Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Even Benedict XVI Is Not Above Criticism

The Ratzingerian Constants and the Maintenance of Harmony in the Church

Bishop Barron: "A similarly illuminating remark was made by Pope Benedict XVI concerning the work of the Church, and I would like to spend a little time exploring it. Papa Ratzinger said that the Church performs three basic tasks: it worships God, it evangelizes, and it serves the poor. The religious activities of over a billion Catholics around the globe, he maintained, can be reduced finally to these three fundamental moves."

If this is an accurate representation of Ratzinger's thought, he is guilty of a simplistic reductionism in his enumeration the tasks of the church. These three tasks flow from the Great Commandment, but they are not the only ones, and the other tasks of the Church, especially of the Christian "laity," are not reducible to these three. Ratzinger leaves no room for explicating the ordinary path to holiness or the lay vocation. This would be bad moral theology or bad catechesis.

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