BENEDICT'S TASK
by John O'Sullivan
New York Post
April 20, 2005

April 20, 2005 -- POPE Benedict XVI — as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is now known — will be a surprise to the world.

Almost all popes surprise the world because they surprise themselves. The awesome responsibility they take on compels them to consider their previous convictions anew and to act boldly in ways they themselves might never have imagined.

John XXIII was an elderly pastoral figure expected to be a stop-gap pontiff who would reign modestly for a few years. He ignited the reform of the Roman Catholic Church with the Second Vatican Council.

Paul VI was a liberal who was expected to reconcile post-conciliar Catholicism even more closely with the modern world being shaped by the '60s. He confirmed the traditional teaching that artificial methods of contraception were contrary to God's law.

John Paul II, who was hailed as a philosopher-pope (which he certainly was), liberated half of Europe and became an evangelist to the Third World.

Benedict XVI is likely to do things equally dramatic. For the moment, however, neither he nor we know what they are.

We can be certain that they are not what so many liberal Catholics and religious commentators in the West would like him to do. The Catholic Church under his leadership is not about to allow abortion, marry homosexuals or distribute contraceptives.

Indeed, when we examine the spiritual and religious condition of the modern world — the decay of all traditional belief in Europe, the spread of evangelical Protestantism in Latin America and Latino communities in the U.S., the challenge of Islam in Asia and Africa and the unnoticed persecution of Christian communities across the world — the obsession of Western liberals with a small range of sexual behaviors is depressingly parochial. (That obsession is all the more extraordinary when their societies are shrinking precisely because sex and procreation have been so thoroughly divorced there.)

Benedict XVI will certainly address these concerns, probably in pastoral ways we cannot now predict, but he is unlikely to make their reform the central theme of his papacy. Liberal Catholics will have to ponder how they will adjust to the likelihood that two popes in succession will disappoint their hopes and contradict their vision of the Church. (Maybe the Holy Spirit is telling them something.)

In that and other senses, the new papacy will continue the work of John Paul II in the different circumstances of the post-Cold War world. The two men were intellectually very close and the new pope will in some ways be a more efficient and administrative version of his saintly predecessor. He may even follow in some of John Paul's evangelical efforts: He has already announced that he will fulfill the previous pope's engagement to attend the Youth Festival in Cologne.

That return to the land of his birth is bound to be dramatic — perhaps as powerful in its impact as John Paul's first visit to Poland, but for very different reasons. John Paul II began the undermining of communist power in Poland; Benedict XVI may hope to begin the unraveling of everyday atheism under prosperity in post-Christian Germany.

For the great unsolved problem of John Paul's papacy was the decay of religious belief in Europe — indeed, the elevation of secular fundamentalism as the new orthodoxy of the European Union. Christian communities in Asia and Africa now send missionaries to the agnostic West to revive the dying Christian tradtions there.

As the distinguished German Lutheran theologian (and religious editor of United Press International) Uwe Siemon-Netto wrote on this point: "You don't have to be a soothsayer to guess why Ratzinger was chosen over Italian, Latin American and African candidates to lead the church. As the Rev. Anthony Figueirero, an Indian-born former papal adviser, said Tuesday prior to Ratzinger's elevation, 'Let the Church in the Third World continue its growth — it is the global North that has to be re-evangelized,' meaning it is that part of the globe the pope must be particularly familiar with."

If that is the main task of his papacy — and "Germany" in this vision encompasses Europe and North America — then Benedict XVI brings to the task a very suitable set of spiritual abilities interests.

* Regarded by Protestant divines as a brilliant theologian, he has a firm grasp of Catholic orthodoxy but a deep understanding and sympathy for other religious denominations. He will continue the practical ecumenism that brought together Catholics and other Christians in pro-life and other causes under John Paul II.

* As a philosopher, he has written eloquently of the necessary mutual dependence of secular reason and religious faith: "To this extent we must be grateful to secular society and the Enlightenment. It must remain a thorn in our side, as secular society must accept the (Christian) thorn it its side." Indeed, the role of reason in religion may become a major theme of his papacy — since the Catholic Church sees the evangelical revolution in Latin America that challenges it as being insufficiently respectful of reason's legitimate claims.

* And as a critic of "the tyranny of relativism," which he sees as contrary to both faith and reason, he is likely to tackle the moral decay of the modern world at its theoretical roots: the idea that all truths are equal and hence no conduct forbidden.

On all of these points, Benedict XVI is likely to be a pope who sees his first responsibility as to revive European Christianity both by seeking to gradually erode the divisions of the Reformation and by confronting post-Christian ideas directly.

None of this is to suggest that he will ignore the great religious issues roiling Asia and Africa. On the contrary, he is likely to draw on the support of the orthodox and conservative Christians in those countries. He will not always agree with U.S. foreign policy, but he will appreciate that the United States is an important force for traditional religious values in diplomacy — and President Bush a likely ally.

As for his own foreign policy — his choice of the name Benedict suggests that he wishes to make peace one of his major themes. (The last Pope Benedict tried to halt the First World War.)

In that effort, he will talk softly but, following John Paul II, carry very large clout.

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