O que esperar de Bento XVI

Leitura recomendada: Gentle man who will rule Church by the book, por John Haldane.

Ratzinger holds firmly to the Roman understanding, but whereas in earlier generations it seemed that this was most frequently challenged by other Christians, he believes that the deepest enemy of truth originates outside Christianity, in secular thinking, and that this corruption of reason is seeping everywhere, including within the churches and even within the Church of Rome.

The corruption in question is relativism: the idea that truth is manufactured rather than discovered, made by humans to remove the discomfort that genuine truth can sometimes bring. When challenged with the idea that one may be a sinner and that one’s sins may lead one to eternal loss of self and of God, it is more comfortable to deny that there is sin than to repent and reform. ###

For nearly a quarter of a century Joseph Ratzinger served as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican body charged with the maintenance of religious truth through teaching.

That experience strengthened his conviction that some had exploited the spirit of Vatican II not to deepen an understanding and love of truth but to modify and dilute it so as to conform to the preferences of those who were not only in the world but of it. Much has been said about the pain of those who came under his inspection but he saw many grown proud, and celebrated, in their dissent.

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In somewhat similar vein he will continue the challenge to those employed in Catholic institutions to teach in accord with the faith and morals of the Church. This is sometimes depicted as a desire to impose personal views but that is the opposite of the truth: he will demand loyalty to the teachings of the Church from those who would use the cover of its institutions to pursue their own opinions. Again I expect to see action on this front with consequent outrage, particularly in North America.

There has been much talk of the decline in vocations in the West and some have argued that this means accommodating the requirements for the priesthood to the lifestyles of secular society and not looking too hard at how things are going. The Pope’s view is that the priesthood is a calling from God and a gift to Him and its standards and discipline must be of the very highest. Better to have few good priests than many indifferent or even bad ones. There will shortly be a series of visitations to American seminaries. Unlike previous such exercises these will not be old boy get-togethers but demanding inspections and few doubt that several will fail the test. In particular sexual indulgence will not be tolerated, be it hetero or homosexual.

Then there is the matter of religious practice. Joseph Ratzinger is an ascetic and pious priest who prays intensely and conducts Mass with devotion. Much of what now goes on in churches offends both his aesthetic and religious sensibility and I believe he is likely to make this an area of reform.