The visionary Benedict XVI

I promised a friend I'd mail him my copy of "Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam", a slim but remarkable volume composed of the 2004 correspondence between Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera, an Italian professor, secularist and president of the Italian Senate, who found lots of common ground with the man who would soon become Pope Benedict XVI.

What initiated their correspondence was a sense shared by both men that Europe is in danger of losing its civilization because, in part, it has turned its back on its past. Though not a religious believer, Pera reveals himself to be deeply concerned with the crisis in civic values gripping Europe, and explores in his correspondence with Cardinal Ratzinger the spiritual roots of the situation. As Pera writes in the introduction, "We hope that these pages will help to peirce the curtain of reticence and timidity that impedes discussion of our destiny today. The only thing worse than living without roots is struggling to get by without a future."

I'd meant to have the book in the mail earlier this week, but it turns out I'd misplaced it. I finally found it, but before I send it off, I wanted to mention a couple of its points to you.

What concerns Pera most acutely is that Western civilization and its enlightened liberalism is under deadly attack by an implacable foe: Islamic fundamentalism. And the attack occurs at a time in which the West has been sapped by relativism -- which entails a lack of confidence in core Western values, and a concomitant disinclination to fight for them, if necessary. Pera says that in Europe today, "belief in the true no longer exists: the mission of the true is considered fundamentalism, and the very affirmation of the true creates or raises fears."

Though they approach it from distinct angles, both men believe that Europe's crisis of values is fundamentally a crisis of the spirit. Both endorse Toynbee's concept that "creative minorities" make the difference in giving any civilization vitality -- and can rescue a civilization in decline. Benedict is quite convinced that Christianity is deeply fatigued in Europe, and exerts little influence on public life. Then, commenting on the secularist Pera's proposal that Europe needs a common "civil religion" to spiritualize, express and propagate its highest values, the Pope writes that if a civil religion is not much more than a reflection of what the majority already believes, it's of little use.:

This is why it is so important to have convinced minorities in the Church, for the Church, and above all beyond the Church and for society: human beings who in their encounters with Christ have discovered the precious pearl that gives value to all life (Matthew 13:45)., assuring that the Christian imperatives are no longer ballast that immobilizes humanity, but rather wings that carry it upward. Such minorities are formed when a convincing model of life also becomes an opening toward a knowledge that cannot emerge amid the dreariness of everyday life. Such a life choice, over time, affirms its rationale to a growing extent, opening and healing a reason that has become lazy and tired. There is nothing sectarian about such creative minorities. Through their persuasive capacity and their joy, they reach other people and offer them a different way of seeing things.

Therefore my first thesis is that a civil religion that truly has the moral force to sustain all people presupposes the existence of convinced minorities that have "discovered the pearl" and live it in a manner that is also convincing to others. Without such motivating forces, nothing can be built.

Benedict goes on to say that everyone in society should have contact with such communities, even if they aren't a member of them. And that we should remember that these creative and life-giving communities can exist outside the visible Church. Further, he says that such dynamic minority communities can and should act as a "yeast" that re-energizes the broader community. He also argues that secularists and believers must move closer to each other, writing:

Secular people are not a rigid block. ...They are people who do not yet feel able to take the step of ecclesiastical faith with everything that such a step involves. Very often they are people who passionately seek the truth, who are pained by the lack of truth in humankind. Consequently they return to the essential contents of culture and faith, and through their commitment often make these contents even more luminous than an unquestioned faith, accepted more out of habit than out of the sufferings of conscience.

Finally, here's a passage from Benedict that closely parallels what I tried to say in a more secular way in "Crunchy Cons," and hope to say much more precisely and persuasively in my next book:

The [early] Chrsitians were able to demonstrate persuasively how empty and base were the entertainments of paganism, and how sublime the gift of faith in the God who suffers with us and leads us to the road of true greatness. Today it is a matter of the greatest urgency to show a Christian model of life that offers a livable alternative to the increasingly vacuous entertainments of leisure-time society, a society forced to make increasing recourse to drugs because it is sated by the usual shabby pleasures. Living on the great values of the Christian tradition is naturally much harder than a lfie rendered dull by the increasingly costly habits of our time. The Christian model of life must be manifested as a life in all its fullness and freedom, a life that does not experience the bonds of love as dependence and lmitation but rather as an opening to the greatness of life. Here, too, I refer to the idea of the creative minorities that enrich this model of life, present it in a convincing way, and can thus instill the courage needed to live it.

What a treasure this pope is. God grant him many years.