Pontius Pilate famously asked that question and the Gospel of John provides the answer, as did Pope Benedict XVI in recent days, most notably in his talk to young people at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie in New York:<\/p>\n
“In seeking truth, we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Indeed, the brightest thread running through the pope’s talks and homilies was truth, and the need to be confronted by truth, and to see truth, and to find truth–and find it in Christ. For believers–and that would include just about every Catholic at the stadium masses and other events, as well of those who could not get inside–the pope’s statements are self-evident. They are a useful and salutary reminder of a basic teaching, and not especially controversial, though certainly worthy of much reflection. A fine starting point is a post titled “Veritas”<\/a> by Peter Nixon over at the Commonweal blog.
\nThe challenging yet uncontroversial content of Benedict’s talks contributed then, in part, to the intent focus on Benedict as a person–on how kind and congenial he seemed, how pastoral and reassuring he was in meeting with victims of clergy abuse and speaking out about the scandal. Neither Benedict nor his predecessor, John Paul, had said or done anything about this gaping wound in the church for more than six years, and the catharsis was welcome.
\nBut the focus on truth and the exhortation to believe in Christ more truly and live as a Christian more truly reminds me of the story about a pagan in the ancient world who was interested in becoming Jewish. He went to the Jewish sage Hillel and challenged him to explain the entire Torah while standing on one leg. Hillel agreed, and said simply: “That which is hateful to you, do not unto your fellow.” In other words, the Golden Rule.
\n“That is the whole Torah,” Hillel said. And he was right. But he was also wise. “The rest is the explanation,” he added. “Go and learn.”
\nIn a sense that is where we are after the pope’s visit. He explained the faith but provided few directions for the church. He called for unity in Christ, but did not give many explanations about how to find that unity. For many, that is more than sufficient. In fact, a great many Catholics–and non-Catholics–will simply be happy to see that the panzerkardinal is not the panzerpapst, and that the Catholic Church seems to be in good hands.
\nBut I suspect stronger reactions to the pope’s visit will break down along the lines of those who see the churchs (and the world’s) problems as traceable to a weakness of faith, and thus best healed by an exhortation to greater faith, and those who see the church itself as in need of repair. The former category will feel affirmed, the latter may be ambivalent.
\nFor them, the lack of direct discussion of the priest shortage that makes evangelizing so problematic, or the role of women who make parishes run and Catholic families the “domestic church,” or accountability of bishops, or the laity who did so much to bring the abuse scandal into the open and force this moment of catharsis, or the Iraq war, or social justice issues, or global warming, or the death penalty, or any one of a number of issues raises the big question going forward: What now? How does the church tackle these issues effectively and still find the unity that Benedict rightly enjoined? (Truth be told, the pope was often so conceptual in his talks that many lament he did not say more on abortion, or much of anything on contraception or homosexuality or divorce.)
\nTwo posts from the New York Times’ fine stable of papal bloggers seem emblematic of the divide. One was Peter Steinfels’ lament that the pope’s talk to Catholic educators–what was billed in the pre-trip build-up as a showdown–was actually a “missed opportunity”<\/a> to clarify certain issues. Another might be Alejandro Bermudez’ take titled, “A few Good Men and Women.”<\/a> To wit:<\/p>\n“I have repeated this so often that I risk being tedious: the Pope is a minimalist…He hopes many non-Catholics will come to the Church attracted by the \u201cSplendor of Truth.\u201d But he does not count on that happening. (snip) Will he be the one identifying who is or who isn\u2019t a good Catholic? Nein. He knows better. He will let American Catholics go to the waters. And each one will take their side in history by the way they drink it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There is more to unpack here, and I’ll try as I sift through the coverage and the blogosphere and Benedict’s homilies this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pontius Pilate famously asked that question and the Gospel of John provides the answer, as did Pope Benedict XVI in recent days, most notably in his talk to young people at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Dunwoodie in New York: “In seeking truth, we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}