A CRITICAL READING OF POPE BENEDICT XVI’S
CHRISTMAS 2005 ADDRESS TO THE ROMAN CURIA
Theologian of the
Pontifical Household Father Wojciech Giertych, OP, asked in a recent video interview for Catholic News Services to give the
most important text of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate, unhesitatingly named
the Christmas 2005 Address to the Roman Curia about the correct hermeneutic for
understanding the Second Vatican Council. This hermeneutic is constantly cited,
often somewhat incorrectly, in theological circles, and deserves to be
understood within its immediate context. To this aim, following Father
Giertych, and especially given Benedict’s recent abdication, it seems
appropriate to devote the first (post-introductory) post of this blog to a
close critical reading of the address that may serve as the key to
understanding Benedict’s pontificate. My aim in this reading is to hew closely
to the text, bolded below in
English translation (found, alongside the original Italian,
on the Vatican website), allowing it to unfurl its concerns, and critically
engaging these concerns throughout. The text in brackets, including the section
headings, is mine. May this be
of use in understanding what we might call the “Benedictine hermeneutic” and in
appropriating the Council in fidelity to the Faith that has been handed down to
us (cf. 1 Cor 15:1-3; 2 Thess 2:15; 2 Tim 13-14)!
Address of His
Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia
Offering Them His
Christmas Greetings
Thursday, 22
December 2005
Your Eminences,
Venerable Brothers in
the Episcopate and in the Presbyterate,
Dear Brothers and
Sisters,
[INTRODUCTION:]
“Expergiscere homo:
quia pro te Deus factus est homo –
Wake up, O Man! For your sake God became man” (St Augustine, Sermo, 185). With the Christmas celebrations now at
hand, I am opening my Meeting with you, dear collaborators of the Roman Curia,
with St Augustine’s invitation to understand the true meaning of Christ’s
Birth.
[“Wake up!” From the
outset, Benedict announces that this is an important address—because it deals
with the Incarnation. The address’s importance for the efforts of Benedict’s
pontificate, as well as to waking up to the reality of the God made man, are
further heralded by the timing of its delivery—a few weeks into the beginning
of Benedict’s first full ecclesiastical year as pope (i.e. during his first
Advent) and a few days before the great feast of the Incarnation. Benedict
emphasizes that this address is crucial to understanding his pontificate and
the Incarnation.]
I address to each one
my most cordial greeting and I thank you for the sentiments of devotion and
affection, effectively conveyed to me by your Cardinal Dean, to whom I address
my gratitude.
God became man for our
sake: this is the message which, every year, from the silent grotto of
Bethlehem spreads even to the most out-of-the-way corners of the earth.
Christmas is a feast of light and peace, it is a day of inner wonder and joy
that expands throughout the universe, because “God became man.” From the humble
grotto of Bethlehem, the eternal Son of God, who became a tiny Child, addresses
each one of us: he calls us, invites us to be reborn in him so that, with him,
we may live eternally in communion with the Most Holy Trinity.
[The “every year”
frequency of its celebration, and its humble, “silent” origin, can harden us to
the reality of the Incarnation. Benedict urges us to listen to the “inner
wonder and joy” of Christmas, which is an invitation to eternal, Trinitarian
life.]
[PART I: JOHN PAUL II AND
THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING AND REDEMPTION:]
Our
hearts brimming with the joy that comes from this knowledge, let us think back
to the events of the year that is coming to an end. We have behind us great
events which have left a deep mark on the life of the Church. I am thinking
first and foremost of the departure of our beloved Holy Father John Paul II,
preceded by a long period of suffering and the gradual loss of speech. No Pope
has left us such a quantity of texts as he has bequeathed to us; no previous
Pope was able to visit the whole world like him and speak directly to people
from all the continents.
[The
entire address from this point forward follows the structure of a reflection on
the preceding year. First (what I’ve called Part I) we have the final days of
Blessed John Paul II, which gives way to a reflection on the mystery of
suffering and redemption. Then (Part II) Benedict reflects on divine worship
through reminiscences of World Youth Day in Cologne and the Synod of Bishops on
the Eucharist. This gives way to the major concern of the address (Part III),
introduced by the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of its closing: the
correct interpretation of the Second Vatican Council. So Benedict offers three
topics that might be called touchstones of his pontificate, two of them wrapped
up in the recent past of the Church.]
In
the end, however, his lot was a journey of suffering and silence. Unforgettable
for us are the images of Palm Sunday when, holding an olive branch and marked
by pain, he came to the window and imparted the Lord’s Blessing as he himself
was about to walk towards the Cross.
Next
was the scene in his Private Chapel when, holding the Crucifix, he took part in
the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum, where he had so often led the procession
carrying the Cross himself.
Lastly
came his silent Blessing on Easter Sunday, in which we saw the promise of the
Resurrection, of eternal life, shine out through all his suffering. With his
words and actions, the Holy Father gave us great things; equally important is
the lesson he imparted to us from the chair of suffering and silence.
In his last book Memory and Identity (Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 2005), he has left us an interpretation of suffering that is not
a theological or philosophical theory but a fruit that matured on his personal
path of suffering which he walked, sustained by faith in the Crucified Lord.
This interpretation, which he worked out in faith and which gave meaning to his
suffering lived in communion with that of the Lord, spoke through his silent
pain, transforming it into an important message.
Both at the
beginning and once again at the end of the book mentioned, the Pope shows that
he is deeply touched by the spectacle of the power of evil, which we
dramatically experienced in the century that has just ended. He says in his
text: “The evil . . . was not a small-scale evil. . . . It was an evil of gigantic
proportions, an evil which availed itself of state structures in order to
accomplish its wicked work, an evil built up into a system” (p. 189).
Might evil
be invincible? Is it the ultimate power of history? Because of the experience
of evil, for Pope Wojty³a the question of redemption became the essential and
central question of his life and thought as a Christian. Is there a limit
against which the power of evil shatters? “Yes, there is,” the Pope replies in
this book of his, as well as in his Encyclical on redemption.
The power
that imposes a limit on evil is Divine Mercy. Violence, the display of evil, is
opposed in history—as “the totally other” of God, God’s own power—by Divine
Mercy. The Lamb is stronger than the dragon, we could say together with the
Book of Revelation.
At the end
of the book, in a retrospective review of the attack of 13 May 1981 and on the
basis of the experience of his journey with God and with the world, John Paul
II further deepened this answer.
What limits
the force of evil, the power, in brief, which overcomes it—this is how he says
it—is God’s suffering, the suffering of the Son of God on the Cross: “The
suffering of the Crucified God is not just one form of suffering alongside
others. . . . In sacrificing himself for us all, Christ gave a new meaning to
suffering, opening up a new dimension, a new order: the order of love. . . .
The passion of Christ on the Cross gave a radically new meaning to suffering,
transforming it from within. . . . It is this suffering which burns and
consumes evil with the flame of love. . . . All human suffering, all pain, all
infirmity contains within itself a promise of salvation . . . evil is present
in the world partly so as to awaken our love, our self-gift in generous and
disinterested service to those visited by suffering. . . . Christ has redeemed
the world: “By his wounds we are healed” (Is 53:5) (p. 189, ff.).
All this is
not merely learned theology, but the expression of a faith lived and matured
through suffering. Of course, we must do all we can to alleviate suffering and
prevent the injustice that causes the suffering of the innocent. However, we
must also do the utmost to ensure that people can discover the meaning of
suffering and are thus able to accept their own suffering and to unite it with
the suffering of Christ.
In this way,
it is merged with redemptive love and consequently becomes a force against the
evil in the world.
The response across the world to the
Pope's death was an overwhelming demonstration of gratitude for the fact that
in his ministry he offered himself totally to God for the world; a thanksgiving
for the fact that in a world full of hatred and violence he taught anew love
and suffering in the service of others; he showed us, so to speak, in the
flesh, the Redeemer, redemption, and gave us the certainty that indeed, evil
does not have the last word in the world.
[The
mystery of suffering and redemption is explicitly linked to Benedict’s
predecessor, whose right-hand man he was and whose person he raised to the
altars. Benedict’s pontificate is in clear continuity with Blessed John Paul
II. And yet, we can now see even more clearly, Benedict compliments this
continuity with a significant shift of emphasis, as becomes apparent in the
next section.]
[PART
II: ADORATION]
I would now
like to mention, if briefly, another two events also initiated by Pope John
Paul II: they are the World Youth Day celebrated in Cologne and the Synod of
Bishops on the Eucharist, which also ended the Year of the Eucharist
inaugurated by Pope John Paul II.
The World
Youth Day has lived on as a great gift in the memory of those present. More
than a million young people gathered in the City of Cologne on the Rhine River
and in the neighbouring towns to listen together to the Word of God, to pray
together, to receive the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist, to
sing and to celebrate together, to rejoice in life and to worship and receive
the Lord in the Eucharist during the great meetings on Saturday evening and
Sunday. Joy simply reigned throughout those days.
Apart from
keeping order, the police had nothing to do—the Lord had gathered his family,
tangibly overcoming every frontier and barrier, and in the great communion
between us, he made us experience his presence.
The motto
chosen for those days—“We have come to worship [i.e. adore] him!”,
contained two great images which encouraged the right approach from the outset.
First there was the image of the pilgrimage, the image of the person who,
looking beyond his own affairs and daily life, sets out in search of his
essential destination, the truth, the right life, God.
This image
of the person on his way towards the goal of life contained another two clear
indications. First of all, there was the invitation not to see the world that
surrounds us solely as raw material with which we can do something, but to try
to discover in it “the Creator’s handwriting”, the creative reason and the love
from which the world was born and of which the universe speaks to us, if we pay
attention, if our inner senses awaken and acquire perception of the deepest
dimensions of reality.
As a second
element there is a further invitation: to listen to the historical revelation
which alone can offer us the key to the interpretation of the silent mystery of
creation, pointing out to us the practical way towards the true Lord of the
world and of history, who conceals himself in the poverty of the stable in
Bethlehem.
[The mention of
the “historical revelation,” emanating from Bethlehem, that “alone can offer us
the key to the interpretation of the silent mystery of creation” links this
passage to the timing of the address and also to the discussion of the correct
key to the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council and Benedict’s
treatment of Dei Verbum. He also identifies this concrete, historical
revelation as the pointer to the proper ordering of the temporal realm, a
crucial issue in assessing the Council.]
The other
image contained in the World Youth Day motto was the person worshipping: “We
have come to worship him.” Before any activity, before the world can change
there must be worship. Worship alone sets us truly free; worship alone gives us
the criteria for our action. Precisely in a world in which guiding criteria are
absent and the threat exists that each person will be a law unto himself, it is
fundamentally necessary to stress worship.
[These words
represent Benedict’s pontificate in nuce: it is adoration that is
at its center.]
For all
those who were present the intense silence of that million young people remains
unforgettable, a silence that united and uplifted us all when the Lord in the
Blessed Sacrament was placed on the altar. Let us cherish in our hearts the
images of Cologne: they are signs that continue to be valid. Without mentioning
individual names, I would like on this occasion to thank everyone who made
World Youth Day possible; but especially, let us together thank the Lord, for
indeed, he alone could give us those days in the way in which we lived them.
[Again, the
return to the beloved word “silence”—from which any legitimate speech and
action is born.]
The word
“adoration” brings us to the second great event that I wish to talk about: the
Synod of Bishops and the Year of the Eucharist. Pope John Paul II, with the
Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia and the Apostolic
Letter Mane Nobiscum Domine, gave us the essential clues and at the
same time, with his personal experience of Eucharistic faith, put the Church’s
teaching into practice.
Moreover,
the Congregation for Divine Worship, in close connection with the Encyclical,
published the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum as a
practical guide to the correct implementation of the conciliar Constitution on
the liturgy and liturgical reform. In addition to all this, was it really
possible to say anything new, to develop further the whole of this teaching?
This was
exactly the great experience of the Synod, during which a reflection of the
riches of the Eucharistic life of the Church today and the inexhaustibility of
her Eucharistic faith could be perceived in the Fathers’ contributions. What
the Fathers thought and expressed must be presented, in close connection with
the Propositiones of the Synod, in a Post-Synodal Document.
Here, once
again, I only wish to underline that point which a little while ago we already
mentioned in the context of World Youth Day: adoration of the Risen Lord,
present in the Eucharist with flesh and blood, with body and soul, with
divinity and humanity.
It is moving
for me to see how everywhere in the Church the joy of Eucharistic adoration is
reawakening and being fruitful. In the period of liturgical reform, Mass and
adoration outside it were often seen as in opposition to one another: it was
thought that the Eucharistic Bread had not been given to us to be contemplated,
but to be eaten, as a widespread objection claimed at that time.
The
experience of the prayer of the Church has already shown how nonsensical this
antithesis was. Augustine had formerly said: “nemo autem illam carnem
manducat, nisi prius adoraverit . . . peccemus non
adorando – No one should eat this flesh without first adoring it . . . we
should sin were we not to adore it” (cf. Enarr. in Ps 98: 9
CCL XXXIX 1385).
Indeed, we
do not merely receive something in the Eucharist. It is the encounter and unification
of persons; the person, however, who comes to meet us and desires to unite
himself to us is the Son of God. Such unification can only be brought about by
means of adoration.
Receiving
the Eucharist means adoring the One whom we receive. Precisely in this way and
only in this way do we become one with him. Therefore, the development of
Eucharistic adoration, as it took shape during the Middle Ages, was the most
consistent consequence of the Eucharistic mystery itself: only in adoration can
profound and true acceptance develop. And it is precisely this personal act of
encounter with the Lord that develops the social mission which is contained in
the Eucharist and desires to break down barriers, not only the barriers between
the Lord and us but also and above all those that separate us from one another.
[This
second part of the address reveals Benedict’s shift from the focus on
redemptive suffering that marked all, but especially the final years, of John
Paul’s papacy, to a focus on divine worship: adoration both in the specific
sense of Eucharistic Adoration, but also in the broader sense of latria, the worship a man properly offers to God alone.
Of course, John Paul had himself revived and emphasized Eucharistic Adoration,
but he was not really a liturgical pope. It is a shift of emphasis, not a
radical break or disavowal of the John Paul II years. Benedict was a supremely
liturgical pope, as anyone who had attended his 7 AM Masses during his years at
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or read his book The
Spirit of the Liturgy (San
Francisco: Ignatius, 2000) would have suspected. The Benedictine arrangement of
the altar, with candles on either end and a crucifix front and center would
have been significant enough, but there was much else: an extraordinary mastery
of ceremonies in Monsignor Guido Marini, the restoration of communion kneeling
and on the tongue at all papal Masses, the retrieval of ancient liturgical
vestments, renewed efforts to promote Gregorian chant, and most significantly,
the motu proprio Summorum
Pontificum, which liberalized the
celebration of the traditional Latin Mass (last modified by Blessed John XXIII
in 1962) and declared that it had never been abrogated. Henceforth, the 1962
Mass is an “extraordinary form” of the Roman Rite, side by side with the
“ordinary form” of Paul VI’s 1969 novus ordo missae.
With Benedict’s renunciation of the Petrine
ministry, this focus on adoration becomes radicalized. If in John Paul II we
witnessed a new Saint Peter crucified, a pope who, in not coming down from his
cross, “showed us, so to speak, in the flesh, the Redeemer,” in Benedict we
had—and have—a Johannine figure. Benedict showed us that the pope must also
echo the words of the Forerunner: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn
3:30). The Faith, as Cardinal Arinze reminded us with his blunt magnanimity in
a CNS interview, is not based on the Pope, but on Christ. Benedict
showed this when he put the crucifix at the center of the altar, when he
celebrated Mass facing this same crucifix along with the congregation (i.e. ad
orientem liturgicam, to the
liturgical East), and most starkly when he renounced the Petrine office because
he was no longer able to fulfill it. Now, in his hidden life of prayer for the
Church, Benedict follows the mystic Apostle who lay at the breast of the Lord
as we may do in Adoration, St Augustine’s favorite evangelist, with whose words
he named his first encyclical (Deus Caritas Est – God Is Love), about whom Jesus said to Peter:
“If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!”
(Jn 21:22). “With his words and actions, the Holy Father gave us great things;
equally important is the lesson he imparted to us from the chair of suffering
and silence.” It is totally false to claim that Benedict has inaugurated a new
era of papal resignations, still less that Benedict somehow slights the memory
of John Paul by not following his example. “Follow me” says the Lord—for Peter,
as for John Paul, this meant unto Calvary; for the Beloved Apostle and for our
beloved Benedict this means writing, prayer, abiding in adoration. Benedict has
given us an example of variety in fidelity to the Lord.]
[PART III: THE
CORRECT INTERPRETATION OF VATICAN II]
The last
event of this year on which I wish to reflect here is the celebration of the
conclusion of the Second Vatican Council 40 years ago. [Benedict’s
pontificate began in the 40th anniversary of the closing of the
Second Vatican Council; it ended with the 50th anniversary of the
opening of the Council, which commemoration is central to the Year of Faith
Benedict proclaimed for 2012-2013.] This memory prompts the question: What
has been the result of the Council? Was it well received? What, in the
acceptance of the Council, was good and what was inadequate or mistaken? What
still remains to be done? [We might even say these questions have been at the
center of Benedict’s pontificate; these are the questions we have asked again
and again these last eight years, reflecting on the forty years, and now the
fifty years, since the Council.] No one can deny that in vast areas of the
Church the implementation of the Council has been somewhat difficult, even
without wishing to apply to what occurred in these years the description that
St Basil, the great Doctor of the Church, made of the Church’s situation after
the Council of Nicea: he compares her situation to a naval battle in the
darkness of the storm, saying among other things: “The raucous shouting of
those who through disagreement rise up against one another, the
incomprehensible chatter, the confused din of uninterrupted clamouring, has now
filled almost the whole of the Church, falsifying through excess or failure the
right doctrine of the faith” (De Spiritu Sancto, XXX, 77;
PG 32, 213 A; SCh 17 ff., p. 524).
We do not
want to apply precisely this dramatic description to the situation of the
post-conciliar period, yet something from all that occurred is nevertheless
reflected in it. The question arises: Why has the implementation of the
Council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult?
[The choice to
approach the answer to the crucial questions about the Council asked above (its
result, reception, acceptance, etc.) with St Basil’s “dramatic” assessment of
the post-Nicene years demands attention. Even Benedict’s comment on them (“We
do not want to apply precisely this dramatic description . . .”), rather
than softening their force, highlights it: Benedict does not wish to apply precisely
Basil’s
description, but he does, it seems, wish to apply something like it. This
modified appropriation of St Basil’s words also hearkens to one of Benedict’s
last addresses, the unscripted remarks to the seminarians of Rome
about his personal experience of the Council, which concluded with an unusually
harsh assessment of the post-Council (“seminaries closed, convents closed,
banalized liturgy”). And Benedict seems, at the end of his pontificate, to have
maintained the same conclusion about the Council he gives in this address. This
conclusion is already implicit in the question that Benedict makes the fil
conducteur of what follows. In beginning with the question of why the implementation
of the Council has been difficult, he assumes that the Council ought to be
implemented. This is Benedict’s starting point, but it should be added that
while this starting point implies that the Council itself is somehow
unproblematic, it does not exclude a priori that the implementation of
the Council has been difficult because of defects in the Council itself.]
Well, it all
depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or—as we would say
today—on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and
application. The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two
contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarrelled with each other. One
caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing
fruit.
[It might be
noted in passing that this appraisal of the two dueling hermeneutics—one false,
one correct—follows Augustinian (and Pauline) dualism (e.g. City of God v. City
of Man, body v. flesh), rejecting Hegelian dialectic-leading-to-synthesis (cf.
Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past?, for a good contemporary
example of the Hegelian approach to theology).]
On the one
hand, there is an interpretation that I would call [1] “a hermeneutic of
discontinuity and rupture”; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies
of the mass media [cf. “the virtual Council” Benedict speaks of in final
address to Roman seminarians], and also one trend of modern theology. [The School of
Bologna, according to which the Council is an “event”?] On the other, there
is the [2] “hermeneutic of reform”, of renewal in the continuity of the one
subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases
in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the
journeying People of God.
[Here we have
the two hermeneutics, briefly defined. The first is perhaps easier to grasp.
Rupture is something our post-revolutionary world encounters daily not only in
the political sphere (Chavez died and what will become of Venezuela is anyone’s
guess) but also in the social and private (homosexual “marriage” and no-fault
divorce) or even material spheres (cosmetic surgery). Even the “Evangelical”
reduction of salvation to “getting saved” participates in this culture of
rupture (whereas the legitimate Christian understanding of salvation—the
“already” of baptism and the contingent “not-yet” of continued assent, lifelong
conversion and growth in sanctity, Judgment with the possibility of the other
“already but not yet” state of Purgatory—unites the rupture of election with
fidelity to the covenant). It is no surprise that this false hermeneutic would
have the sympathies of the mass media, that mirror and master of the culture,
that leopard ever-more-rapacious for a new “big break” and a new “hit”. There
is no doubt much blame to be assigned to the media in the distortion of the
Council, but, as Benedict notes, the media was used by the hermeneutic; the
origin of the false hermeneutic lies elsewhere. Its origin lies elsewhere, too,
than the “trend of modern theology” to which Benedict alludes, which, like the
media, is its instrument, not its maker. We might speculate that its origin,
like the final origin of all falsehoods and lies, is the Father of Lies—and so
draw a connection to Paul VI’s famous mention of the “smoke of Satan” that
seemed, almost, to have entered the sanctuary—but Benedict, perhaps
surprisingly, does not here ask the question of origin of the false
hermeneutic.
The second,
“correct” hermeneutic, is not, as if often said, that of “continuity” tout
court; rather Benedict defines it in one word as the hermeneutic of “reform”.
It would be totally false to claim Benedict here puts forward a
“traditionalist” hermeneutic or that he is a traditionalist, in any Catholic
sense of the term. Rather, Benedict sees “reform” as a positive term, and the
particular “reform” of the Council as positive, even necessary. But like any
word, “reform” needs to be unpacked, and it would be just as false to allow the
single world “reform” to define the hermeneutic. The “hermeneutic of reform” is
one of “renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has
given to us.” So the term “continuity” is central to the Benedictine
hermeneutic, but he does not conceive of continuity as something necessarily
static; rather, he speaks of dynamic continuity (echoes of Avery Cardinal
Dulles’s “dynamic fidelity”?). And why does continuity with the “one
subject-Church which the Lord has given to us” allow for, even demand, reform?
Because the Church, once and for all gifted by Christ, is also “the journeying
People of God”—“increasing in time and developing, yet always remaining the
same.” The Benedictine hermeneutic of “reform in continuity” presupposes and
develops out of his ecclesiology. The Church, for Benedict, is at once the same
and developing, as explained by John Henry Cardinal Newman, whom Benedict
beatified, extraordinarily, in person in England (Essay on the Development
of Doctrine) and as enunciated by Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium.
While Benedict
does not directly address it here, there are at least two, very different
“hermeneutics of discontinuity”. His immediate concern is that hermeneutic of
discontinuity that, briefly put, thinks the Council “did not go far enough” in
reforming the Church. The other hermeneutic of discontinuity (associated with
the SSPX, but also advanced by such theologians as Romano Amerio, Enrico Maria
Radaelli, and, with a lighter touch, Brunero Gherardini, as well as the
historian Roberto de Mattei) holds that the Council “went too far” in reforming
the Church, that it was unfaithful to the Faith gifted by Christ. Both
hermeneutics of discontinuity risk splitting the Church into a “before” and
“after” the Council, but they are substantively different, as I will briefly
note further on.]
The
hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar
Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council
as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they
are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found
necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless.
However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises
but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.
[Is Benedict
implying that the “true spirit of the Council” is to be found in
its compromises, which would perhaps unite the “impulses toward the new”
(reform) with “old things” (continuity)? A related question: are there in fact true compromises in
the texts, or merely the juxtaposition of different, opposed,
even irreconcilable statements or assertions or theologies juxtaposed?]
These
innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and
starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead.
Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of
the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond
the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council’s deepest
intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.
In a word:
it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In
this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this
spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every
whim.
[The
hermeneutic of discontinuity relies upon the idea (we might call it its
epistemological conception) of the extricability of form and substance.
According to this understanding of how we come to know reality, how something is
expressed is 1) not essential to what is being expressed, and
2) can be divorced from it. It is possible to isolate “pure spirit” from
“obfuscating text”. The truth or falseness of this idea is at the center of
conciliar hermeneutics of all stripes, from Küng to Radaelli, including the
Benedictine hermeneutic that follows the words of Blessed John XXIII. As
Benedict notes, if we fully embrace this idea, there is a “vast margin” for
consequently defining this spirit, that is, giving it other, less “concealing”
forms. I define the spirit this way today, another tomorrow, you define it
still another, etc.—and unity of form becomes impossible. And since language is
a form, communication finally becomes impossible in this realm of “formal”
relativism.]
The nature
of a Council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way, it is
considered as a sort of constituent that eliminates an old constitution and
creates a new one. [i.e. the way politics has worked since 1789] However,
the Constituent Assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the
mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve. The Fathers
had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have
given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the
Lord and was given to us so that we might attain eternal life and, starting
from this perspective, be able to illuminate life in time and time itself.
[Note that
Benedict does not condemn the “constitutional” approach a priori (as we will
see later, he is not opposed to all manifestations of the “Enlightenment”).
Rather, he notes that a constitutional approach is impossible for a Church
Council because the ecclesial “constitution” (he even uses this word!) was
gifted by Christ for the attainment of eternal life. Fidelity to Christ and
salvation itself are at stake—because fidelity to Christ is the only means of
salvation. But again, Benedict’s understanding of the application of the
ecclesial “constitution” is dynamic: if it is itself materially sufficient, it
nonetheless needs to be applied in time, always grounded in the perspective of
salvation.]
Through the
Sacrament they have received, Bishops are stewards of the Lord’s gift. They are
“stewards of the mysteries of God” (I Cor 4:1); as such, they must be found to
be “faithful” and “wise” (cf. Lk 12:41-48). This requires them to administer
the Lord’s gift in the right way, so that it is not left concealed in some
hiding place but bears fruit, and the Lord may end by saying to the
administrator: “Since you were dependable in a small matter I will put you in
charge of larger affairs” (cf. Mt 25:14-30; Lk 19:11-27).
These Gospel
parables express the dynamic of fidelity required in the Lord’s service; and
through them it becomes clear that, as in a Council, the dynamic and fidelity
must converge.
[Dynamic
fidelity. Fidelity to the Lord requires evangelical dynamism (whatever that
means), so that the Gospel may bear fruit and its shepherds may attain eternal
life.]
The
hermeneutic of discontinuity is countered by the hermeneutic of reform, as it
was presented first by Pope John XXIII in his Speech inaugurating the Council
on 11 October 1962 and later by Pope Paul VI in his Discourse for the Council’s
conclusion on 7 December 1965.
[Benedict
grounds the correct hermeneutic in words, not “spirit”, the papal words that
opened and closed the Council, just as his own words on the Council would open
and close his pontificate, corresponding to the closing and opening of the
Council.]
Here I shall
cite only John XXIII’s well-known words, which unequivocally express this
hermeneutic when he says that the Council wishes “to transmit the doctrine,
pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion.” And he continues:
“Our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned
only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without
fear to that work which our era demands of us.” It is necessary that “adherence
to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness” be presented
in “faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however,
should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the
literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the
deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is
another,” retaining the same meaning and message (The Documents of Vatican
II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., p. 715).
[Obviously,
Benedict intends with these quotations to show the “renewal in continuity”
advanced by John XXIII, a figure often appropriated by those hermeneuts of
discontinuity Benedict has described above. Yet Pope John makes two, interrelated
assertions here that would disquiet the other hermeneuts of discontinuity.
First, he calls for applying modern research methodology and literary forms to
doctrine. This assumes that modern thought (however vaguely defined) is
valuable for the appropriation of doctrine—something that would be widely
contested. More baldly, he claims that doctrine’s “substance” and its “way of
presentation” (i.e. its form) are different things. This
difference could perhaps be read as a “distinction” or something united—in the
way the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity are distinct but united as the one
God. But, prima facie, the assertion is bold. Does it not make much the
same response to the question of the relation of form and substance as those
who hail the “spirit” of the Council? Is it correct? Ought we rather to say
that while form and substance are ontologically distinct, they are
epistemologically coincident? That is, in themselves form and substance may be
two different realities—or, if not different realities, distinct entities—but
insofar as man comes to understand substance, does he not always, or at least
ordinarily (i.e. naturally) come to know them together? We only know the ideas
of the book through the words of the book. We only know a man’s spirit through
his body. We only know the Father through the Son. And would not this be true a
fortiori given the Incarnation, when the Son, already the Form of the Father,
takes on humanity, so that henceforth man may know the Father through the
eternally incarnate Son of God and of the New Eve? One wonders if Benedict’s
not treating this potentially problematic statement of John XXIII might be
traced to his own preference for St Augustine over St Thomas Aquinas.]
It is clear
that this commitment to expressing a specific truth in a new way demands new
thinking on this truth and a new and vital relationship with it; it is also
clear that new words can only develop if they come from an informed
understanding of the truth expressed, and on the other hand, that a reflection
on faith also requires that this faith be lived. In this regard, the programme
that Pope John XXIII proposed was extremely demanding, indeed, just as the
synthesis of fidelity and dynamic is demanding.
[Benedict’s
unpacking of John XXIII’s statement softens its impact. Surely there are always
new ways to express specific truths, new insights, even new thinking. But it
might be cautioned, as Benedict would surely agree, that not every new
expression is a true expression, that some new expressions or patterns of
thought are not adequate to express doctrine—and also that the old expressions
cannot really lose their validity in themselves, even if the men of a certain
time my find them less illuminating, because the Church, following Christ’s
words, is eternally infallible (cf. Dei Filius).]
However,
wherever this interpretation guided the implementation of the Council, new life
developed and new fruit ripened. Forty years after the Council, we can show
that the positive is far greater and livelier than it appeared to be in the
turbulent years around 1968. Today, we see that although the good seed
developed slowly, it is nonetheless growing; and our deep gratitude for the
work done by the Council is likewise growing.
[Without
contradicting the Holy Father’s enthusiasm, one wishes again for some
precision: what, specifically are these good fruits?]
[Now Benedict
shifts from enunciating the two hermeneutics to an historical survey of the
Church’s relationship to the modern era, which prepares for his reading of how
the Council responded to three questions that had emerged:]
In his
Discourse Closing the Council, Paul VI pointed out a further specific reason
why a hermeneutic of discontinuity can seem convincing.
In the great
dispute about man which marks the modern epoch, the Council had to focus in
particular on the theme of anthropology. It had to question the relationship
between the Church and her faith on the one hand, and man and the contemporary
world on the other (cf. ibid.). The question becomes even clearer if, instead
of the generic term “contemporary world”, we opt for another that is more
precise: the Council had to determine in a new way the relationship between the
Church and the modern era.
[While looking
for an answer in what follows, we might ask Paul VI, and Benedict: Why did the Council
have to recast the relationship between the Church and modernity?]
This
relationship had a somewhat stormy beginning with the Galileo case. [Is this
perhaps an exaggeration? While le cas Galilée remains a cause célèbre of secularist
coteries, are not the facts rather less dramatic? These include, for example,
that his theory contradicted every known thinker, contemporary or ancient. It
was not so much a case of the Church against Galileo as the World against
Galileo.] It was then totally interrupted when Kant described “religion
within pure reason” and when, in the radical phase of the French Revolution, an
image of the State and the human being that practically no longer wanted to
allow the Church any room was disseminated.[And thousands were
martyred.]
In the 19th
century under Pius IX, the clash between the Church’s faith and a radical
liberalism and the natural sciences, which also claimed to embrace with their
knowledge the whole of reality to its limit, stubbornly proposing to make the
“hypothesis of God” superfluous, had elicited from the Church a bitter and
radical condemnation of this spirit of the modern age. [Note that
Benedict characterizes as “radical” both 19th century
liberalism and naturalism and Pius IX’s response to it.] Thus, it
seemed that there was no longer any milieu open to a positive and fruitful
understanding, and the rejection by those who felt they were the
representatives of the modern era was also drastic.
[Benedict seems
partially to blame Pius IX for the rejection of the Church by modernity. Was
his condemnation of liberalism and naturalism somehow wrong? Is his Syllabus
of Errors somehow faulty or subject to false application?]
In the
meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People
came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern
State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had
emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.
[This is a very
interesting statement. First, note the pejorative use of “radical”, which
informs our reading of the preceding paragraph. Benedict claims (“people came
to realize”—not “people proposed, or argued, or felt”)
that the American Revolution offers an alternative modernity to that founded in
the French Revolution. Is this true? Are there really two modernities—the
radical, secularist French version that leaves no room for God and religion,
and the American version? Just how would we define this American version? Would
we look to the Constitution, which implicitly derives its agenda from
God-gifted freedom: “We the People . . . in order to . . . secure the Blessings
of Liberty . . . establish this Constitution”? (It also mentions “our Lord”
when giving the year in the closing statements.) Would we look to the First
Amendment, guaranteeing the free practice of religion? Or to the Declaration of
Independence, which refers to “Nature’s God” and to the “Supreme Judge of the
World” (shades of Robespierre’s Être suprême?), asserts that men are
“created”, and derives the “unalienable rights” of “Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness” from the “Creator”? Or, leaving behind texts, would we
look to the longstanding liberality in the tolerance of the practice of
religion, or perhaps the greater religiosity, relative to Europeans, of
Americans in the late 20th century? Is American secularism really so
different from French laïcité? Or is it rather than, given the diversity
and decentralization of the United States, laïcité and the other
Enlightenment projects have taken longer to crystallize? And in the last
decades at least—with Roe v. Wade overturning the right to
life, with the HHS Mandate restricting religious liberty, with the fabrication
of the “right to divorce”, the “right to marry” one’s own sex, to reinvent
one’s gender—witnessing the “purification” of the Enlightenment à
l’américaine in the waters of the Seine? If so, what are the implications for
Benedict’s argument, and want are the implications for the proper understanding
and appropriating of the Council?]
The natural
sciences were beginning to reflect more and more clearly their own limitations
imposed by their own method, which, despite achieving great things, was
nevertheless unable to grasp the global nature of reality.
[Benedict seems
to see another positive shift in the turn away from “totalitarian” thought. But
has this shift not been accompanied by a turn toward absurdity, and thus the
relative—indeed, toward what Benedict famously called the “dictatorship of
relativism”?]
So it was
that both parties were gradually beginning to open up to each other. In the
period between the two World Wars and especially after the Second World War,
Catholic statesmen demonstrated that a modern secular State could exist that
was not neutral regarding values but alive, drawing from the great ethical
sources opened by Christianity.
[Just which
countries and statesmen? Not being versed in the political history of these
eras, the prime Catholic secular statesman I can think of is the Bonapartist
DeGaulle, whose nuclear proliferation hardly drew on the “great ethical
sources” of Christianity. Admittedly, much of the denaturalization of the legal
systems of historically Christian countries (e.g. legalization of abortion,
divorce, sodomy, etc.) postdated the Council. Still, from today’s perspective,
Benedict’s assessment of the era seems curiously optimistic.]
Catholic
social doctrine, as it gradually developed, became an important model between
radical liberalism and the Marxist theory of the State. The natural sciences,
which without reservation professed a method of their own to which God was
barred access, realized ever more clearly that this method did not include the
whole of reality. Hence, they once again opened their doors to God, knowing
that reality is greater than the naturalistic method and all that it can
encompass.
[Again, is this
not rather rosy? Does the idea that Catholic social teaching is a via media “between”
economic liberalism and Marxism dangerously approach the centrist fallacy? And
does it risk reducing social theory to the dominant framework of the twentieth
century? And so many natural scientist’s door were “open to God” in 1962, why
are they all shut now?]
It might be
said that three circles of questions had formed which then, at the time of the
Second Vatican Council, were expecting an answer. First of all, [1]the
relationship between faith and modern science had to be redefined. Furthermore,
this did not only concern the natural sciences but also historical science for,
in a certain school, the historical-critical method claimed to have the last
word on the interpretation of the Bible and, demanding total exclusivity for
its interpretation of Sacred Scripture, was opposed to important points in the
interpretation elaborated by the faith of the Church.
Secondly, it
was necessary to [2]give a new definition to the relationship
between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for
citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility
for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to
practise their own religion.
Thirdly,
linked more generally to this was the [3]problem of religious
tolerance—a question that required a new definition of the relationship between
the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent
crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long
and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the
relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.
[For Benedict,
the three central questions leading up to the Council have to do with the idea
of the relationship, or, in biblical language, the covenant. First, the
relationship of faith and science, second the relationship of Church and State,
and third the relationship of Christianity and other religions (or perhaps,
more broadly, between Catholicism and other religions). Benedict does not
explain why these questions had to be answered, that is, why the
Church’s traditional answers were insufficient; perhaps he thinks this why self-evident,
but is it self-evident to us today? To the first question, Benedict does
provide some explanation about its urgency in the need to address the
self-proclaimed hegemony of the historical-critical method in certain circles.
Of course, given the rise in prominence of the historical-critical method in
Catholic circles after the Council, this seems at first glance a curious
assertion. But of course part of Benedict’s point is that Dei Verbum itself (the
Council’s Constitution on Revelation), while giving some place to the method,
does not allow for its hegemony. To the question of Church and State, there is
only a semblance of an answer to why the relationship had to be
redefined. Why should the Church support secular states? Perhaps an implied
answer would be a pragmatic one: secular states exist, and Christians live in
secular states, so some framework for this reality needs to be enunciated? But
if, as experience would seem to show, the secular state is necessarily
anti-Christian, why should Christians attempt to harmonize their relationship
with the enemy? Would this not rather be to make friends with the devil? These
are vexing questions, and Benedict does not here anticipate them. Finally, to
the question of the inter-religious relationship, Benedict mentions the Shoah.
Again, this does not directly explain the necessity of re-defining the
relationship between the Church and Judaism. The Nazi regime was pagan, its
anti-Semitism largely based in pseudo-science, not Christianity, even if many
professed Christians perpetuated its crimes. Still, the horror of the Shoah,
which like all horrors, took years to sink in, obviously demanded reflection in
all areas.]
These are
all subjects of great importance—they were the great themes of the second part
of the Council—on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this
context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a
single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a
discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions
between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made,
the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to
miss this fact at a first glance.
[This is a
fascinating if somewhat obscure passage. The “single problem” is surely the
relationship between the Church and the modern world. The Pope argues not only
that “some kind of discontinuity might emerge” in re-evaluating this
relationship, but that discontinuity had already arisen and “been revealed.” So
the work of the Council, in Benedict’s understanding, is to reveal the
continuity in apparent discontinuity. Rather than creating discontinuity, the
Council healed discontinuity by enunciating a broader continuity. And he admits
this project of continuity is susceptible to misconstrual “at first glance.”]
It is
precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different
levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of
innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than
before that the Church’s decisions on contingent matters—for example, certain
practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible—should
necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a
specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to
recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the
permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions
from within. On the other hand, not so permanent are the [N.B.] practical
forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to
change.
[“Decisions on
contingent matters . . . should necessarily be contingent themselves.” “It is
only the principles that express the permanent aspect.” Is Benedict embracing
John XXIII’s split of “substance” and “ways”?]
Basic
decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are
applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom
were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the
truth and thus become a canonization of relativism[isn’t this exactly how it
is conceived by large swaths of contemporary Westerners?], this social and
historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and
thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those
who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God
and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this
knowledge.
It is quite
different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that
derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the
truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only
through the process of conviction.
[There are two
points here in defense of religious freedom: 1) the reality that men of
different religions coexist, and 2) by its nature faith cannot be imposed but
personally adopted. The first point relies on the implied premise that there
should be no wars of religion, a premise not self-evident in the history of the
Church and so, I would argue, needing further explanation. The second, however,
is unassailable. Even God does not impose Himself upon man: faith, and
salvation, always demand man’s assent. Now, the question might be raised: did
any Catholic every deny this?]
The Second
Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the
modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has
recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious
of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22:21), as
well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church
naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm
2:2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and
thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.
[Is the modern
State’s principle of religious freedom really founded on the truth that faith
requires personal assent and cannot be imposed? Or is it founded, at least in
the popular imagination, on the principle that men should not go to war over
religion? Of course, the “Wars of Religion” were about religion in name only,
but the myth that they were about Catholic and Protestants killing each other
over doctrine was exploited as propaganda at the time and persists in the
popular imagination. Modern States were founded on State religions—in
opposition to Catholicism and the universal jurisdiction of the papacy that
ensured a dynamic of allegiances. Against the medieval world with its
allegiances to family, parish, lord, bishop, king, and pope, the modern State
reduced allegiances to one: the State itself.]
The martyrs
of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus
Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and
the freedom to profess one’s own faith—a profession that no State can impose
but which, instead, can only be claimed with God’s grace in freedom of
conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all
peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to
transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all.
At the same
time, she assures peoples and their Governments that she does not wish to
destroy their identity and culture by doing so, but to give them, on the
contrary, a response which, in their innermost depths, they are waiting for—a
response with which the multiplicity of cultures is not lost but instead unity
between men and women increases and thus also peace between peoples.
The Second
Vatican Council, with its new definition of the relationship between the faith
of the Church and certain essential elements of modern thought, has reviewed or
even corrected certain historical decisions, but in this apparent discontinuity
it has actually preserved and deepened her inmost nature and true identity.
The Church,
both before and after the Council, was and is the same Church, one, holy,
catholic and apostolic, journeying on through time; she continues “her
pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God,”
proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 8).
Those who
expected that with this fundamental “yes” to the modern era all tensions would
be dispelled and that the “openness towards the world” accordingly achieved
would transform everything into pure harmony, had underestimated the inner
tensions as well as the contradictions inherent in the modern epoch.
[A fundamental
“yes.” Where is the evangelical basis for “openness towards the world”? Where
does the Faith tell us to embrace the world? Did not St James rather say in his
Letter: “Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world
is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes
himself an enemy of God” (4:4).]
They had
underestimated the perilous frailty of human nature which has been a threat to
human progress in all the periods of history and in every historical
constellation. These dangers, with the new possibilities and new power of man
over matter and over himself, did not disappear but instead acquired new
dimensions: a look at the history of the present day shows this clearly.
In our time
too, the Church remains a “sign that will be opposed” (Lk 2:34)—not without
reason did Pope John Paul II, then still a Cardinal, give this title to the
theme for the Spiritual Exercises he preached in 1976 to Pope Paul VI and the
Roman Curia. The Council could not have intended to abolish the Gospel’s
opposition to human dangers and errors.
[Is not this
last line so obvious to anyone who has read the Gospels that the need the make
it rather casts doubt on the Council’s clarity of continuity with the Church?
While Gaudium et spes contains occasional warnings, its overall tone is quite optimistic and sympathetic to the world.]
On the
contrary, it was certainly the Council’s intention to overcome erroneous or
superfluous contradictions in order to present to our world the requirement of
the Gospel in its full greatness and purity.
[How is
speaking the Council’s “intention” different from speaking of its “spirit”?]
The steps
the Council took towards the modern era which had rather vaguely been presented
as “openness to the world,” belong in short to the perennial problem of the
relationship between faith and reason that is re-emerging in ever new forms.
The situation that the Council had to face can certainly be compared to events
of previous epochs.
[Benedict
acknowledges that the slogan “openness to the world” is vague. He places the
Council’s re-evaluation of the relationship between Church and the world in the
historical perspective of the relationship between faith and reason, and
proceeds to a brief historical survey:]
In his First
Letter, St Peter urged Christians always to be ready to give an answer
(apo-logia) to anyone who asked them for the logos, the reason for their faith
(cf. 3:15).
This meant
that biblical faith had to be discussed and come into contact with Greek
culture and learn to recognize through interpretation the separating line but
also the convergence and the affinity between them in the one reason, given by
God.
When, in the
13th century through the Jewish and Arab philosophers, Aristotelian thought
came into contact with Medieval Christianity formed in the Platonic tradition
and faith and reason risked entering an irreconcilable contradiction, it was
above all St Thomas Aquinas who mediated the new encounter between faith and
Aristotelian philosophy, thereby setting faith in a positive relationship with
the form of reason prevalent in his time. There is no doubt that the wearing
dispute between modern reason and the Christian faith, which had begun
negatively with the Galileo case, went through many phases, but with the Second
Vatican Council the time came when broad new thinking was required.[Again, why
“required”?]
Its content
was certainly only roughly traced in the conciliar texts, but this determined
its essential direction, so that the dialogue between reason and faith,
particularly important today, found its bearings on the basis of the Second
Vatican Council.
This
dialogue must now be developed with great openmindedness but also with that
clear discernment that the world rightly expects of us in this very moment.
Thus, today we can look with gratitude at the Second Vatican Council: if we
interpret and implement it guided by a right hermeneutic, it can be and can
become increasingly powerful for the ever necessary renewal of the Church.
[Benedict
argues for a balance between openmindedness and discernment. We might recall
St. Paul’s admonition to the Thessalonians: “Test everything; hold fast what is
good” (1 Thess 5:21).]
[CLOSING
REMARKS:]
Lastly,
should I perhaps recall once again that 19 April this year on which, to my
great surprise, the College of Cardinals elected me as the Successor of Pope
John Paul II, as a Successor of St Peter on the chair of the Bishop of Rome?
Such an office was far beyond anything I could ever have imagined as my
vocation. It was, therefore, only with a great act of trust in God that I was
able to say in obedience my “yes” to this choice. Now as then, I also ask you
all for your prayer, on whose power and support I rely.
[“Should I
perhaps recall”: what a winning combination of humor and humility!]
At the same
time, I would like to warmly thank all those who have welcomed me and still
welcome me with great trust, goodness and understanding, accompanying me day
after day with their prayers.
Christmas is
now at hand. The Lord God did not counter the threats of history with external
power, as we human beings would expect according to the prospects of our world.
His weapon is goodness. He revealed himself as a child, born in a stable. This
is precisely how he counters with his power, completely different from the
destructive powers of violence. In this very way he saves us. In this very way
he shows us what saves.
[This remark
recalls Benedict’s case for religious freedom. Christ did not wage war over the
Truth, nor did he force himself upon anyone. Rather, He to Whom all is subject
made himself a meek and mild child, powerless from womb to tomb. Powerless,
that is, from a worldly perspective. For the saving power of Christ, Pope
Benedict reminds us, is in his passio.]
In these
days of Christmas, let us go to meet him full of trust, like the shepherds,
like the Wise Men of the East. Let us ask Mary to lead us to the Lord. Let us
ask him himself to make his face shine upon us. Let us ask him also to defeat
the violence in the world and to make us experience the power of his goodness.
With these sentiments, I warmly impart to you all my Apostolic Blessing.
Peccator,
Sacramento, California, 7 March 2013, Thursday after the Third Sunday of Lent
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