Disquiet at Benedict XVI's second anniversary

Christian Terras, yesterday at Golias, took the two years of Pope Benedict XVI's pontificate into review and is not enthusiastic.
 
Beginning by admitting Joseph Ratzinger's obvious intellectual and theological gifts, and rightly refusing to ascribe to him any simple ideological purpose, M. Terras then proceeds to distinguish his policy from the "judgements too binary or diktats too voluntarist of a too voluntarist extreme right... whose 'strong-arm' activities seem to him inopportune and angry" i.e., in other words, and it is not only my English that is tortured prose, at least he isn't as close to the awful Opus Dei and the Legionnaries of Christ as the Servant of God Pope John Paul II was.

Then--leaving aside M. Terras's labored introduction of 'Pope Nemo' as a figure of an antitype, who would do nothing more with his pontificate than dispense blessings in isolation from the real world--nôtre Goliaste gets to the point: Benedict is on crusade, and, we all know, "every crusade is always an act of blasphemy".

"... It would, certainly, be equally simplistic to see in (Benedict XVI) an integralism in the habitual sense of the term, a pure nostalgia for the past.  Joseph Ratzinger's personal theology, by all the evidence, resists any attempt to reduce it to an ideological  project.  At the same time, Benedict XVI perceives himself to be the pope of the reconquest of lost ground.  For him, Catholic dogma is the truth, full stop, beside which no other truth can establish itself as an alternative or as competition, not even in a complementary way or as simply different.   The actual decisions taken in Benedict's pontificate more and more obviously betray this basic orientation, this fundamental intention.  The Pope desires the triumph of Catholic truth; for him, dialogue doesn't in any way constitute an end in itself; it can sometimes eventually constitute a tolerated means, if it proves to be strategically useful."

"One remembers the objections of the still Cardinal Ratzinger to the meeting, willed by John Paul II, of religions at Assisi in 1986.  The greatest peril, according to Joseph Ratzinger, lay in a levelling of religions.  For him, the principal enemy is relativism, a disposition to relativise every pretension to a definitive and absolute truth.  The spirit of the Enlightenment, deplored by the Pope, was greatly responsible for this state of affairs in which man, amputated from his religious dimension, today bears the costs and for which the Church, defender of truth, pays the price.  Benedict XVI would therefore define himself above all as intransigeant, by this aligning himself with the most integralist current of Catholicism.  Would anyone dare to suggest that the recent recognition by Rome of four former followers of Mons Lefebvre, with the support of a juridical statute writ in gold, only reveals a Roman openness to welcome and not a profound connivance of thinking and strategy?  Certainly, the informed theologian who Joseph Ratzinger remains does not make his own all the affirmations of an integrist Catholicism that often presents as a cartoon of itself.  However, it seems necessary for us to recognise in him a certain family resemblance that disquiets."

M. Terras proceeds to recall the Pope at Regensburg (although Islam seems rather an afterthought, in some way that I don't grasp: don't rely on my translation from the French in a court of law!) and launches into his indictment of Benedict the crusader:

"... (H)is purpose, as it has been in the Church for fifty years and more, is to establish that Christianity is the true religion and that Catholicism is the true Christianity.  Benedict XVI is, therefore, in a metaphorical sense, animated by a crusading spirit.  A crusade for the triumph of Catholic truth, a crusade against overly lax morals and opinions too questionable: a crusade that doesn't result in bloodshed but which will result in crushing consciences."

After another couple of paragraphs of more of the same (which means, in other words, that I'm tired of doing this), and via Paul Ricoeur, M. Terras reaches his conclusion, which I noted supra: "every crusade is always an act of blasphemy".  M. Terras and his colleagues are the people whose goodwill and esteem 'the French bishops' care about, which is something to keep in mind when one reads that certain of their Excellencies are unhappy with the prospect of 'the' motu proprio.