The four day visit of Pope Benedict XVI to his homeland which concluded on Sunday was surprising in many ways, but paradoxically for factors that by now have become almost routine in this particular pontificate. Above all, while the happiness of visiting his native land was certainly part of the experience for him, at a personal level, there was a clear sense of purpose and method to the Holy Father’s four busy days.
The Pope was on a mission, and there was nothing obscure about what the mission was, and is. An intellectual by inclination and training who is usually described as shy, gentle and retiring, he took command by turning the four days of his visit to his countrymen into a superb teaching moment where he spelled out repeatedly the importance of Jesus Christ as the saviour of the world and the validity of religious faith, specifically Christianity, in modern societies such as Germany which have to all intents and appearances largely divested themselves of belief in God.
In a very real sense the elderly academic was taking the battle for a society that has rejected God to its own heart. The visit was therefore, above all other things, a papal pilgrimage – not to a shrine but to a people. But the ripples created by the Pope’s message will not stop at the borders of Germany. Because an increasingly globalised culture has created significant similarities between all modern developed societies, there are lessons for Australia from the Pope’s visit to Germany as well.
Among the objectives of what has come to be termed Project Benedict, the particular effort by the Pope to proclaim the new evangelisation to modern societies everywhere, was a reconnection with ordinary Germans and their families. However, the new evangelisation, in the case of societies like Germany, Europe in general and in places such as Australia, is really a re-evangelisation of societies that have abandoned both Christianity and the all-important moral principles which sprang from the Christian inheritance.
It is clearly a difficult job, but not one that is impossible to history, as he well knows. The difficulty comes in the shape and form of highly secularised society where a practical kind of atheism, a daily indifference to whether God exists or loves individuals, is the powerful informing spirit of millions of lives. However, the Pope has some things working in his favour. Unlike Australia, Germany has a high European intellectual tradition which can be engaged.
The Holy Father was clearly hoping to do just this when he delivered a remarkable address to the Bundestag on the essential nexus between social justice and morality. While his comments on the philosophical influence of positivism would have flown over most people’s heads, it was clear that Benedict was speaking not only to the politicians but also to the nation’s intellectuals. While it would be impossible for the media to discuss such a speech in Australia, where journalists would be likely to think the Pope was talking about electrical charges, it is possible in a country with intellectual traditions such as Germany and throughout much of Europe. Pope Benedict’s highly reasoned and courteous argument undoubtedly won him listeners and generated reflection.
Unlike not a few theologians in the Christian world in the last half century or so, it is clear that for Pope Benedict the way forward depends entirely on faith in Christ and his Gospel, not in compromise with contemporary fashionable attitudes in an approach to Christianity that has been described as cafeteria Catholicism where one takes what one wants (the easy bits) and discards what one doesn’t emotively like (the hard bits). This is because Benedict believes in the concept of truth and sees clearly the problem of superficiality in Christianity. It dissolves.
The Holy Father’s remarks to the Central Committee of lay Catholics were heartening because he did not avoid speaking frankly in a spirit of communion with his fellow German Catholics. On this point especially, Australian Catholics should take note of the resonances with the situation here. The Holy Father noted the superb organisation of the Church in Germany but said it was lacking in spirit. He pointed his fellow Catholics’ attention to what he clearly sees as important probabilities for the future, such as that the new evangelisation will depend greatly on small Catholic communities who are willing to share their faith with all those around them. This is called being the light of Christ.
With every such national visit conducted by the Holy Father it becomes harder and harder for the proponents of the culture of modernity, in which moral relativism is prized above all other things as a licence to do whatever one wants, to argue that Christ, Christianity and the Catholic Church are no longer relevant to modern life. Every time Pope Benedict visits another country, a gentle, scholarly voice of extraordinary strength and power can be heard speaking.