Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made it clear in his Mass before Conclave in Rome that he wants to emphasize fighting “A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the “I” and its whims as the ultimate measure.” The day after, he was elected pope and took the name Benedict XVI. In his first homily as the pontiff, Benedict said,

... I turn to all, also to those who follow other religions or who simply seek an answer to the fundamental questions of life and have not yet found it. I turn to all with simplicity and affection, to assure them that the Church wishes to continue to engage with them in an open and sincere dialogue, in search of the true good of man and of society.

I invoke from God the peace and unity for the human family and declare the readiness of all Catholics to cooperate for a genuine social development, respectful of the dignity of every human being.

But as Joe Katzman observes, what does the Church do regarding Islam? Citing the WaPo:

Before they stopped speaking to the press on Saturday, several of the 115 cardinals who are in Rome to elect John Paul’s successor cited the spread of Islam as one of the major issues facing the church. Hanging over the church’s deliberations, Vatican officials said, was whether to view Islam as a collaborator in combating secularism or a religious rival.

It doesn’t help that a number of prominent Muslim leaders and cleric have said that, in one example,

We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians, who carve crosses on the breasts of the Muslims… will yet pay us the Jiziya [JK: poll tax paid by non-Muslim second-class citizens under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…

Says Joe,

Muslim behaviour toward Christians is no longer an incidental issue. Fro Aceh to Nigeria, many communities are experiencing violence and discrimination first hand. As competition between these fast-growing religions intensifies, the pressure on the Catholic Church to publicly defend the Christian faithful will grow. Shining a spotlight on the persecutions and grave lack of religious freedom in most Muslim countries is a good place to start.

Principled dialog with Muslim nations cannot any longer seek mere “understanding.” It must be made clear that religious oppression must stop. There are signs that the new papacy may move in that direction; Joe includes this quote (original cite unclear):

After two decades of contact and dialogue with the Islamic world under Pope John Paul II, the Vatican is rethinking an outreach program that critics say is diluting Catholicism and has brought almost no benefits to beleaguered Catholic minorities in Muslim countries.

...Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, said the next pope might more emphatically demand rights for Christian minorities in Islamic countries and the freedom of all people to choose their faith. “There may be a greater insistence on religious liberty,” said Fitzgerald, the church’s point man on Islamic relations.”

I remember attending a panel discussion in the early 1990s in Springield, Va., about 15 miles south of Washington, DC. The panel consisted of three professors of religion from The George Washington University. One was Christian, one was Jewish and one was Muslim. They were all very collegial, both to one another and to we attendees. During the Q&A someone asked whether interreligious dialog among the three faiths was making a difference.

Their consensus was that it was not. As the Muslim professor pointed out, there had been so many groups holding so many dialogs for so many decades that there was no lack of understanding among the leaders of the faiths of what the other faith believed and stood for. So the three professors pretty much agreed that more dialog for the sake of dialog was mostly pointless.

I raised my hand and commented that the first tenet of the Hippocratic Oath was, “First, do no harm,” so if there was no evidence that positive good was arising from the dialogs, then at least they are doing no harm. And the three academics agreed.

I assume interreligious dialog conferences are still being held, if for no other reason than they provide funded vacations for their participants. If the dialogs shore up the status quo, then they are harmful. There are too many Christians being killed at Muslim hands (Darfur, anyone? how about Indonesia?) to pretend that interreligious dialog can do any good to end the oppression. Any outreach by the Vatican of “tolerance” or “understanding” of Islam will simply reinforce the status quo and will be actually harmful, not helpful. There are some in the Conclave who understand it. Time will tell whether they or the new pope will act on it.

. . . and pretty soon you’re talking about real money! Chuck Simmins reports that private donations from Americans to tsunami relief efforts have now topped one billion dollars. The tsunami struck the island of Sumatra and other Indian Ocean coasts at Christmastime, killing about a quarter-million people.

Twenty-three months ago I wrote a post in response to a fellow United Methodist pastors article in the denominational newspaper, The Reporter. In it, the Rev. Wes Magruder said that

... he suffered his one of his “first pastoral failures” when a young lady in his congregation decided to join the Army. Magruder bemoans the fact that the young woman is apparently willing to give her life for her country, and “wants to know” why pastors don’t “encourage their graduating seniors to give their lives for Christ rather than for their country.”

Pretty tough talk from someone who leads a life as sheltered as an American United Methodist pastor, which is typically about the least risky occupation I can think of. I’d be interested to know whether the Rev. Magruder has actually ever truly risked his own life or suffered enduring hardship on behalf of any kind of great cause, whether religious or not. If not, what is his moral authority to tell others to do so? His ordination orders? Oh, please.

Today I received an email from Rev, Magruder’s wife, Leah:

I thought you would be interested to know that he and I and our three little girls are now missionaries in Cameroon, West Africa. We chose to leave “life as sheltered…American United Methodist pastor (and family)” and answer yet another call of God to serve him in a different way. Maybe you have been to Africa in your military career. If so, you might consider this “suffering enduring hardship on behalf of a great cause.” We have left all that we know and love, including our parents, to serve the beautiful, yet desperate, people of Cameroon.

So maybe you will say, “The Magruders really did put their money where their mouth is.” Or maybe you don’t think this qualifies, but I just thought you would be interested to know where he is now.

God bless you and I hope you are as fulfilled in your ministry as we are!

I make no claim connecting my post two years ago with the Magruder family’s decision to pull up roots and move their ministry to Africa - Leah’s letter made it clear they had not seen my blog until very recently. Whatever their motivations, they are to be admired and respected for what they are doing to fulfill their call. And whatever Wes’s credentials for writing his piece were before, they are solid now. Thank you for your service, Reverend Magruder, and may God bless your ministry, your family and all those with whom you serve.

BTW, Wes has a blog, posting from Africa. If you want to see what a pygmy kitchen looks like, go there.

Yesterday, California Arnold Schwarznegger gave a speech in which he called for California’s broder with Mexico to be closed. Then in the next sentence, he called for the entire US-Mexico border to be closed. He gave the talk to a group of newspaper editors and publishers.

Needless to say, a tempest erupted in the state. Today, the governor “clarified” his comments, saying that he emant to say the border should be “secure.” His misspoke, he explained, because of <cough>his faulty English </cough>.

“Yesterday was a total screw-up in the words I used,” the Republican said at a news conference. “Because instead of closing, I meant securing. I think maybe my English, I need to go back to school and study a little bit.”

Yeah, right. This is a man who gave a keynote address at the Republican National Convention. Needs more English lessons? Nice one, gov!

The contrition seemed to quell the issue at the Capitol. Hispanic lawmakers many of whom are also rival Democrats said they accepted his apology.

“I don’t think the governor identifies himself with that kind of rhetoric,” said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a Democrat. “I don’t know why he said it, but I’m very pleased he has totally removed himself from those folks who espouse that kind of hatred.”

Nunez’s office, however, pointed out that Schwarzenegger said something very similar in a 2003 interview with Fox TV host Bill O’Reilly.

Remember, Arnold’s an actor and a politician. He know how to sound contrite and he knows how to float a trial balloon.

Kenneth Woodward analyzes the elevation of Jospeh Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy and compares it to a vice president becoming president. “Clearly, the conclave that elected him wanted continuity rather than change.” But there is a significant difference, says Woodward.

Like his predecessor, the new pope is a genuine intellectual. But where John Paul II was a professional philosopher, Benedict XVI is a theologian. And although the two men worked closely together, the differences showed. ...

But a pope is much more than just defender of the faith, and perhaps the first test Benedict XVI faces is how well he moves mentally from the job of deciding when theologians are off base to the far broader role of expounding Christian truths in ways that excite the faithful to live a more authentically Christian life.

That’s it in a nutshell, and I would add that not only popes are faced with that challenge. Ordinary pulpit pastors like me deal with it every day.

I found that my seminary (Vanderbilt Divinity School) did not really prepare me for the task. VDS was heavy on theology, church history and biblical studies, and offered comprehensive courses in preaching and pastoral counseling, but precious little in the art of actual leading a congregation in holiness, or as Methodism’s founder put it, “moving on to perfection.”

I am not complaining here, just observing. Nor am I castigating the shape of the curriculum. A Master of Divinity degree at VDS required 84 semester hours of course work, that at an institution where a Doctorate of Education was about 30 hours less, including dissertation hours. One of my professors commented in class one day that the entire M.Div. curriculum really amounted only to a survey-level degree. I scoffed at the time, but no longer. My M.Div. diploma really just credentialed me as a rank amateur.

In churchy words, what seminary teaches and what the pope formerly known as Ratzinger propounded is the contrast between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Orthodoxy is right doctrine or belief; orthopraxy is right practice (sometimes also defined as right spirit).

Some denominations emphasize one over the other, and which is emphasized can also change as that church tries to adapt to changing demographics or other cultural shifts. My own denomination, United Methodism, has been losing members in North America since 1968, and since that time has basically increased its emphasis on orthopraxy over orthodoxy. There were a number of factors that led to the UMC’s shift in emphasis, but its acceleration in latter years came form a belief that people either left the UMC or declined to join it because orthodoxy carried the freight of judgmentalism, which is always assumed to drive people away.

However, the UMC is growing rapidly outside North America, and Methodism elsewhere in the world is definitely emphasizes orthodoxy. Inside the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention is growing, too, despite its virtual takeover about 15 years ago by the very conservative (some say fundamentalist) wing. (But the denomination hasn’t grown as fast as the population, so the SBC has suffered a loss in “market share,” to borrow a business term. See here). Kenneth Woodward observes,

In Africa, as in Latin America and much of Asia, the form of Christianity that is growing fastest is Pentecostalism, which mirrors tribal religions by emphasizing exorcisms of evil spirits, trance-like feelings of divine possession, and promises of health and wealth for those who believe. These are not the kinds of rocks on which to build a sold Catholic church. And although Third World Catholics tend to be more conservative than those in the First World, they do not readily respond to the theological abstractions that the new pope dealt with daily in his old job.

Here is the paradox of Third World Catholicism, but not only Catholicism. In the Third World generally, right doctrine is emphasized also as a way of life - what we might call “lifestyle” - rather than simply a set of theological propositions. In much of Africa and Asia is occurring the real struggle between Islam and Christianity, and when Christians are being mass murdered, as in Sudan, there is precious little inclination toward theological studies.

Whether Benedict XVI will retain Cardinal Ratzinger’s devotion to theological purity remains to be seen. Part of Ratzinger’s unyielding stands on Catholic doctrine and dogma until now may be due - at least in part - to the fact that it was inherent in his position as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As Woodward concludes,

Having spent the last 26 years guarding the sources of church tradition, it is entirely possible that Benedict XVI will find in the papacy an opportunity to take the church in new and more fruitful directions. Popes are called to build on the past, not repeat it.

But the Catholic Church, it is worth recalling, is not a one-man show. All the media focus on Rome when a new pope is elected distorts the nature of the church itself. The problems and opportunities facing Catholics around the world cannot be solved by papal fiat or pontifical programs. Bishops and priests can help. But what the church needs most are Catholics who want to be Catholics, who know what that means, and who seek the grace to become true disciples of Christ. That they must do themselves.

And so must Methodists, for that matter.

Update: this paragraph exists only to comply with James Joyner’s rule for trackbacking.

Update: Timothy Garton Ash, writing in the UK Guardian, observes,

This pope also has some decidedly old-fashioned views on Islam. In a sermon delivered in Regensburg in 2003, he sharply attacked the then German president for suggesting that the monk’s habit has as little place in European public life as the Islamic headscarf. He quoted with approval a German theologian’s response “that Europe was, after all, built not through the Qur’an but through the holy scriptures of the old and new covenant”. (That is, including Judaism as well as Christianity.) “I would not ban any Muslim woman from wearing the headscarf,” he generously declared. “But far less will we allow the cross, which is the public sign of a culture of reconciliation, to be banned!”

But Gerard Baker, writing in the UK Times, headlines, “Shock! New Pope a Catholic.“