In
CWR
“The Church represents the memory
of what it means to be human in the face of a civilization of
forgetfulness, which knows only itself and its own criteria. Yet just as an
individual without memory has lost his identity, so too a human race without
memory would lose its identity.”
— Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas Greetings
to the Roman Curia, December 21, 2012.
“I would say that the Christian can afford to be supremely
confident, yes, fundamentally certain that he can venture freely into the open
sea of the truth, without having to fear for his Christian identity. To be sure,
we do not possess the truth, the truth possesses us; Christ, who is the truth,
has taken us by the hand, and we know that his hand is holding us securely on
the path of our quest for knowledge.”
— Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas Greetings
to the Roman Curia, December 21, 2012.
I.
Each year the Holy Father gives a significant lecture to
the Roman Curia about the events of the previous year. In this year’s account,
Benedict spent time recalling his trips to Mexico, Cuba, and Lebanon. In the
course of a year, the modern popes probably see more important (and
“unimportant”) people in the world than any other public figure. Their trips to
various countries are usually major events in those countries. It is said that
John Paul II was seen in person by more human beings than any man in history.
In introducing Pope Benedict, Cardinal Sodano recalled the
liturgical antiphon: “Propre est jam Dominus, venite adoremus–The Lord
is near, come let us adore Him.” The Child in the stable in Bethlehem, Benedict
continues, “is God himself and has come so close as to become a man like us.”
Benedict never hesitates to identify Christ as true God and true man. These very
words—the “Child is God Himself”—defy and challenge the whole world by affirming
its truth.
Benedict made a most interesting remark about Cuba: “That
country’s search for a proper balancing of the relationship between obligations
and freedom cannot succeed without reference to the basic criteria that mankind
has discovered through encounter with the God of Jesus Christ.” One presumes
that, if that statement is true for Cuba, it will be true for other lands,
including our own. Evidently, mankind has learned something about obligation and
freedom from its dealing with the reality of Christ. Essentially it is that no
freedom exists without corresponding obligation. Likewise, an obligation that is
not freely accepted is more like determinism or coercion than free
responsibility.
II.
To the Curia, Benedict devotes considerable discussion to
two topics: the family and the meaning of dialogue. The meeting on families in
Milan gave the Holy Father an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the family
and the modern effort to eliminate it as the central institution of human life.
Many questions come up about the family with which we must
be familiar: “First of all there is the question of the human capacity to make a
commitment or to avoid commitment. Can one bind oneself to a lifetime? Does this
correspond to man’s nature? Does it not contradict his freedom and the scope of
his self-realization? Does man become himself by living for himself alone and
only entering into relationships with others when he can break them off again at
any time? Is lifelong commitment antithetical to human freedom?” These are the
common questions that we hear when we try to justify divorce or infidelity of
various sorts. They are rooted in an individualism that does not see human
perfection as a relationship of commitment to others, including to God Himself.
But Benedict brings up something of great profundity about
the nature of the modern attack on marriage. Evidently, the pope has been
reading a reflection on marriage by the Chief Rabbi in France, Giles Benheim.
Rabbi Benheim points out that the current attack on the family, child, and
marriage is not just rooted in a false notion of freedom. This latter view has
been characteristic of much modern opposition to permanent marriage. Now the
issue goes to the very nature of what a human being is, not just his freedom.
What is questioned is the being of man as we have known
it. It is only if we deny the being of man that we can embrace views of human
relations that undermine the structure of man. Traditionally, Rabbi Benheim
notes, to be a human being meant to be born “of woman.” Chesterton noted
somewhere what a terrible thing it would be if we were “born of man.” But today,
the notion of gender is not something of given fact but of choice. What one is
born of makes no difference. “Sex is no longer a given element of nature that
man has to accept and personally make sense of; it is a social role that we
choose for ourselves.”
If man is born of woman, the role chosen for him is
essential to his own good. But if we conceive “being given ourselves” to be a
denial of our “freedom,” we must develop a theory that denies our given nature.
We thus have to choose our “gender”, whatever it be. Of this view, Benedict
states: “The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological
revolution contained within it is obvious.” This obvious falsity, however, does
not prevent individuals and governments from choosing it.
People deny they have a “nature” that derives from the
fact of the body (and soul) given to them at conception and birth. They want to
“make” themselves with no relation to God or nature. They will seek to prove
that nothing in them has an origin from anything but themselves. “According to
the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains
to the essence of human nature.” The male and female division of human beings is
essential to human nature as such. This duality is now questioned.
What are the consequences of this new view? It is the
belief that it was “not God who created us male and female.” What did this was
“society,” whose authority we now also deny We decide for ourselves. “Man calls
his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will.” This is a
new form of what Maritain once called “angelism.” The body has nothing to do
with our soul and spirit. Will is everything, shades of Nietzsche. We need not
account for our body, let alone see in it as part of our own real good. The pope
points out that now we are manipulating human nature, a manipulation often
pursued by the same people who are up in arms about manipulating the
environment. They oppose manipulating the latter but demand that we manipulate
human nature.
One can only stand in awe at the force of the pope’s mind
as he examines the logic of these views of gender. “From now on there is only
the abstract human being who chooses for himself what his nature will be. Man
and woman in their created state as complimentary versions of what it means to
be human are disputed.” Yet, we are not just spirit and will but we are persons
with body and soul in one whole. We are a unified being, all aspects of which
belong together in a harmonious whole
Benedict proceeds to draw out the logic of this denial of
the normalcy of male and female in one nature. “But if there is no preordained
duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a
reality established by creation. Likewise the child has lost the place he had
occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him.” The dignity of the child
is that it is a gift, not the product of human engineering or ownership. He is a
good in his own being.
“Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject
of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which
they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom
to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately
too man is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God…. The defense of the
family is about man himself…. When God is denied, human dignity also disappears.
Whoever defends God is defending man.” (See Schall, “On the ‘Right to Be Born,’”
in Political Philosophy and Revelation, The Catholic University of
America Press, forthcoming 2013).
If we maintain that someone, male or female, has an
independent “right” to a child apart from the stable male-female marital
relation, it follows that any arrangement in which a child can be
obtained—in vitro, cloning—is merely the exercise of one’s rights. The
child, who ought to be the center of the issue, is deprived of his own need of
father and mother, of his own dignity.. What comes first is not the child but
oneself, the complete opposite of the natural order.
III.
Benedict next takes up the issue of dialogue. It is a
confused area. The noble Platonic notion has become—if not useless in a world of
relativism in which no truth can be found—at least a justification for endless
discussions that decide very little. Benedict sees three areas of dialogue: with
the state, with society, and with religion. When civilizations forget what man
is, the Church becomes the memory of mankind, of what man is. What the Church
knows from its experience is relevant to non-believers.
Benedict draws a delicate line here. Knowing the almost
impossible task of discussing theological issues publicly, particularly with
Muslims, he grants that dialogue still must find some basis of agreement about
common problems. Still, any dialogue will lead in some way to fundamental
issues. “A dialogue about peace and justice is bound to move beyond the purely
pragmatic, to become an ethical struggle for the truth and for the human
being.…” What began as a pragmatic issue does bring up the question of what is
the right way to live and why.
Two reasons are given for dialogue among those whom we are
not seeking to change. “1) Dialogue does not aim at conversion, but at
understanding. In this respect it differs from evangelization, from mission. 2)
Accordingly, both parties to the dialogue remain consciously within their
identity, which the dialogue does not place in question either for themselves or
for others.” These principles, of course, strike us as being a long way from
Plato’s understanding of dialogue. The pope himself finds problems with them. “I
find them too superficial. True dialogue does not aim at conversion, but at
better mutual understanding—that is correct. But all the same the search for
knowledge and understanding always has to involve drawing close to the truth.”
A Christian cannot say that his discussion blocks out any
approach to the truth. “I would say that the Christian can afford to be
supremely confident, yes, fundamentally certain that he can venture freely into
the open sea of truth, without having to fear for his Christian identity.” He
can do this because reason open to revelation and revelation addressed to reason
constitute a grounding in the what is that unifies our knowledge and
sees the truths in other views together with their limitations.
The Church exists in part that we do not forget who and
what we are. It sees that the most fundamental institution of society, the
family, is now an object of complete elimination and the relations that are
associated with the family, the most fundamental ones, are left without
grounding in nature or being. The dialogue with any of the disparate religions
and philosophies of our time cannot ultimately forget that truth is the
direction in which all reason tends. When Socrates said that dialogue taught him
what he did not know, he only reached this conclusion after eliminating many
positions that were in fact not true. Dialogue may not be conversion but the
establishment of any truth or the rejection of any error remains a central task.
The wars of the world are still fought in the minds and hearts of men. Benedict
quite clearly understands this fact.
