The Nov. 24 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle contains an article by Fr. Michael Sweeney, O.P., a Dominican priest from the Province of the Holy Name (Western Province).  Fr. Sweeney also comments on the media's invented controversy about the book's reporting of the Pope's views on condoms.  But more than that, Fr. Sweeney helps to reveal some of the Holy Father's extraordinary vision of Christianity and the Church.

New book reflects on pope's role in the world 

"The pope is, on the one hand, a completely powerless man. On the other hand, he bears a great responsibility. ... The important thing is that I do not present my ideas, but rather try to think and to live the Church's faith, to act in obedience to His [Christ's] mandate."

With these words Pope Benedict XVI reflects upon his role in the Roman Catholic Church and world in a series of conversations with Peter Seewald, newly published in the book "Light of the World" (Ignatius Press, 2010). Incisive, candid and occasionally playful, Pope Benedict addresses a wide range of issues, from the scandal of clerical abuse of minors - "Suddenly so much filth. ... It is a particularly serious sin when someone who is actually supposed to help young people toward God ... abuses him instead" - to the crisis in the world economy - "We are living at the expense of future generations. In this respect it is plain that we are living in untruth."

What emerges in the interviews is a man who in his own words is "a simple beggar before God - even more than all other people" who, nonetheless, is deeply confident in the future of the church and of Christianity. Questioned about the AIDS crisis, the pope does not approve the use of condoms, despite what has been widely reported in the world news. In fact, "the sheer fixation on the condom" is itself part of the problem; it "implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only as a sort of drug that people administer to themselves." It is possible that in the case of some individuals the use of a condom might indicate "a first assumption of responsibility on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed," but nowhere does he suggest that the use of condoms is objectively effective or morally acceptable.

On the world stage, Benedict speaks of "the clash of two spiritual worlds, the world of faith and the world of secularism." Secularism represents "an abstract negative religion" that is "being made into a tyrannical standard that everyone must follow." As a consequence, "In the name of tolerance, tolerance is being abolished. ... No one is forced to be a Christian. But no one should be forced to live according to the 'new religion' as though it alone were definitive and obligatory for all mankind."

The pope is well aware that many Catholics now live "a divided existence," and he poses the question, "to what extent do people still belong to the Church? On the one hand, they want to belong to Her and do not wish to lose this foundation. On the other hand, they are of course also shaped and formed interiorly by the modern way of thinking. It is the unfermented coexistence, with and alongside each other, of the basic Christian intention and a new world view, which leaves its mark on all of life. To that extent what remains is a sort of schizophrenia."

Therefore he challenges the church to meditate with him the way in which Christianity is to be proposed to the modern world: "The question is, Where is secularism right? Where can and must the faith adopt the forms and figures of modernity - and where must it offer resistance?" The decisive sign of hope for him lies in "the joy of young people. ... In this regard, thanks to what I myself am able to see and experience, I am quite optimistic that Christianity is on the verge of a new dynamic."

The Rev. Michael Sweeney is president of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.