John Allen on Benedict's First Year

In The Last Twelve Months, the National Catholic Reporter's Vatican correspondent John Allen gives his overview of the first year of Pope Benedict's papacy. His judgements seem to me, who have less knowledge of the events but perhaps a little more sympathy, sound and insightful. For example, he argues that:

Job number one of this pontificate, therefore, is the reassertion of objective truth in a culture often allergic to the very concept. The beating heart of his pontificate can be expressed in three core concepts: truth, freedom and love. Truth, as the pope sees it, is the doorway a human person must walk through in order to be really free, meaning free to realize one's full human potential; and love is both the ultimate aim of freedom, and the motive for which the church talks about truth and freedom in the first place.

. . . To put Benedict's point in street language, it boils down to this: You may not like what we have to say, but at least give us credit for our motives. We're not talking about truth because we want to chain you down, but because we want to set you free.

It's not a matter of love and joy versus a fussy, legalistic church. It's a question of two different visions of what real love is all about -- Baywatch, so to speak, versus the gospel. We too want happy, healthy, liberated people, we just have a different idea of how to get there.

"Benedict's Wager" is that by reframing the debate in this way, the church can get a new hearing in a cultural milieu in which many people long ago made up their minds. Whether that's the case remains to be seen, but judging from the reaction to Deus Caritas Est, he at least seems to have some people scratching their heads, reconsidering impressions of Catholic teaching they long regarded as settled.

I commend the whole article, including Allen's description of the differences of style between Benedict and his predecessor — John Paul will be rememberd as a great evangelist, he says, and Benedict as a great teacher — and the differences in their attitude to Islam, Benedict being, Allen says, "more of a hawk, pursuing a kind of interaction with Muslims one might call 'tough love'." Allen is one of those people who are always worth reading.

As many readers will know, Allen has moved from the kind of writer you'd expect to be the National Catholic Reporter's Vatican correspondent to a judicious, moderate, and sympathetic observer, who manages to be justly respected by all sides. But you still get hints of his earlier liberalism in the way he frames some matters. For example, he writes in this report that:

The church faces a tough sell on issues such as homosexuality, the family, abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia, in part because some people can't help thinking that the church is simply afraid of change and afraid of freedom.

This is perfectly true, and well-qualified with that "in part." But it is certainly not all the story and not all the story that needs to be known to understand Benedict's challenge. The liberal Christian tends to read challenges to the Church as partly the Church's fault, if not for what she has done then for what she has let herself be seen as doing or being — the reason people "can't help thinking." This tendency seems to me reflected in that selective "in part."

Of course, the conservative Christian tends to read challenges to the Church solely as evidence of the world's wickedness, even when the Church has clearly gotten herself into the mess. This is not good either.

But granted that selective conservatism is wrong, the biblical mind does tend to see these things as mainly matters of wordly rebellion against the Gospel — though at the same time seeing wickedness within the Church as itself an example of worldly rebellion, which makes the discernment more difficult. If we want to speak in the biblical and patristic mode, of the two questions, "Why won't those people listen to us?" and "Why do those people refuse to face the truth?" the second is the better one to ask most of the time, without failing (as some conservatives do) to ask the first regularly.

In this case, Allen's sentence needs another "in part." That is, that the Church faces a tough sell in part because many people want to do what they should not do — the evils they can't not know are evils, to use J. Budsiszewski's phrase — and the  Church is telling them that these things are evil.

It's not an easy sell, selling chastity to the woman going home with a guy known for his gymnastic abilities and the middle-aged man on a "sex tour" of a southeast Asian country, or selling humanity to the research scientist looking for fame and funding for destroying a few embryonic stem cells, or selling charity to the insurance executive looking for ways to cut costs and finding that forcing the dying to die more quickly would help profits nicely. Why would they buy something they don't want from the Church, when the thing they really want is so much cheaper?

But never mind the obviously depraved: it is not easy selling chastity to the lonely young man who has just found someone with the same secret desires, selling seven more months of pregnancy and the resulting shame to a teenager from a strict family carrying some lout's baby, or an older married woman carrying a rapist's child, selling a few more days of pain to someone whose body is almost completely eaten by cancer.

They feel they cannot afford what the Church is selling and one understands how they feel. Few of us are saintly enough not to understand the temptation nor to fear our own failure.

The Church faces a tough sell in part, in great part, because the things she has to sell — no, give away — can cost more than most of us want to pay. "Why do those people refuse to face the truth?" Because it can cost a lot. It's easier to close the door on the salesman. It is easier to rebel. This Benedict knows, I'm sure.

Comments

[Dcn. Michael D. Harmon]

Yes, the choices life gives us are often hard. It is hard to stop drinking after one or two, or whenever you've reached your limit; it is hard to smile and turn away from the woman in the office or store who seems to welcome your attention; it is hard to be in charge of large sums of money not your own and be faithful in accounting for it; it is hard to see trouble coming if you tell the truth that perhaps could be avoided by a simple little lie.

Then there is the Lord's counsel, which is also very, very hard: "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." Matt. 7:13-14

[Pr. Dave Poedel]

An interesting article from an unlikely source.

This Lutheran finds much to love and appreciate from this papacy, as I did from the previous. The themes of Benedict XVI expressed in this article are my own. Hmmmm....

[Pauli]

John Allen is definitely more thoughtful and moderate than many other journalists from NCR, but I think he still trips over the same things liberals have been tripping over for years. When he says "some people can't help thinking" why doesn't he identify who "some people" are? I suppose they are the "many people" mentioned two paragraphs later who were suprised by the Holy Father's "endorsement of eros" in Deus caritas est.

[Tony Esolen]

Great post, David. We Christians tend to forget how radical our message is, because we spend much of our time wishing for ourselves that it were not so radical. But the words of Jesus ring out. "If they have rejected me, don't be surprised by what happens to you." I love Benedict for his honest attempts to speak the truth in charity, and then for his not caring what anybody says about him -- his perfectly calm acceptance of the crucifixion to follow.

[Maureen]

But the thing about sales is that you don't sell the customer what he wants; you sell him what he needs and tell him why he wants it. If you can identify the need and get the customer to agree on that need, you are more than halfway to the sale.

I guess it applies to more than just goods and services.