He muses on the past year, and really says something important here, and says it almost perfectly:
Benedict is a supple thinker, and unpacking his approach on any given question requires nuance. Because his points of departure are the 2,000-year tradition of the church, coupled with his own judgments about the character of people under consideration, rather than the ideological categories of secular politics, his decisions will sometimes strike the outside world as surprising and out of character.
His organizational scheme:
What Hasn't Happened
First, anyone who expected Benedict XVI to ride into town and turn the Catholic church on its ear had an overheated imagination. Benedict is profoundly conscious of himself as the carrier of a 2,000 year old tradition and as the universal pastor of a very large and complex global community, not as a president or prime minister elected to pursue a personal agenda.
Who's Paying Attention?
Papal aficionados, those who hang on every utterance, are by and large tremendously impressed with Benedict XVI, regardless of whether they come from the left, right or center. Benedict is an extraordinarily erudite figure, easily the most intellectually profound world leader on the stage today. He is a gifted writer, and his texts to date have been well received, both at the level of content and of tradecraft. He is also a surprisingly adept public figure, projecting an air of warmth and gentleness that people tend to find charming.
He is, in short, a pope of whom Catholics seem to feel proud.
The Dictatorship of Relativism
To put Benedict's point in street language, it boils down to this: You may not like what we have to say, but at least give us credit for our motives. We're not talking about truth because we want to chain you down, but because we want to set you free. It's not a matter of love and joy versus a fussy, legalistic church. It's a question of two different visions of what real love is all about -- Baywatch, so to speak, versus the gospel. We too want happy, healthy, liberated people, we just have a different idea of how to get there.
Tough Love
In his March 23 session with cardinals, much conversation turned on Islam, and there was general agreement with Benedict's policy of a more muscular challenge on what Catholics call "reciprocity." In essence, it means that if Muslim immigrants can claim the benefit of religious liberty in the West, then Christian minorities ought to get the same treatment in majority Muslim nations.
Benedict the Teacher
Benedict, on the other hand, is shaping up as a great teacher. It has struck many observers in Rome that he is still drawing larger-than-usual crowds for his Wednesday General Audience and for the Sunday Angelus address. Speaking afterwards with the people who show up, it's striking how often they give some version of the following reaction: "I can understand him." Benedict has a remarkable capacity to express complex theological ideas with clarity and simplicity
I think this is quite on the mark, and Allen notes as well that the most consistent rumblings of discontent, after the whole Reese thing, have come from the "conservative" end - from the mild questions of when things are going to get reigned in, to the accusations of total sell-out on the part of some that greeted the Instruction on Homosexuals in the Seminary.
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