The "Progressive" Project Is Over

What Benedict XVI means


By George Weigel

The "Progressive" Project Is Over

What Benedict XVI means


By George Weigel



ROME --- The election of Pope Benedict XVI means many things: a
resounding affirmation of the pontificate of John Paul the Great; an
overwhelming vote of confidence in Joseph Ratzinger, one of the great
Christian minds and spirits of our time; and dynamic continuity in the
world's oldest office.

In the long view of history, though, April 19, 2005, may mark the
moment at which the 40-year effort to force Catholicism to tailor its
doctrine and its message to the tastes of secular modernity crashed and
burned.

Ever since the Second Vatican Council, some Catholics and most of the
world media have expected --- and in certain cases, demanded --- that
the Catholic Church follow the path taken by virtually every other
non-fundamentalist western Christian community over the past century:
the path of accommodation to secular modernity and its conviction that
religious belief, if not mere childishness, is a lifestyle choice with
no critical relationship to the truth of things.


These expectations have involved both doctrinal accommodation (e.g.,
the question of whether Jesus is the unique savior of the world) and
moral accommodation (e.g., the many issues involved in the
post-Freudian claim that human beings are essentially bundles of
desires).

I respect the decisions that other Christian communities have made,
before God and before the bar of history, in adopting accommodation
strategies. Yet it is very, very difficult to argue that this strategy
of cultural accommodation --- which in some cases bleeds into cultural
appeasement --- has solved the 250-year-old problem of being Christian
in the modern world.

Nor is it possible to demonstrate, empirically, that cultural
accommodation or appeasement produce vital, growing, compelling
Christian communities. Precisely the opposite is the case. Christian
communities with porous doctrinal and moral boundaries wither and die.
Christian communities with clear doctrinal and moral borders flourish,
even amidst the acids of modernity.

Yet it was expected that the Catholic Church would, indeed must, take
the path of accommodation: that has been the central assumption of
what's typically called "progressive" Catholicism. That assumption has
now been decisively and definitively refuted. The "progressive" project
is over --- not because its intentions were malign, but because it
posed an ultimately boring question: how little can I believe, and how
little can I do, and still remain a Catholic?

In choosing a pope with an unparalleled command of ancient, medieval
and modern theology, the College of Cardinals has sent a clear signal
to the entire Catholic Church: The really interesting question is, how
much of this rich, vast, subtle tradition have I made my own? At the
same time, the College of Cardinals, by electing Pope Benedict XVI, has
told both the church and the world that the evangelical adventure of
dynamic orthodoxy launched by John Paul II will not only continue, but
be deepened.

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the great divide in world
Catholicism these past several decades has not been between "liberals"
and "conservatives," "reformers" and "integrists." It's been between
bishops, priests, religious and laity who see the church primarily in
terms of its evangelical mission, and bishops, priests, religious and
laity who see the church primarily in terms of institutional
maintenance and the exercise of intra-institutional power. The conclave
of 2005 was a rout for the latter and a smashing triumph for the
former.

The conclave of 2005 also repudiated what might be called "50-yard-line
Catholicism" --- the attempt to find the safe, comfortable,
unthreatening "center" between "the extremes." Pope Benedict XVI, like
his immediate predecessor, is emphatically not a 50-yard-line bishop.
If one end zone is the truth of the world, and the other embodies a
false story about the world and about us, you can't split the
difference and rest comfortably at midfield. Benedict XVI, to press the
imagery a little further, will not play to avoid the interception;
he'll play for the touchdown.

Pray for his success. Pray that he'll inspire the bishops of the church
to do the same, so that the people of the church are given bold
leadership in the critical task of showing the world the face of
Christ, which reveals both the mercy of God and the truth about us.



George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center
in Washington, D.C.




http://www.the-tidings.com/2005/0429/difference.htm