c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) “Some people think that the church should not be the salt of the Earth but that it should be sugar.”

These words, recently pronounced by Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Australia, may describe well the disappointment of some people at the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as successor of Peter.

To call our new pope a “Rottweiler” or a “German shepherd” is ridiculous: He is a shy, kind and humble man who does not like crowds; a listener and, at the same time, a great scholar and a man of high intelligence. At least three times, he asked Pope John Paul II to relieve him of his important and influential position as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith so he could return to his great love of scholarship, but Karol Wojtyla told him that he would stay as long as John Paul reigned.

In the years leading up to the conclave and in its opening Mass on April 18, Ratzinger avoided any politicking and, for this reason, was seen until the week before the conclave as a dead candidate.

For more than 20 years, Ratzinger worked closely with John Paul II on openness to Judaism, ecumenical dialogue, asking forgiveness for past mistakes, the defense of eternal truths and the encouragement of the new ecclesial realities and movements born within the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. He was the pope’s theological right arm; faithful Catholics in the public forum elected him even before the cardinals.

In his first Mass as pope, Benedict XVI reaffirmed that the Second Vatican Council should remain the “compass with which to orient ourselves in the vast ocean of the third millennium,” and he restated the fundamental commitment of John Paul II to reach unity with other Christians. The center of his mission, however, will be the new evangelization; this is undoubtedly one of the reasons he chose the name Benedict, the patron and great evangelizer of Europe.

Today the great problem that the church faces is the advance of secularization, most visible in Europe but progressing rapidly in Canada and in the United States, where the masses of new immigrants somehow still conceal the gravity of this phenomenon. To face with authority this challenge, the church and the world needed a pope who came from the very epicenter of the crisis, Germany, which was also at the heart of the maelstrom of the 20th century.

As John Paul II played a fundamental role in freeing the world from the terrible tragedy of communism, Benedict XVI will help Europe and Catholics everywhere find their roots, heal the wounds of the past century and answer secularization. Indeed, the election of a European pope is a sign that God has not abandoned Europe to secular atheism and the growth of Islam.

This will be very important and positive for the American Catholic Church, buffeted by scandals and “cafeteria” Catholicism. Ratzinger has spoken several times of the American Constitution as an example of the right relationship between state and church.

Yet North America is also threatened at her heart by what he has called the “dictatorship of relativism”: How can the truth be decided by a majority vote?

He recently discussed this issue with lay philosophers worried by the disintegration of a society without any transcendent truth. His remarks about the dangers of Turkey entering the European Union are to be read in this context: as an appeal to Europe to rediscover her roots and her values or disappear, snuffed out of existence by a suicidal way of behaving.

In the next weeks and months, Benedict XVI will be attacked by relativists who will paint a picture of a pope who wants to take the church back to the Middle Ages. They will want to distract the world, the church and him with the cruel and unfounded accusation that he was a Nazi. Once again, they will be disappointed. There will be no women priests, no support for gay “marriage” or contraception or abortion or euthanasia.

John Paul II made the papacy the highest moral authority on the planet, and Benedict XVI will confirm this. He will preach the unchanging truths in a changing world with a brilliance and wisdom born of the Holy Spirit that can reach the hearts of God’s people.

Ratzinger was the only one who could pick up the heritage of John Paul the Great, who led the Catholic Church and the world into the third millennium. Someone was needed to continue and build on his work. God puts the right person in the right place at the right moment. Is it not incredible that the most hated and feared nation of the 20th century has given the world the first pope of the 21st century?

“I can feel his strong hand squeezing mine,” Benedict XVI said on the morning after his election, referring to John Paul II.

“I seem to see his smiling eyes and listen to his words, addressed to me especially at this moment: Do not be afraid!”

KRE/PH END FIGUEIREDO