Alternative to the corrupt modern culture

The Church as refuge from the world
The new Pope, Ratzinger the Doctrinaire, wants to present an alternative to the corrupt modern culture

Peter McKnight
Vancouver Sun

April 23, 2005

We might have to part with the notion of a popular Church. It is possible that we are on the verge of a new era ... when Christianity will continue only in the form of small and seemingly insignificant groups ... Christianity might diminish into a barely discernible presence.

That statement could have been written by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's detractors, who fear that in elevating Ratzinger to the papacy the Church has sounded its death knell.

According to his critics, and there are many, Ratzinger the Doctrinaire is the last thing the Church needs right now, as it gradually bleeds parishioners to other faiths, or to no faith at all, at least in the West.

The Church's diminishing relevance in Europe and North America, the critics charge, is a function of its failure to embrace modern values, its refusal to face today and look to tomorrow. And by handing the papacy to the Grand Inquisitor, the Church has decided once again to look to yesterday, to turn its back on the people, and consequently, to ensure its own demise.

So the critics could well have written the epigraph to this column. But they didn't. Indeed, those words, predicting but not necessarily lamenting the vanishing of (Roman Catholic) Christianity, were written by Ratzinger himself.

However, for Ratzinger, the Church isn't to blame for its impending demise; that sentiment has things the wrong way around. The Church might be facing an eclipse, Ratzinger says, but it's because the people "do not want to bear the yoke of Christ."

Ratzinger's words reflect his conviction that the Church is not an ephemeral creation of man, but is a product of God, and is, therefore, otherworldly and timeless.

For that reason, Church authorities can't simply bend to the caprices of modernity, but must remain steadfast in protecting and promoting the revealed, eternal truth. The failure to embrace modern values might lose the Church some adherents, but modern values are momentary whims, not the eternal truth, the wisdom of the ages.

This is a wholly uncontroversial position in Catholicism. But that's not to say there's no debate within Catholic theology about the Church's position in the modern world. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), which sought to renew Catholicism, laid bare the fault line dividing those who believe the Church should open itself to the world, and those who desire a return to tradition and scripture.

Ratzinger, who served as a peritus (theological expert) at Vatican II, is solidly in the latter camp. As Aidan Nichols explains in The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger, and John Allen documents in Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith, Ratzinger's thought is profoundly influenced by St. Augustine, the fourth-century theologian and cleric who preached a kind of Christian Platonism, with his emphasis on "otherworldliness," on the idea that true reality is not to be found in this world, but in the mind of God.

In addition to Augustinian otherworldliness, Ratzinger's own experiences led him to become deeply suspicious of overtures to make the Church more attractive to the world. Growing up in the nightmare of Nazi Germany, Ratzinger noticed that Catholics were sustained by their faith precisely because it was separate from the world, because it didn't adopt the values of the culture or the state.

The Nazis -- and, indeed, modern Europe, about which Ratzinger has little good to say -- also confirmed to Ratzinger that Augustine was right in his pessimism about human nature. For Augustine, fallen man was inherently weak, easily subject to temptation and error.

Ratzinger's distrust of the world is therefore complemented by his distrust of human nature, and he has gone so far as to ponder, during an interview with German journalist Peter Seewald, whether free will has led man "to become dangerous rather than lovable."

Ratzinger is consequently loath to open up the Church to a world he sees as corrupt, to consider the values of a culture that has fallen into error. As such, the separation of the church from the world isn't a problem to be solved, but is a solution in itself -- an alternative to the corrupt modern culture.

Many Catholics warm to this notion of the Church as a refuge from the modern world. But those on the other side of the fault line -- those who prefer Thomas Aquinas's sunnier view of human nature over Augustine's pessimism -- see God's grace at work in the modern world, and are therefore open to having the Church learn from the world. This, certainly, was the position held by Pope John XXIII, the man who instituted Vatican II.

None of this is to suggest that the Thomists are prepared to adopt modern values pell-mell, to wash 2,000 years of theology down the drain. Rather, it is to say they believe that the modern world is not to be feared, that modern life can contribute to a deepened understanding of their faith.

The Thomists had considerable influence over Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope), the official document of Vatican II. But Ratzinger, who wishes to return the Church to an emphasis on sin and redemption, has described the treatise as too Thomist, too optimistic about the human condition.

As the epigraph to this column affirms, Ratzinger is well aware that his theology -- or as he would have it, the Church's theology -- might well result in Christianity becoming "a barely discernible presence." That is the price one pays for steadfastly adhering to the Word rather than the world, and it's a price Ratzinger is evidently willing to pay.

Certainly, the Church might be able to better sustain itself by building a bridge to the modern world; for Ratzinger, it is a bridge too far.

Vancouver Sun