The Pope’s New Book
“Anyone is free to disagree with me. I only ask readers to be open-minded, in the absence of which there is no understanding.” So says Joseph Ratzinger, also known as Pope Benedict XVI, in the preface of his book, Jesus of Nazareth. His book does not claim to speak officially for the Roman Catholic Church, but rather, expresses his “personal search for the face of the Lord.” The book covers the first part of Jesus’ life, beginning with his baptism in the Jordan River.
The book answers the question – what has Jesus brought? Jesus has brought God, the true God, to all the peoples of the earth. “He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about where we are going and where we come from: faith, hope and love.”
Considering this same writer is the cleric who walloped the hell out of proponents of liberation theology, which views Jesus as the liberator of the poor, the following statement comes as bit of a shock: “Faced with the abuses of economic power, faced with the cruelty of capitalism that downgrades man to a commodity, we have begun to see more clearly the dangers of wealth and understand in a new way what Jesus meant when he warned against wealth,” the pope wrote.
I hope he underlines that passage in red and hands it to President Bush when he has an audience with him next month. I also hope he cuts out-and tapes it to his bathroom mirror-the quote about “free to disagree” and “open-minded.”
