I spent about 30 minutes yesterday early afternoon looking at Ratzinger's writings. He definitely was not reacting within modernity against another type of modernity -- my fear. What I found was a very bright theologian anchored in the intellectual tradition of the early and early medieval church.

Last night I googled "writings of Joseph Ratzinger." I found an article from the National Catholic Reporter -- http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/041699/041699a.htm. The article quoted people I both knew (Michael Waldstein) and those whom I respected from reading their work (James DiNoia). It talked about two impulses in Vatican II -- a modernizing movement (aggiornamento) and a return to the sources (ressourcement). Both were radical for the late medieval, Baroque entrenchment of Roman Catholicism of the early and mid-nineteenth century. Americans tended to hear the council through their own desires -- a means of making the church like American society and polity, of baptizing the deepest convictions of the modern age with a slight catholic accent.

When Ratzinger did not act like one committed to this translation agenda of having the church change to its intellectual and moral environmnet, he was defamed as a traitor. What is apparent, however, to me know is that Ratzinger had not changed -- he had spoken always within the "back to the sources" commitments of catholicity.

In reflection, this is very analogous to interpretations both of the congregation and the "Wesleyan movement" in the past 40 years. Often persons, I think, perceive our congregation as a "liberal" congregation, rejecting the social conservatism and privatized piety of most American Protestant Christianity. Such is correct on what is rejected, but wrong in what is affirmed. In our mission statement, we are a "back to the sources" congregation -- we are committed to the spirit of the early church, not the agenda of contemporary social progressives. We only look like social progressives to outsiders sometimes because of the early church's commitment to non-violence and life with the poor and mutuality of life in the sharing of common goods. Yet our doctrinal, liturgical, and personal ethical commitments get confusing to such interpretations because we are a "back to the sources" congregation. I do not want to place one bad modernity by an equally wrong modernist "post-modernity."

Moreover, in the "Wesleyan movement" of the past 40 years, there has been a similar movement to Vatican II -- and through Albert Outler, there is a direct connection -- as a "back to Wesley movement." Yet this "back to Wesley" (the Wesleyan) really has two sides, even as these look similar in their moving beyond nineteenth century American holiness movement thought. The majority have pursued this new reading of Wesley within modernity -- a freedom from the commitments of the church to make the church relevant to the modern age of translating its life within modern categories -- such as relationship, process theology, 20th century categories of religious experience or psychotherapy. Yet underneath is a very different reading of this reading of Wesley -- back to the sources, not only in Wesley, but also to the early Christian sources that nurtured Wesley -- himself very much a "ressourcement theologian and churchman."

Those committed to making the Christian faith understandable to the modern age by fitting within it will call such a "return to the sources" commitment as reactionary conservative -- much like Cardinal Ratzinger was so-called. Modernist conservatives will call such commitments as "liberal." I'll just call it what it is: the faith given to the saints.