Benedict XVI: Christian faith is personal encounter, not moralism PDF Print E-mail
Written by Michael R. Walker   
Thursday, 04 September 2008 10:16
In an address to a group at the Vatican yesterday, Benedict XVI, while reflecting on Paul's conversion, noted that Christianity "is not a new philosophy or a new form of morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ, even if He does not reveal Himself to us as clearly and irresistibly as he did to Paul in making him the Apostle of the Gentiles. We can also encounter Christ in reading Holy Scripture, in prayer, and in the liturgical life of the Church - touch Christ's heart and feel that Christ touches ours. And it is only in this personal relationship with Christ, in this meeting with the Risen One, that we are truly Christian."

Though in some ways this is an unremarkable statement of mere Christianity, I think this succinct statement is a nice contradiction of the impression one can get of the Pope from American media.  The composite picture of the Pope gleaned from mainstream media can make it seem as though he thinks of Christianity first and foremost as a set of moral restrictions.

There are a few reasons why the media focuses on the Pope's comments on the conflict between mainstream Christian ethics and western libertarian morals.  Obviously such comments seem newsworthy because they speak into the "culture war."  And the continuity of basic Christian ethics across the Protestant-Catholic divide has, of course, been one basis for recent rapproachment between evangelical Protestants and Catholics.  On that score, see the nice editorial from Richard Mouw in the New York Times, written during the Pope's visit to the U.S. last Spring.

The audio of the Pope's brief comments yesterday can be heard here.
 

The Notebook

"Weight which listeners felt": Chadwick on Calvin's Preaching
"Calvin lay back on his bed thinking out what to say, but he could preach or lecture without notes and usually took with him only the Greek or Hebrew text of the Bible to expound. The words went flowing out of him. Every other week he preached every weekday and every Sunday he preached twice, that is 260 sermons in a year, with very numerous lectures in addition. Anyone who tries to speak knows that in a far lower frequency of utterance no one can talk sense all the time because no one, not even a person who takes so short a time for sleep as Calvin, has time to suck in enough to make good what goes out; not at least without an excess of repetition. But audiences were not bored. They were supposed to go to church but did not need to go to Calvin’s church and most preferred it. His sermons were not amusing nor anecdotal. They were not decked with the devices of eloquence; they did not come over with passion, though sometimes interesting through vehemence of denunciation; they had none of Luther’s fun and fewer flashes of original insight; but they thumped away, like a battery of hits that landed on target, with clarity of thought, style, and arrangement, reinforced by the manifest conviction of truth in the speaker. No witness said that he had a musical voice. It was weight which listeners felt." Owen Chadwick, The Early Reformation on the Continent. Oxford, 2001, pp. 195-6.