When Pope Benedict XVI used a Sunday sermon last week to warn Roman Catholic theologians against becoming arrogant - just as it was revealed that one had been put under investigation for conceding non-Christian religions have a role in salvation - he was continuing a pattern that started earlier in the summer.The Pope's homily followed two similarly hard-line pronouncements that gave a clear indication of what this papacy would stand for.
First there was an announcement to allow a broader use of the old Latin Mass, a step back from the liturgical reforms of Vatican II; and then a pronouncement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church's ideological overseer, that Protestant churches were defective and not really full churches like the Catholic Church.
"He wants to draw a line, make distinctions, increase clarity - 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 problem with Benedict is that in his heart he's a German professor without a politically sensitive bone in his body. He doesn't know how to read an audience. A teacher doesn't have to worry about reading his classroom. They have to memorize what he says and give it back on the exam or they flunk. It just doesn't work that way when you're Pope."
While Pope John Paul II identified the enemy as communism, and then helped to dismantle the Soviet empire, Pope Benedict sees the enemy as relativism, an offshoot of secularism in which it does not matter what you believe and there is no absolute truth.
It is not an exaggeration to say the Pope is waging a war against relativism. He can see the fallout in the desperately low Mass attendance in Europe, the regulation of same-sex unions and the erosion of many religious orders.
The Vatican even failed to get a mention of God in the new European constitution.
Add to this that Europe now has millions of faithful followers of Islam, and it is no wonder the Pope occasionally worries about the future of the faith.
Just before succeeding John Paul II in April, 2005, he gave this homily that has become the touchstone of his reign. "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."
To Richard Gaillardetz, a professor of Catholic studies at the University of Toledo in Ohio, the three statements this summer are linked to that homily and were "warning shots across the bow" against those who would make the Church look divided or say Vatican II was a repudiation of the past.
"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," he said.
"I understand that framework, I understand his fears, but I'm not sure his solution is going to work.... I think there is a danger you succumb to kind of a historical romanticism."
As for the Pope's warning to theologians, Prof. Gaillardetz said: "The moment you talk about a dictatorship you invite this battle cry language, this us-against-them fight for the integrity of the Christian faith ... there's not a lot of room for debate."
Fr. Reese said when the Pope was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II, he went after theologians who questioned the church's teachings on sex, especially birth control, and theologians who were interpreting the Gospel as a means to overthrow oppressive regimes in Latin America.
And now the doctrinal enforcer is going after Peter Phan, the Georgetown University theologian, for his inter-religious views.
"He feels he has clear and distinct ideas and responses to these issues, and he wants theologians to echo his position and not confuse people with their creative ideas," said Fr. Reese, who now teaches at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington.
"But frankly, how many people read Peter Phan until the Vatican went after him? Most of these people that the Vatican have gone after are in no way endangering the faith of the people in the pews, because the people in the pews don't even know they exist. Seems to me it's a much better process to let the theologians fight it out among themselves."
Fr. Richard Neuhaus, the Canadian-born editor of First Things, an influential New York-based magazine about religion and public life, believes theologians have to "think with the Church" and not undermine its teachings.
And when someone steps too far away, they should no longer be called Catholic theologians.
(The Catholic Church actually licenses its theologians and being stripped of that licence can prevent someone from teaching at a Catholic university.)
Fr. Neuhaus, who also works closely with Evangelical Protestants in the United States on issues of common concern such as gay marriage and abortion, but also on broader areas of faith, said the Evangelicals he works with were not at all insulted by the Vatican's remarks on Protestant churches.
He said secularism is often "anti-religious and anti-Christian," and it is right for Pope Benedict to fight a system of thinking that wants to exclude religion from the public debate.
"The fact is the institutional separation of church and state is something that is to be cherished. But you cannot separate religion and public life. If you have an overwhelming majority [as in the United States] who claim to be religious and Christian, and if they believe as we know they do that morality is connected to religion, to exclude religion from public life is to exclude morality from public life. And that simply undermines the whole foundation of democracy."
Brian Stiller, the president of Tyndale University College and Seminary, a Christian school in Toronto, admires the Pope for bringing "certitude."
Evangelicals and Catholics in Canada have worked closely on such issues as abortion and euthanasia and will continue to do so, he added.
"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]."
Not everyone, though, is so understanding. Rev. Canon John Simons, the principal of the (Anglican) Montreal Diocesan Theological College, and who has worked on Anglican-Roman Catholic conciliation for years, likened the comment about Protestants to one person telling another they are not fully human.
"I think that the unfortunate lasting impact that it will have among Anglicans is to set back the ecumenical progress that has been made over the last 35 years," he said.
"When Anglicans hear these things being said, they say, 'What's the use of talking to Roman Catholics, they really don't take us seriously.' For those of us committed to the ecumenical movement, this is really disappointing, really disheartening."
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