Benedict, then & now.

I too was at the Lumen Christi colloquium starring (in more than one sense of the word) that Orion-like constellation of Alasdair MacIntyre, Jean-Luc Marion, and Charles Taylor, with a response by Cardinal George. My memory of the event differs almost completely from William D. Wood's account. In the course of speaking about the recent papal election (from which he had returned only two days earlier), the cardinal spoke of the symbolism behind the new pope's choice of the name Benedict, which the pope himself said was meant to refer both to the founder of the Benedictine order and to Pope Benedict XV. As everyone now knows, the name was chosen by the new pope to symbolize the need to re-evangelize Europe. St. Benedict of Nursia was obviously more successful in evangelizing Europe than was Benedict XV (although only after centuries of gestation); and that, I thought, was the point of the cardinal's reflections. The Western powers--and this is a matter of historical record--brushed aside Benedict XV's plea for a just peace. It is also a matter of agreed-upon history that the Treaty of Versailles contributed to World War II, which in its wake led to the hegemony of the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe, as ratified by the Allies at Yalta.

I took the cardinal to mean by these hardly controversial historical observations that Europe is bound to pay a price now, as it did in 1919, when it ignores the witness and admonitions of either Benedict XV then or Benedict XVI now. To the best of my memory, the cardinal made no mention of the glories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; he issued no plea to return to some putative "Christendom" once instantiated in the Holy Roman Empire; and he certainly never called on secular Europe to submit its diplomatic rows to the binding arbitration of the Vatican. All of these scenarios are but the nightmares of Wood's imagination, not the considered opinions of the cardinal archbishop of Chicago.

But even if my memory fails, at least everyone can surely agree in calling Wood's judgment, if not his memory, into question when he says, "Sometimes, I think, the church even needs to get out of the way and let the gospel present itself as surpassingly beautiful and worthy of love." If that means that the gospel can, and indeed should, be proclaimed without the church, then Wood needs to exorcize not only his nightmares but also his dreams. To me, thinking the gospel can be preached without the church is like designing a water-purification plant that "purifies" the water by removing all its oxygen.

EDWARD T. OAKES, SJ

Mundelein, Ill.

THE AUTHOR REPLIES:

Cardinal George claims that I misrepresented his remarks at the April 30 Lumen Christi conference. Edward T. Oakes questions my memory. And Paul J. Griffiths believes that I am gripped by a deep theoretical confusion. The simple truth is that I wrote what I wrote because Cardinal George said what he said: I found his remarks at the conference--a public forum--quite troubling, and so I reported them and disagreed with them.

I am confident that I quoted George accurately and in context because I have the entirety of his remarks on tape. I interpreted his words according to their plainest sense. I also took care to cite an opposing viewpoint, that of Paul J. Griffiths, who said that my interpretation was off the mark. In short, George may legitimately claim that what he said at the conference does not reflect his considered views, but he cannot claim that I misrepresented his remarks or treated him unfairly.

Cardinal George set his own remarks in a political context. He linked the spiritual and cultural phenomenon of secularization in Europe both to specific political events of the twentieth century and to the decisions--not unintended consequences--of political leaders that he named. He chose to say that the secularization of Europe "really began in earnest" with, of all things, the Treaty of Versailles. He also chose to say that with Versailles, "the last remnants of Christendom were destroyed" (the full quotation is below). Twice, he described the pastoral program of Benedict XVI in terms of a desire to undo the Treaty of Versailles. He also condemned the Yalta conference and discussed the birth of the European Union. George's remarks were not only political but strikingly so, precisely because I did not expect remarks of this kind when he began to elaborate the ways in which Benedict XVI will "attend in particular ways to the secularization of Western Europe."

In any event, I am happy to learn that I was so wrong about George's interpretation of Yalta and Versailles. At the Lumen Christi conference, George said that with the Treaty of Yalta, "Stalin and Churchill and Roosevelt divided the world between slave and free and handed peoples over to the slavery of communism." This strongly worded criticism came directly after similar charges directed at Woodrow Wilson. I certainly did not realize that these sharp remarks merely expressed the bland truism that, as George now writes, "agreements have unintended consequences."

I am happier still to learn that George does not conflate secularism and relativism. In fact, George says that he didn't mention relativism at all. It is true that he did not say the word "relativism"--and I didn't say that he did--but at the conference, he did say, for example, that Benedict XVI would "bring forward a theory similar to what John Paul II did with communism, and what he started to do with Western secularism in his last years, saying that you can't deliver a stable society if, in order to protect personal freedom, you sacrifice objective truth and particularly moral truth. It's a fault line and it will destabilize our societies and bring them down ... as certainly as the fault line in communism effected its demise." I thought that this reference to sacrificing "objective truth and particularly moral truth" was a straightforward reference to relativism. (It's practically the dictionary definition of the word.) Since this criticism of societies that sacrifice objective truth was, without distinction, also directed at "Western secularism," I said that George conflated the two. I still think that my interpretation of these remarks is justified.

Moreover, eleven days before the Lumen Christi conference, Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, famously criticized modern society for "building a dictatorship of relativism" (these remarks had been touched on earlier in the conference), and since George was discussing the pastoral program of Benedict, I naturally interpreted George's criticism of societies that sacrifice objective truth against the backdrop of Benedict's well-known critique. Should I not have? Of course I agree with the statement in George's letter that there is no logical connection between secularism and relativism. That's exactly what I said in my article. I emphasized the point because I genuinely think that confusing the two is unhelpful to the church.

I am happiest of all to learn that George feels no nostalgia for Christendom. Apparently, I interpreted too literally his statement that Benedict XVI is going to "bring us back to the Treaty of Versailles when the secularization of Europe really began in earnest and the last remnants of Christendom were destroyed." In his talk, Cardinal George moved directly from this reference to Christendom to the claim (cited above) that societies that embrace Western secularism and deny objective moral truth will collapse. I therefore took him to mean that societies remain politically stable only when they embrace an explicitly Christian conception of moral truth. Frankly, as a result of the context of his speech--which advocated a papal role in making treaties and guiding the birth of the European Union--I took George to mean that societies remain politically stable only when they embrace an explicitly papal conception of moral truth. And all this--bringing the political order and its laws into ever greater concord with the Christian moral law--ends in a form of Christendom. "Christendom" is a perennial temptation for the church, and I'm sincerely glad that George repudiates it, but I don't think that my interpretation of his talk was unreasonable.

My response to Cardinal George suffices as a response to Edward Oakes. But it is worth pointing out that his letter actually confirms my interpretation of the specific political context of George's remarks. After all, Oakes himself apparently thought that George presented what amounts to a straightforward, causal story: Benedict XV, but not the Western powers, wanted "a just peace" in 1919; the fact that they ignored Benedict XV contributed to the outbreak of World War II, which led to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, which the Western powers then "ratified" at Yalta. Similarly, according to Oakes, George meant to say that Europe will pay a price today--just as it did in 1919--if it ignores the counsel of the current Pope Benedict. Whatever one makes of all this, it is a thoroughly political narrative. And surely it is fair to say, as I did, that it is odd to encounter this kind of black-and-white politically charged history in the middle of a talk about Benedict XVI's desire to re-evangelize Europe.

I will say, though, that I agree with Oakes about the particular sentence of mine that he criticizes at the end of his letter. It's a bad sentence. At best, it reads like an empty rhetorical flourish; at worst, like a silly bit of kumbayah-pseudo-theology. Here is what I should have said: It is all too easy to dwell on abstract questions about the authority and temporal influence of the church at the expense of the concrete practices of selfless Christian love, but it is selfless Christian love that is inherently compelling. I didn't intend to deny the importance of the church's explicit witness, preaching, and sacraments. Just to be clear, let me also say that I do not intend this revised version as a criticism of Cardinal George.

For his part, Griffiths charges that I misinterpreted George because I failed to see that making the governing institutions of Europe less secular can simply mean making them more just. If that is all George meant, then I agree with him heartily. By now it should be clear why that is not what I took him to mean. Finally, on the question of whether the political order-cum-saeculum can correct itself, I would be interested to know exactly where Professor Griffiths and I diverge. I don't think that we are as far apart as he apparently does, but I also don't think that I implied anything at all about the matter in what I wrote. I criticized the specific words of Cardinal George and then expressed my general hope that the church will eschew coercive tactics, engage its critics, and sincerely try to show them the beauty of the gospel. WILLIAM D. WOOD