Pope Benedict XVI / Joseph Ratzinger passed away on December 31 at the age of 95 years old. His writing and teaching have been a major influence on my thinking. So in honor of his memory and gratitude for his example, this episode is a talk I gave on Pope Benedict XVI on Five Crises of Culture and the Intellectual sources of Secularism and the New Evangelization. I go through five intellectual themes/crises that Benedict identifies in the West “where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization."

• Truth and the Dictatorship of Relativism

• Reason

• Progress

• Freedom

• Beauty

I examine how he describes and explains the challenges of our age; how he addresses each of them on their own terms, and the proposes a Gospel response. One element of the crisis of faith is grounded in intellectual sources. We think, and too often live, like secularists and adopt often without thinking a secular framework. But secularism is not neutral. As Benedict argues, “We must develop and adult faith.”

An "adult" faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth. We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - that creates unity and is fulfilled in love.”

In this talk I provide a lot of quotes and references. You can find show notes, links, and outline of the talk at www.themoralimagination.com

Resources

See the outline / handout of the talk below.

Also see Amazon links to books I refer to in the talk below. I also provide Amazon link to the encyclicals, but you can get all the encyclicals for free at vatican.va

There a lot of books listed and if you are unsure where to start I would suggest you begin with the following:

• Books: Jesus of Nazareth Vol 1, Milestones, and Last Testament

• Collection of more complex essays: Values in a Time of Upheaval

• Encyclicals Spe Salvi and Deus Caritas Est

• Short Readings: Here are some links

Homily before the Conclave — “Dictatorship of Relativsm”

Regensberg Address — on the crisis of reason in the west

Cardinal Ratzinger on Europe’s Crisis of Culture at Subiaco

Benedict XVI Paris Lecture Meeting with Representatives from the World of Culture

Additional Links mentioned in talk

Roger Scruton: Beauty and Desecration  

Roger Scruton: Kitsch and the Modern Predicament 

I Grateful to Authenticum and Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish for the invitation to speak and for recording and providing me with the audio of this lecture. You can learn more about the Authenticum Lecture Series

 OUTLINE/HANDOUT

Benedict XVI—Five Crises of Culture and the Intellectual sources of Secularism and the New Evangelization

Michael Matheson Miller

The New Evangelization

Re-Propose the Gospel "to those regions awaiting the first evangelization AND to those regions where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization." Benedict XVI

 Theme:  Think Like Christians

Focus on Intellectual roots of secularization and the crisis of faith and the work of Benedict XVI We must not approach the social and political order in a purely secular manner.  Benedict is I think a model for new evangelization because he takes the situation of our current time on its own terms and then addresses it in light of reason and the Gospel.

Paul VI: Evangelii Nuntiandi

 "The conditions of the society in which we live oblige all of us therefore to revise methods, to seek by every means to study how we can bring the Christian message to modern man. For it is only in the Christian message that modern man can find the answer to his questions and the energy for his commitment of human solidarity."

John Paul II: Redemptoris Missio  

“I wish to invite the Church to renew her missionary commitment.” 

“…it is the primary service which the Church can render to every individual and to all humanity in the modern world, a world which has experienced marvelous achievements but which seems to have lost its sense of ultimate realities and of existence itself. "Christ the Redeemer," I wrote in my first encyclical, "fully reveals man to himself.... The person who wishes to understand himself thoroughly...must...draw near to Christ.... [The] Redemption that took place through the cross has definitively restored to man his dignity and given back meaning to his life in the world."

Benedict XVI

“Throughout the centuries, the Church has never ceased to proclaim the salvific mystery of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, but today that same message needs renewed vigor to convince contemporary man, who is often distracted and insensitive…

“For this reason, the new evangelization must try to find ways of making the proclamation of salvation more effective; a proclamation without which personal existence remains contradictory and deprived of what is essential. Even for those who remain tied to their Christian roots, but who live the difficult relationship with modernity, it is important to realize that being Christian is not a type of clothing to wear in private or on special occasions, but is something living and all-encompassing, able to contain all that is good in modern life.” 

BXVI to Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization

“We…have this mission: to encounter our contemporaries so as to make His love known to them. Not so much by teaching, never by judging, but by being travelling companions. Like the deacon Philip, who – the Acts of the Apostles tell us – stood up, set out, ran towards the Ethiopian people and, as a friend, sat down beside them, entering into dialogue with the man who had a great desire for God in the midst of many doubts” 

—Pope Francis: International Meeting  for Academic Centers and  Schools of New Evangelization

Five Crises of Culture and Key Themes in the Thought of Bendict XVI 

1.     Truth and the Dictatorship of Relativism

“How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.

“Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitu