In his article for the Times of Malta, "Benedict XVI and the 1960s: An ill-judged essay placed blame in all the wrong places," published today, Martin Scicluna touches, albeit more forcefully, on several of the themes I took up in my post. Like most public opiners, I am gratified when my expressed views are validated.
Ratzinger's letter (I am retiring my use of "Pope Emeritus," a more untenable title could not be invented - it is the nature of the papacy to have one Pope at a time) deserves to be called out for several reasons, not least among which is that, as Scicluna observes: "inside the Vatican itself the more emotionally intelligent approach adopted by Pope Francis is resented, and being resisted, by conservative clerics and laity."
The long and short of it is that, when it comes to the events of 1968, which Ratzinger personally found and still finds so traumatic, events that prompted him to resign from Tübingen in order to go to a relative backwater - Regensburg - he is simply not a reliable or particularly insightful commentator. Rather, as his letter amply demonstrates, he remains a reactionary vis-à-vis events that happened more than 50 years ago. Solutions and reforms rooted in such reactions can only prove disastrous, as recent history shows.
The events of 1968 and their aftermath did not, as Scicluna points out, alter the landscape in quite the dramatic way Ratzinger insists it did. For example, "Sexual standards have indeed changed, sometimes in ways one might shudder at, but the thoughtless, anything-goes culture is far from universal. Faithful intimacy was – and still is – regarded as a treasure by the vast majority." At least in my personal and pastoral experience, sometimes this treasure is cherished more by non-religious people than by religious ones. But then Christianity is a religion for screw-ups or it is nothing.
How can anyone fail to see in Humanae vitae's "unitive" dimension of marital sexuality a trace of the sexual revolution? (see sec. 12). And is that not, indeed, a good thing? We need to learn, as Gaudium et spes bids us do, to read the signs of the times (sec. 4). Inherent in this reading is the realization we can't go back to the future.
Insisting that we can't move backward on time's linear continuum does not mean forsaking or eschewing history. At least for those who bother to study it, as opposed to mining it in order to construct an overly simplified ideological narrative, even Church history is rather complex and multi-faceted. Referring to those he insisted were "not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure," Pope St. John XXIII, himself a historian, in his speech opening the Second Vatican Council, noted that such people say our times, "in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, nonetheless, the teacher of life."
Historically-speaking, Church reform, at least what Yves Congar would call "true reform," moves the Church forward, not backward. To take just one example of true ecclesial reform, look at the revolutionary nature of the rise of the mendicant orders (i.e., Franciscans and Dominicans) in the thirteenth century. Now, some would say we need a reform "like" that now. Whether or not I agree with that assertion depends entirely on that to which "like" refers.
Given the reality of Ecclesia semper reformanda, the Church always stands in need of being reformed until she realizes the full stature of Christ. So, if the insistence that we need a reform "like" the one wrought by the mendicants refers to this, then count me in. If you mean the mendicant-led reform needs to happen again, then you're dreaming. Don't exaggerate my answer. I grasp that true and lasting reform is brought about by Christians who give themselves wholly to Christ by living out his teachings. But this will look different in every era. Another pitfall, given the statist and corporatist nature of advanced Western society in our day, is being content to only seek institutional reforms. While our present moment certainly requires some institutional reforms, accountability of bishops being at the top of the list, settling only for these reforms comes at the expense of the kind of conversion called for by the Second Vatican Council.
Looking at the Protestant side of Church history, I have been re-reading Leslie Chamberlain's Nietzsche in Turin. While Chamberlain is noticeably more hostile to Christianity than was Nietzsche (as well as more ignorant of it), she insists, quite rightly I think, that German idealism and the intricate speculative metaphysical systems it spawned (think Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Leibniz, etc.), which Nietzsche so despised, are the product of the Reformation. On her view, for Nietzsche this made the Christian religion primarily a matter of the head and led in turn into a denial of life instead of an affirmation of it.
In perhaps not such an intuitive way, this is a result of Luther's insistence that theology should avoid contact with philosophy. It would've been useful for Chamberlain to contrast the bass line that Nietzsche's philosophy amounts to a rejection of the Reformation, which gives rhythm to the first third of her book, with her insistence that it is absurd to take seriously that the Shroud of Turin might be the burial cloth of Jesus in light of Nietzsche's philosophy (see "The Shroud of Turin: Short Take"). Relevant to my purposes, it is important to consider how these disembodied, idealistic (in the philosophical sense) metaphysical systems, among Catholics most particularly neo-Thomism, led to the kind of bizarre and inhumane sexual ethics to which Ratzinger wants to return (see "Humanae vitae at 50").
While the past must and inevitably does shape the future to some extent, the future does not now nor has it ever lain in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment