December 3, 2006

Accounts of the papal trip to Turkey have downplayed the appalling conditions under which the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church is obliged to exist in Istanbul. There is little “freedom of religion” there. The Pope is well aware of the situation, as he is aware of many things others would prefer to ignore. Above all, as Successor of Peter, Pope Benedict in this season is renewing the world’s consciousness of the glories of what God has revealed about Himself, at a time when such glories tend to cause unease among materialist minds. His message includes the wonderful mysteries of the “Four Last Things” which are supposed to be the subject of Advent preaching: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.

The Pope bids the world to pay attention to reality. Superficial attempts at anticipating Christmas point up the banality of a culture which avoids the deep mysteries of Redemption. Avoiding Advent by the denials and distractions of “the Christmas rush” bring to mind the quip that reality is for people who can’t cope with drugs.

A recent Wall Street Journal headline read: “A Tumultuous World Tests a Rigid Pope.” There are different kinds of rigidity, and one is plain stubborn­ness and another is false pride, but there is also a rigid­ity which is the virtue of fortitude in the face of weakness.

History has known many churchmen willing to be pliable at the expense of truth, beginning with one of the Apostles, and that mentality is easily scandalized by integrity. Some were astonished at Pope Benedict’s advice to some Catholic theologians in October: “Speaking just to find applause or to tell people what they want to hear . . . is like prostitution. Don’t look for applause, but look to obey the truth.”

The Catholic World News service recently commented that in the student unrest of the 1960s, Joseph Ratzinger was rare among academics in refusing to give in to polemical thugs. Only weeks ago we saw the dismal fecklessness of university leaders at Columbia in challenging student rioters. The Pope has long been familiar with such unedifying scenes. He did not retreat into wounded reaction in the social chaos of the 1960s and 70s, and he continues to confront and engage those who prefer ideology to reason. As Catholic World News put it, many who now call the Pope “rigid” are justifying their own sell-out to the mob: “. . . they put up for sale what ought not to be sold. Those who are conspicuously successful don’t like to be reminded of the way they got started (‘I was young and needed the money. . .’) and their distinguished professorships make them forgetful of the metaphorical Hershey bars for which they first swapped their virtue. For such persons the existence of a Ratzinger is like a slap on a sunburned back. Small wonder if stung pride tries to make him out to be the weakling.”

Fr. George W. Rutler