6/20/2007

Lead by example

And you know what? The Pope is loving enough to admit that we don't even have to be perfect!

Here's an anecdote from D. Vincent Twomey's essay The Courage To Be Imperfect:
Once he asked me gently about the progress of my thesis. It was about time, as I had been working on it for some seven years. I told him that I thought there was still some work to be done. He turned to me with those piercing but kindly eyes, saying with a smile: "Nur Mut zur Lücke" (Have the courage to leave some gaps). In other words, be courageous enough to be imperfect.

On reflection, this is one of the keys to Ratzinger's character (and also to his theology; in particular his theology of politics): his acceptance that everything we do is imperfect, that all knowledge is limited, no matter how brilliant or well read one may be. It never bothered him that in a course of lectures he rarely covered the actual content of the course. His most famous book, Introduction to Christianity, is incomplete. Ratzinger knows in his heart and soul that God alone is perfect and that all human attempts at perfection (such as political utopias) end in disaster.

The only perfection open to us is that advocated by Jesus in the Gospel: "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48), he who "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Mt 5:45). Love of God and love of neighbor: that is the secret of Pope Benedict XVI, and that will be the core of his universal teaching.

How can you not adore this man? He goes to people around the world and says, "Let's get real." How is that not salt-of-the-earth? He didn't go visit the Moslem Turks and insult them; he invited them to engage in rational discourse, and they pitched a hissyfit. He didn't tell the indigenous people of Brazil that European conquest was warranted; he lauded that so many souls in Brazil have come to Christ, and they were outraged. He didn't slander liberation theology; he proposed authentic Catholic teaching to wayward theologians and people screamed bloody murder. If the proof is in the pudding, Papal pudding tastes divine.

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