Ratzinger
proposes the challenge:
“Here is the problem: Ought we to accept
modernity in full, or in part? Is there a real contribution Can this modern way
of thinking be a contribution, or offer a contribution, or not? And if there is
a contribution from the modern, critical way of thinking, in line with the
Enlightenment, how can it be reconciled with the great intuitions and the great
gifts of the faith?
“Or ought we, in the name of the faith, to
reject modernity? You see? There always seems to be this dilemma: either we
must reject the whole of the tradition, all the exegesis of the Fathers,
relegate it to the library as historically unsustainable, or we must reject
modernity.
“And I think that the gift, the
light of the fait, must be dominant, but the light of the faith has also the capacity
to take up into itself the true human lights, and for this reason the struggles
over exegesis and the liturgy for me must be inserted into this great, let call
it epochal struggle over how Christianity, over how the Christian responds to
modernity, to the challenge of modernity…
“and it seems to me… that this was
the true intention of the Second Vatican Council, to go beyond an unfruitful
and overly narrow apologetic to a true synthesis with the positive elements of
modernity, to heal it of its illnesses, by means of the light and strength of
the faith.
“Because it was the Council Fathers’
intention to heal and transform modernity, and not simply to succumb to it or
merge with it, the interpretations which interpret the Second Vatican Council
in the sense of the de-sacralization or profanation are erroneous.
“Augustine, as you know, was a man
who, on the one hand, had studied in great depth the great philosophies, the
profane literature of the ancient world.
“On the other hand, he was also very
critical of the pagan authors, even with regard to Plato, to Virgil, those
great authors whom he loved so much.
“He criticized them, and with a
penetrating sense, purified them.
“This was his way of using the great
pre-Christian culture: purify it, heal it, and in this way, also, healing it, he gave true
greatness to this culture. Because in this way,
it entered into the fact of the incarnation, no? And became part of the
Word’s incarnation.”[1]
Wojtyla:
“If we study the Conciliar magisterium as
a whole, we find that the Pastors fo the church were not so much concerned to
answer questions like ‘What should men believe?’ ‘What is the real meaning of
this or that truth of faith?’ and so on, but rather to answer the more complex
question: ‘What does it mean to be a
believer, a Catholic and a member of the Church?’”[2]
Wojtyla solution as suggested as the metaphysical under-girding of his papacy: Craft a metaphysics of subjectivity that is not the idealism (relativism) of Cartesian “consciousness” by using the moral experience of self-determination and self-gift as ontological foundation of an ontological self as irreducible “I.” Then take the insights of the Enlightenment as suggested by Ratzinger and account for them more fully and adequately by the experience of this ontological “I.” Hence, the purification of Modern thought and its incorporation into the reality of the Incarnation that can be deployed as foundation of a new social order built on the Person of Christ as the revelation of both God and man.
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