Okay, so again Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, has managed to botch the historically significant works of Pope John Paul II toward interfaith dialogue. My list of complaints about Ratzinger's narrow view of the world certainly doesn't begin here (I have a previous post complaining about his views on the Christianizing of indigenous peoples). What most of this list have in common was correctly identified today by another blog with Religiondispatches.com. On that blog Professor Louis Ruprecht correctly, in my estimation, notes that the former member of the Nazi Youth has not in fact been roaming the world seeking to alienate Jewish, Muslim, and Amerindian populations. The papal axe to grind is about modernity.
Years ago, I heard Israeli scholar Emmanuel Sivan speak about fundamentalisms. He said the one thing they all had in common was that they were a response to modernity. At their core, they were a response to the possibility that people could live in their midst as atheists. Fundamentalisms express a fundamental insecurity in the heart and mind of a religious believer. They cannot handle the rational challenge to the very foundation of their faith and identity. Ratzinger/Benedict would do well to recognize that his anti-modernity and religious fundamentalisms share a common thread. That common thread suggests it is no mere coincidence that a rehabilitated (or no longer ex-communicated, just in case you're unfamiliar with oddities of Vatican law here) anti-modern bishop would also be a Holocaust-denier. Anti-modernity (as opposed to post-modernity and the others who exist along a modern spectrum) has as its core a fundamental rejection of others in their midst, others who threaten carefully constructed, dare I say "modern" identities. Perhaps the Pope would be well-advised to visit his own anti-modernity for the ways in which it is constrained by peculiarly modern limitations, like all strains of fundamentalist anti-modernity.
In memoriam, 2012
11 years ago
