This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Habemus Papam

Today, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger was elected Pope by his brother cardinals. Cardinal Ratzinger is now His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI.

He greeted the faithful with these words:

Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me - a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.

The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.

In the joy of the risen Lord, trusting in his permanent help, we go forward. The Lord will help us and Mary his very holy mother stands by us.'

The Holy Father has, for more than three decades, the last two as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, maintained that orthodoxy is the standard for Catholics. This was nowhere more evident than in the homily he gave as the electoral conclave began:

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking... The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what St. Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 4:14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching," looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.

However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an "Adult" means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. We must become mature in this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - which creates unity and takes form in love. On this theme, St. Paul offers us some beautiful words - in contrast to the continual ups and downs of those were are like infants, tossed about by the waves: (he says) make truth in love, as the basic formula of Christian existence. In Christ, truth and love coincide. To the extent that we draw near to Christ, in our own life, truth and love merge. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like "a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal" (1 Corinthians 13:1).

I don't know much about the Holy Father, but that he and I share a devotion to St. Benedict and to the Catholic Faith of the Church, makes me already inclined to respect him as I respected John Paul the Great. I am extremely glad and happy that he was elected. The Lord's hand is at work here.

In an odd bit of present-day reality, the Holy Father's fan club website is down. Not a surprise, really.

Posted by Clifton at April 19, 2005 11:14 AM | TrackBack