Monday, April 9, 2007
Sightings 4/9/07
The Pope and
Reason
-- Martin E. Marty
"Europe is the faith" and "the faith is
Europe." Hilaire Belloc, noted Catholic writer in the 1930s, looked out
from England on the rest of Europe and uttered what was then still partly
plausible. Today "the faith's" memory remains overwhelmingly
European. The archives and libraries, cathedrals and chapels, pilgrimage
sites and tourist attractions in Europe beckon more than do their counterparts
in Latin America (which would come in second in numbers of Christians) or Asia
or Africa. Yet "memory" and "faith" are not exactly the same thing, and
the empty cathedrals and the constant decline in church participation suggest
that one must look elsewhere to find where and how "the faith" is
prospering.
Onto this scene came Pope Benedict XVI, whose moves Jane
Kramer, European correspondent for the New Yorker, has been observing, as
in her much-discussed account "The Pope and Islam" (see References,
below). Kramer herself is, by assignment and instinct, "Eurocentric," but
she is aware that other worlds and cultures and church cultures exist "out
there." Latin America, Africa, and Asia are precisely where the Catholic
Church and other forms of Christianity, notably Pentecostalism, are surging, but
they necessarily receive little mention in her piece. At best, the pope
looks beyond Western Europe to Eastern Europe, since his heart burns and he
yearns for better relations with Orthodoxy. Protestantism, in Kramer's
account and Benedict's actions, does not seem to count for as much.
The
proverbial elephant in the room for the pope is Islam, with which he has said he
would like to engage in dialogue. As Kramer tells it, he frustrates, and
is frustrated by, Muslims, since those leaders with whom he would deal and the
papacy with which they must deal are both closed systems, sure that they have an
absolute hold on absolute truth. This means that they have little to learn
from each other, and turn more militant in order to hold loyalties.
One
point on which Kramer focuses and which preoccupies others is the pope's basic
approach to faith: He sees it grounded in reason of a particular sort.
Those (of us) who do not like to see faith dismissed as non-rational or even
anti-reason can welcome that accent. As Benedict's published speeches and
the quotes in Kramer's article show, however, his "reason" derives from Greek
philosophy fused with Western Catholic concerns, which he has mastered.
The pope's main concerns are to counter Europe's post-Catholic secularism and to
help produce a trimmer, more assertive Catholicism that is sure of its
identity.
One who is sympathetic with the pope's plight, given that
agenda, might well question -- as Kramer does -- whether his definition of
"reason" is itself so colored by the European experience that it must look
almost philosophically sectarian to non-Christians, non-Catholics, and
non-European-sectored Catholics. What he means by reason is not what many
"post-Vatican II" Catholics, as Kramer sees them, regard as
inclusive.
Yes, the pope is Catholic, as the old saying goes, but
"Catholic" implies "embracing the whole." The pope frustrates those who
contend that "the whole" does not derive only from Plato and Aristotle or Thomas
Aquinas, super-magisterial though they may
be.
References:
Jane Kramer's article "The Pope and Islam" appears in
the April 2, 2007, issue of the New Yorker, and can be read at:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/02/070402fa_fact_kramer.
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School.
