April 20, 2005
Bishop of Rome Selected
Cardinals Select Ratzinger as New Pope
VATICAN CITY — Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, the Vatican's chief overseer of doctrine, assumed the name Benedict XVI Tuesday after he was elected pope of the Roman Catholic Church following one of the shortest conclaves in history.
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On Monday, Ratzinger, who was the powerful dean of the College of Cardinals, used his homily at the Mass dedicated to electing the next pope to warn the faithful about tendencies that he considered dangers to the faith: sects, ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and relativism — the ideology that there are no absolute truths."Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism," he said, speaking in Italian. "Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself, be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards."
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"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires," he said.
Being that I am a former Catholic, now Presbyterian, I have mixed feelings about this. I am greatly encouraged by his words of wisdom concerning relativism and guarding against this self-destructive worldview. Meaning it is a worldview that will cause an individual much strife in this world along with its inherent self-destruction as being logically impossible.
I am also reminded of all the pomp and circumstance that led to me despising Christianity altogether as hypocritical. The Vatican seems like it is an attempt to build God’s thrown room here on earth and the priests, cardinals and bishops all to seem to be a part of this court, elevating themselves above common man. It’s this elevation that I believe made me feel the most distance from God and Christ growing up.
As Rev. Larry Wanaselja said on the previous pope’s message, “he was adamant about the sanctity of life…and he understood the heart of discipleship which is dying to self.” It is not hard to understand there are many positive influences in the world that come from the Roman Catholic Church. It played a vital role in the birth of the Church and preserving the Scriptures as we now know them.
As Ratzinger is the first pope in nearly a thousand years that is from Germany, I felt it fitting to see some words of wisdom from another German theologian. Helmut Thielke tells a story of a young student attempting to understand, interact and learn more about God’s word. Taken from his book titled A little exercise for young theologians, chapter V – The Shock of Infatuation with Theological Concepts.
A young student has a question that he is eager to raise in the discussion period following the Bible study hour. Under the pressure of putting it into words, because of his excitement and embarrassment, his pulse beats high. But finally he takes this pounding heart of his into his hands, stands up, frames his question and lets himself speak out freely with a couple of critical objections.
Now you should see how the young theological "pro's" feel summoned to the lists. With lances lowered and at a rattling gallop, with their lips painfully locked, hardly repressing a howl of triumph, they pounce upon him. Then the technical terms fly around the uninitiated ears of the unhappy layman. Then rattle upon him words like "synoptic tradition", "hermeneutical principle", "realized eschatology", "prophetic foreshortening of the time perspective", "here and now", "ever and ever", "legitimate and illegitimate", "presupposition" and "toward what end", so that he hastily runs for cover, with one hand held up to protect his face the other raising the white flag.
And so they easily suppose that this truce, owing to helplessness, is victory and that they have convinced the other man. But in fact, instead of winning him over, they have merely applied a kind of shock therapy - only it was never "therapy". They have smothered the first little flame of a man's own spiritual life and a first shy question with the fire extinguisher of their erudition. By such performances a person can really be smothered and strangled!
The student was in bitter earnest. Whoever is in earnest instinctively reacts with unusual sensitivity. And this instinct makes him say quite rightly: "Although my fate and my life were at stake, those others came at me with their routine. I found in them no trace of life or truths learned by experience. I smelled only corpses of lifeless ideas. I would rather go back to the less rigid young heathen. Granted that they haven't much to say to me, and that that little is probably wrong, at least it is genuine. I was looking for a Christian in whom I could detect a flame. I found only burnt-out slag. Maybe there was a glow underneath, but I am just so unused to it that I wouldn't see such hidden fire."
Here we see that a lack of humility, understanding and love can push someone away from learning about the only true faith that saves eternally. This is something that I can identify with as I recall being driven away by the lifeless corpses I saw growing up in the Catholic Church. It is also a reminder to me in my now Protestant Church, not to be discouraged as the flame continues to grow in my heart and to be especially sensitive to the lives at stake around me.
How will the Church bring the Gospel message of hope, faith and love into this "dictatorship of relativism"?
Posted by price at April 20, 2005 02:27 PM
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