Monday, September 10, 2007

Pope Benedict Stays Lofty in Austria


Pope Benedict XVI arrives for an afternoon mass at the pilgrimage church Mariazell during the second day of his visit to Austria
Johannes Simon / Getty


TIME
Monday, Sep. 10, 2007
By JEFF ISRAELY/ROME

It was a pilgrimage, Pope Benedict XVI insisted, not a political outing. The pontiff's just-completed stay in Austria was built around a visit to Mariazell, an 850-year-old shrine to Mary in the foothills of the Alps, just over two hours south of Vienna. And though Benedict used his three-day trip to touch on some familiar hot-button issues both inside and outside his Church — abortion, euthanasia, the so-called "de-Christianization" of Europe — he did so in a context and spirit that matched the humble "just-a-pilgrimage" billing he announced just before takeoff from Rome on Friday.

But of course the 80-year-old pontiff is no ordinary pilgrim. Not only is he the absolute leader of the billion-strong Catholic Church, he's also one of contemporary society's leading intellectuals — an unquestionably big thinker with the world's biggest platform for espousing his ideas. Speaking in his native German, and amongst believers much like those from the neighboring region of Bavaria where he was born, the Pope seemed especially comfortable on this latest trip. In a steady rain, Benedict pulled out the latest nuggets from his seemingly inexhaustible mine of deep thoughts on a now familiar theme: why his black-and-white brand of faith is the right response in a contemporary world given to compromises and what he disparagingly and repeatedly calls relativism. "Our faith is decisively opposed to the attitude of resignation that considers man incapable of truth as if this were more than he could cope with," the Pope said to some 40,000 fellow pilgrims at Mariazell. "This attitude of resignation with regard to truth lies at the heart of the crisis of the West. If truth does not exist for man, then neither can he ultimately distinguish between good and evil." He acknowledged legitimate fears that "faith in the truth might entail intolerance," but insisted that the Catholic Church espouses not a threatening truth, but one that he says "proves itself in love. It is never our property, never our product, just as love can never be produced, but only received and handed on as a gift."

Benedict has made his mark as a Pope by exploring timeless philosophical questions with a keen sense of the contemporary context, and by making complex Christian theology digestible for the masses. Progressive Catholics may not like his proselytizing for the traditions of the faith, but no one can deny the clarity with which he lays out his vision.
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