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Ratzinger insists, "Rationality has been the postulate and the condition of Christianity and will remain a European legacy with which we can confront peacefully and positively Islam as well as the great Asian religions."

But where this rationality "reduces the great values of our being to subjectivity, then it will endanger and destroy man, it will amputate man."

Hence, he continued, "Europe must defend reason. To this extent we must be grateful to secular society and the Enlightenment. It must remain a thorn in our side, as secular society must accept the (Christian) thorn it its side—meaning the founding power of the Christian religion in Europe."

The tenure of this 78-year old Bavarian on St. Peter's throne may be a relatively short one but it is bound to bring surprises. Coming from the land of the Protestant Reformation, this allegedly doctrinaire Catholic has already made it clear by his very actions the journey out of the "tyranny of relativism," whose properties are suspended ethical principles, must be an all-Christian enterprise.

Almost unnoticed by the world's media looking for sensations at the memorial service for John Paul II, Ratzinger quietly communed with Brother Roger Schutz, the Swiss Protestant pastor and founder of the vibrant ecumenical community in Taizé, France.

Benedict XVI, arguably the foremost Catholic theologian of our time, has always been an ecumenist, though never a fuzzy one. If he gives the Sacrament to a member of another Christian church—and Schutz was not the only one—he makes it abundantly clear he consider this person a fellow member of the mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church.

This is not the way narrow-minded blockheads behave.

There is nothing stiff, hard or dogmatic about Benedict XVI. He is, as those close to him have always insisted, simply a "coherent thinker," and coherence is precisely what the confused secularized world appears to be longing for.

It is well worth listening to the ecumenical tenor of his vision for faith to leave its ghetto by going public with a property that is intrinsically its own—the suffering God (a favorite expression by Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer) who is also judge.

"This God," Ratzinger wrote in a frontal attack on postmodern relativism, "is the God setting standards for us; the God whence we originate and where we shall return."

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Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a German, Is Pope Benedict XVI | "Simple and humble worker" had served as head of the Vatican office on church doctrine.

Conservative Evangelicals Say New Pope Speaks Their Moral Language | "He's going to hold the line," says Norm Geisler.

From 'Erstwhile Liberal' to 'Vatican Enforcer | A review of John Allen's Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith.

Earlier articles on Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II include:

The New Pope's Relationship with Protestants | In this 1998 Christianity Today article, Richard John Neuhaus examined Joseph Ratzinger's dialogue with the Reformation traditions and his vision for Christianity in the new millennium. (May 18, 1998)

The Pope We Never Knew | The unknown story of how John Paul II ushered Campus Crusade into Catholic Poland. (April 19,2005)

Pope's Funeral Spotlights Kinship Between Catholics and Evangelicals | Once antagonistic communities are now on the same side of several cultural issues. (March 08, 2005)

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April (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49