"A very sober view of the state"

Is what Christians should have, said Joseph Ratzinger in his 2006 Values in a Time of Upheaval.  "It is not the task," he said, "of the state to create man's happiness, nor is it the task of the state to create new men.  It is not the task of the state to change the world into a paradise . . . nor can it do so."  Two years earlier, in Truth and Tolerance, he had written, "Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much.  Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic."