Ranting to /dev/null

I like this pope

I'm in the middle of reading a lengthy, in-depth essay about the man who was formerly Cardinal Ratzinger, and who is now Pope Benedict XVI. It's in the latest issue of The Atlantic, so apologies to those who aren't subscribers.

A few quotes of interest:

In his new introduction to Introduction to Christianity, his best known and best respected work:

"He focused on two dates: 1989 and 1968. Upon the fall of communism, in 1989, he argued, Christianity had "failed to make itself heard as an epoch-making alternative." It failed, he suggested, because it had failed earlier, in 1968, when it became captive to Marxist ideas of revolution, which obscured the truth of the Gospel. This was clearest in liberation theology, which promised to free the poor peoples of Latin America but instead left them with no true alternative to dictatorships, only the theories of Marx-addled professors."

Wow.

Elsewhere:

"'It is not the Christians who oppose the world,' he declared, 'but rather the world which opposes itself to them when the truth about God, about Christ and about man is proclaimed.' But his account of the conflict between Catholicism and modernity was eloquent and forward-looking. He was no throwback but a "realist" who simply thought that the reforms that followed Vatican II went beyond what the council fathers had called for. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was not a new Inquisition but an institution charged with "the defense of right belief." As prefect he was not an enforcer so much as a kind of physician treating "the pathology of faith.""

"Surprisingly, given his authoritarian image, Benedict has a fairly restricted conception of the papacy, especially when compared with that of the maximalist John Paul. In his personal writings he explains it through the biblical imagery of the rock. Following tradition, he sees the papal office as at once "petrus," the rock on which the Church is founded, and "skandalon," the stumbling block. To these images he adds one from Michelangelo. In Benedict's view, change in the Church is brought about by what the sculptor called ablatio, or removal—"the removal of what is not really part of the sculpture." The Church is in need not of reform but of renewal, and the pope is less an agent of change than a sculptor helping it to attain its noble form."

If you can get hold of a copy of this issue, it's really worth the read.

Posted by ryan at January 28, 2006 07:05 PM | TrackBack