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by John Houk

Our new pope has begun to reach out with his first messages to Catholics and the world. Perhaps we can anticipate, from what we already know, what his first encyclical might say. You may have your own guess, but this is mine.

First he will acknowledge the state of the world with wars about race, class and money. Then deal with the prevalent lack of respect for authority. He will praise his predecessor and call for a renewed sense of the charity of Jesus Christ in the world. Then he will call for all Catholics to stop dissension and strife, of whatever character, among ourselves while calling for each Catholic to subject his opinion to the authority of his superior.

Then he is likely to say that in matters without harm to faith or discipline there is room for divergent opinions, and that it is clearly the right of everyone to express and defend his own opinion (but always in charity). No one should consider himself intitled to affix on those who merely do not agree with his ideas the stigma of disloyalty to faith or discipline.

Finally there will be a strong call to avoid the errors of modern secular thought and there is to be no innovation. The rule shall be “Old things, in a new way.”

Actually, I have cheated. These thoughts came directly from the first encyclical of our new pope’s name predecessor, Benedict XV. Benedict XV became pope during World War I, in 1914, and also when there was open “warfare” within the Catholic Church between Traditionalists and Modernists. He called for and end to war both inside and outside the Church in his first year as pope in the encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum. He had good success putting and end to internal warfare (so the historians say) but had little effect on the war devastating Europe at the time.

No one knows what Benedict XVI will write in his first official teaching document, but it is interesting to speculate based on his choice of names and the signs of the times. What do you think?