But which truth?
Wednesday, 13th December 2006

Dear friends,

Sandro Magister

Sandro Magister's blog this week makes for interesting reading — more particularly for me in view of what I was endeavouring to express in my own commentary yesterday. In short Magister's piece is summarised by these words:

Benedict XVI doesn't seek applause, he doesn't harangue the crowds, but he's still extremely popular. He himself has explained his secret: it is "obedience to the truth, not to the dictatorship of popular opinion".

But let me give that a little more substance by quoting the last three paragraphs...

[Pope Benedict] explained the reason for his speaking "in season and out of season" last October 6, in a homily to the thirty scholars of the international theological commission:

"In this context, a beautiful phrase from the First Letter of St Peter springs to my mind. It is from verse 22 of the first chapter. The Latin goes like this: 'Castificantes animas nostras in oboedentia veritatis'. Obedience to the truth must 'purify' our souls and thus guide us to upright speech and upright action. In other words, speaking in the hope of being applauded, governed by what people want to hear out of obedience to the dictatorship of current opinion, is considered to be a sort of prostitution: of words and of the soul. The 'purity' to which the Apostle Peter is referring means not submitting to these standards, not seeking applause, but rather, seeking obedience to the truth. And I think that this is the fundamental virtue for the theologian, this discipline of obedience to the truth, which makes us, although it may be hard, collaborators of the truth, mouthpieces of truth, for it is not we who speak in today's river of words, but it is the truth which speaks in us, who are really purified and made chaste by obedience to the truth. So it is that we can truly be harbingers of the truth."

That's just how Benedict XVI is. He feels himself to be so closely girded with this armor of "purity" that he fears no contamination. He scandalized some when he received in private audience at Castel Gandolfo the combative Oriana Fallaci. But one year later he wanted to meet also with Henry Kissinger, the most realistic of the followers if Realpolitik. The prince of the anti-Roman theologians, Hans Küng, has been another of his surprise guests. Benedict XVI simply isn't the type to be frightened by a dispute, a satire, or a fatwa.

In all honesty I have to say I am not swept off my feet by the ideas expressed in the above by Sandro Magister — or Pope Benedict. I also see no evidence yet that Pope Benedict is "firing the imagination" of the masses in civilisation and redressing the catastrophic slide of Christianity into a state of irrelevance or remnant status. As I argued yesterday the issue is not "truth" when "truth" is understood solely as the big picture laws or rules. My observation of what humanity is crying out for is for a spiritual leader, or leaders, who can show us how to navigate through all the "big picture laws or rules" to arrive at the particular moral truth in the myriad of particular decisions we have to make moment-to-moment in our lives if we are to arrive at what might be called "the ultimate truth" of each of our particular lives.

Where Benedict is correct is that that process is NOT one of allowing our lives to be governed by popular opinion, the applause of the masses, or the dictates of our own feelings and egos. Where I believe Benedict is misguided is if he believes that is the chief challenge facing civilisation — or the faithful who have deserted the Catholic Church in their hundreds of millions. I do not believe that, in the main, they have been seduced by some "dictatorship of relativism". Some have. The vast, vast majority I speak to though are truthfully searching as to how they apply the "absolute truths" — things like the Ten Cammandments — to the nitty-gritty of their lives to arrive at the particular moral truths in the everyday actions they have to take if they are to achieve personal happiness and that ultimate "peace that surpasses all human understanding" promised by Jesus Christ. Learning to recite the Ten Commandments does not get anyone to heaven. Learning how to apply them in one's life might!

This constant, constant pandering to the emotionally insecure, the fundamentalists, and the political conservatives in the Church will not re-evangelise the 85% who have left!

Have a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life, and in our world.

A commentary on wealth and freedom... Peregrinus was struck by Andrew's piece on "affluenza" on Sunday — the endless pursuit of possessions, driven by the conviction that possessing things is the key to a better life. It led to this response. [more]

On Sandro Magister's portrait of Pope Benedict... Ruth's been endeavouring to digest what Sandro Magister and Brian Coyne might be at odds about in this morning email commentary? [more]

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher
Catholica Australia