true for al-Qaeda, but it’s also true for Muslim feminists. He also notes how difficult (and bloody) the Christian Reformation was—in part, I think, as a plea for understanding what a complex project it is to reconcile tradition with modernity.
The differing understandings and uses of “jihad”, both today and throughout Muslim history, are one notable example of the contested terrain that is Quranic interpretation and Islamic law.
Again, this is not history I know well, but Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher and physician, was born under one Muslim dynasty (the Almohads) in Spain that was tolerant of Christians and Jews. When the more “fundamentalist” (to use an anachronism) Almoravids overthrew the Almohads, Maimonides eventually chose exile to Morocco and Egypt (then ruled by more tolerant Islamic empires) rather than to a Christian kingdom (where Jews tended to fare less well).
Based on the Quran, Islamic law has always defined a legal status for the “dhimmi”, originally Jews and Christians (“people of the Book”), that afforded them higher legal status and protection than other non-Muslims (though, of course, lower legal status that Muslims). The largest school of Islamic law now (I believe) extends “dhimmitude” to Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians and other religions.
Those are somewhat scattered thoughts I know, but my sense is that many Muslims find encouragement in their scriptures for a life of peaceful co-existence in the world today—as do many Christians.
Thanks, Luke. Now if they can just get to non-literal interpretation of their scriptures.
You’re welcome. My sense is the non-literal interpretation of scripture is a bit trickier for Muslims because the Quran is God-in-book-form, somewhat analogous to Jesus being God-in-human-form for Christians. Nonetheless, I think there are schools of Islam that take a less (or more) literal approach to understanding the Quran. (Anyone who knows more, please jump in.) And, of course, plenty of Muslims—including the vast majority in the US—live their lives in peaceful co-existence with their non-Muslim friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers and fellow citizens.
Ann, et al. –
In my strong preference for original source material whenever possible (intermediary gatekeepers of information often allow their own interests to intervene), if anyone has not already done so, I would strongly urge you to find and read for yourself, cover-to-cover, an accurate translation of the Koran, a translation that is done by faithful, believing Muslims, and not some non-believing Westernized version (assuming that you cannot read the original Arabic).
Some years ago, I was curious about the spread of Islam and asked myself, “Why would someone become Muslim? What exactly is their belief, beyond the Five Pillars, that would lead one to convert?” So I found a copy of the Koran used by Muslims and endeavored to find an answer. It was an interesting experience.
And what did you find in the Koran, Bender?
What did I find?
I found the basis of Islam.
Fr. Komonchak,
I feel a similar frustration (if that’s the word) with another of the Pope’s programmatic statements, when he speaks of the hermeneutic of reform as “continuity and discontinuty on different levels.” Which levels?!!
In his works on specific subjects–liturgy, scripture–these are sometimes spelled out. It would be very nice to see them linked back to the 2005 address to the curia.
I don’t mean to be off the subject–more of an illustration or parallel.
AS the Pope wraps up Germany, it interests me that this is the only thread here on his visit (other than the Kung/Putin dialectic.)
If this is as one poster said,”BXVI at his best,” the question I havei s what impact did his speech and visit have in Germany on its politicians? The broader German Catholic and other comunities? And the broader world picture?
There’s a rumor circulating that Benedict wants to retire at 85. I doubt that seriously, but it’s emblematic of the situation he’s in, and, as Ann noted elsewhere, part of being a “tragic figure” in a world where he speaks many fine things, but his actions turn off many for being unabvle to be the listener he challenges others to be.
Martin Marty in his Sightings today had some poignant thoughts on Benedict in Germany:
“Popes, especially those as intelligent, experienced, and surrounded by counsel as Benedict XVI is, can argue their way out of challenges, ignore what does not please them, or offer softeners against the blows. What one thinks of critics and challenges depends upon who is looking in or looking on: aggrieved and outraged parents who feel they have not been heard or who are thwarted when they protest clerical abuse. These include women denied ordination, and some other intra-Catholic issues which needn’t directly concern the five-sixth of the world that is not Catholic of the Roman obedience.
Get past these, and then observe Catholics, Europeans, Christians in most parts of the world—half paralyzed or shaken by that word “Apathy.” The stories, taken together, suggest that the grievances and protests of the faithful should be at least signs of life. They are the voices of the faithful who still care enough to rise above apathy and inertia. The problem of which the pontiff is assuredly aware is that apathy has led millions of Europeans to vacate the pews, check out of the liturgies, stop participating in church-inspired works of love and maybe, as they exit the chapels and cathedrals, forget about those works of love entirely.
Knowing about apathy is one thing, but as these stories and all reports of the lead-up to the papal visit suggest, knowing what to do is another. The pope can be friendly to Lutherans, an ecumenical signaler of hope to those called “the faithful,” a greeter to people of other faiths. But he should have learned by now that “warning” does little in complex situations. German and European Catholics argue: does the Pope’s discouragement of the hopeful people who once flocked to the movement of aggiornamento and to generous ecumenism four decades ago contribute to the problems? He does not pretend that things are going well: all the statistics and cultural evidences challenge him. This apathy is not merely an isolated sign of a short and mild setback, but a symptom among populations which have simply lost faith in God, love for the Church, and the ability to care about them.”
Jeanne –
I once knew a priest (now an ex-priest) who said that when students seemed bored in class that it was actually a sign of anger. I guess you could call it a sort of passive aggression, and we all know that is a very unlovely thing to have to deal with. But how to get people (whether students or laity or te lower clergy) to cope with unwelcome ideas? The fact of it is that a lot of Christ’s messages are unwelcome — many of his teachings are very, very, very hard. So how to approach the difficulties of being Christian, especially in a hedonistic culture?
I think this is a basic problem in the Church today. The laity, not just the bishops, contribute to the malaise.
Ann: In one of his last speeches in Germany, the Pope returned to a theme that he has developed many times over the decades: that the great scandal of faith in Christ may be obscured from view by the scandals caused by the way Christians, and Christian leaders in particular are acting: Why even bother looking at a faith being proclaimed by such people?
“To put it another way: for people of every era, and not just our own, the Christian faith is a scandal. That the eternal God should know us and care about us, that the intangible should at a particular moment have become tangible, that he who is immortal should have suffered and died on the Cross, that we who are mortal should be given the promise of resurrection and eternal life – for people of any era, to believe all this is a bold claim.
“This scandal, which cannot be eliminated unless one were to eliminate Christianity itself, has unfortunately been overshadowed in recent times by other painful scandals on the part of the preachers of the faith. A dangerous situation arises when these scandals take the place of the primary skandalon of the Cross and in so doing they put it beyond reach, concealing the true demands of the Christian Gospel behind the unworthiness of those who proclaim it.”
Benedict is absolutely correct. But the devastating irony is that he himself, by continuing to lock in the Church’s autocratic style of governance, has perpetuated the very scandal he decries. How many young people raised in the egalitarian world they were raised in will pay any attention to an organization that is an un-transparent, un-accountable autocracy? That compromises intellectual freedom? That preaches the coherence of faith and reason yet asks people to swallow the illogic of Humanae Vitae and all that follows from it? It just isn’t going to fly. Trust in the authority of the institution is at its lowest ebb and much of that damage has been self-inflicted.
Last night I read Cardinal Wuerl’s piece on te new Evagelization in print America -my wife and I both found it disingenuous with the same blame the laity and get everyone on board to support what Rome and the bishops tell you.
Think Jeanne got it right -the same old things dolled up as “new” won’t stop apathy.
Blaming the apathetic, or the (putatively) uneducated catholic, as Wuerl does, or the awful. secular world or whatever won’t do it despite as many nice words as spoken.
Of course, abusers caused mistrust, but so does the structure and intransigence of the governnace system.
IMO the Time review of Benedict’s visit was right, viz. that it’s not going to slow the departures from Church there.
Whether Benedict’s description of Europe as “cultureless” is by design or accident, it suggests he sees a vacuum waiting to be filled. It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that all people have a culture, as Luke Hill and Fr. JAK did. A rich, complex culture can be identified and described today, like it or not, for Germany, middle Europe, and beyond.
The Pope speaks of Europe as if its Christian culture of yore was the province of clerics and philosophers, apparently unaware of the central role in its growth and distribution played by warfare intertwined with Christianity over a millennium or so from Charlemagne to the 19th century. Looking back only 75 years, he leaves out a principal determinant of the peoples and cultures he faces.
This is the Pope who expressed his view of South American natives silently having longed for Christianity, apparently unaware of the cultural impact of the slaughter, slavery, and forced conversion involved in the evangelization. Natives reminded him in 2007. Perhaps some Europeans will remind him of how the culture of Europe came to be.
JAK –
i 5hink that Benedict’s likening the scandalon of Christ’s becoming man as somehowa comparable to the contemporary sex scandal is gross misuse of the term. Christ’s saying he was a “scandal” did not mean that he did something to encourage people to sin. I thing Benedict was grasping at straws there, a linguistic one, an attempt at an analogy that just doesn’t exist.
Ann: One of the meanings of Skandalon and of its English variant, and the meaning intended by Pope Benedict, is “stumbling-block,” that is, something that impedes the acceptance of a religion or other faith or justifies rejecting it. Thus, for example, in 1 Cor 1:23: “But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a skandalon, to the Gentiles folly.” Gal 5:11: “the skandalon of the cross”; and 1 Pet 2:8, where Peter says that Christ has been made both a foundation-stone and “a rock of skandalon to those who stumble at the word and do not believe.” Thus also, theologians have spoken of “the scandal of particularity,” that is, the difficulty in believing that a single figure, Jesus of Nazareth, is the necessary savior of all mankind. In his Introduction to Christianity Ratzinger devoted a good number of pages to addressing the “scandal” of the externality of the Christian religion, that it is based on something that comes to us from without, from Christ and the Church, that it is not just an emanation from our hidden depths.
These are the most difficult stumbling-blocks in the way of accepting the Christian Gospel. The Pope’s point is that the serious stumbling-blocks represented by the sins and failures of Church leaders prevent the inescapable stumbling-block of the Incarnation and the Cross from even being seriously confronted. There is, then, THE Stumbling-blocks, and there are the stumbling-blocks; what they have in common, which validates the analogous use of the one term, is that, as St. Peter said, they cause people to “stumble at the word.”
“These are the most difficult stumbling-blocks in the way of accepting the Christian Gospel. The Pope’s point is that the serious stumbling-blocks represented by the sins and failures of Church leaders prevent the inescapable stumbling-block of the Incarnation and the Cross from even being seriously confronted.”
JAK –
Thanks, but I can’t see how the Pope’s claim follows.. If the scandalon that Paul and Peter talk about is/are a stumbling block to faith (and i don’t deny that at all), it seems to me that that is apparent just by looking at those two claims — you don’t have to know about the wicked clergy to see the “scandalon” of the Incarnation and Crucifixion.
If you want to say that both hinder accepting the faith, fine. But *both* do that independently. Both push the seeker in the same direction — away.
I didn’t say, and neither did the Pope, that you have to know about the sinful clergy to see the “skandalon” of the incarnation and the Cross, and I can’t figure out how you got that idea. The idea is that the scandal of wicked priests and bishops so discredits them that people won’t listen and hear the word of and about Christ that is the real stumbling-block. It’s like the saying: “How can I hear what you’re saying when what you are is shouting in my ear.”
Now I think I get what you’re saying == if the wicked clergy scandalize you, you won’t even get to think about the scandalon, so you’ll won’t understand it.
This might be true in the cases in which someone *has been* scandalized by the clergy, but it is possible not to be scandalized by the clergy — if, for instance, you don’t know how awful the reputations of some of them are. Then you might read the Gospel and get to know that scandalon.
Lord, Ann, do you think the Pope was talking about metaphysical necessities or impossibilities. Of course, your last paragraph is true–who would deny it? I would only note that solitary reading of the Gospel is not the normal way in which people encounter the Christian message–it’s from encountering living Christians, and even their leaders.
I just think the Pope is over-simplifying the Church’s membership problems . Most people don’t meet their bishops, the vast majority of priests aren’t monsters, and the dreadful reports of the scandal didn’t hit till around 2000. But conversions had started to lessen and people had started leaving en masse in the 60s, long before the scandal became public. So I think there’s a lot more wrong with the Church than the abusers and cover-up bishops, and those troubles have been there a very long time.
But thanks for the explanations.
I agree with your last sentence, and I suspect that the Pope would too. I’m sure he doesn’t think there’s only one problem, but all you have to do is think of the many posts here on the sex-abuse crisis to realize that it has alienated and continues to alienate large numbers of people, and in Germany the issue was fresh and serious, the way it was here back in 2002.