I am presently working on a little book about the role of Christ in Pope Benedict’s thought. It’s not scholarly, aimed, rather at a popular audience, and I’ll only be pulling from his writings as Pope. I will be, more than anything else, pulling from his writings as Pope with an eye simply towards helping the lay reader, serious about deepening faith, come into contact with what Benedict says about Christ. Almost more of a devotional.
But I do have to do background, and part of that involves finally reading his Introduction to Christianity.
My advice?
You read it,too.
As I’ve said several times before, what’s so impressed me about Benedict is not just his knowledge about theology, but his understanding of the human condition and contemporary culture: the Way We Live Now – the context in which we believe, in which we follow Christ. He gets it – he seems to just get all of it – from how the intellect and will struggle with faith to how life in the Church can, paradoxically, challenge faith as well.
Reading this book emphasizes, once more, how ignorant commenters are who characterize Ratzinger as a rules-only, believe-in-the-precepts-or-else, let’s-live-in-the-past kind of fellow.
The first chapter in the book, for example, begins with a prolonged and sympathetic (and I might venture – knowing) discussion of doubt. This is the part that moved me to set the book and think a while. Which was bad because it was only about page 4, and I’ve got get moving on this thing:
First of all, the believer is always threatened with the uncertainty which in moments of temptation can suddenly and unexpectedly cast a piercing light on the fragility of the whole that usually seems so self-evident to him. A few examples will help make this clear.
That lovable saint Teresa of Lisieux, who looks so naive and unproblematical, had grown up in an atmosphere of complete religious security; her whole existence from beginning to end and down to the smallest detail, was so completely molded by the faith of the Church that the invisible world had become not just a part of her everyday life, but that life itself. It seemed to be an almost tangible reality that could not be removed by any amount of thinking. To her, “religion: really was a self-evident presupposition of her daily existence; she dealt with it as we deal with the concrete details of our lives. Yet this very saint, a person apparently cocooned in complete security, left behind her, from the last weeks of her passion, shattering admissions which her horrified sisters toned down in her literary remains and which have only now come to light in the new verbatim editions. She says, for example, “I am assailed by the worst temptations of atheism”. Everything has become questionable, everything dark. She feels tempted to take only the sheer void for granted. In other words, in what is apparently a flawlessly interlocking world someone here suddenly catches a glimpse of the abyss lurking – even for her – under the firm structure of the supporting conventions. In a situation like this, what is in question is not the sort of thing that one perhaps quarrels about otherwise – all of this becomes absolutely secondary. What is at stake is the whole structure; it is a question of all or nothing. That is the only remaining alternative; nowhere does there seem anything to cling to in this sudden fall. All that can be seen is the bottomless depths of the void into which one is also staring.
Paul Claudel has depicted this situation in a most convincing way in the great opening scene of the Soulier de Satin. A Jesuit missionary, brother Rodrigue, the hero of the play (a worldling and adventurer veering uncertainly between God and the world), is shown as the survivor of a shipwreck. His ship has been sunk by pirates, he himself has been lashed to a mast from the sunken ship, and he is now drifting on this piece of wood through the raging waters of the ocean. The play opens with his last monologue:
Lord, I thank thee for bending me down like this. It sometimes happened that I found thy commands laborious and my will at a loss and jibbing at thy dispensation. But now I could not be bound to thee more closely than I am, and however violently my limbs move they cannot get one inch away from thee. So I really am fastened to the cross, but the cross on which I hang is not fastened to anything else. It drifts on the sea.
Fastened to the cross – with the cross fastened to nothing, drifting over the abyss. The situation of the contemporary believer could hardly be more accurately and impressively described. Only on a loose plank bobbing over the void seems to hold him up, and it looks as if he must eventually sink. Only a loose plank connects him to God, though certainly it connects him inescapably and in the last analysis he knows that his wood is strong than the void which seethes beneath him and which remains nevertheless the really threatening force in this day-to-day life.
This picture contains in addition yet another dimension, which indeed seems to me the really important thing about it. This shipwrecked Jesuit is not alone; in him there is a sort of advance reflection of the fate of his brother; the destiny of his brother is present in him, that brother who considers himself a non-believer, who has turned his back on God because he sees his business not as waiting, but as “possessing the attainable . . ., as though he could be anywhere else than where Thou art”.
We do not need here to follow the intricacies of Claudel’s conception, to see how he uses the interweaving lines of these two apparently antithetical destinies as guiding threads, up to the point when finally Rodrigue’s fate touches that of his brother, in that the conqueror of the world ends up as a slave on a ship, a slave who must be glad when a ragged old nun with a rusty frying-pan take him too with her as a worthless chattel. Instead, we can return without any more similes to our own situation and say: If on the one hand the believer can only perfect his faith on the ocean of nihilism, temptation and doubt, if he has been assigned the ocean of uncertainty as the only possible site for his faith, on the other hand the unbeliever is not to be understood undialectically as mere man without faith. Just as we have already recognized that the believer does not live immune to doubt but is always threatened by the plunge into the void, so now we can discern the entangled nature of human destinies and say that even the non-believer does not represent a rounded and closed existence. However, vigorously he may assert that he is a pure positivist, who has long left behind him supernatural temptations and weaknesses, and now accepts only what is immediately certain, he will never be free of the secret uncertainty whether positivism really has the last word. Just as the believer is choked by the salt water of doubt constantly washed into his mouth by the ocean of uncertainty, so the non-believer is troubled by doubts about his unbelief, about the real totality of the world which he has made up his mind to explain as a self-contained whole. He can never be absolutely certain of the autonomy of what he has seen and interpreted as a whole; he remains threatened by the question whether belief is not after all the reality which it claims to be. Just as the believer knows himself to be constantly threatened by unbelief, which he must experience as a continual temptation, so for the unbeliever faith remains a temptation and a threat to his apparently permanently closed world. In short, there is no escape from the dilemma of being a man. Anyone who makes up his mind to evade the uncertainty of belief will have to experience the uncertainty of unbelief, which can never finally eliminate for certain the possibility that belief may after all be the truth. It is not until belief is rejected that its unrejectability becomes evident.
It may be appropriate at this point to cite a Jewish story told by Martin Buber; it presents in concrete form the above-mentioned dilemma of being a man.
An adherent of the Enlightenment [writes Buber], a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him too and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi’s room he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, wrapped in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly and said, “But perhaps it is true after all”. The scholar tried in vain to collect himself – his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Jizchak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: “My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and nor can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true.” The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible “perhaps” which echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance.
Here we have, I believe – in however strange a guise – a very precise description of the situation of man confronted with the question of God. No one can lay God and is Kingdom on the table before another man; even the believer cannot do it for himself. But however strongly unbelief may feel itself thereby justified it cannot forget the eerie feeling induced by the words “Yet perhaps it is true”. The “perhaps” is the unavoidable temptation which it cannot elude, the temptation in which it too, in the very act of rejection, has to experience the unrejectability of belief. In other words, both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide away from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt, for the other through doubt and in the form of doubt. It is the basic pattern of man’s destiny only to be allowed to find the finality of his existence in this unceasing rivalry between doubt and belief, temptation and certainty. Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sides from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication. It prevents both from enjoying complete self-satisfaction; it opens up the believer to the doubter and the doubter to the believer; for one it is his share in the fate of the unbeliever, for the other the form in which belief remains nevertheless a challenge to him.
Introduction to Christianity is what did it for me, too, especially the discussion about doubt. I agree that Ratzinger does know something about doubt. Somewhere in the back of my mind is an interview he did when he was Prefect where he mentioned a horrible tragedy that he said caused him to doubt and I’ve never forgotten it. Benedict couldn’t have written that way about doubt if he had not experienced it himself. And that’s so refreshingly honest. Those people who claim they’re always …. so faithful – I just wonder.
Amazing how moving theology can be.
Reading this book five or six years ago brought me back to Christianity and the Church.
Amy,
You read too much! LOL. Thanks so much for putting the world on pause and sharing that with us.
Reading this book emphasizes, once more, how ignorant commenters are who characterize Ratzinger as a rules-only, believe-in-the-precepts-or-else, let’s-live-in-the-past kind of fellow.
Perfectly and accurately stated, Amy. I read Introduction to Christianity about ten years ago and was blown away; I soon read several more Ratzinger books. All of them were impressive in terms of their erudition, clarity, insight, and depth. Those who say that Ratzinger/Benedict is “out of touch” or “nostalgic” or “narrow minded” only prove that they are the ones out of touch and narrow minded.
By the way, folks can a href=”http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/ratzinger_prefintrochr_may08.asp”>read the new preface (written shortly before Ratzinger’s election) to Introduction to Christianity over on Ignatius Insight. And then, of course, they can order the book!
I’m so excited! When does your book drop?
Honestly, I’m not sure. The manuscript is due at the end of the year, so I’m thinking next fall…maybe? Do you want to write it for me?
I believe there is another Hitchens/D’Souza debate coming up in the near future on the University of Colorado campus sponsored by the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center. Would be interesting to hear their answers to the question, “What if you’re wrong?”
Hmm…..ghost write? Well. being that I am about to enter a time of great inarticulateness, I think even Joseph your son might be a better writing partner.
Very timely. My daughter does not wish to be confirmed, in part because she is ‘not sure’ and wants to decide for herself. “If I was born into a Jewish home, wouldn’t I become Jewish?”
I’d love to share this with her and encourage her that confirmation is about building her faith – not checking boxes that say she has no remaining doubts.
Alas, I fear Benedict’s writing style is a bit complex for her, and her eyes would glaze over. It would be great to find a more accessible discussion of doubt and faith in the lives of the saints.
Suggestions?
Joe: This is sort of lame, but you might try my “Here.Now. A Catholic Guide to the Good Life.” I wrote it for young adults. Also Peter Kreeft’s “Because God Is Real: Sixteen Questions, One Answer “, which is probably far better than my book!
My oldest read Here. Now and all of the Prove Its. I read the Prove Its and will pick up Here. Now.
My middle has all the Prove Its with the Amy W. signature. She has never read a page for fear (I think) that she would be manipulated. Wants to figure things out for herself. (Interesting that she sees the folly of that approach with mathematics).
But I am hijacking the direction of this thread. I’ll talk to a variety of folk, pray, listen and do my best to figure out how to best help her. Perhaps she is better off than the multitude who get confirmed cuz that’s what you do.
Thanks.
“Introduction to Christianity” is one of the most profound books of the 20th Century. It illuminates like no other book I know of the coherence, depth and sophistication of the Christian worldview. Consider, for example, the discussion, found at pages 41-47, of what Christain “faith” is. Starting from a consideration of the Hebrew word “Amen” and the difference between practical knowledge and belief, it demonstrates how Christain faith ultimately is an affirmance of meaning and truth. It is such a powerful exposition that I quote it below at length.
The discussion starts with a consideration of the following translation of a sentence from Isaiah: “If you do not believe (if you do not hold firm to Yahweh), then you will have no hold”. Ratzinger says about this sentence: “The one root ‘mn (Amen) embraces a variety of meanings whose interplay and differentiation go to make up the subtle grandeur of this sentence. It includes the meanings truth, firmness, firm ground, ground, and furthermore to the meanings loyalty, to trust, entrust oneself, take one’s stand on something, believe in something; thus faith in God appears as a holding on to God through which man gains a firm hold for his life. Faith is thereby defined as taking up a position, as taking a stand trustfully on the ground of the word of God.” Ratzinger then goes on to discuss whether the Greek translation of this sentence represents a Hellenization and less Biblical view, in that it “instead of expressing the notion of standing on the firm ground of the reliable word of God it is now linked with understanding and reason and thus removed to a quite different and completely inappropriate plane.” This discussion is interesting but is essentially a tangent to the main point: what the nature of belief and faith (which have to do with meaning) is and how they differ from practical knowledge (which concerns “making” things). Ratzinger then goes on:
“It is perhaps permissible here to draw attention to a distinction made by Martin Heidegger, who speaks of the duality of calculating and reflective thought. Both modes of though are legitimate and necessary, but for this very reason neither can be absorbed in the other. There must therefore be both: calculating thought, which is concerned with “makability”, and reflective thought, which is concerned with meaning. And one cannot deny that the Freiburg philosopher has a good deal of justification for expressing the fear that in an age in which calculating thought is celebrating the most amazing triumphs man is nevertheless threatened, perhaps more than ever before, by thoughtlessness, by the flight from thought. By thinking only of the practicable, of what can be made, he is in danger of forgetting to reflect on himself and on the meaning of his existence. Of course this temptation is present in every age. Thus in the thirteenth century the great Franciscan theologian Bonaventure felt obliged to reproach his colleagues of the theological faculty at Paris with having learned how to measure the world but having forgotten how to measure themselves. Let us repeat the same thing once again in another form: belief in the sense intended by the Creed is not an incomplete kind of knowledge, an opinion that subsequently can or should be converted into practical knowledge. It is much rather an essentially different kind of intellectual attitude, which stands alongside practical knowledge as something independent and particular, and cannot be traced back to it or deduced from it. Belief does not belong to the realm of what can be, or has been made, but to the realm of basic questions which man cannot avoid answering and the answer to which can by its nature occur only in one form. This form we call belief. It seems to me essential that this should be seen quite clearly: every man must adopt some kind of attitude to the basic questions, and no man can do this in any other way but that of entertaining belief. There is a realm which allows no other answer but that of entertaining a belief, and no man can completely avoid this realm. Every man is bound to have some kind of ‘belief.’”
There then follows a paragraph that I omit in which Ratzinger observes that Marxism represents an (impressive but unsuccessful) effort to incorporate the attitude of “belief” into the attitude of practical knowledge. He then continues:
“Let us return after this little detour to ask once again and more comprehensively: what is belief really? We can now reply like this: it is a way of taking up a stand in the totality of reality, a way that cannot be reduced to knowledge and is incommensurable by knowledge; it is the bestowal of meaning without which the totality of man would remain homeless, on which man’s calculations and actions are based, and without which in the last resort he could not calculate and act, because he can only do this in the context of a meaning that bears him up. For in fact man does not live on the bread of practicability alone; he lives as man and, precisely in the intrinsically human part of his being, on the word, on love, on meaning. Meaning is the bread on which man, in the intrinsically human part of his being, subsists. Without the word, without meaning, without love he falls into the situation of no-longer-being-able-to-live, even when earthly comfort is present in abundance. Everyone knows how sharply this situation of “not being able to go on any more” can arise in the midst of outward abundance. But meaning is not derived from knowledge. To try to manufacture it in this way, that is, out of the provable knowledge of what can be made, would resemble Baron Munchhausen’s absurd attempt to pull himself up out of the bog by his own hair. I believe that the absurdity of this story mirrors very accurately the basic situation of man. No one can pull himself up out of the uncertainty, of-not-being-able-to-live, by his own exertions; nor can we pull ourselves up, as Descartes still though we could, by a ‘cogito ergo sum,’ by a series of intellectual deductions. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.
Thus starting from a completely general analysis of the basic attitude of ‘belief’ we arrive directly at the Christian mode of belief. For to believe as a Christian means in fact entrusting oneself to the meaning which bears up me and the world; taking it as the firm ground on which I can stand fearlessly. Using rather more traditional language, we could say that to believe as a Christian means understanding our existence as answer to the word, the logos, that bears up and holds all things. It means affirming that the meaning which we do not make but can only receive is already granted to us, so that we have only to take it and entrust ourselves to it. Correspondingly, Christian belief is the option for the view that the receiving precedes the making – though this does not mean that making is reduced in value or proclaimed to be superfluous. It is only because we have received that we can also ‘make.’ And further: Christian belief – as we have already said – means opting for the view that what cannot be seen is more real that what can be seen. It is an avowal of the primacy of the invisible as the truly real, which bears us up and hence enables us to face the visible in a calm and relaxed way – knowing that we are responsible before the invisible as the true ground of all things. To that extent it is undeniable that Christian belief is a double affront to the attitude which the present world situation seems to force us to adopt. In the shape of positivism and phenomenalism it invites us to confine ourselves to the ‘visible’, the ‘apparent’, in the widest sense of the terms; to extend the basic attitude to which natural science is indebted for its successes to the totality of our relationship with reality. Again, in the shape of techne it calls upon us to rely on the ‘makable’ and to expect to find in this the ground which bears us up. The primacy of the invisible over the visible and that of receiving over making run directly counter to this basic situation. No doubt that is why it is so difficult for us today to make the leap of entrusting ourselves to what cannot be seen. Yet the freedom of making, like that of enlisting the visible in our service by means of methodical investigation, is in the last analysis only made possible by the provisional character with which Christian belief invests both and by the superiority which it has thus revealed.
[Heading omitted.]
If one ponders all this, one will note how closely the first and last words of the Creed – ‘I believe’ and ‘Amen’ – chime with one another, encircling the totality of individual assertions and thus providing the inner space for all that lies between. In the harmony of ‘Credo’ and ‘Amen’ the meaning of the whole becomes visible, the intellectual movement which it is all about. We noted earlier that the word ‘Amen’ belongs in Hebrew to the root from which the word ‘belief’ is also derived. Thus ‘Amen’ simply says once again in its own way what belief means: the trustful placing of myself on a ground that bears me up, not because I have made it and checked it by own calculations but, rather, precisely because I have not made it and cannot check. It expresses the abandonment of oneself to what we neither make nor need to make, to the ground of the world as meaning, which first of all discloses to me the freedom to make.
Yet what happens here is not a blind surrender to the irrational. On the contrary, it is a movement towards the logos, the ratio, towards meaning and so towards truth itself, for in the final analysis the ground on which man takes his stand cannot possibly be anything else but the truth revealing itself. At this point, where we might least expect it, we stumble yet again on one last antithesis between practical knowledge and belief. Practical knowledge must – as we have already seen – by its own intrinsic aim be positivistic; it must be confined to what is given and can be measured. But the consequence of this is that it no longer enquires after truth. It achieves its successes precisely by renouncing the quest for truth itself and by directing its attention to the ‘rightness’, the ‘soundness’ of the system whose hypothetical design must prove itself in the functioning of the experiment. In other words, practical knowledge does not enquire what things are like on their own and in themselves, but only whether they will function for us. The turn towards practical knowledge was accomplished precisely by no longer contemplating being in itself but only how it functioned with regard to our own work. This means that in the separation of the question of truth from being and in its shifting to the fact and the faciendum the very concept of truth was itself fundamentally altered. The notion of the truth of being itself has been replaced by the rightness of the results. What is pertinent and irrevocable about this is that only this rightness is vouchsafed to us as something that can be calculated; the truth of being itself eludes knowledge of the calculating variety.
The Christian attitude of belief is expressed in the little word ‘Amen’, in which the meanings trust, entrust, fidelity, firmness, firm ground, stand, truth all interpenetrate each other; this means that the thing on which man can finally take his stand and which can give him meaning can only be truth itself. Thus the Christian act of faith intrinsically includes the conviction that the meaningful ground, the logos, on which we take our stand, precisely because it is meaning, is also truth . Meaning or sense which was not truth would be non-sense. The indivisibility of meaning, ground and truth which is expressed both in the Hebrew word ‘Amen’ and the Greek logos at the same time proclaims a whole view of the world. The way – for us inimitable – in which words such as these embrace the indivisibility of meaning, ground and truth throws into relief the whole network of co-ordinates by which Christian faith surveys the world and takes up its position in relation to it. But this also means that in its original nature belief or faith is no blind collection of incomprehensible paradoxes. It means, furthermore, that it is nonsense to plead “mystery”, as people certainly do only too often, by way of an excuse for the failure of reason. If theology arrives at all kinds of absurdities and tries not only to excuse them, but even where possible to canonize them, by pointing to the mystery, then we are confronted with a misuse of the true idea of the “mystery”, the purpose of which is not destroy reason but rather to render belief possible as understanding. In other words, it is certainly true that belief or faith is not knowledge in the sense of practical knowledge and its particular kind of calculability. It can never become that, and in the last analysis it can only make itself ridiculous if it tries to adopt its methods. But the reverse is true too: calculable practical knowledge is limited by its very nature to the apparent, to what functions, and does not represent the way in which to find truth itself, which by its very method it has renounced. The tool with which man is equipped to deal with the truth of being is not knowledge but understanding: understanding the meaning to which he has entrusted to himself. And we must certainly add that “understanding” only reveals itself in ‘standing’, not apart from it. One cannot occur without the other, for understanding means seizing and grasping as meaning the meaning which man has received as ground. I think this is the precise significance of what we mean by understanding: that we learn to grasp the ground on which we have taken our stand as meaning and truth; that we learn to perceive that ground represents meaning.
If this is so, understanding not only implies no contradiction with belief but represents its most intrinsic property. For knowledge of the functional aspect of the world, as procured for us so splendidly by present-day technical and scientific thinking, brings with it no understanding of the world and of being. Understanding grows only out of belief. That is why theology as the understanding, logos-like ( = rational, understanding-through-reason) discussion of God is a fundamental task of Christian faith. This context is also the basis of the inalienable right of Greek thought to a place in Christianity. I am convinced at bottom it was no mere accident that the Christian message, in the period when it was taking shape, first entered the Greek world and there merged with the enquiry into understanding, into truth. Believing and understanding belong together no less than believing and “standing”, simply because standing and understanding are inseparable. To this extent the Greek translation of the sentence in Isaiah about believing and abiding reveals a dimension which is implicit in the biblical attitude itself if it is not to be degraded into fanaticism, sectarianism.”
Christopher Hitchens. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, and other atheists and agnostics, what do you have to say in response?
Not long ago I purchased a hardback copy of this book from Barnes and Noble for under $5!
Fastened to the cross – with the cross fastened to nothing, drifting over the abyss. The situation of the contemporary believer could hardly be more accurately and impressively described. Only on a loose plank bobbing over the void seems to hold him up, and it looks as if he must eventually sink.
Thank you for this excerpt from Ratzinger. His commentary on the Claudel piece was insightful and articulate. I definitely feel like this often as a young, single Catholic in the working world. Somehow, it is comforting to know the Pope has felt that same feeling of being stranded but knowing that you have to hold on to the cross because it is your only hope…”to whom shall we go?”
I recall reading these exact paragraphs some years ago–in fact, somewhat presciently, a week before Ratzinger’s election–while undergoing an existential crisis, one largely precipitated by seemingly dismissive treatment by local clergy. Seeing the man who wrote these words on the balcony of the Apostolic Palace greatly bolstered my resolve.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that my experience, as well as that of many others, of the Catholic Church on the ground-level in the States, is not one of profound faith, wisdom, holiness, and courage in the face of the abyss, but rather one of an element of the ephemeral American society that troubles me so much. Why today do our clergy not seem to care to personify the wisdom and holiness of Christ and of the saints, but rather seem like secular “managers,” often with a half-witted smirk? If the Church is the normative milieu for the personal encounter with Jesus Christ through the Gospel and the Sacraments, why do our masses so often resemble some manner of banal entertainment, with a motivational speech rather than a homily, and light, James-Taylor-style, self-congratulatory songs rather than our rich treasury of artful, even cathartic, sacred music? Why was my last confession not a heartfelt plea for forgiveness to the Mysterious Other veiled from my sight behind the screen, but a mundane therapy session with Smilin’ Father So-and-So? Why do our yearning, troubled souls find no succour?
It often leads me to wonder if the Church in the States is truly in communion with the Holy See! Is American Catholicism the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.? It appears so, but I am no American Catholic; I am a Roman Catholic. The often unspoken problems of doubt, alienation, anguish, uniformity, inauthenticity, are deeply held concerns for many socially and culturally displaced persons here today, and the Church could play a huge role vis-à-vis these concerns. Rome has, and continues to do so, while the American clergy can only offer the tritest of platitudes, and seem blind as to the realities of the human condition in this day. Dostoyevsky, Bernanos, Eliot, Kierkegaard–does not even the finest literature of our day deal with this? For all of the talk about personalism lately, and all the fine trends of recent philosophy and theology, has this been lost on those who could most benefit from it?
Forgive me for going quite far afield, but re-reading these paragraphs once more, I am led to wonder if those responsible for the Church in this country, who no doubt profess loyalty to the Holy Father, are even aware of his thought.
Thank you for indulging my rant.