Benedict XVI: In No One's Shadow

by Samuel Gregg

It was inevitable. In the lead-up to John Paul II's beatification, a number of publications decided it was time to opine about the direction of Benedict XVI's pontificate. The Economist, for example, portrayed a pontificate adrift, "accident-prone," and with a "less than stellar record" compared to Benedict's dynamic predecessor (who, incidentally, didn't meet with the Economist's approval either).

It need hardly been said that, like most British publications, the Economist's own record when it comes to informed commentary on Catholicism and religion more generally is itself less than stellar. And the problems remain the same as they have always been: an unwillingness to do the hard work of trying to understand a religion on its own terms, and a stubborn insistence upon shoving theological positions into secular political categories.

Have mistakes occurred under Benedict's watch? Yes. Some sub-optimal appointments? Of course. That would be true of any leader of such a massive organization.

But the real difficulty with so much commentary on this papacy is the sheer narrowness of the perspective brought to the subject. If observers were willing to broaden their horizons, they might notice just how big are the stakes being pursued by Benedict. This pope's program, they may discover, goes beyond mere institutional politics. He's pursuing a civilizational agenda. Read the whole article here.