First, from Hans Kueng – scroll down a bit

The man’s ego is evident and unintentionally humorous. He has an impressive sense of his own importance and the attention that must be paid to his opinions. So with that in mind –

Benedict must choose between an eventual retreat to the pre-modern, pre-Reformation world of the Middle Ages, or a forward-looking long view which will take the Church into the post-modern universe that the rest of the world entered for quite some time.

The Pope may decide on retreat, but I don’t believe he will. He may decide to stand firm right where the Church is now, but to be limited merely to celebrating the Papacy instead of helping the Church in its present needs would be tantamount to taking a step backwards.

Or he may decide to go forward – and this is what I and countless other persons within and outside the Catholic Church wish that he would do. The Pope knows that the situation of the Church is serious. John Paul II failed to convert many persons to his rigorous viewpoints, especially in matters of sexual morality, despite all his speeches and his travels. Such viewpoints have been rejected by a crushing majority of Catholics and national parliaments, even in his native Poland. All his encyclicals and his catechism, his decrees and his disciplinary sacntions, all the pressures from the Vatican, plain or hidden, on those who opposed him, resulted in practically nothing.

Maybe Benedict perceives that the campaign to re-evangelize Europe revived fears of spiritual imperialism from Rome and contributed to the rejection of even a mention of God and Christianity in the preamble to the European Constitution. The oceanic Masses by the previous Pope, though they were very well-organized and effective as media events, failed to hide the fact that things are not going well for the Church.

And…Charles Curran! All your favorites!

Yet I have been pleasantly surprised by the first year of Pope Benedict’s papacy. He has recognised his role as a centre of unity and has not seen the Church primarily as a small remnant in opposition to the world. Church pundits have often pointed out that the most important document from a new pope is the first encyclical. On 25 January, Benedict released his first encyclical: Deus Caritas Est. My fears were that the first encyclical would be on truth: we the Church have the truth and we must struggle against the relativism and subjectivism in the world around us. Many of Cardinal Ratzinger’s earlier statements and homilies before his election took this approach. But the first encyclical is a reflection on what Pope Benedict calls “the heart of the Christian faith” – love. He is speaking here as the centre of unity in the Church, confirming his sisters and brothers in their faith in the power of love. There is nothing divisive about this encyclical.