Joseph Ratzinger BEAUTY CHURCH 5

Sorry for the bad translation

Reform useless

But how should this be? How can such a reform to succeed? However, we have to begin, they say. It is often said with the naive assumption of the enlightened, who is convinced that the generations up until now have not understood the question, or that they were too timid and poorly lit, and we, however, we now finally at the same time is the courage that intelligence. No matter how much resistance they can oppose the reactionary and "fundamentalists" in this noble undertaking, it must be put into work. At least there is a recipe for the very enlightening first step. The Church is not a democracy. From what appears, it has not yet integrated in its internal constitution that heritage of freedom and rights that the Enlightenment has produced and which has since been recognized as a fundamental rule of social and political formations. So it seems the most natural thing in the world once and recover what had been neglected and begin coll'erigere this key asset structures of freedom. The road leads - as they say - from a paternalistic church and distribution of goods to a church-community. It is said that no one should remain passive receiver of gifts that are to be a Christian. Everyone must become active players instead of the Christian life. The Church must no longer be dropped from the top down. No! It is we who "have" the Church, and we always new. So finally it will become "our" church, and we its active responsible parties. The passive aspect gives to those assets. The Church rises through discussions, agreements and decisions. In the debate today shows what can be required, what today can still be recognized by all as belonging to the faith or moral line directive.

Are issued new "formulas of faith and stripped. In Germany, a relatively high level, it was said that the liturgy should no longer correspond to a previous scheme, already given, but instead must arise on the spot, in a given situation by the community for which is celebrated. Also it should not be anything more already pre-established, but instead something self-made, something that is an expression of themselves. On this way turns out to be a bit 'of an obstacle, for the most part, the word of Scripture, which, however, can not be waived altogether. It must then deal with them as much freedom of choice.
Not many, however, the texts used are left in such a way as to fit without interference in that self-realization, which now appears to be intended for the liturgy.

In this reform, which now finally also in the Church 1 '"self" must be guided by replacing the other, but soon questions arise. Who here was the right to make decisions? On what basis does this happen? In the political democracy, this demand is being met by the system of representation: election each choose their representatives, who make the decisions for them. This position is limited in time and is also limited in content, in outline, by the party system, and includes only those policy fields that are assigned by the Constitution to separate state representative.

Here, too, the questions remain: the minority must bow to the majority and the minority can be very large.
Moreover, it is not always guaranteed that the representative that I have chosen to act and speak in the way I really want, so that even the most victorious, looking at things more closely, once again can not be considered fully at all as an active political event .

On the contrary, it must also accept "decisions taken by others", so at least not impair the system in its entirety.
More important for our discussion, however, is a general problem. Everything that men do, may also be withdrawn from others. Everything that comes from a human taste may not appeal to others. All that a majority decision can be repealed by another majority.

A Church that rests on a majority decision or a church becomes purely human. It is reduced to a level that is

plausible, what is the result of their action and their own insights and opinions. The review replaces faith. And indeed, in the formulas of faith coined by saying that I know the meaning of "belief" does not go beyond the meaning "we think". The Church has made itself at the end of the taste of the "self" that other "self" is never acceptable and soon reveals his own smallness. It was withdrawn in the context of the empirical, and so it was dissolved as an ideal dream.