Today half a million young people will be in Cologne, Germany for World Youth Day to hear the Pope on his first visit abroad. What will Benedict’s message be? Without a doubt, he will warn the youth against the "dictatorship of relativism" and put forward a doctrine that is aligned with the neo-conservatives in Washington.
Relativism for Ratzinger/Benedict is anything that deviates from the authority of the Vatican. Thus gay relationships are a symptom of degenerate relativism and cannot be tolerated. Women cannot hold power in the church, since the church cannot abide the relativism of sexual equality. The multicultural ideal of European secularism must be condemned as a relativist rejection of the primacy of Christian (read Roman Catholic) values. In his extensive writings Ratzinger dismisses all other faiths – including Protestantism – as being outside the "true church". Ecumenism is thus itself a surrender to relativism.
It is interesting that Pope Benedict XVI has used the first one hundred days to speak out against gays, feminists,abortion and divorce. Little or no mention has been made of global poverty, preemptive war, the scourge of AIDS, etc. In fact, in his speech just before the death of John Paul II, Ratzinger appeared to deliberately turn away from the Church’s traditional adherence to Jesus’ message of social justice. Social concerns are scornfully dismissed as "personal moralism’.
It is true that a new moralism exists today whose key words are justice, peace and conservation of creation — words that call for essential moral values of which we are in real need. But this moralism remains vague and thus slides, almost inevitably, into the political-party sphere. It is above all a dictum addressed to others, and too little a personal duty of our daily life. In fact, what does justice mean? Who defines it? What serves towards peace? […}Political moralism, as we have lived it and are still living it, does not open the way to regeneration, and even more, also blocks it. The same is true, consequently, also for a Christianity and a theology that reduces the heart of Jesus’ message, the "kingdom of God," to the "values of the kingdom," identifying these values with the great key words of political moralism, and proclaiming them, at the same time, as a synthesis of the religions.
Am 4. November 2004 brachte Radio Vaticana seine Äußerungen gegenüber der römischen Tageszeitung "La Repubblica" so auf den Punkt: Kardinal Ratzinger beklagte "einen antichristlichen Werteverfall in Europa und empfahl dagegen das amerikanische Gesellschaftsmodell". Der Moralkonservatismus der Bush-Administration und die öffentliche Berufung von US-Politikern auf religiöse Vorstellungen finden seinen Beifall. Die Bedrohung heißt "Relativismus". […]Für eine Annäherung zwischen Rom und Washington könnte Ratzinger der ideale Papst sein.
And in the Frankfurter Rundschau former CDU Family Minister HEINER GEIßLER warns that Benedict is leading the church away from the issue of social justice in modern capitalism, and is instead too fixated the personal (esp. sexual) sphere (via Wahlblog05):
Es wäre ein Verhängnis, wenn dieser Papst seine eigene Kirche nicht aus den Fesseln befreite, die anzulegen allerdings er selber mitgeholfen hat: die Fixierung der katholischen Morallehre auf das Sexuelle, im weitesten Sinne geistesverwandt den Evangelikalen in den USA, gegen Homosexualität, gegen das Abendmahl für wiederverheiratete Geschiedene, gegen Frauenpriestertum und für das Zölibat, gegen Pille und Kondome. Müsste dieser intelligente Papst nicht endlich die unselige Pillen-Enzyklika seines Vorgängers Paul II., die Teile der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz schon mal als einen zweiten Fall Galilei bezeichnet hatten, aufheben?
Geißler would like the CDU/CSU to return to its Christian roots in the aftermath of WWII and embrace the vision of the social market economy (Sozialmarktwirtschaft) that has always been the key to postwar German prosperity.
