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The puzzle of Ratzinger
If, as a Washington Times editorial informed us in September 2003, Joseph Ratzinger was a “radical leftist” theologian at the Second Vatican Council, and if, as the same editorial reports, he says he has not moved to the right in the four decades since then, then how did he come to give the magnificent, classically Christian homily he delivered earlier this week, without a spot of modernism, leftism, or humanism about it? (The word “humanism” appeared once in the sermon, but in a traditional Christian context and without any of its Wojtyla-esque implications.) This is a mystery that cries out for explanation.
The most hopeful answer would be that Ratzinger has most certainly moved to the right since the catastrophe of Vatican II (or, more precisely, that he has moved back to the truth of Christianity), but that, in a Benedict XV spirit of avoiding unnecessary conflict, he doesn’t want to be too explicit about that fact. Email entry |