April 19, 2008 12:34 am
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By James F. Drane
All the attention being given to Benedict XVI in the media during his visit here provides an opportunity for Americans to learn something about the Papacy — an office that has had enormous influence, both good and bad, on Western history. Most people know who the pope is and his leadership role in the Catholic Church. But not many know much about the history of his office or its evolution over almost two millennia.
Some of the more than 200 popes who preceded Benedict in the office are remembered for their saintliness and their model leadership skills. Others are remembered for their sins and for the harms which they inflicted on the church world-wide. The enduring and scandalous fragmentation of the Christian community into Protestants and Catholics can be understood in different ways, but no historian would deny that the sins of some Renaissance popes had a powerfully destructive influence on church unity. Most 16th century Protestant reformers focused attention on examples of papal debauchery. Some fundamentalist Protestant ministers continue to tag all popes and the papal office with the adjective “satanic.” In fact, however, there were both saints and sinners among the hundreds of popes. Those who use terms like satanic to describe all holders of the papal office say more about themselves, their bigotry and prejudice than they do about the papacy.
Pope John Paul II, who preceded Benedict XVI, was a world-class philosopher, a former actor and a person very comfortable in public. Benedict is a shyer person who might be most accurately characterized as a life-long intellectual. He and John Paul were good friends. Before entering into the Catholic hierarchical system, Joseph Ratzinger was a university professor. Everything he has spoken or written since becoming Benedict XVI reflects his academic background.
Pope Benedict has not made the evening news or the front pages of many papers during his reign because neither media gives prominent coverage to intellectual activity. John Paul II was much more of a newsmaker, but since his arrival here in the U.S., Benedict is everywhere in the news. Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Jews, believers and unbelievers, all have an opportunity now to get to know him, to form a judgment of him and, in the process, to learn something about the papal office and its influence on Western history.
A glimpse into the personality of Benedict can be caught from a look at some of the encyclicals he has written. An encyclical is a teaching document, the highest form of papal teaching. His most recent encyclical entitled “Spe Salvi” (“Saved by Hope”), is on the role of hope in human life. The document runs almost 13,000 words and offers new insights and new inspiration every time it is read. Benedict’s first encyclical was on the topic of love.
Both encyclicals reflect Benedict’s strong academic identity. He taught philosophy and theology for years in German universities and then ran the Vatican office which oversees theological writings. His latest encyclical reminds me of what old people do, and I know about this from experience. When we get old, what we write tends to be a synopsis of our life experience. Pope Benedict’s encyclical on hope is full of scholarly references one can find in some of his former books. The text reflects his biblical, theological, historical, philosophical, spiritual and artistic learning. He brings his academic life experience to the subject of hope.
Hope, the pope argues, is important at different stages of life. Young people need hope to be able to commit themselves to a career or to a relationship. Then at midlife, hope is needed again to be able to keep going after failures, disappointments and declining capabilities. Finally, as physical beings, we must die and leave behind anything and everything we have accomplished. Without hope in something more, human life would be defined by loss, despair and depression. With hope believers can anticipate being united with God and life eternal. Hope is the only cure for the inevitable suffering at the end of life. Societies which do not help members to handle suffering at the end are defined as cruel and inhumane. The injustices of history, the pope insists, cannot be the final word or the defining reality.
One issue which the pope refers to over and over is the necessary relationship between faith and reason, religion and science. One without the other, he argues, becomes a distortion and leads to destruction. For him, the fundamental error of our contemporary age is secularization; the attempt to replace religion and faith with salvation through science and material progress. He traces this error to the beginning of modern science (Francis Bacon) and sees Karl Marx and 20th century communism as prime examples of this error.
Unlike popes during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries who took a negative and combative stance against the modern Enlightenment culture, Benedict cites Enlightenment heroes to make his point on the need for religion and science to remain in relationship. He cites Albert Einstein for example, who warned that “if technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in ethical formation, then it is not progress at all but a threat.” Without religion, science is a threat. Without science and reason, religion is a threat. Benedict also cites Immanuel Kant to make the same point. Throughout the document, he cites Adorno, Bacon, Dostoevsky and Plato.
Instead of being the conservative and disciplinarian whom most expected, Benedict in his writings and in his public behavior so far has presented himself as an open, tolerant and reconciling Catholic leader. Maybe all the prejudice and hatred generated during the reformation period will not be overcome during his papacy, but this pope will make some progress toward Protestant and Catholic reconciliation. I know that this is his hope.
Drane is the Russell D. Roth Professor of Bioethics at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Drane said he and Ratzinger “crossed paths” while they both studied in Rome in the late 1940s and early ’50s. A decade later, Ratzinger worked with German bishops, while Drane, a former Catholic priest, was working with Jesuit scholars who took part in creating the Second Vatican Council documents of the 1960s.
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