Culture War: Battle Line and Two Camps --Ratzinger

"La rendición de Granada" Francisco Pradilla

Below is an excerpt from an article by Michael Waldstein--on the Erasmus Lecture--in which Waldstein  indicates the shift in discourse proposed by Joseph Ratzinger.

It seems to me that the thrust of the Ratzinger shift is nothing other than an alliance in favor of classical metaphysics. Ontology is the issue which divides the intellectual world and its worldviews.
--

The conventional map of the debate in present-day culture is to distinguish two countries at war with each other:

One of them is the country of religious faith, allied with conservative, repressive politics. The Catholic Church, traditional forms of Protestantism and Islam inhabit that country.

The other is the country of science, of rationality, and of liberal politics. The dominant culture of the West, shaped by the school system, the universities, and the mass media, inhabits that country.


The Regensburg Lecture radically reconfigures this map:

One of the countries is the country of authentic reason and of Christian faith. Greek philosophy, especially Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, etc. inhabit that country, as does the Catholic Church.

The other is the country of voluntarism, that is, of the primacy of will and power over reason. Islam, medieval nominalism, the Reformation, modern natural science, and liberal politics inhabit that country.

Michael Maria Waldstein, The Self-Critique of the Historical-Critical Method: Cardinal Ratzinger's Erasmus Lecture, "Modern Theology" 28:4 October 2012.

P.S. Seven in Heaven: the new saints canonized today.