EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE: THE POPE IN BAVARIA
Benedict XVI challenges Munich crowd to fight relativism

Pope Benedict XVI arrives at Munich Trade Fair Center to celebrate an outdoor Mass for approximately 250,000 people on Sept. 10. Herald/Bill Howard

Bill Howard
Sep 10, 2006 4:30 PM
MUNICH, Germany. In the first major appearance of his return to his home state of Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI continued to hammer on the need to fight moral relativism and agnosticism in society at a papal Mass at the Munich Trade Fair Center attended by an estimated 250,000 people.

“God must

become the force shaping our lives and actions,” he said. “This is what we ask for when we pray ‘Thy kingdom come’ (in the Our Father). We are not asking for something in the distance, something that we may not even want to experience. Rather, we pray that God’s will may here and now determine our own will, and that in this way God can reign the world.”

Pope Benedict began his six-day pilgrimage when he arrived in Munich mid-afternoon Sept. 9. After the outdoor Mass Sept. 10, he went back to the archbishop’s residence in downtown Munich for a nap and then led Vespers at the downtown cathedral. On Sept. 11, he will celebrate an outdoor Mass for an estimated 100,000 people in the small town of Altotting, where Benedict grew up.

In discussing the Gospel reading, where Jesus heals a deaf and mute man (Mk 7: 31-37), Benedict said “there is not only a physical deafness (today) which largely cuts people off from social life; there is also a ‘hardness of hearing’ where God is concerned, and this is something from which we particularly suffer in our own time.”

“Put simply,” he added. “we are no longer able to hear God – there are too many different frequencies filling our ears. What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited to our ears. Along with this hardness of hearing or outright deafness where God is concerned, we naturally lose our ability to speak with him and to him. . . . we risk losing our inner senses. This weakening of our capacity for perception drastically and dangerously curtails the range of our relationship with reality.”

Pope Benedict reminded the congregation of the graces of the sacrament of baptism, which “makes us part of the community of those who are able to hear and speak, it brings us into fellowship with Jesus himself, who alone has seen God and is thus able to speak of him. Through faith, Jesus want to share with us his seeing God, his hearing the father and his converse with him.”

He said Catholics eagerly participate in social justice causes but often lack in evangelization causes. “Every now and then . . . some African bishop will say, ‘If I come to Germany and present social projects, suddenly every door opens. But if I come with a plan for evangelization, I meet with reservations,’” Benedict said. “Clearly some people have the idea that social projects should be urgently undertaken, while anything dealing with God or even the Catholic faith is of limited and lesser importance. Yet the experience of those bishops is that evangelization itself should be foremost, that the God of Jesus Christ must be known, believed in and loved, and that hearts must be converted if progress is to be made on social issues and reconciliation is to begin.”

Benedict gave the example of the AIDS epidemic, where he believes the Gospel message may be getting lost in the desire to eradicate the disease.

“When we bring people only knowledge, ability, technical competence and tools, we bring them too little,” he said. “All too quickly the mechanisms of violence take over; the capacity to destroy and kill becomes the dominant way to gain power – a power which at some point should bring law, but which will never be able to do so.”

“People in Africa and Asia admire our scientific and technical prowess, but at the same time they are frightened by a form of rationality which totally excludes God from man’s vision, as if this were the highest form of reason and one to be imposed on their cultures too,” he added. “Dear friends, this cynicism is not the kind of tolerance and cultural openness that the world’s peoples are looking for and that all of us want.”

Judging from the hush of the crowd when the pope arrived – a stark contrast to the thunderous applause that followed Pope John Paul’s arrivals – one could wonder why they were there. Flags waved across the sea of people, but when Benedict arrived at the trade center and transferred to the popemobile, the crowd remained quiet, with small pockets of applause bursting out in anticipation of his appearance.

An informal survey of attendees by the Herald showed that the crowd was very much excited to see the pope, but that a lack of huge applause is just the reserved German way.

The crowd spoke in other ways, particularly in dress. Thousands of men and women wore traditional clothes – lederhosen for men and dirndls for women. Many of them participated in a pre-Mass parade with marching drummers.

The pope, meanwhile, was visibly happy to be back in his homeland, often sporting a beaming smile and acknowledging frequent crowd interruptions of the chant “Be-ne-detto” early in the Mass. Benedict opened his homily by pointing out the importance of keeping in touch with one’s home.

“I am . . . happy to revisit familiar places which had a decisive influence on my life, shaping my thoughts and feelings, places where I learned how to believe and how to live,” he said. “This is a time to say thanks to all those – living and deceased – who guided and accompanied me along the way. I thank God for this beautiful country and for all the persons who have made it truly my homeland.”

They may have been relatively quiet, but the fact that 250,000 people showed up for Mass speaks louder than words, saying that, just maybe, the pope is slowly starting to win over his countrymen.