[Question:]{.underline} If Pope Benedict XVI approves secularism and humanism, is it true to affirm that he is a secular humanist?
[Answer:]{.underline} Humanism was originally a movement of thought calling for a return, in art, architecture and literature, to the pagan classics, and it existed from the 14^th^ — 16^th^ centuries, preparing the way for moral decadence and for the protestant revolt. However, it was not in itself opposed to the Faith, with Erasmus and St. Thomas More being counted as some of the greatest humanists of the 16^th^ century.
With the advent of the French revolution (1789) and the promulgation of the rights of man, as opposed to the rights of God, humanism took on a new face. The focus on man rather than on God led to the defense of the liberty, equality and fraternity of all men, which is directly opposed to divine revelation. Not only did it lead to a rebellion against God, but to also to the exclusion of religion from all public life, including works of doing good to others or to society. The motive became the good of mankind, of our fellow man, with whom we share fraternity, and thus was born secular humanism, which is defined as “A type of humanitarianism which is a devotion to the cause of humanity as a substitute for religion. It is a natural philanthropy coupled with a desire to bring the greatest good to the greatest number. It operates from no spiritual or supernatural motives.” (Maryknoll Catholic Dictionary, p. 518).
Secular humanism is the freemasonic, and ultimately atheistic ideal that reigns everywhere in modern society, in which man’s refusal to believe in God is supplanted by his willingness to believe in himself without God. Pope Paul VI acknowledged, in his concluding speech at the end of the Second Vatican Council on December 7, 1965, that secular humanism in the 20^th^ century posed a grave danger to the Church, and made this response: “Secular and profane humanism has finally appeared in its terrible dimensions, and, in a certain way, defied the Council. The religion of God made man met up with the religion (for it is one) of man who makes himself God. What happened? A fight, a struggle, an anathema? This could have happened, but did not take place. …An unlimited understanding for men overwhelmed it entirely… You, modern humanists, who refuse the transcendence of higher things, admit for it at least this merit, and know how to recognize our new humanism: we also, we more than anyone else, practice the worship of man…”
INTEGRAL HUMANISM
Thus was born into the Church a new kind of humanism, no longer considered secular, for it does admit man’s openness to a transcendence above himself, that is called God, and no longer purely material, for it considers above all else the dignity of the human spirit. It is called integral humanism, and Pope Paul VI learnt it from Jacques Maritain. It produced Vatican II’s determination to get along with the world of men, and to give up the Church’s opposition to the world, summarized as it is by St. John: “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him” (I Jn 2:15). Hence the extraordinary statement of Paul VI in the discourse mentioned above: “A current of affection and admiration overflowed from the Council for the modern, human, world.”.
Such also is the humanism of Pope Benedict XVI, which he calls an authentic humanism to distinguish it from a purely materialist or secular humanism. Innumerable texts could be quoted to demonstrate that this humanism is the driving force behind his whole thought process, the unifying factor in all his decisions and teachings, the constant focus that overcomes the apparent contradictions between conservative and liberal ideas. We find it early on in his career as a theologian, in his 1968 book, Christian Faith, yesterday and today, in which he states that Christ is God because he is the most perfect man, the exemplary man, “the definitive or ultimate, who introduces man to that future which belongs to man, a future consisting in not simply being man, but to be one with God” (In si si no no, June 1994, #8, p. 19). He declares this elsewhere in the form of a rhetorical question: “Do we, then, still have the right to reabsorb Christology into theology? Must we not rather passionately acclaim Jesus as man and consider Christology as Humanism, an Anthropology? Or could authentic man, simply because of the fact of being completely and authentically man, be God and could God be, precisely, authentic man? Could it be possible that the most radical humanism and the Faith in the God of revelation merge together here to become one and the same thing?” (Ib. p. 18).
Prof. Tracey Rowland points out very accurately that Benedict XVI’s positive view of Vatican II’s approach to modern day atheism is precisely because it deals with atheism not to refute it on the level of truth, “but as an authentic desire for a true humanism. Atheism must therefore be answered on an anthropological plane” — that is on the level of the consideration of man’s human nature, according to which it is God alone “who makes it possible for man to be human” (Ratzinger’s Faith, Oxford, 2008, p. 147). In the well known interview with Peter Seewald, published as Salt of the Earth in 1997, Cardinal Ratzinber drew the logical conclusion from this humanism. The history of humanity, he concludes, is no longer determined by the opposition between two cities, the love of God unto sacrifice of self, and self-love unto the denial of God, as defined by St. Augustine, nor even by the opposition between belief and unbelief. “History as a whole is the struggle between love and the inability to love, between love and the refusal to love…: Yes or no to love” (p. 282, 283). He is speaking here of the love which is in every human heart, and not of the supernatural charity that comes from the love of God above all else.
HUMANISM IN THE ENCYCLICALS
However, the clearest evidence of the Pope’s humanism is to be found in his three encyclicals. His first encyclical, Deus caritas est, attempted to bring about a fusion between the two kinds of love, self-serving and self-sacrificing, as if they were a single reality in God (sic! § 9) as also in man. The distinction between natural and supernatural love is done away with and so all love is to enable man to “attain his full stature” (§ 5). He clearly states that it is the Church’s role to promote true humanism, which is why it must work together with non-Catholic charitable agencies, that promote the same: “We all have the same fundamental motivation and look towards the same goal: [a true humanism]{.underline}, which acknowledges that man is made in the image of God and wants to help him to live in a way consonant with that dignity” (§ 9).
His second encyclical, on Christian Hope, Spe salvi, presents this humanism as being a positive and very beneficial fruit of the French revolution. “The French revolution was more than anything else an attempt to bring about the domination of reason and of liberty…Reason and liberty seem to guarantee by themselves, in virtue of their intrinsic goodness, a new perfect, human community (§ 19, 18). Note the implicit denial of original sin and its wounds. It is an immediate consequence of this humanism that the Redemption is redefined: “Thus the Redemption appears truly as the re-establishment of unity, by which we gather together again in a union that can be seen in the worldwide community of believers” (§ 14). Note the denial of the supernatural: reparation and payment of the debt for sin. Here we find the fundamental reason why it is open to all men of all beliefs or even of no belief at all. As a consequence there is no longer any fire in Purgatory, unbaptized children go to heaven, the Last Judgment is no longer to be considered as a judgment, but simply as a purification, Hell is no longer a place but a state of mind and very few people go there - only those “who have totally destroyed in themselves the desire for the truth and disposition to love…who live for hatred…” (§45).
However, it is Benedict XVI’s third encyclical Caritas in veritate, which is most radical in its teaching of authentic and integral humanism. In fact the title of the encyclical, not addressed just to Catholics “but to all men of good will” is “on integral human development in charity and truth”. It begins with a redefining of charity in line with his first encyclical, simply as the aspect of man’s willingness to have relationships with others, “Charity can be recognized as an authentic expression of humanity, and as an element of fundamental importance in human relations” (§ 3). The Church’s highest role, above all else, is consequently “in promoting integral human development… to the advancement of humanity and of universal fraternity…(§ 11). Truth is likewise redefined as dialogue, or communication with others, so that fidelity to truth is fidelity to man, “which alone is the guarantee of freedom and of the possibility of integral human development” (§3).
Hence the Pope’s preoccupation with globalization, which is ethical because of the unity of the human family, and because it promotes the dialogue with the followers of other religions and even with non-believers without which there is no truth, and consequently as a requisite for integral human development. He likewise calls for a one world government that has real teeth to promote that dialogue, thus excluding any Catholic society and any possibility of the reign of Christ the King. His conclusion, it is true, is a rejection of a secular humanism, to be substituted by the integral humanism that allows for the transcendence of man to be acknowledged: “A humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism. Only a humanism open to the Absolute can guide us in the promotion and building of forms of social and civic life” (§78), which is why Benedict XVI, like Paul VI before him, dedicates himself “with generosity to the task of bringing about the development of the whole man and of all men” (§ 79).
BENEDICT XVI’S SECULARISM
There consequently can be no doubt at all as to Benedict XVI’s humanism, and that it is the motivating factor behind all his teachings. To answer the question as to whether he promotes secularism, it suffices to refer to the interview that he granted en route to the US on April 15, 2008, in which he makes a clear distinction between positive secularism and a new atheistic secularism. This is what he had to say: “What I find fascinating about the USA is that it began with a positive concept of secularism. Because this new people was made up of communities and persons who had escaped the State religions and wished to have a lay, secular State, which opens the doors to all confessions, to all forms of religious exercise. It was thus a willingly secular state, but secular truly for love of religion, of its authenticity, which can be lived only freely…This seems to be a fundamental and positive model to be considered also in Europe… Now there is even in the US an attack of a new Secularism, and therefore, new problems”.
Benedict XVI wants a secular state, to the extent that there is separation of Church and State, and to the extent that there is freedom for all religions. However, he does not want the secular state that is atheistic, that promotes immorality, that restricts religious freedom and that attacks the Catholic Church or any other religion for that matter. All secularism, including that which is defended by Benedict XVI, is clearly condemned by the Church, for example by Pope Pius XI in his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, on the Social Kingship of Christ, who calls all secularism a “plague” and an “evil spirit”. “It has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ Himself to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions, and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them…”
Benedict XVI promotes secularism, but a secularism that is mitigated, in opposition to the radical secularism of the atheists, which he calls the “new secularism”, although it is not at all new, for it was the secularism of the French revolution*.* As radical a humanist as he considers himself to be, he is consequently not a radically secular humanist, as those who attack the Church. He is an authentic humanist, who insists on his humanism accepting all religions as a consequently of man’s openness to transcendence. This is a form of naturalism and of modernism, based upon the premise that religion is an experience that emanates from the depth of man and that enables him to realize his true greatness. This is the source of his ecumenism with other religions, of his promotion of dialogue and of religious liberty for all religions, and likewise, somewhat surprisingly, of his statement of November 2010, concerning the morality of condoms. The Catholic man cannot understand how he could have even entertain the possibility, in direct opposition to all the Church’s teaching concerning homosexuality and artificial birth control, both condemned as intrinsically evil. How can an immoral prevention against AIDS be “a first step in the direction of a moralization”?. How can an immoral, intrinsically evil, act have morality? The answer is simple; because it is “a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality”. Once more, it is the human and relational (that is, having reference to another person) aspect of the act that gives morality, even though it is directly against God.
Benedict XVI’s humanism pervades all that he does, and although he is not a secular humanist in the old-fashioned meaning of the term, but rather an authentic humanist, this humanism is in fact and in its consequences not far removed from secular humanism. Both alike undermine and destroy the supernatural order of grace, the necessity of the sacraments and prayer, of the one true Catholic Church and its unique Faith. The advantage of authentic humanism is that it allows religion as a personal experience of man’s transcendence. But it is for this reason all the more dangerous, for this enables it to infiltrate the Church, which secular humanism does not do, and to bring about the continuation of the ongoing autodestruction of the Church.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.