New  Pope Revitalizes Morality

Habemus Papam
April 20, 2005; Page A16

The world has a new Pope -- Benedict XVI, known until yesterday as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany. It appears inevitable that his election -- by 115 Catholic cardinals convened in the Sistine Chapel for the second day of their conclave -- will be seen as a conservative choice. To the extent that is true, the former Cardinal Ratzinger's critics in the U.S. and Europe can probably take some of the credit for his elevation to the papacy.

The cardinals are men of the world and could see as well as anyone the "change-or-else" dialectic that the Church's critics had thrown before them in the days after John Paul II's death. And just as surely, the cardinals knew that a chorus of anti-hosannas would rise from these quarters over yesterday's selection. Indeed, they may have welcomed it. Faced with the challenges of a post-religious West and advancing Islam, they appear to have decided it wasn't time to depart from the paths set for nearly three decades by John Paul II.

This will disappoint the many secularists in Europe and America for whom the Roman Catholic Church's moral fortitude in the face of a liberal consensus on these matters is a constant irritant. But the notion that the elevation of, say, Cardinal Arinze of Nigeria or one of the South Americans would have opened these particular doors was never in the embers. Here is Cardinal Arinze speaking at Georgetown University two years ago: "In many parts of the world, the family is under siege. It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography...."

Attention is being drawn to a remark made days ago by Cardinal Ratzinger in a pontifical Mass that "we are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism." It may have gotten him elected. For it is not likely that any member of the college of cardinals was willing to allow this brand of relativism to endanger the Church's dynamic gains in Africa, South America or Asia. In his revealing memoir, "Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977" (Ignatius Press), he describes his early sense, as a young German in the war, of the Church's historic role: "Despite many human failings, the Church was the alternative to the destructive ideology of the Nazis. In the inferno that had swallowed up the powerful, she had stood firm with a force coming to her from eternity. It had been demonstrated: The gates of hell will not prevail against her."

What, then, may we expect of the "conservative" Benedict XVI? We suspect that rather than the suppression feared by Western liberals, this vigorous 78-year-old intellectual, extending the mandate of John Paul, will promote a spiritual revival and evangelization among the strays in his own flock.