I tell you what will remain of Pope Ratzinger’s thought
Benedict XVI: "This intellectually gigantic and physically humble Pope was a "heretic" in the time of religious correctness, syncretism, do-it-yourself mysticism, empty ecumenism, dialogue with everyone and no one". The analysis of Giulio Meotti, journalist and essayist
(“Goodbye, gigantic last Pope of the West”, the analysis taken from Giulio Meotti's newsletter )
In the period of maximum splendor of the West, Joseph Ratzinger, who has always had the courage to move still waters, saw the shadows of an imminent sunset. His lamp has illuminated the hidden face of the Old Continent. Themes that after having been at the center of our public debate for so many years, today no longer seem to attract the interest of Catholics and lay people: the inviolable dignity of the human person, the natural law, the unconditional character of the moral obligation, the meaning of freedom.
Ratzinger was great, also because as soon as he spoke and wrote he increased the map of enemies, inside and outside the Church, among progressives, liberal Catholics, Muslims, the UN, newspapers, intellectuals, academics. Ratzinger worried about the possibility of the West falling into a new dark period emanating from scientific laboratories, the mendacious media, the perversion of university education, the corruption of parliamentary democracy, the insidious growth of the ideological influence of the United Nations – all those pillars of the "dictatorship of relativism" against which this little white man had fought for half a century.
Here are the points Benedict XVI indicated in the process of self-destruction of Western culture: reason reduced to scientific reason; the oblivion of Judeo-Christian culture; the truth that derives from its mere technical reproducibility; happiness replaced by well-being; "nihilism with a human face"; the world thought of as an immense holiday village and desires; sex as a source of eschatological revelation; and, to quote Ratzinger himself, "the silence of what is authentically human".
Ratzinger allegedly fought against nihilism in many of its forms: the equivalence of cultures, a Europe that exalts the comfort zone of relativism, a Europe that demonstrates for peace even when it is under the blows of Islamic Jihad, Europe dominated by the Orwellian newspeak, a Europe that claims to be secular while practicing an intolerant form of secularist ideology, the "anti-Genesis" as he defined it.
This intellectually gigantic and physically humble Pope was a "heretic" in the time of religious correctness, of syncretism, of do-it-yourself mysticism, of empty ecumenism, of dialogue with everyone and with no one, of Catholicism that the dominant culture wants submissive, bent, defeated, marginal. A pilgrim of modernity who has crossed the old European world marked by shortness of breath, emptiness, derision, nothingness.
Ratzinger's entire pontificate was a defense of Western civilization or, more simply, of the West. But there is not a single challenge from which Ratzinger has apparently emerged victorious, as if nihilism were to be the only destiny of the West, as if seduction were so immeasurable that it could only find satisfaction in annihilation, in that image- Medusa of nihilism that seems increasingly pertinent to Western man. “Benedict XVI tried, and failed, to re-evangelize Europe” wrote the historian of religions Philip Jenkins.
Laws that undermine natural law are also approved in the European Catholic strongholds, Europe is everywhere a desert of post-Christian rubble, no one dares to question Islam anymore as Benedict did in Regensburg and the "dictatorship of relativism" has welded to the market.
The little man dressed in white who stood out like a giant of thought and who denounced Europe suffering from low birth rates and multicultural languor has been defeated and this is the most disturbing and scandalous announcement, the catastrophic fulfillment of an entire historical cycle , called “the West”, arrived at the final showdown with itself.
In the eyes of the secularists of Europe and North America, Ratzinger was the last obstacle in the face of what he himself had called the "dictatorship of relativism." This was also seen after his writing on the link between pedophilia and Sixty-eight. Never had a pope been attacked again as much as after that essay in recent years.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/pensiero-papa-ratzinger/ on Sat, 31 Dec 2022 15:32:08 +0000.