The “encounter” truly took place. The pope, whom the press described before his arrival in Paris as “distant” and, in comparison to his predecessor John Paul II, as a dry “Thomist theologian” rather than an accessible Augustinian pastor, Benedict XVI managed to prove his critics wrong and ultimately projected a much more human image of himself, even if he didn’t provide the same advantage to the Church he leads.
Cautiously, indeed, the Sovereign Pontiff avoided in his numerous interventions the traditional themes that, like the “muleta”, systematically provoke and anger secular groups: abortion, sexuality, or the use of advances in genetics. At most, during his homily at the Esplanade des Invalides, he reiterated the condemnations and warnings against the scourges of modern society, “money, the thirst for having and power” that “distract” man from a spiritual path.
However, it was likely in his speech at the Collège des Bernardins that the Holy Father delivered the core of his message. Probably more at ease in front of this assembly of intellectuals, researchers, and literati, the pope truly gave meaning to this “encounter”. For every “encounter”, two are needed: by emphasizing right from his first speech at the Élysée, the necessity of a strict separation—stated in the gospel—between the religious and the political, Benedict XVI made possible an authentic debate which we can hope will deepen the one initiated by John Paul II in September 1998 with his Encyclical letter “Fides et Ratio”.
Skillfully, instead of claiming to embody the official line to follow, which allowed him to avoid any indisputable doctrinal references, Benedict XVI preferred to outline, define borders and suggest limits for this future exchange: thus leaving a more extensive space at its center open for dialogue. Between “the arbitrariness of subjectivity”—a flexible, stretched, and overly personalized interpretation of the gospel texts from which people pick rather than nourish themselves—and “fundamentalist fanaticism”—the locking of human conduct and thought dogmatically fixed to the texts—a world opens where reason can find it acceptable, if not “enriching” in his view, to establish a dialogue with faith. This “tension between binding and freedom” mentioned in the papal speech is meant to show the ability left to individual judgment to oscillate, to float between structural markers, one might say “here and now.”
Furthermore, by emphasizing in his address to the Bernardins the importance of orality—”the culture of the word linked to the search for God”—in the interpretation and transmission of the Gospels leading to knowledge and mentioning its “exploration in all dimensions,” could Benedict XVI, in a way, be considering punctuating the New Testament with a “comma instead of a period,” to borrow the expression of Jesuit Joseph Moingt in his book “L’homme qui venait de Dieu”?
Nevertheless, if the Church claims the ability to express its opinion on societal issues, it must also accept being questioned in return about its interpretation of the scriptures and divine word. Between this “Eruditio” so valued by the Sovereign Pontiff in front of the Parisian thinkers and the “greed for knowledge,” criticized a few hours later in his homily at the Invalides, one can perceive the Roman Church’s great challenge: to remain the steadfast guardian of the temple while assuming the possible consequences for doctrine and liturgy of the step it invites the new “seekers of God” to take.
