Benedict’s incisive clarity

Pope Benedict continued his Wednesday catechesis on the Apostles today, and he focused on Simon and Jude. In his charactertistic style of speaking plain truth with startling practical application, he pointed out what these two represented. Reading over his remarks in the Vatican Information Service, this part caught my attention:

“To Jude Thaddaeus is attributed … one of the Letters of the New Testament,” the principal theme of which “is to warn Christians from all those who use the grace of God as a pretext for their own dissoluteness and to mislead their brethren with unacceptable teachings, introducing divisions within the Church.”

  “Today, perhaps, we are no longer accustomed to using such polemical language which, though adopting beautiful poetic imagery, does not fail to state with great clarity both what is distinctive of Christianity and what is incompatible with it. The path of tolerance and dialogue … taken by Vatican Council II must certainly be continued with firmness and constancy. This must not, however, make us forget the duty to reconsider and highlight the irrefutable guiding lines of our Christian identity.” An identity which is not merely cultural “but requires strength, clarity and courage of conviction.”

Every one of Benedict’s messages is packed. This one should be unpacked sentence by sentence. Is the world still paying explicit attention to every line of Benedict’s addresses?