Legacy MattersGeorge Weigel, the biographer of Pope John Paul II, in Light in the New Dark Age about Benedict XVI - the name is the program, and the name is the man.
Benedict XVI has long been concerned that the West risks the possibility of a new Dark Age. What he described in a sermon on the day before his election as a new "dictatorship of relativism" is one dimension of the problem. If there is only "your truth" and "my truth" and nothing that we understand as "the truth," then on what principled basis is the West to defend its greatest accomplishments: equality before the law, tolerance and civility, religious freedom and the rights of conscience, democratic self-governance? If the only measure of us is us, isn't the horizon of our aspiration greatly foreshortened? (And if you want to see what that kind of metaphysical and spiritual boredom can do to a once-great civilization, look around Western Europe, where self-absorption and a stubborn resistance to saying that anything is "true" has led a continent to the brink of demographic suicide.)
Pope Benedict also senses that a new Dark Age may be aborning in those laboratories where human begetting is turned into human manufacture -- the Dark Age of Huxley's brave new world. So just as we can expect the new pope to champion a revitalization of Christian faith and practice in Europe as the necessary condition for the rejuvenation of the public life of the West, so we can expect him to be, like his predecessor, a global champion of the dignity and worth of human life from conception until natural death.
UPDATE: A good example of the metaphysical boredom Weigel speaks about is this story of a German woman who gave birth in a gallery in front of dozens of spectators as part of an art exhibition. Gallery owner Novak said, "It a bit of test to see if society can cope."
I regret I am unconvinced! The last century was one of great moral conviction but led to some awful atrocities. There is some value in seeing the that other peoples' truth may be of equivalent value to your own. The truths which lead to peace are those which respect other's truths and recognise that our own may not be the last word.
Posted by: Tom C at April 23, 2005 7:55 AMTom, I appreciate your thoughtful comment.
Ah, but is moral conviction the same as moral truth? Many communists had moral conviction, but no moral truth as the 60-70 million dead in the former USSR, and how many killed in Nazi Germany and WWII? There's much of value in other cultures that can enrich and enhance our own. There's also some practices that are abominable that Western countries should not tolerate or allow. Slavery, serfdom, female genital mutilation, honor killings, sati where widows are expected to immolate theirselves on their husband's funeral pyre. If we can't say that we find such practices morally abhorrent. but just "respect" their truth about such practices, what we take as Western civilization will devolve to a lesser state with nothing to hold it together. It's done so before, so it can easily happen again in another Dark Ages. Of course, no single person or group of people or countries hold all the truth. But we do have to hold on to core values, to preserve our culture.
I think the best way to bring about peace is to find peace in our lives because that ripples out to the society in a thousand different ways. But what I don't want to happen is a confusion of passivity with peace That's what I find so frightening in Europe today. People believe there's nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth dying for, and the population and the culture is dying out. I don't see any optimism in EUROPE about their own future.
Posted by: Jill at April 24, 2005 11:21 PM