As you know, last week saw a large gathering of representatives of the Italian Church in Verona. Pope Benedict gave a lengthy speech on Thursday morning, and celebrated Mass and preached later in the day.
He begins by speaking of the Resurrection, explaining its centrality to the Christian faith, not just as an idea or a truth, but as a reality – a reality that continues to be lived in and through the Church:
His Resurrection, therefore, has been like an explosion of light, an explosion of love that melts the chains of sin and death. It inaugurated a new dimension of life and reality, from which the new world comes forth, that continuously penetrates our world, transforming it and drawing it to himself.
All of this concretely happens through the life and witness of the Church; rather, the Church herself constitutes the first fruits of this transformation, which is God’s work and not ours. It comes to us through faith and the Sacrament of Baptism, which is really death and resurrection, rebirth, transformation to a new life. It is what St Paul reveals in the Letter to the Galatians: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (2: 20). Hence, the essential identity of my life is changed through Baptism, and I continue to exist only in this changed state.
My own self is taken away and I am filled with a new and greater subject, in which my "I" is still there but transformed, purified, "open" through the insertion into the Other, who acquires new space in my existence. Thus, we become "one in Christ" (Gal 3: 28), a unique new subject, and our "I" is freed from its isolation.
"I, but no longer I": this is the formula of Christian existence established in Baptism, the formula of the resurrection in time, the formula of the Christian "novelty" called to transform the world.
Pause for a moment and consider this. Compare it to the way in which we are accustomed to think about church and religion. Don’t read it too fast, assuming you get it because the language is familiar and you know the lingo. Right off the bat, the Pope is challenging his listeners to look at Church in a new way – well, obviously not a new way – the ancient way – but a way that has been buried.
For in our own context, what is "church?" It is something we do. We gather, we choose this particular community, we come together to follow Jesus, and that gathering is church.
But, of course, that is not what the New Testament says Church is, and here, Benedict reminds us.
He then immediately turns to the present situation, particularly in Italy and Europe, but it applies to the entire developed world as well:
It is profoundly needy because it participates in the culture that predominates in the West and seeks to present itself as universal and self-sufficient, generating a new custom of life. From this a new wave of illuminism and laicism is derived, by which only what is experiential and calculable would be rationally valid, while on the level of praxis, individual freedom is held as a fundamental value to which all others must be subject.
Therefore, God remains excluded from culture and from public life, and faith in him becomes more difficult, also because we live in a world that almost always appears to be of our making, in which, so to speak, God no longer appears directly but seems to have become superfluous, even out of place.
In strict relationship with all of this, a radical reduction of man has taken place, considered a simple product of nature and as such not really free, and in himself susceptible to be treated like any other animal. Thus, an authentic overturning of the point of departure of this culture has come about, which started as a claim of the centrality of man and his freedom.
Along the same lines, ethics is brought within the confines of relativism and utilitarianism with the exclusion of every moral principle that is valid and in itself binding.
It is not difficult to see how this type of culture represents a radical and profound break not only with Christianity but more in general with the religious and moral traditions of humanity. It is therefore not able to establish a true dialogue with other cultures, in which the religious dimension is strongly present, besides not being able to respond to the fundamental questions on the sense and direction of our life.
Take a look at that last sentence. In all of the Regensburg Mess, the press attention was heaped upon what Benedict critiqued in Islam, and considerably less to his real subject, which was a critique of the West. It re-emerges here, doesn’t it? How can a relativist, utiliatarian West which has driven the transcendent out of reality dialogue with cultures in which an awareness of the transcendent still glimmers or even remains as a foundation?
He praises the life of the Italian Church, saying that there is great work going on, and potential for much more:
The Church and Catholic Italians are called, therefore, to welcome this great opportunity, and above all to be aware of it. Consequently, our attitude must never be renunciatory or closed in on ourselves. Instead, we must keep alive, and if possible increase, our dynamism, trustingly open to new relationships, without wasting any energy that can contribute to the cultural and moral growth of Italy.
Interesting, eh? Basically…internal church squabbles, infighting, and an overwhelming interest in internal church matters drains us of energy that should be used to evangelize. Sound familiar?
So what does it mean, practically speaking, to say "yes" to Christ? To be this Church in the world? First of all, it means understanding that Christ meets human beings in all cultures, and there is good in all cultures:
So, the disciples of Christ recognize and gladly welcome the authentic values of the culture of our time, such as scientific knowledge and technological advancement, human rights, religious freedom, democracy. They do not overlook or undervalue, however, that dangerous fragility of human nature which is a threat for man’s advancement in every historical context; in particular, they do not neglect the interior tensions and contradictions of our age.
Therefore, the work of evangelization is never a simple adaptation to culture, but it is always also a purification, a courageous break that leads to maturation and healing, an openness that brings to birth that "new creation" (II Cor 5: 17: Gal 6: 15) which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Further on, Benedict gives another road map for evangelization, simple, yet sure:
We must do it full time, on the level of thought and action, of personal behaviour and public witness. The strong unity that was present in the Church of the first centuries between a faith that befriends intelligence and a life praxis characterized by reciprocal love and caring attention to the poor and suffering, made the great missionary expansion of Christianity in the Hellenistic-Roman world possible. So it also happened later, in the different cultural contexts and historical situations.
This continues to be the high road for evangelization. May the Lord guide us to live this unity between truth and love in the conditions proper to our time, for the evangelization of Italy and of the world today. And so I come to an important and fundamental point: education.
And what of education?
A true education must awaken the courage to make definitive decisions, which today are considered a mortifying bind to our freedom. In reality, they are indispensable for growth and in order to achieve something great in life, in particular, to cause love to mature in all its beauty: therefore, to give consistency and meaning to freedom itself.
If I were going to write a paper of some sort on Benedict’s thought (which would be mostly beyond my capability), I think I would choose this theme of making a definitive decision – it’s something he turns to frequently – he really hammered it a World Youth Day in Cologne, as I recall, and it pops up with great regularity. It’s sort of a backhanded way of addressing the relativism question, and a way that takes it on, not so much an intellectual level, but on an emotional and spiritual level. What holds us back from saying "Yes" to Christ without fear or qualification?
He moves on to speak of charity and political life, restating much of what he said in Deus Caritas Est. Finally:
Dear brothers and sisters, together we raise our humble but confident prayer to the Lord, that the Italian Catholic community, inserted in vital communion with the Church of every place and time and closely united to its own Bishops, may bring with renewed impetus to this beloved Nation, and to every corner of the earth, the joyful witness of the Risen Jesus, hope of Italy and of the world.
Naturally, there was much discussion of this in the Italian press, much of it focusing on the topic of the Church and political life. You can take a look at much of the analysis here, at the Papa Ratzinger Forum.
What Magister focuses on, as he did in the run-up to Verona is the contrast between the program of Benedict (and Cardinal Ruini, president of the Italian bishops’ conference) and the program of Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan. Tettamanzi’s speech at the beginning of the gathering emphasized his preferred mode of a more quiet, accomodating presence of Christians within society. Magister gives us practical examples of what this means, in terms of the Lenten celebrations at the duomo (cathedral) in Milan:
During Lent, for meditation on the “last words of Christ on the cross,” the readings in the Duomo were not from the four Gospels, but selections from the writings of Oscar Wilde, Marguerite Yourcenar, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Jack Kerouac, with an audience that had its back turned to the altar, watching videos projected on the back front of the church, with a musical stage beneath it.
At Pentecost, there were recitations from the works of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, with the debut of a musical composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen and a video display by the Japanese abstract artist Tatsuo Miyajima.
Finally, in the crypt beneath the main altar, beside the relics of saint Charles Borromeo, who together with saint Ambrose is a patron of Milan, a cubbyhole was set up with the title “Via dolorosa,” within which, in darkness, one could watch an 18-minute video of images with no sound and almost entirely in black. The stated aim: “to bring the visitor into a cloud of unknowing, in which he finally faces the free decision to believe or not believe.”
Fr. Z has an analysis of Magister’s article and the Pope’s speech – very helpful.
Read Previous Post
