Pope Benedict XVI and his critics

Pope Benedict certainly has a lot of critics. Many of them don’t care who he is; he’s head of the Catholic Church, and that’s reason enough to detest him. Others jump to the conclusion that a German Pope must be a dogmatic, repressive, intellectual fossil who’s defending a medieval faith in the best tradition of the Spanish Inquisition. Other have no real opinion, but fall under the influence of critics, and are swayed by them. Finally, there are those who genuinely disagree with the position that the Pope represents—they want to see female priests, or have the Church embrace homosexuality, or something.

For just about all these critics, they are at a severe disadvantage—while they may be louder than the Pope, they are far less intelligent than he is. There’s just no other way to put it.

Because Pope Benedict XVI is one of the great intellects of our ages. This becomes immediately obvious to anyone who reads his works. Admittedly, some of his more theological works can be a challenge—they were not written for a general audience, and take some pretty hard work to appreciate. But for general audiences, the four book-length interviews he has given—starting with The Ratzinger Report in 1985, moving to Salt of the Earth in 1997, God and the World in 2005 (completed just before he was elected Pope) and most recently Light of the World in 2010—the reader encounters a man of stunning knowledge, insight, honestly, moral conviction, mental agility, and candor.

Reading these books doesn’t require a great knowledge of Catholicism…but it helps. The casual reader may be thrown by references to terms like “eschatology”, but keeping dictionary.com handy takes care of that. (While easy enough to do, this simple step is clearly more effort than most of his critics are willing to put forth.)

What is most amazing is that despite his background in academia, Benedict is no idealistic theoretician. His focus remains on the practical steps that the Church must take—and that we as Christian must take—to keep the faith healthy and real. He uses his intelligence to link all these concepts together, not use tortured logic to twist them apart.

If he has a vulnerability, it’s that I think he is disappointed and even shocked at the amount of hostility he faces, especially in the press. He is so straightforward in his manner and mission that I think he can’t understand why so many are so openly hostile. His message is that of love—God’s love for man, man’s love for God, and the Christian love for our fellowman.

What sort of minds find this objectionable?