The Wind that's Coming
The first
year of ministry after his ordination in 1951 brought Father Joseph Ratzinger to the
Munich parish of Heilig
Blut (Precious Blood). During the Nazi regime, this parish had
two lay martyrs, Ludwig Baron Leonrod and Franz Sperr, and two priest martyrs,
Hermann Josef Wehrle and Alfred Delp, SJ. They protested the cruelties of
Hitler and his minions and had been executed as witnesses to Christ.
Expressing admiration for the brave
testimony of these men for the spiritual truth of Jesus Christ over
materialistic ideology, on May 24, 1952, he penned the following words in the
autograph book of a girl in one of his religion classes in Munich::
However the winds blow
You should stand against them.
When the world falls apart
Your brave heart may not despair.
Without the heart’s bravery which
Has the courage to withstand unshakably
The spirits of the time and the masses,
We cannot find the way to God
And the true way of Our Lord.
Shortly after Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died, the Vatican issued his Spiritual Testament, a statement each pope writes for release on his death.
The testament highlighted key issues the late pontiff addressed throughout his priesthood, professorship, and pontificate, Near the end of this testament, he states:
Stand firm in the faith! Do not be confused!
Often
it seems as if science - on the one hand, the natural sciences; on the other,
historical research (especially the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures) - has
irrefutable insights to offer that are contrary to the Catholic faith.
I
have witnessed from times long past the changes in natural science and have
seen how apparent certainties against the faith vanished, proving themselves
not to be science but philosophical interpretations only apparently belonging
to science - just as, moreover, it is in dialogue with the natural sciences
that faith has learned to understand the limits of the scope of its
affirmations and thus its own specificity.
For 60 years now, I have accompanied the path of theology, especially biblical studies, and have seen seemingly unshakeable theses collapse with the changing generations, which turned out to be mere hypotheses: the liberal generation (Harnack, Jülicher, etc.), the existentialist generation (Bultmann, etc.), the Marxist generation. I have seen, and see, how, out of the tangle of hypotheses, the reasonableness of faith has emerged and is emerging anew.
Jesus Christ is truly the Way, the Truth, and the Life - and the Church, in all her shortcomings, is truly His Body.
Ratzinger is a fascinating study. He swallowed all the modernist stuff as a young man -- perhaps understandably, given where and when he grew up -- and was associated with that wing of the Church pre-Vatican II. But to his great credit, he was one of the first to see the poison leaking out of it and spent the rest of his life trying to staunch the flow. I would have preferred it if he had not abdicated, but did a John Paul and died in office. But I don't think his faith was of that kind. He was an intellectual, and intellectuals always default to calculation over faith. This isn't a dig at him; he had to be the man he was, but he miscalculated about his succession. I don’t think he understood how dangerous the St Gallen group were and by abdication, he made the second great mistake of his life, after his modernist youth.
ReplyDeleteI don't think he was a "modernist" as we understand the term. Have a read of this from 1958:
Deletehttps://www.hprweb.com/2017/01/the-new-pagans-and-the-church/
@Bell,
DeleteInteresting analysis on why Benedict abdicated: Gadjo never quite understood why he agreed to it... or (from an Roman Catholic standpoint) that it was even theologically possible.
(Ratzinger may well be a fascinating study, as is the man who ordained him, Michael Ritter von Faulhaber.)
There was a World Youth Day scheduled for July 2013, in Rio de Janeiro. My impression at the time, and I still think it was probably correct, was that Pope Benedict feared he lacked the public appeal to make a success of it. Millions of people would simply stay away. I’m not saying this was his only reason for abdicating, but I’m pretty sure it was a consideration that carried a certain weight.
Delete@Gadjo -- there's been a massive number of speculations on why Benedict abdicated when he did, and I do don't completely discount any of them. The Vatican is rotten to the core of its existence, and blackmail, intimidation or just despair on Benedict's part that he could never prevail in the face of such wickedness are all possibilities. However, it could be just as simple as the highly intellectual Ratzinger calculating that, in an era of extended life spans, it was just time for popes to start retiring. There's never been any prohibition on abdication, it's just something which wasn't done. The strong tradition was always that popes stood in the shoes of the Fisherman and you died where you stood.
DeleteIf I'm right, it was a miscalculation on his part. Benedict thought too well of those around him, and they simply weren't worth of that trust. The Church is in the worst place it's been, certainly since the Reformation, and possibly ever. It'll take a strong, ruthless, visionary pope to bring Her back to full health and vigour now, and one who won't be afraid to lose the lukewarms. The Jesuits have got to go. There's no argument about that. The cardinals need to be culled and the bishops need to start experiencing the fear of God again. Germany needs to be told to give up the religious tax -- which has killed the Church there -- and women need to be told in no uncertain terms they'll never be priests. Unfortunately, I don't see anybody in the consistory who looks remotely like they've got the chops to do that. All we can hope for is that someone is keeping his powder dry until he's conned the liberals into voting him onto the papal throne.
It's theologically possible, but unusual. There have been a handful of popes who've abdicated since the 4th century, including St. Celestine in 1294, who passed a decree formalising the right to papal resignation and immediately took advantage of it as he felt himself too weak to govern the Church. The last to do so before Benedict was Gregory XII in 1415, in an attempt to end the Western Schism.
Delete@Bell,
DeleteThank you for your detailed reply. I'm still 'processing' the subject... again, I don't claim to be an expert. I have a friend who is just finishing his RC seminary training and seems unaffected by these issues.
Gadjo believes that it's not only Roman Catholic Christians who regret the passing (and abdication) of Pope Benedict XVI. (And, although Gadjo realises that this is entirely trivial - and he wishes to reiterate he is himself as straight as a die - he guesses that local girls may have uttered the phrase that he once heard from an Italian female friend, that "It is a pity that he is destined for the priesthood").
ReplyDeleteBell I agree with your summation of the Church's situation. It is hard to believe that it has come to this. The solution is a strong Catholic Pope,but who would vote for him.?So something drastic may have to occur if the next Pope goes soft on having women as priests and blessing homosexual relationships. Sorry to be such a realist but the situation can only get worse....Something has to be done....it cannot continue on like this...Cressida
ReplyDeleteI'd care less about worrying over female priests etc. why is the church in the situation it is? Because male priests either raped children, or turned their back and ignored the problem.
ReplyDeleteThe church needs to honestly address that problem.
Not directly. Few of the "outraged" actually care about the victims, it was always just an excuse to hammer the Church. The problem was never that the abusers were priests, it was that they were homosexuals, and that orientation is celebrated in the wider culture even as it attacks the Church for the crimes of these men. There would never have been a scandal in the first place had the Church lived by its own rules and forbidden these men entry to the priesthood.
DeleteIn some ways, it all springs from the same poisoned well. The abuse scandal, the victims of which were largely adolescent males rather than children (which I think is a significant distinction or one ends up safeguarding against the wrong thing), is a systemic failing. This isn't to excuse the priests in question, but abuse is sadly inevitable in any large organisation that deals with vulnerable people - we see it in schools, care homes, hospitals etc. However, priests who were known or suspected abusers should have been reported to the authorities and defrocked. Instead, many were simply moved to another parish and the cycle continued. This is the real scandal, IMO. Also, many of these priests were, by the Church's own rules, unsuitable for ministry in the first place.
DeleteWhy did this happen? In a large part because the Church forgot her mission and her first love. Unsuitable priests were recruited by unsuitable bishops who wanted to surround themselves with people like them, instead of ministers of the Gospel. When abuse came to light, it was covered up because the bishops' loyalty was to the institution of the Church and protecting its reputation instead of the justice and compassion of God.
What we are seeing now is more of the same. Female priests are being pushed, as they were in the CofE, not for theological reasons but because there is a shortage of priests and it aligns with secular ideas of equality. Similarly, the wavering stance on gender and sexuality. So-called progressive bishops select priests on the grounds of a shared ideology, rather than a real sense of vocation, something that goes all the way up to attempts to stack the Curia or synods with likeminded people rather than servants of Christ.
I'm not saying that the abuse scandal and female priests are equivalent, but they are both symptoms of a Church that is comprising itself for worldly acceptance. And, as the CofE has found, along that road lie empty pews and churches turned into wine bars.
Gadjo should firstly state that he is far from being an expert on the doings of the Roman Catholic church. But he also reckons that any organisation that bothers to work with young people - churches, the scouts, etc - is liable to attract the types with bad intentions. (Are there any Humanist organisations reaching out to The Yoof? Possibly there are and one hasn't heard about them). Of course, that's never an excuse for alowing such things to continue. Matters such as women priests/pastors are surely not related... but will be.
Delete@Bell,
How does one even detect that a person has over-riding same-sex attraction? Not really possible... and even if it were, surely such folk have a place in The Kingdom (if they genuinely believe) along with the avaricious and the covertous, etc. (Any church that has an unmarried priesthood may have made a rod for its own back in this respect, though its intentions to follow St Paul's advice would surely have been noble).
Yes you are right. It's political and current cultural values acceptance. It is here to stay. So something has to happen...If nothing happens to change the situation it does not bear thinking about. I pray that some real Catholic Cardinals or Archbishops are divinely inspired to make a stand and it has to be now !....Cressida
ReplyDeleteMaybe the laity need to be stronger in their anger and more proactive. Waiting for a 'Catholic' Bishop to rescue the church is avoidance. It's inaction pretending to be piety
DeleteI agree that a lot of the wider responses to the abuse is humbug. Indeed I would go further and say that these people not only are pleased but they take pleasure in the scandal.
ReplyDeleteI think I accused Linus of that once!
However the fault and blame lies with the church and I'm not limiting it to the Roman church 🤣.
And remember the abuse happened. People were damaged. And the source of that is the institution.
Hmm, but isn't "the source of this" the sinful nature of the people who commited those acts? (Yes, any church organisation that would permit this is also complicit). As a non-RC Christian, I could say that The Church is not an 'institution' and doesn't need reform; if you are an RC Christian, then wouldn't you need to say that the RC church, in its essense, is not to blame?
DeleteIt depends how you understand 'the institution'. We treat churches (as in communions), companies, schools etc. as persons and agents when we sue them, rather than specific people, for wrongs or accuse them of something - but this is just a convenient legal fiction. The Church as an institution can't do anything independently of the people who make it up. If all of humanity vanished tomorrow, there would be no Church (in the institutional sense). I think that there's a tendency to treat the legal fiction as a reality and either hold 'the Church' up as an irredeemable boogeyman that should be got rid of, or as a monolith that renders those inside it powerless and excuses their inaction.
DeleteOn the other hand, if 'institution' is understood as 'culture', then yes. There was (is) a culture of laxity, nepotism and cover-up in the Church. The abuse in any given diocese could have been curtailed by just one priest or bishop standing against the prevailing culture and saying 'no'. But they chose, by and large, not to. This is not the fault of the institutional Church in the sense that the Church made them cover the abuse up. It's the fault of human sin, and valuing one's own career progression and reputation above one's duty to care for Christ's flock.
Imagine that, purely speculatively, you are the Archbishop in charge of a large archdiocese in the West Midlands confronted with a number of historic and recent abuse cases. Do you cover them up because you're in line, hypothetically, for a move to London and, hypothetically, a cardinal's hat; or do you deal with them as justice requires and possibly end your clerical career for ruining the reputation of the Church? If you choose the former, that's not the fault of 'the Church' as a some kind of supra-individual agent - but your own cowardice and sin.
雲水,
DeleteI think that we are reading from pretty much the same hymnsheet here. Gajdo's perennial concern is for the proverbial throwing of the baby out with the bathwater.
I have watched this recent YT video
ReplyDeleteThe Atheism Delusion - Konstantin Kisin (9 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmCvw-TJyb0
What gets me is the way people make light of “Life and Brian” — even some commenters such as one who says he/she is a devout Christian find it very funny. I haven’t watched it, but from bits that have been relayed to me I can see there is some very pointed humour in it. But I think some of the humour is very puerile, more suited to a junior school toilet. It has been said that if such comedians write “роо” on a wall and expect one to find it funny because they are the ones doing it.
Also, the trivialization of such a hideous method of execution as crucifixion stick in my craw.
Any thoughts?
It's a despicable film.
DeleteI watched it as a teenager and thought it was overhyped. I suppose it belongs to an age (1979, way before my time!) where it was still shocking and 'edgy' to mock Christianity. Perhaps it would have made more of an impression on me if I'd been around when it came out, but it all seems a bit tame and predictable in the modern world, where Christianity is routinely degraded if not actively persecuted.
DeleteLike you, I found the crucifixion scene unpalatable; not just for the religious parody but because it's making light of something so evil. I just don't find state-sanctioned torture and execution funny. However, I'm grateful that my faith allows people to treat it that way and still live to tell the tale. Those who have parodied other religions have not been so lucky.
I've been following Kisin for a while, but this is surely the worst thing he has ever put out. The 'New' Atheists were 'cool', etc? The apologists who argued against them were 'cowardly*'?? Have a look at e.g. William Lane Craig and John Lennox (who are also much nicer people it would seem) taking them apart intellectually. Maybe Kisin misses the atheism of his Soviet youth - I guess that everything seems rosier in retrospect! - or perhaps he feels that atheism has never truly been tried yet... (And he still finds that joke the funniest in the world - Hicks wouldn't want forgiveness, Konstantin.)
Delete* Kisin seems to like this word, having used it recently in a different context (as did Alan Bennett about Brexiteers, if I recall correctly... if anyone has heard an explanation or an apology from him, I'd love to hear it!)
I saw Life Of Brian when I was just getting interested in faith. I felt uneasy about it even then, but I think that are there are some genuinely funny jokes in it - and most are not about Christianity at all. The last scene is crass on every level and is reason enough for not seeing the film.