From the editor’s desk

Into unknown territory

At last weekend’s Kirchentag event in Munich, where Pope Benedict was once archbishop, there was disappointment that he did not attend. The massive interchurch gathering, for the second time in its history involving Catholics as well as Protestants, was a striking sign that ecumenism can still warm the blood in the land of Martin Luther, even if the impression is given that the Vatican has gone cold on the subject. The Pope was in Portugal, attending a big celebration at the shrine of Fátima. But it would be misleading to interpret this as a retrograde retreat into simplistic pieties. The Catholic Church in Portugal, as elsewhere in Europe, is struggling to come to terms with a pervasive spirit of secularism. The Pope had new things to say about what is arguably a more important topic to the twenty-first-century Church even than ecumenism.

His ideas should have resonance in Britain, when he visits in September. His startling admission at Fátima that the major persecution facing the Church today came from within, through the sinful actions of its members, marked the abandonment of all conspiracy theories, all efforts to blame others or to shoot the (secular mass media) messenger, which some in the Vatican have been using to deny the reality of the clerical sex-abuse scandal. But the Church’s relations with secularism, which he construed positively, do have connections with the ecumen­ical process. The challenge of secularism to the Church is a larger version of the pluralism that already characterises the ecumenical scene – how to work towards shared objectives with those with whom one does not totally agree. There was no call here for a return to the Catholic ascendancy, nor even for the laws of the state to comply with the moral teaching of the Church. His remarks on abortion could almost have been an endorsement of the policy adopted by President Barack Obama in the United States: he praised “all those social and pastoral initiatives aimed at combating the socio-economic and cultural mechanisms which lead to abortion …”

The encounter between faith and secularism had shown a prevailing tendency towards “opposition and mutual exclusion”, he said. But this not inevitable. “The presence of secularism is something normal, but the separation and the opposition between secularism and a culture of faith is something anomalous and must be transcended. The great challenge of the present moment is for the two to come together, and in this way to discover their true identity.” He cautioned against “an excessive trust in ecclesial structures and programmes” and over-reliance on “simply proclaiming the message”. Even more surprising, given Pope Benedict’s opposition to relativism, was his telling the Cultural Centre at Belém, Lisbon, that the Church “is in the process of learning how to live with respect for other ‘truths’ and for the truth of others … Dialogue, without ambiguity and marked by respect for those taking part, is a priority in today’s world.” He is in effect applying the ecumenical method to the Church’s engagement with secular culture. This is not quite the Joseph Ratzinger we are familiar with. This is more an open-minded man on a journey into unknown territory, a journey from confrontation to dialogue. Nobody can be sure of the destination, but it is certainly not back to the past.