Necessary Roughness

Pope Benedict XVI writes very well, and one can appreciate his preemptive efforts to head off a full religious war with those who follow Islam. During the Christmas Mass, the Pope delivered his “Urbi et Orbi” message, which had some good ideas and some that should be challenged or clarified.

I do like his point that even though we have progressed so much technologically, we haven’t progressed beyond the need for a Savior. I also don’t mind how in the third paragraph he points to current events as evidence there are still evil people.

Paragraph four contains an interesting remark:

It is there, in the very depths of his being, in what the Bible calls his “heart”, that man always needs to be “saved”. And, in this post-modern age, perhaps he needs a Saviour all the more, since the society in which he lives has become more complex and the threats to his personal and moral integrity have become more insidious. Who can defend him, if not the One who loves him to the point of sacrificing on the Cross his only-begotten Son as the Saviour of the world?

I’ve no quarrel with the first sentence, but the relative “need” of a Savior is an interesting concept. We still commit sins. The baptized Christian still needs Christ, no matter what moral environment he or she happens to live in. In fact, a moral environment may be detrimental, as people can be deceived into thinking they are doing good and can get to heaven on their own. There was still sin in Puritanical Massachusetts.

The second to last paragraph contains a sacrifice of truth for the sake of ecumenism:

Only by rediscovering the gift she has received can the Church bear witness to Christ the Saviour before all people. She does this with passionate enthusiasm, with full respect for all cultural and religious traditions; she does so joyfully, knowing that the One she proclaims takes away nothing that is authentically human, but instead brings it to fulfilment.

What does “full respect for all cultural and religious traditions” mean? Does this mean praying in a house of worship that denies the deity of Christ? Or maintaining that nonbelievers can be saved, despite Christ’s exclusive comment in John 14:6?

I do like how he prays for those nations in trouble but doesn’t advance a particular solution. Repeatedly he states that Christ died for all, which is good.

There is a constant theme through this message of Christ our Savior, but there is only one reference to what he actually saves us from. Christ has not guaranteed us from war and other simple manifestations of sin in this world. He saves us from the temporal and eternal punishment that we deserve. With a midnight mass watched around the world even by non-Catholics, this might have been an opportunity to emphasize this point.