It’s not a club where you change the rules as you go along. It’s a faith, and you abide by the rules of the faith.
Such is the base conflict within the Church. This is – by no means – a new problem, nor shall it be fixed under the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI. That being said, it does seem as if the 2,000 year old, 1.1-billion member Church is dealing with a great number of stresses all at once. And this Papacy will set a tone and direction for the Church in the future.
Priests to marry, women to be ordained, contraceptives to be accepted. As a Catholic, I’m torn. On hand – and with my limited knowledge regarding the issues – I would like to see the Church agree with some of these principles. And at the same time, isn’t the entire purpose of the Church to be – literally – the Rock of Faith and Truth? A solid foundation that does not change under the pressures of popular opinion and changes in culture?
In the view of the Pope, the church does not exist so that it can be incorporated into the world, but so as to offer a way to live. It is not a human edifice but a divinely created one. The Church is the way and offers Truth and salvation. Good and Evil very much exist in the world…as clear as black against white. And while the evils and threats to salvation today might not be as clear as Fascism and Communism, the threats still exist…except that today it goes by the name of Relativism.
Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as 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 toward 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.
What stands out to me most of all, regardless of whether I agree with him is that this is a man who has grown up under the direct shadow of the Nazis, Fascism and Communism. He saw Jews being sent off to Death Camps. This is a man who has seen evil in person and in action. And at a time in which many of my generation only see it as an abstract idea—a theory.
I look forward to seeing the direction that the Church will take under Pope Benedict XIV.