Values in a Time of Upheaval

A Review of the Book

Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
Published by: Crossroad Publishing, New York, 2005.
ISBN 10: 0-8245-2372-3
Hardcover, 172 pages
$19.95

Reviewed by: Vincent J. Curtis   

23 November 2006

Before he was elevated Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was a university professor and world-class theologian, and for over twenty years under Pope John Paul II the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  He continued to write learned papers and deliver lectures in philosophical theology even as his responsibilities within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church grew.  The book Values in a Time of Upheaval is a collection of his essays and lectures that he wrote and delivered between 2001 and 2005.  No one who was familiar with the contents of this book would have been surprised either with the tone or the content of Pope Benedict XVI’s now famous lecture at the University of Regensburg.

Values is divided into three parts.  The first part is entitled What Rules Should Guide Our Conduct: Politics and Morality.  The second section is called Responsibility for Peace.  The last is concerned with the question What is Europe: Foundations and Perspectives.

If one can read the work of Christopher Hitchens for delight, one absorb the writing of Joseph Ratzinger for profit.  Values is a thoughtful read, and one or two essays at a time of the ten in the book is an adequate pace at which to take in his thinking.

Unlike Hitchens, who writes on religion from the perspective of a committed atheist, Ratzinger writes from the perspective of a person who believes in God and who is open to religion, but is not committed to either proposition on the basis of faith alone.  So pure is his intellectualism that the Pope does not write learned papers on philosophical theology from the perspective of a committed Catholic.  Such an openness to doubt makes Ratzinger’s analysis and conclusions that much more respectable.  One can disagree with his analysis and conclusions, but one cannot dismiss them out of hand as the work of a committed Catholic.

The two most important themes in this book and in the Regensburg address are the diminishing role of reason in the world and the Christian nature of Europe.  The work of Aristotle established that what sets man apart from all other animals is his capacity for reason.  Man is most distinctively man when he employs his faculty of reason.  Ratzinger makes the contrary point that man is diminished as the sphere of reason is diminished.  Religion too, he argues, is subject to reason, and is not and should not be merely an expression of belief or emotion.

 

This leads to his famous point that God is logos, a Greek word meaning both ‘word’ and ‘reason’ and from which the English word logic is derived.  The existence of science shows that the universe is governed by a logos, and if the nature of God is logos then man is able to understand God, as well as the universe, through his faculty of reason.  Conversely, an all-powerful God whose nature was not logos could not be understood at all by man.

The point on the nature of God has a broad and far-reaching application to the conflict between Islam and the West, and was the alleged basis of the rioting that followed the Regensburg lecture.

Of direct and immediate concern is the last section on the identity of Europe, and the prospective role of Turkey in the European Union.

Ratzinger makes the point that the identity of modern Europe is fundamentally Christian.  Modern Europe began after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and following the mass migration of peoples into Europe and the spread of Christianity.  The successes of militant Islam beginning in the Seventh century confined Christendom largely to the geographical area now known as Europe, until the discovery of America.  Today, most Europeans would claim to be humanists, not Christian, yet the humanism of Europe grew upon Christian roots, Ratzinger argues.  Today, Europe is as much a consciousness as it is a loosely defined geographical reference.  And Europe has a mission in the world, a service to which the rest of the world is entitled, Ratzinger believes.

That mission and service is in giving witness to human dignity and human rights, and in upholding monogamous marriage as the basic structure of the relationship between a man and a woman and as the cell for the construction of civic society, Ratzinger says.  Out of these propositions can be founded a non-religious basis for supporting conclusions reached by the Catholic Church on abortion, cloning, artificial insemination, organ donation, cohabitation, divorce, and homosexual partnerships.

Islam is fundamentally at odds with Christianity, and with the humanism that has Christianity as its root, Ratzinger believes.  A Muslim community is not an absorbable minority in a tolerant and pluralistic European society.  Thus it is dangerous to Europe and to the mission Europe has in the world for it to take in large numbers of Muslims, and by extension to admit Turkey to the European Union, with its few restrictions on travel and immigration.  Ratzinger is by no means a social Darwinist, nor can he be given his belief in the “mission of Europe”.

After the Regensburg lecture, it is apparent that Values contains the main themes of Benedict’s papacy.  These themes will have a force in the near future because they are not couched as strictly matters of Christian faith, but resonate with a reason all on their own, and because they are relevant to political matters today.

Committed atheists who delight in their intellectualism, like Christopher Hitchens, should welcome debate with a Pope who is prepared to meet them on their own ground and engage them with their choice of weapons.  They will find scorn alone to be unavailing and insufficient.

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