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Honey and Vinegar
 The
election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope
Benedict XVI comes as a shock to the liberal Catholics of Europe and
America.  For
them the great papacy of John Paul II was a long ordeal, and Ratzinger, the uncompromising
defender of Catholic orthodoxy, was a chief reason.
It had become customary for
liberals to say they “disagreed” with John Paul’s
“positions,” as if those were mere arbitrary personal opinions
of the man himself rather than immutable truths upheld by the Church. On
this view, a pope is a sort of dictator who may change the party line at his
whim. If he doesn’t change it in keeping with the fashions of the age,
he seems incomprehensibly stubborn.
But the Pope is chiefly a
custodian, whose principal duty is to preserve the ancient faith we have
inherited. It isn’t up to him to edit that faith to suit his taste or
anyone else’s. In Catholicism, novelty is not a virtue. It usually
signifies corruption, not improvement.
To the liberal mind, progress
consists not in gradual development, but in dramatic breaks with the past,
typified by the U.S. Supreme Court’s use of the U.S. Constitution
— a “living document” — to foist sudden changes on
an entire polity. Old laws (in America, there is no such thing as the ancient)
are abruptly declared unconstitutional. To be disruptive is to be
“progressive.”
Until the 1960s, this outlook was
alien to the Catholic Church. But the Second Vatican Council, summoned by
Pope John XXIII, introduced the most sudden changes in liturgy and discipline
in Catholic history. Liberals rejoiced, willfully mistaking these for changes, or
at least the promise of change, in Catholic doctrine itself. The “spirit
of Vatican II” became the equivalent of the American judiciary’s
“living document” — allegedly authorizing unlimited
change, including dissent from the most basic Catholic teachings. The
supposed liberal “spirit” of the Council contradicted the
orthodox letter of what the Council had actually said.
Like John Paul II, Cardinal
Ratzinger was disturbed by the abuses that followed on the Council’s
heels, and he has been an outspoken critic of false “reforms.”
His doctrinal adamancy has earned him the opprobrium of liberals for whom
there is no such thing as too much change.
![[Breaker quote for
HONEY & VINEGAR: The promise of Benedict XVI]](2005breakers/050419.gif) For Catholic liberals — the sort who are liberals
first, Catholics second — the Church should follow the model of the
secular world. Since the old Pope died, the leading American newspapers have
been running daily articles on the discontents of American Catholics, by
which they mean those who grumble against Catholic teaching and tradition.
We seldom read about those Catholics, here and abroad, who love the Church
as it is; you’d think a few dissident Americans were the core of
Catholicism.
The election of Benedict XVI
means that the College of Cardinals does indeed want change; but not the
kind of change the liberals crave. It wants the return to orthodoxy and
discipline the new Pope has been advocating throughout the long papacy of
John Paul II.
Under Benedict, we are not going
to see female or married priests, let alone any softening of Catholic sexual
morality. We can probably expect a vigorous reaffirmation of Catholic
teaching on contraception, which has depopulated formerly Catholic Europe.
No more than John Paul will Benedict tailor his words to opinion polls.
He may also prove a sterner
disciplinarian than John Paul. It was often said of the late Pope that he was
more loved than heeded; Benedict certainly won’t enjoy the same
phenomenal popularity (who could?). But he is also a man who commands
respect, because he has always preferred speaking truth to making friends.
After the honey of John Paul II,
Benedict XVI may seem like a dose of vinegar. But at 78 he probably
can’t look forward to a long papacy, and he must make his remaining
years count. He has the example of the Savior, whose most startling
teaching (in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel) caused many of his
disciples to desert him: “This is a hard saying; who can accept
it?”
This new Pope knows that such
hard sayings are the very essence of Catholic teaching. Whatever his reign
may give us, it won’t be a watered-down Catholicism.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2005 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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