Benedict XVI

SALT OF THE EARTH

Laid to rest on January 5, 2023, the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI cannot be allowed to simply pass into history, because his legacy is compelling, if complicated. In 2013, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Munich became the first pope to resign in almost 600 years. To be sure, the reticent Benedict, against his will, had to follow the dynamic St. John Paul the Great. However, more intellectual than inspiring, his insightful commentaries will continue to inform and influence future generations. Moreover, Benedict articulately defined the western theological rationale for the relationship between faith and reason. Likewise, Benedict’s book Salt of the Earth captures his essential humility. But scandals involving Vatican subordinates and the child abuse outrage tarnished his papacy. Meanwhile, although he directed sweeping revelations, punishment and legislation, abuse survivors will always hold him responsible.

UNSHAKABLE FAITH AND TRUST

Firstly, Joseph Ratzinger was a German who experienced the evils of Nazism and Communism. Therefore, he appreciated liberal democracy and specifically, traditional America, which he admired as a “vast, pluralistic society.” Benedict disparaged a secular western world that was abandoning the transcendent moral truths its civilization was founded upon in favor of “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.” Moreover, it sounds as though he was speaking directly to today’s American and European leftist elites. But Benedict was also a progressive champion of Vatican II, although the secualr and agnostic press came to viciously label him the “Panzerkardinal.” However, the scholarly Benedict came to represent an important human desire: hope. Like St. Augustine, Benedict possessed unshakable faith and trust in Jesus Christ and the God of Israel.

DEFENSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Benedict lived through the monumental struggle with the great atheist ideologies, the bloodbath of World War II, and reactionary impulses within the Catholic church. Consequently, in defense of western civilization, he believed in honest dialogue, with religion open to reasoned debate. However, his belief that Vatican II represented a Christian transition and not a revolution inspired brutal criticism from leftists. But the refined Benedict never sought to be a bishop, cardinal or pope, yet served as all three. Therefore, the retiring intellectual was easily susceptible to controversies and attacks. Nevertheless, at Regensburg in 2006, in a lecture wrongly trashed by critics as anti-Muslim, he delivered a superb defense of the mutually supportive roles of faith and reason and the nature of a free conscience. Moreover, Benedict argued that secularism, or reason, was by itself inadequate to sustain intact social structures, and required the counterweight of religion, or faith.

ENDURING LEGACY

Meanwhile, omnipotent Xi Jinping of China and despotic Vladimir Putin of Russia have predicated their cynical agnostic alliance upon the conclusion that liberal democratic western civilization is decadent and doomed. At the Communist Party’s 20th National Congress in October, Xi asserted that “scientific socialism is brimming with renewed vitality in 21st-century China. Chinese modernization offers humanity a new choice for achieving modernization.” But In defense of Judeo-Christian tradition, Benedict countered, ““Reason and faith can come to each other’s assistance. Only together will they save man. Entranced by an exclusive reliance on technology, reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence. Faith without reason risks being cut off from everyday life.” In conclusion, Benedict was much more than a “conservative.” Whatever the future holds, the western world has lost one of its most brilliant minds and articulate voices. His legacy will endure.

Dennis M. Spragg is the author of America Ascendant, the Rise of American Exceptionalism, Glenn Miller Declassified and the forthcoming America and Britain, the Essential Alliance. Among related essays are Defiant Ukraine and NATO Reborn.