John Allen skriver om pave Benedikts besøk i Tyskland, at noen var svært fornøyde, andre mindre:
Last Sunday Pope Benedict XVI wrapped up a four-day trip to Germany, which, depending upon whose word you take, either generated “widespread acclaim” (Italian commentator Sandro Magister) or a national yawn (the Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s headline was, “He came, he spoke, he disappointed.”)
Slik beskriver John Allen pave Benedikts aller sterkeste side (som taler); at han er «a sensation as cultural critic»:
Pop quiz: What do the Collège des Bernardins in Paris, Westminster Hall in London, and now the Reichstag building in Berlin have in common? The answer, in papal terms, is that they have been the settings for arguably the most triumphant moments of Benedict’s papacy — occasions when the cerebral pontiff dazzled secular audiences with an oratorical tour de force on faith, reason, and the foundations of democratic society.
Whatever one makes of Benedict as a religious leader, he’s a sensation as a cultural critic. True to form, his Sept. 22 speech to the Bundestag, the national parliament, quickly became the latest candidate for “best speech of his papacy.”
Addressing German lawmakers, but really speaking to Western culture generally, Benedict took on logical positivism — the view that only empirical science counts as real knowledge, and that all moral claims are subjective. It’s a widespread conviction, the pope said, but inadequate as the basis of a just society. Without belief in some form of natural law, he argued, there’s no foundation for universal human rights. That means “humanity is threatened”, because the only thing left as the basis for law and politics is the raw will to power.
Germany’s Nazi past, Benedict XVI said, offers a harrowing reminder of what happens when “power becomes divorced from right.”
…. Secular media outlets, even those which were otherwise critical, raved about the speech. Der Spiegel called it “courageous” and “brilliant,” while Bild quoted a prominent lawmaker hailing it as a “masterpiece.” Even Die Welt grudgingly allowed that it was “not completely without cunning.” (In a further indication that Benedict got through, the left-wing London Guardian published a lengthy commentary on the speech, encouraging secular environmentalists to see past their stereotypes of the pope as “a prissy and repressed German professor”.)
In these venues, Benedict also wins points for style. He comes off as gracious and thoughtful, a contrast to the blowhards and ideologues who dominate public life. As George Weigel recently put it, he seems “the world’s premier adult.” …