And assorted notes.
From the Corner:
Popes Must Speak Out for Peace [Michael Novak]
That is what popes are intended to do — they are to represent Christ, the Prince of Peace, in a world that is and has always been a maelstrom of passions, conflict, and wars. Popes have sometimes been warlike, but that ill becomes their office, and nearly always causes lasting repugnance.
That is why in 2003 many Americans who believed that the war in Iraq was justified, also believed that it was very good for Pope John Paul II to oppose the war. The pope should not be, and should not even be allowed to seem to be, a proponent of war, especially of a war with so many complex religious tendrils, and with so many centuries of conflicted history. It was right and just for Pope John Paul II to oppose the war.
The role and munus (office, burden, duty) of the presidents of nations are different. Presidents must make a probable judgment about the long-run implications both of inaction and action, and about what in the long run will have been the most creative path for them to have taken. These are excruciating judgments, for they usually involve long-run costs, discouragements, and difficulties. Many of us of a certain age remember the long sacrifices and costs of World War II.
This background is important to grasp, since Pope Benedict XVI will almost certainly judge that he is duty-bound to call for the violence in Iraq to cease. The edge of his words will be felt more sharply here, where he delivers them, than among Al Sadr and his Shia militias, who are now causing so much of the violence in three cities in Iraq. The Shiites militias very much want the Americans will stop fighting, and to depart.
The pope may also continue saying, as he has often in the last year, that the religious freedom and dignity of every person in Iraq must be protected, and minority populations (in this case, one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world) must be especially respected. He may repeat his deep conviction that violence is contrary to the nature of God.
Benedict XVI may also wish the future of democracy and the rule of law in Iraq to flower fully, and to be long-lasting. He may express the hope that these will bear good fruit for justice and human dignity throughout the Middle East, and all around the world.
The pope is not primarily a political player, and yet the cultural and moral power of his words and actions may this week well have long political consequences. On the record, we are entitled to have confidence in Benedict’s bravery, balance of mind, and concern to do his duty.
Fr. Neuhaus in yesterday’s WaPo:
edict is not a showman, as many – intending praise or blame – said his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was. Benedict is a priest and professor who finds himself in the unexpected position of being pastor of a universal church of 1.2 billion people. This visit to America is a pastoral visit, and he will do what good pastors do: teach, encourage, and gently correct where necessary. The best way to understand Benedict is to listen carefully to what he says.
Many who claim to be perplexed by Benedict wonder how the harsh doctrinal “enforcer” under John Paul II can reinvent himself as the benign father of the family of the faithful. (The word “pope” has its origins in “papa.”) No reinvention is necessary. Those of us who have known him for many years, recognize in Benedict the invariably gentle manner of the learned and intellectually curious Joseph Ratzinger. If there is a surprise in these first three years, it is that Ratzinger, who very much wanted to retire to his scholarly pursuits, seems to enjoy being pope.
Key to understanding the man is that he is much more of an Augustinian than a Thomist. Of all the great doctors (i.e. teachers) of the Catholic intellectual tradition, the fifth century St. Augustine and the thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas are the great lights by which most schools of thought are defined. To be sure, there are Augustinian Thomists and Thomist Augustinians, and the distinctions often have more to do with sensibility than substance. Put all too roughly, Thomists are devoted to a systematic presentation of unchanging principles of reason, while Augustinians are given to a discursive account of the complexities of mind and heart in pursuit of the right ordering of love to the truth, and ultimately to absolute truth, who is God.
Perhaps the best known words of Augustine are these: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Benedict’s first encyclical (teaching letter) is titled Deus Caritas Est – God is Love – in which Thomas gets one footnote to dozens from Augustine. Benedict recently said at the funeral of a friend, “Christianity is not an intellectual system, a collection of dogmas, or a moral system. Christianity is an encounter, a love story, an event.”
In Benedict’s telling, it is in the first place the story of God’s unqualified love for and commitment to the human project. He speaks frequently of Jesus Christ as “the human face of God.” While the Church says “no” to this and “no” to that, every “no” is in the service of a much greater “yes.” Against a sometimes dry intellectualism or restrictive moralism, Benedict presents the way of Christ as a high adventure of mind and heart toward the transcendental realities of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In sum, Christianity is an invitation to say “yes” to God’s “yes” in Jesus Christ.
This Augustinian pope has a very high estimate of human reason, and in his United Nations address this week I expect he will address the rational grounds for commitment to human rights and the dignity of the human person. Reason was also the centerpiece of his “controversial” lecture at Regensburg University in September, 2006, where he challenged Muslims to recognize that the use of violence in advancing religion is “to act against reason and therefore to act against the nature of God.”
A constant theme of Benedict’s is that, when rightly understood, there is no conflict between religion and science, faith and reason, heart and mind. Theories to the contrary, he contends, are both unreasonable and de-humanizing because they fail to offer an adequate account of the limits, possibilities, and complexities of the human experience. His message is one of prophetic humanism.
This week Benedict will be addressing many issues, both those internal to the Church and those related to the culture and the world. To understand Benedict, listen to what he says, and listen most closely to what he says about what it means to be a human being fully alive. ++++++++++
Father Richard John Neuhaus is editor in chief of First Things, the monthly magazine of religion, culture, and public life.
And, from Newsweek, two opposing stories:
George Weigel
And this.
