From 2010 to his renunciation, Pope Benedict XVI has insistently denounced the central problem of Christianity in Europe as the loss of connection between faith and the value of truth. By no longer representing truth in religious matters, Christianity has not stripped itself of an incidental characteristic: it has lost its very nature, its fundamental essence.
For these serious reasons, one of the leading brands of Benedict's pontificate was calling on Christians to fight the state of things he showed to rule Europe. A true Crusade, with a spiritual and not military nature, has thus been called by him on that subject.
Ratzinger presents the following diagnosis of the spiritual situation in Europe: "At the beginning of the third millennium, and precisely within its original expansion - Europe - Christianity is immersed in a deep crisis, which is a result of the crisis of its claim of truth [...] Christianity has its precursors and its internal preparation in philosophical rationalism, not in religions. According to Augustine and biblical tradition, which was decisive for him, Christianity is not based on mythical images and ideas [...] but refers to the divine aspect of reality that rational analysis can apprehend. In other words, Augustine identifies biblical monotheism with philosophical ideas on the foundation of the world in its many variants formed in ancient Philosophy. The apostle Paul referred to this in his sermon at the Areopagus, where Christianity was presented as the religio vera [...] From this premise, Christianity was seen as a triumph of demythologizing, as a triumph of knowledge and, therefore, of truth, not as a specific religion that takes the place of another" (RATZINGER, Joseph and D'ARCAIS, Paolo Flores. Does God exist? Sao Paulo: Planeta, 2009. pp. 11-13).
This is indeed the soul of Christianity. Without its soul, which is its claim of truth, Christianity ceases to be. As Ratzinger said, this special claim alloyed the Christian faith more strongly to Philosophy than to other religions in the first century. And this claim is as present in Paul as in Augustine, in Origen and in St. Thomas.
Christian rationalism cannot be confused with the Aristotelian or Kantian ones. It is closer to Platonic rationalism, although not identical with it. The biggest difference between Christianity and philosophical rationalism is the visceral connection of ratio with Christian love. The sum of ratio and divine love is practically equivalent to the gospel. Therefore, Christian currents that deny or diminish any of these two themes deprive themselves of the very essence of their faith.
From the beginning, Christianity proposed itself to be the way to the truth about God (religio vera), as well as pre-Socratic Philosophy set itself as a questioning of the truth about nature. Christianity did not occupy the space of the religions of the first century, because its ideal was different. According to the Pope, the fundamental task faced by Christians today is not to discover how they can change that proposal, but how they can preserve it.
John Paul II fought bitter political and spiritual battles against Communism, under which he once lived in Poland. He also condemned Liberal Capitalism. This political crusade was the most successful undertaking of that great Pope. But Ratzinger clearly pointed the problem of Christianity in Europe as one of the biggest challenges of his pontificate.
Although distinct, the struggles of the last two Popes have in common the purpose of combating the diversion of Modernity from Christianity. However, the problem of Modernity is too momentous to allow the belief that the Catholic Church or another Christian force are coming to fix it. On the contrary, despite the triumph of John Paul against Communism and the denunciation of the evils of European Christianity by Benedict, until now the doctrinal problems at the basis of the present crisis of faith were not directly attacked. I do not believe that the fight against Socialism or the modernization of the Church should be considered such attacks.
The philosopher Flores d'Arcais said in a dialogue with Ratzinger: "Catholicism believes that it has definitely paid off accounts with atheism - from Hume to Freud and Monod - just because it ended its contest against Communism victoriously. A hasty operation, based on a series of risky equivalences: given that Communist and Marxist states declared themselves atheist, all atheism collapsed along with Communism" (idem. pp. 94-95).
D'Arcais is right. The defeat imposed on Communism was a side triumph in the war against the deviations introduced by Modernity. Neither Socialism, nor Modernity are enemies of Christianity. Its true enemies are the larger deviations from the foundations of Christian faith, which were introduced in some streams of Modernity, such as the neoatheism of Richard Dawkins and others.
D'Arcais stated that "the objections of the skeptical and atheist tradition against rational proofs of the truths of faith were so sparsely refuted” (idem. p. 91) that they still constitute the implicit horizon of the entire debate between believers and non-believers. Again he is right, although the lack of response can lead atheists to welcome a dangerous sense of triumph of their ideology.
For these reasons, it is necessary that churches and Christians directly combat what d'Arcais called "traditional objections of skepticals and atheists against the rational proofs of the truths of faith." Neither John Paul II nor Ratzinger nor any representatives of Christian faith have performed that. None of them offered counter-arguments to atheist briefs on those issues.
Rather, the Catholic speech stands out because of its generality and vagueness. It is a religious discourse on the personal God who paradoxically lost all personal strength. It comes near to presenting God as a legal force that governs the world by general precepts articulated in a complex tangle: the precepts of the Church itself. Long ago, the Catholic mentality got away from the early prophetic discourse, which used to present a God who speaks directly to individuals of a certain time.
When referred to the God of Israel, the Second Isaiah thought of a being who communicated directly with his people. The same applies to all other biblical prophets. The same is true of the apostles and fathers of the early centuries. All of them saw God as someone who has relations with his followers, as a father with his son, a man with his neighbor or a friend with another one.
When the Protestant Reformation started, this was the speech of Luther. And the lack of the same discourse in the Catholic Church explains part of the early success of the Reformation. The Catholic discourse lost its appeal, as it became vaguely personal, if not altogether impersonal. A speech basically legal. And the same speech is handled by the Church now against Modernity. With undeniable wisdom, but impersonally, the Church points, but does not solve the nuclear problem of the present time. It does not refute the assumptions on which Modernity itself rests, point by point. So, if the Church speaks for God and if the Pope is infallible when pronouncing ex cathedra, we must conclude that God does not care for the assertion of errors which flatly deny the Christian faith.
To cite one example of the omission which I point, when he was a Cardinal and Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger personally wrote three chapters of the book Understanding the Church Today (RATZINGER, Joseph. 2nd ed., Petropolis: Vozes, 2005). The work is highly argumentative, but what does it struggle for? It defends the biblical character of the primacy of Peter and his successors, the Church's unity under the Catholic hierarchy, the idea that any reform must refrain from deploying the democratic principle and the need of a center for the ecumenical movement.
It is not difficult to understand that all such teachings are anti-modern, as far as they prove highly centralizing. Some of them, such as the primacy of Peter, are biblical, though not to the extent Ratzinger develops them. However, why does not the Pope or an official deputy of the Church does not refute the modern claims that are more openly anti-Christian, such as unbelief, atheism and the dangers that spring from them?
John Paul said that evolution is a fact. Ratzinger, that neither micro, nor macroevolution can be denied. For him, the big contemporary mistake is to draw a philosophia universalis from those data. Well, what are the main points of that philosophia universalis? What is its main sophistry? How can it be disproved? What other philosophia universalis can be opposed to it? St. Thomas’? These issues are barely addressed by the Church. Although some argue that time for the Church is measured in centuries, why the Church’s discourse on other points is so immense and on these it is so irrelevant?
Christianity has always maintained its self-consciousness of religio vera, by fighting contrary doctrines. What did Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, Augustine do at their time? What did St. Thomas do? And Luther? To continue this remarkable rational tradition, it is not sufficient for churches to declare the falsehood of the atheist consciousness, which empties them in Europe. Nor is it enough to have a triumph over communism like that of Pyhrrus against the Romans, since it has not the power of bringing the faithful back. Today’s need is that the errors which affect the essence of Christian faith may be confronted.
Moreover, Benedict's Crusade must be understood in the light of the whole movement the body of the Catholic Church makes today. This movement is almost a counterrevolution. It is a reaction to the ecclesiastical modernization initiated by the Second Vatican Council. Though they are deeply different in spirit, the traditionalist yaw of recent Popes and of the Roman Curia is the Catholic version of Muslim fundamentalist movements, which react to the nineteenth century’s attempts to modernize the Islamic culture.
The battle of Benedict XVI against the main deviations of Modernity is shy because it is so indirect. At the same time, the Church’s combat against the political contributions of Modernity remains fierce. There is a profound reason for this. The Pope's Crusade is part of a broader anti-modern movement for the conservation of the archaic essence (the Pope would say divine) of the Catholic Church.
I have many agreements with the antiatheist Crusade that Benedict XVI triggered, from the top of his enlightenment. But I also hold disagreements. Unlike reactionary Islamic, Catholic, and Pentecostal currents, I feel the need of a much broader modernization of religion, with the preservation of its timeless fundamentals. The need for renewal did not end in the nineteenth century or in the Second Vatican Council. It is more than ever alive. It is necessary for religion to be renewed. But in order to do this, without losing its essence, religion needs to talk with Modernity a lot more openly than its institutions, until now, have been able to.
