Benedict At Gettysburg.

The National Post of Canada has a real gem (read hit piece) of an article on Pope Benedict XVI. I had planned to take issue with this article but something else became evident to me as I read it. When they attack the Pope, the truth often unintentionally slips out.

I have read a number of hit pieces on the Pope in recent months and this article definitely qualifies. However, because the Pope is so simple and clear on the issues at hand, even these dissenting Papal gnats are forced to inadvertently relay the truth and are limited to critiquing style. Hardly an effective approach. Check out these quotes from some of Benedict’s critics. (Emphases and [comments] mine)

“He wants to draw a line, make distinctions, increase clarity [Indeed he does] – even if it upsets people,” said Thomas Reese, a priest who stepped down as editor of the Jesuit magazine America under pressure from the Vatican just after Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict.

The article includes this quote from the Pope: “To have a clear faith … is often styled a fundamentalism. Meanwhile relativism, meaning allowing oneself to be carried away ‘here and there by any wind of doctrine,’ appears as the only attitude to modern times. What’s being constructed is a dictatorship of relativism, which recognizes nothing as definite and that regards one’s self and one’s own desires as the final measure.” [’nuff said]

“The only way to confront the dictatorship of relativism is with a more robust assertion of the uniqueness of the revelation of God in Christ, which continues to be preserved in the Catholic Church,” –Richard Gaillardetz, a professor of Catholic studies at the University of Toledo in Ohio [Yes, he is a critic. I am not making this up.]

“In a radically secular age, conservative Protestants have so much in common with Catholics that we find ourselves to be easy working partners,” he said. “I give the Pope space because there is a public in the world that he thinks he needs to speak to and get something across. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was intended for Latin America where there has been a great wave of conversions [to Protestantism].”–Brian Stiller, the president of Tyndale University College and Seminary, a Christian school in Toronto.

It seems that in their ardent desire to attack the Pope they are forced to repeat the clear and concise statements of the Pope. This brilliant and supposedly tone deaf Pope has a remarkable ability to speak so simply that the critics are cornered. In the end, they may very well hurt their own cause when they gripe and try to convince your that the pope is tone deaf and out of touch. After all, it is a hard sell if you have to convince people that Lincoln was a boob after first reading to them from the Gettysburg address.