When St. Pope John Paul II died in 2005, I was interviewed on the BBC in Rome moments before the Conclave that would elect Joseph Ratzinger his successor. When the veteran BBC reporter Brian Hanrahan asked me how I could possibly believe that Ratzinger would be elected pope after he just delivered his notable "Dictatorship of Relativism" speech insisting on objective moral truths against the dangers of the subjectivism of passing fads. Wasn’t this too extreme? I replied that it really wasn’t so shocking to think that the Cardinal-electors might actually choose a Catholic pope.
Despite the coverage of Pope Benedict’s passing painting him as "God’s Rottweiler," an "iron fist in a white glove," and a ‘far right’ representative of an antiquated and extreme form of Catholicism, I see Ratzinger as a liberal – in the truest and deepest meaning of the word.
Admittedly, it is difficult to sum up a life that spanned some of the most significant events of the Catholic world in the last 600 hundred years; and it is sad to think that he will be remembered mostly as the only pope in that timeframe to resign the pontificate.
POPE EMERITUS BENEDICT XVI DEAD AT 95, VATICAN SAYS
Yet, even Benedict’s detractors will concede (even if only begrudgingly) that his was one of the great minds of our era, possessing a unique ability to articulate, as the phrase goes, simplicity on the other side of complexity – no mean feat for a German theologian.
Yet, given his role as John Paul’s doctrinal chief, he was seen as someone who was willing to use forceful methods to impose the truth. In revoking certain theologians’ mandates to teach at Catholic universities he was portrayed as the very caricature of the Inquisitor.
Yet, his actions were nor more illiberal or coercive than a Tesla salesman being fired for hawking a Lexus over a Tesla. It just makes things more honest and above board.
As theologian and later as pope, Benedict showed no affinity for the notion of the temporal power and was suspect of Church-State proximity, especially in his German homeland, which he saw weakened in its evangelical witness due to political entanglements.
A survey of his writings will show that he believed the Church’s most potent role as a cultural force whose truth-claims wield influence over hearts and minds. Much like the Second Vatican Council he attended he preferred the Church to propose and convince rather than coerce and impose its teaching on the human heart.
Following that Council, another form of liberalism would emerge within Catholicism that contrasted with an older view represented by figures like Antonio Rosmini, Cardinal John Henry Newman, Lord Acton and their generation of Catholic liberalism. Without dissenting from the core of Catholicism, they offered a complement to the old political liberalism which embraced freedom and truth, and saw freedom as the best means to seek and advance truth.
The new liberalism, in contrast, wanted to argue not about religious liberty but the liberty from moral constraint. It embraced not democracy, but democratic relativism that resented any truth claim which has brought us to the woke generation, calling into question the ability of the human mind to assert the truth of anything.
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The writings of Benedict on matters of politics and theology burn with a passion for a right understanding of liberty, anchored in the Christian tradition reaching back to Jesus' startling declaration that God and Ceasar cannot be conflated.
Christianity is not and must not become a politicized faith; it may inform politics, but ultimately it transcends politics. It does not find its fulfillment in the power of kings, presidents, central plans, or sweeping revolutions for control by new regimes.
Benedict’s writings on the inviolability of conscience are at least as passionate and politically unyielding as anything written by the Lord Acton whose warning about the corruptive tendency of power applies as much to popes as it does to politicians.
Given the vast intellectual corpus Benedict leaves in his subtle wake, time is required to sort out what his legacy will be.
He has left the Church and the world a lot of thinking to do.
