The resignation of the Pope in 2013 was a decision that completely shocked the world, partially because for a traditionalist like Benedict XVI, it seemed like a highly untraditional thing to do. But as head of the Holy Office in the last years of the previous pontificate, Cardinal Ratzinger watched with deep pain as the great pope declined in mental power and therefore managerial skill. The crowds grew as he traveled the world but there was a growing crisis developing within the church that only grew worse each year.
Benedict XVI made the difficult decision to retire at his prime in order that he would not repeat the error. Also, he became convinced that his literary work and scholarship could do more to restore the faith than his managerial leadership. Thus did he embark on a remarkable ten-year quest to re-understand the life and teachings of Christ. The result is a series of books that will surely last the ages. These books add to a vast literature that constitutes his brilliant legacy and gift to the world.
To this day, people misunderstand the belief structure of Cardinal Ratzinger who became the Pope. The Second Vatican Council was a formative event in his intellectual life, and one that he celebrated for one central reason. This Council made a decisive and clean break with the past with its tremendously clear embrace of religious freedom as a human right. And probably that does not sound too radical to you, or maybe it strikes you as slightly embarrassing that the Catholic Church would have to go to such lengths to state the obvious.
However, for various reasons both historical and theological, the principle of religious liberty has not always been central. The problem for the Church began in the years of the decline of the Roman Empire when persecution and martyrdom defined the life of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. The conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great changed the fortunes of Christians but over time, the Church arguably learned too much from their former oppressors and adopted for itself the power of the sword along with all the symbols and signs of the old regime.
To be sure, Catholicism over 2,000 years has proven itself remarkably adept in accommodating itself to the cultural forms of any society in which it is evangelizing for new adherents. This is why the practice of the faith looks and feels so very different in so many different lands. The Catholic way you find in Ireland is radically different from what you find in Japan or El Salvador or Haiti. Germany too has its own way as do Catholics in America. This impressive pliability dates probably from the experience of the 3rd and 4th centuries in Rome where it began this habit of granting as much as possible to native customs while insisting only on essentials.
Let’s skip forward to the late 19th century with the march of democracy in Europe and the decline of the Holy Roman Empire during which time the Roman Church was faced with declining hegemony over what were called the Papal States. Pope Pius the IX called a Vatican Council for reasons no one particularly understood until many months in when the Pope himself made his purposes clear: he wanted a clean declaration that the Chair of Peter had infallible power not only over doctrine and morals but also politics. He wanted a worldwide statement in favor of the idea that religious liberty was anathema and that the papacy must always possess the power of the sword. The gathered Bishops and Cardinals refused to grant that, however, settling on a much lesser claim but still leaving the question of religious liberty on the table.
The movement for a “liberal” Catholicism that was orthodox on doctrine but accommodative to democracy and liberty continued to advance in both the UK and the United States (think of the writings of John Henry Newman and Lord Acton). Nearly a century later, Pope John XXIII called another Council that was named Vatican II, the primary purpose of which was to declare once and for all that the Church favors the right of religious freedom. Cardinal Ratzinger was a central figure in that Council and it was the proudest achievement of that generation of thinkers.
Sadly, during and after the Council, the vision of an orthodox Church that chooses freedom over compulsion went off the rails, as a “leftist” faction used the cultural upheaval of the times to toss out the “orthodoxy” part and sell its new forms as an application of freedom. That introduced complete chaos to the rituals, calendar, and many other settled doctrines and morals. Ironically, these new champions of “freedom” had no interest in granting freedom for tradition itself, even to the point of using brutal methods to suppress historical rites and languages of the faith.
The whole Catholic Church became quickly polarized starting as early as 1964 and continuing through the present day, with two sides in a forever struggle: revanchists vs. revolutionaries. Yes, I’m here painting with a very broad brush and there are volumes to be written about this. But the main point here is that the Ratzinger school of “orthodox liberals” (meaning for truth but also for human liberty) was quickly marginalized and remained so until the Conclave that elected him pope.
With his election, Benedict XVI now had the opportunity finally to restore the orthodoxy lost in the chaos of the 1960s while continuing to embrace the idea of human freedom that had shaped his intellectual life. That meant a great deal of restoration of the liturgical forms, the vestments, the music, and the rituals that had been brutally suppressed.
That of course delighted the conservatives, but they were not so thrilled by the Pope’s continuing insistence on the truth of religious liberty as defined by Vatican II. As incredible as it might seem to outsiders, there is a faction within the Catholic Church that wants back the Papal States and longs for monarchs ruling on behalf of Rome, even to the point of crushing dissident. So contrary to the main media line, Benedict XVI never really had the backing of the most reactionary elements in the Church. He was attempting to recapture a vision lost sometime in the years between 1961 and 1964 of a modern Church that still practiced the old faith, a Church that embraced both the truth of faith and the truth of freedom. In this position, he was certainly in the minority.
“The cry for freedom that is going through the whole world proceeds from a situation in which man has had a taste of freedom yet at the same time feels that this freedom is threatened and restricted on every side .... But whereas he has attained a hitherto almost unimaginable freedom of movement in this regard, technological civilization, with the centralization of services and the anonymity of its ordinances, has created constraints that were formerly unknown, from the determination of the slope of the roof to rules about gravestones, from traffic regulations to an establishment for universal education that harnesses teachers and students to a network of legal prescriptions resulting from—what else?—efforts to safeguard the citizens’ rights to freedom.”
“So one may have doubts about whether the modern history of freedom has really produced an appreciable increase in freedom and whether the area of freedom and the area of compulsion have not just shifted. In any case, this abundance of regulations, reaching into everyday life, produces an odd sense of restriction, boredom with institutionally organized freedom, and a cry for a better, radical, anarchic freedom. A further observation comes immediately to mind. Formerly, an institution manifested itself to a great extent in persons. Restriction of freedom could be traced back to the arbitrary decisions of persons. The important thing was to limit the power of those persons through corrective institutions and a wide sharing of responsibility. Now that this has happened, the institutions appear to have receded into the gray anonymity of a faceless, indefinable power, as Kafka portrayed it in the bleak visions of his novels ‘The Trial’ and ‘The Castle.’ No wonder, therefore, that institutions in general are increasingly perceived as the opposite of freedom and that people try to fight against the ordering of freedom, too, so as to arrive at last at freedom itself.”
He goes on to say:
“The right to believe is the real core of human freedom; when this right is forfeited, it follows logically that all further rights and freedoms fail. This right is at the same time the authentic gift of freedom that the Christian faith has brought into the world. In an unprecedented way it cut asunder the identification of state and religion, thus depriving the state of its totalitarian claims, and, with its distinctive character vis-à-vis the governmental sphere, the faith has given man the assurance that his own being with God and in the presence of God is reserved for him, an assurance in which God calls him with a name that no one else knows. Freedom of conscience is the core of all freedom.”
Wow, so there we have it. All kinds of freedoms have come into question in our time, including the freedom to speak and even the freedom to worship. Here the work of Benedict XVI speaks very profoundly. He was absolutely correct to hold the line on the truth of freedom, the betrayal of the faith by the state, and the primary of the human conscience. As we try to rebuild the social and political structure following the disaster of these last three years, his writings can serve as a valuable guide to people of all faiths.
