Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI on Christianity

In pursuit of the truth - cinops be gone - Tuesday, August 20, 2013

 

Christianity is not a philosophical speculation; it is not a construction of the intellect. Christianity in not "our" work, it is a revelation, a message that has been given us, and we have no right to reconstruct it as we wish.

 

Consequently we are not authorized to change Our Father to Our Mother. The symbolism used by Jesus is not reversible.

 

It is based on Man-God relationship that he came to reveal to us. It is even less permissible to replace Christ by some other persona.

 

But what radical feminism - even at times which claims to be based on Christianity - is not willing to accept is this: the exemplary, universal, and unchangeable relationship between Christ and the Father.

 

In fact, I am convinced that what feminism promotes in it radical form in no longer Christianity as we know it but an entirely different religion.

 

I am also convinced (we began to see the deep foundation of the biblical standpoint) that the Catholic Church and the Eastern churches will defend their faith and their understanding of the priesthood  and they will thereby defend in reality both men and women in their totality as well as in their irreversible differentiation into male and female and consequently, their irreducibility to a mere function or role.

 

There applies here as well what I shall  never weary of repeating: for the Church, the language of nature ( in this instance, two sexes that are complementary to, yet distinct from, one another) is also the language of  morality (man and woman are called to destinies that are equally noble and equally eternal yet at the same time different from one another.).

 

George H. Kubeck, August 19 meditation, Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth, 1992, Ignatius Press.