Friday, January 4
Benedict XVI: Affirmative Orthodoxy
The inimitable John Allen has a strong analysis of Benedict XVI's approach to evangelization and secularization.
An excerpt:
By “affirmative orthodoxy,” I mean a tenacious defense of the core elements of classic Catholic doctrine, but presented in a relentlessly positive key. Benedict appears convinced that the gap between the faith and contemporary secular culture, which Paul VI called “the drama of our time,” has its roots in Europe dating from the Reformation, the Wars of Religion, and the Enlightenment, with a resulting tendency to see Christianity as a largely negative system of prohibitions and controls. In effect, Benedict's project is to reintroduce Christianity from the ground up, in terms of what it’s for rather than what it’s against.
But, read the whole thing.
This project by His Holiness is not new in 2007, but, from what I remember, began the very day of his Installation Mass, and was hit home very hard in his message to Dutch youth, that Christianity is not a list of prohibitions, but a Person, the loving God-Made-Man, Jesus Christ, and for this reason, it is a Joy to be a Christian.
An excerpt:
By “affirmative orthodoxy,” I mean a tenacious defense of the core elements of classic Catholic doctrine, but presented in a relentlessly positive key. Benedict appears convinced that the gap between the faith and contemporary secular culture, which Paul VI called “the drama of our time,” has its roots in Europe dating from the Reformation, the Wars of Religion, and the Enlightenment, with a resulting tendency to see Christianity as a largely negative system of prohibitions and controls. In effect, Benedict's project is to reintroduce Christianity from the ground up, in terms of what it’s for rather than what it’s against.
But, read the whole thing.
This project by His Holiness is not new in 2007, but, from what I remember, began the very day of his Installation Mass, and was hit home very hard in his message to Dutch youth, that Christianity is not a list of prohibitions, but a Person, the loving God-Made-Man, Jesus Christ, and for this reason, it is a Joy to be a Christian.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
