In its Introduction to Christianity (1968), Ratzinger takes up the parable of Kierkegaard in his Diapsalmata (1843): a clown runs to warn the people of a fire in the circus. The more he shouts, the more they laugh at him, and so the fire eats the circus and the people.
It is the fate of the Christian intellectual, Kierkegaard thinks, who announces what people no longer want to hear. Then, because he had made a Christianity to suit himself. Now, because it has become detached and flees from it.
It is a fact that Christianity seems to people to be a known thing; that words alone do not move; and that, as Nietzsche charged, we Christians do not look very much like we have been saved. Orwell said that "freedom consists in telling people what they do not want to hear".. Ortega, recalling Amos, said that the mission of the intellectual is to "oppose and seduce".. But with the beauty of charity, a continual miracle and proof of God in this world, which the Holy Spirit puts in hearts. Newman knew this from experience: Cor ad cor loquitur. So many witnesses.
Professor of Theology and Director of the Department of Systematic Theology at the University of Navarra. Author of numerous books on theology and spiritual life.
