By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Protests and a hostile media have been unable to push Pope Benedict XVI off his stride as he courageously reminds his countrymen that clear moral principles are the basis of a truly free society.
Catholic Culture.com is reporting that the Pope appeared visibly moved when he was greeted at the airport yesterday by German President Christian Wulff who said, “Welcome home, Holy Father!” The president remarked that in today’s Germany, “Christian belief is no longer a foregone conclusion,” a statement that Benedict was quick to address in his own remarks.
“We are witnessing a growing indifference to religion in society, which considers the issue of truth as something of an obstacle in its decision-making, and instead gives priority to utilitarian considerations,” the Pope said, and went on to call that approach misguided. “The fact that there are values which are not absolutely open to manipulation is the true guarantee of our freedom.” Germany “has become what it is today thanks to the power of freedom shaped by responsibility before God and before one another.”
After driving to Berlin and meeting privately with Wulff and Merkel, the Pope delivered a powerful address to the country’s parliament where he emphasized the need for objective standards of justice.
“Without justice, what else is the state but a great band of robbers?” the Pope asked, citing the words of St. Augustine. He continued: “We Germans know from our own experience that these words are no empty specter. We have seen how power became divorced from right, how power opposed right and crushed it, so that the state became an instrument for destroying right–a highly organized band of robbers, capable of threatening the whole world and driving it to the edge of the abyss.”
Later that evening, the Pope presided at an outdoor Mass in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium that was attended by 70,000 and spoke candidly about the widespread disaffection with the Church in Germany.
“Many people see only the outward form of the Church. This makes the Church appear as merely one of the many organizations within a democratic society, whose criteria and laws are then applied to the task of evaluating and dealing with such a complex entity as the ‘Church.’ If to this is added the sad experience that the Church contains both good and bad fish, wheat and darnel, and if only these negative aspects are taken into account, then the great and deep mystery of the Church is no longer seen.”
Instead, he urged the faithful to cling to the Church in times of trouble. “In our era of restlessness and lack of commitment, when so many people lose their way and their grounding, when loving fidelity in marriage and friendship has become so fragile and short-lived, when in our need we cry out like the disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Lord, stay with us, for it is almost evening and darkness is all around us!” (cf. Lk 24:29), then the risen Lord gives us a place of refuge, a place of light, hope and confidence, a place of rest and security.”
The Church is one body with members who readily support each other. “They stand firm together against the storm and they offer one another protection,” he said.
The pope started his day today with a private Mass and meetings with leaders from Germany’s Muslim community. He then traveled to the eastern city of Erfut where he held a joint service with Germany’s Protestant churches in an Augustine monastery where Martin Luther once lived as a monk. The schism created by Luther in 1517 led to the Protestant Reformation and the split continues to be source of contention between Germany’s Christian denominations to this day.
Although the Pope’s trip was heralded by much of the same hostile press coverage and promises of protests that greeted him in England last year, some of the promised events didn’t materialize as planned.
For instance, a much advertised demonstration in Berlin that was supposed to rally 20,000 people didn’t even pull half that number with only “several thousand” showing up at the capital’s Potsdamer Platz.
But enough hosility remains to warrant more than 6,000 security personnel to protect him during this visit, a situation the Pope seems more than willing to confront as he speaks boldly to the German people he so much wants to bring back to God.
No one seems to know how monumental that task is better than he. In a country where 30 percent of the population is Catholic, only 13 percent attend Sunday Mass and vocations to the priesthood have dropped 62 percent since 1990. Der Spiegel magazine reports that another 181,000 Catholics left the Church last year when the child abuse scandal broke. As for the rest of the population, in a poll for Stern magazine, 86 percent of Germans said they thought the papal visit was unimportant.
The Pope will preside at another outdoor Mass on Saturday night and return to Rome on Sunday.
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
Photo is of Pope Benedict with German President Christian Wulff and Chancellor Angela Merkel
