In the role of Socrates

The Pope has left Germany and after six days in Bavaria has returned to the Vatican. The return to his roots and the enthusiastic welcome he was given by the people reinvigorated him, as he himself affirmed. It is really astonishing how he was able to recover so well from a long journey so full of events. The Catholic Church in Bavaria and in the rest of Germany has also been reinvigorated by the visit. To the faithful Benedict XVI gave a kind of basic lesson on the faith – not at high theological levels, but focusing on the essential. To use the language of football (much used in Germany when people are speaking in metaphorical terms): he did not wish to teach his team a very complex tactic, but especially tried to get it back into shape to enable it to tackle in good form the tough championship that lies ahead. There is an urgent need for this recall of the essential aspects of the Christian faith at a time when – as the Pope emphasized – a distancing from the teaching of the Church has become widespread in this country. Once again the Pope succeeded – thanks to the great attention paid by the media to him – in focusing interest on the Christian faith. After his election as Pope in the spring of 2005 and World Youth Day last year, this was already the third major event in which the Pope has aroused a great emotional response in the media. As already happened during the two above-mentioned religious events, the Pope was subjected to an exposure to the media held excessive by some, especially those outside the Church. But the work – now much in vogue – of the “return to religion” was represented for the third consecutive time on the media scene, obtaining considerable success to judge from the response of his audience. A man of deep culture and brilliant conversation, the Pope, however, is not interested in playing to the crowd. In the restricted but devout setting of Altötting he clearly felt more at ease that in the huge outdoor space outside the gates of Munich or in the concentrated atmosphere of the university lecture theatre. So he will not trust in opinion polls for an assessment of the long-term effects of his second visit to Germany. What he will have more at heart is knowing whether the questions he posed in his speeches and homilies have really entered into souls; and whether he has succeeded in arousing in non-believers at least a sense of wonder, a wish to know what lies hidden behind the speeches and the liturgical celebrations. Like the philosopher Socrates (briefly cited in his lecture at Regensburg), he gave a few replies and posed many questions: where is a society going that fails to listen to the word of God? Can science give a response to the ultimate questions about the origin of being? How is it possible to establish a dialogue with profoundly religious cultures if the West relegates religion to the private sphere? For people who reflect, the debate on these questions is far more interesting than the stale discussions on celibacy or the reform of the Church. If the questions posed by the Pope give rise to further reflection, that could help – if not produce – a return to religion – or at least throw up some ideas for further reflections: like Socrates, it might be possible to obtain more from essential questions than could be obtained from the replies.