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"Whosoever shall scandalize even one of these little ones that believe in me, it would be better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck and he were cast into the sea." (Mk 9:42).
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In April 1986, during a visit to Ontario, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave a keynote address to the community of Saint Michael's College, Toronto -- it was later published in the Toronto Journal of Theology under the title "The Church as an Essential Dimension of Theology." This became widely known as the Cardinal's "Toronto Lecture."
What is less known is that the address had originally been written and delivered in a language in which the future Pope Benedict XVI reasons and writes much more comfortably, Italian, in a visit to the Diocese of Brescia: it was on March 22, 1986, in a gathering organized by the Communio journal. Based on this original text of the address, our contributor Francesca Romana brings one of the most precious pearls of theological wisdom in the post-conciliar years.
It was a thought that had been clear in the Cardinal's mind, and that would be increasingly part of his concern: those in authority in the Church -- theologians, certainly, but priests and bishops as well -- must realize the immense responsibility they bear in preserving the faith of the most unprotected, the believers themselves, those who have no power, sheep in a world of wolves, hens in a world of foxes.
In other words: in a worldly setting, usually someone has to work hard to be heard. In the Church, there is certainly quite a lot of hard work, but the reason we give more relevance to, for instance, what a pope speaks than to what a cardinal says; to what a cardinal says more than to what a regular bishop says; to what a regular bishop says than to what a priest says; the reason is that the person is in that position, not that the person is particularly bright, particularly enlightened, superior in a gnostic/initiated or pagan sense (that is not the sense of the ministerial priesthood and hierarchy in Christianity), or proved himself necessarily worthy of that position. That was the Cardinal's main point.
Therefore, in order to honor the position of authority God allowed him to have, and the trust we, the "little ones", are willing to give him in faith, the man in an ecclesiastical position of teaching authority has the obligation not to abuse this trust by speaking error, scandal, or nonsense. That is, it is not a one-way street of "pay, pray, and obey, and I'll say what I want": believers must respect, but they deserve respect as well from popes, bishops, priests, and theologians, who cannot abuse their positions. If they breach the trust they did nothing to earn, they should not be astonished that the faithful suddenly notice the emperor's new clothes, and think accordingly.
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| Cardinal Ratzinger in 1986 |
A separation of the sort between proclamation and doctrine is in profound conflict with the essence of the Biblical Word. Such a separation does nothing other than revive that division between the psychists and gnostics, with which the so-called historic Gnosis attempted to create a free area for itself, and de facto expelled itself from the Church and from the Faith. That separation [between proclamation and doctrine], in fact, presupposes the relationship there is in paganism between myth and philosophy, religious symbolism and enlightened reason; the religious criticism effected by Christianity was directed against that separation; as such, it was also critical of class-based religious thinking.
This resulted in the emancipation of ordinary [unlearned] people and also claimed for them the right to be – in the true sense of the word– philosophers; which means to say, having the knowledge of that which is characteristic and peculiar to man just as much as the academics have this knowledge; or, rather even more than the academics. The words of Jesus about the foolishness of the wise and the wisdom of the little ones (in particular Matt. 11:25 and parallels) have exactly this aim: to establish Christianity as the people’s religion, as a religion without a two-class system.
