The End of the Caricature

In other words, genuine interreligious dialogue, capable of turning noise into conversation, does not avoid the hard questions; it begins with the hard questions. It is not difficult to imagine that Benedict had in mind here the dialogue he has been slowly nurturing with Islam, a dialogue focused on religious freedom and the separation of spiritual and political authority in the state. Unlike those veterans of the Catholic-Islamic dialogue who have long preferred to avoid those questions, Benedict insists, quietly but firmly, on beginning with them. Whether his approach helps support those Islamic reformers working to build an Islam that can live with pluralism and political modernity is one of the great questions on which a lot of 21st-century history will turn.

Benedict was equally challenging in discussing the grand strategy of the intra-Christian ecumenical dialogue. At "just … the time when the world is losing its bearings and needs a persuasive common witness to the saving power of the Gospel," Christians are deeply divided, the pope noted—a standard ecumenical lament. But then Benedict sharply raised the ecumenical ante by asking his fellow Christian leaders to consider whether those divisions did not reflect a "relativistic approach" to Christian doctrine and moral teaching strangely parallel to secularist critiques of Christianity: a "relativism" about the truth of Christian faith that is shaped by the assumption that "science alone is 'objective'," an assumption that relegates all religious conviction "to the subjective sphere of individual feeling." Benedict's personal answer to that question is, undoubtedly, yes. Which suggests that this man who once took a professor's post at Tubingen precisely to deepen his own theological dialogue with Lutheran colleagues now realizes that the real future of serious ecumenical conversation lies with the Catholic Church's encounter with those Christian communities (largely, but not exclusively, evangelical) that still believe that the Gospel and the creeds stand in judgment on our theological speculation, rather than vice versa. The Gospel and the creeds, the pope suggested, are the boundaries within which real conversation can grow from ecumenical noise.

The Intellectual as Pastor
For three years Benedict XVI has thought that his will be a relatively short pontificate. He was, after all, 78 when elected. Yet he also seemed quite energized during most of his U.S. visit, and that energy calls to mind a story about Pope Leo XIII, the inventor of the modern papacy as an office of moral persuasion, who died in 1903 at the age of 93. A few years before his death Leo received an American bishop in private audience. Toward the end of their meeting, the story goes, the bishop got a little emotional and, wiping away a tear, said, "Holy Father, I suppose this is the last time we shall see each other in this world." At which the nonagenarian pontiff reached over, took his visitor's hand, and replied, "My dear man, you didn't tell me you were feeling poorly."

No one, including Benedict XVI, knows whether he has another decade in the chair of St. Peter or whether he will ever visit the United States (a country he manifestly loves) again. Even if he never returns, however, he has given Americans of all faiths and no faith important things to think about. The American majority was reaffirmed in its conviction that religiously informed moral argument has a place in public life. The nonbelieving minority experienced a religious leader who took care to speak in a language nonbelievers could understand. In a season of increasingly adolescent political cantankerousness, it was refreshing to be in the presence of an adult—an adult who treated his hosts as adults by paying them the compliment of making serious, sustained arguments. Moreover, by showing his pastor's heart, one of the world's most learned men embodied a truth of which both he and John Paul II were firmly convinced: faith and reason go together. If Benedict XVI was received warmly in the United States, that may have had something to do with his ability to gently remind all Americans of one of the truths on which our democracy rests, and indeed has long rested.

George Weigel, a NEWSWEEK contributor, is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center.

© 2008