Benedict Reminded Us God Is Bigger

Pope Benedict’s real legacy may be found not in being 1st to resign Peter’s throne in 600 yrs, but in his pre-papal 2006 Regensburg address, in which he warned of Islamic radicalism but mostly berated Western narcissism.

These pragmatic warnings, remember, were framed in the body of a conservative man who would live to 95, but only after witnessing the horrors of fascism & then being Chosen to work for a better post-WWII world in the shadows of Michelangelo’s inspiring Sistine Chapel. As the WSJ editors suggested, Benedict retired because he could clearly see he was “no longer up to the job” of running the Catholic Church. But, might we suggest Benedict also saw his best shot at serving God the way God wanted by devoting his remaining days & playing a Luke or Matthew or John gospel writer?

As the editors concluded, “the writings of Joseph Ratzinger are the most significant legacy of his life and papacy. They reflect his theological focus on the interplay between reason and faith, or between Athens and Jerusalem in the Western philosophical tradition. Rather than foes, he saw (the East and West) as a necessary check on the other. THIS was the message of his 2006 address … which was widely misinterpreted as an attack on Islam. The irony is that Pope Benedict’s most pointed criticisms were reserved for a West that was abandoning the transcendent moral truths its civilization was founded on … he warned about a ‘dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.’ Sound relevant today?”

Davd Soul