An editoral by William Murchison published in Forward In Christ magazine (FiFNA)

His Holiness Benedict XVI took careful aim recently at the Spirit of the Age.

He squeezed the rhetorical trigger. Bulls eye! No God, no freedom. It’s as simple, and as profoundly complex as that. The Pope takes honors for reminding the world in his address to Czech notables in September of the Lord’s ineffaceable role in the affairs of the world.
Czechoslovakia, according to a New York Times report, may be Ground Zero for European secularism. It was logical the Pope should go there. It’s where the imperiled souls are. Christian ministers are great hunters of empty or wasted souls – unless from lack of application they no longer recognize emptiness or waste when they see it.
What, then, did Benedict have to say about Christianity and freedom? Nothing very original. Lack of originality is among the gifts God gives his favorite shepherds. Benedict knows the futility and foolishness of dancing around the Truth for a new, exciting view. Come to think of it, he speaks of Truth without equivocation or apology.
“Today,” he said, “especially among the young, the question again emerges as to the nature of the freedom gained. To what end is freedom exercised? What are its true hallmarks?”
To what end? Don’t we know? It’s to be free to do – right? We often enough hear such an account of the matter. We’re free because we’re free because we’re free because…
Benedict begs to nudge the question a little farther down the path. “Freedom seeks purpose: it requires conviction. True freedom presupposes the search for truth – for the true good – and hence finds its fulfillment precisely in knowing and doing what is right and just.
“Truth, in other words, is the guiding norm for Scripture, and goodness is freedom’s perfection.”
A determined secularist is at this point squirming or drumming his fingers. Whose definitions of goodness and truth are we talking about? Doesn’t freedom confer integrity and approval on contrasting or conflicting ideals? Your truth, my truth – something like that? Not so as Benedict, classical Christian that he is, understands the matter.
He pushes ahead: “For Christians truth has a name: God. And goodness has a face: Jesus Christ.” And so (he tells us) freedom, for all the connotations the word has acquired in recent times, aims not at “whatever,” rather at particular ends, the great End being God Himself. If only we understood as much!
The Pope tries at this point to draw a historical connection: hope and freedom as proceeding form Czechoslovakia’s Christian roots, which include Hus and Good King Wenceslas. Hear him: The roots in question “have nourished a remarkable spirit of forgiveness, reconciliation and cooperation which has enabled the people of these lands to find freedom and to usher in a new beginning, a new synthesis, a renewal of hope. Is it precisely this spirit that contemporary Europe requires? Europe is more than a continent. It is a home. And freedom finds its deepest meaning in a homeland…[W]ith full respect for the distinction between the political realm and that of religion, which indeed preserves the freedom of citizens to express religious belief and live accordingly, I wish to underline the irreplaceable role of Christianity for the formation of the conscience of each generation and the promotion of a basic ethical consensus that serves every person who calls this continent [his] home.”
The thesis is a knotty one from the perspective of men and women just wanting to be left alone, please. Such men and women in modern Europe, not to mention the United States, can’t get their arms around the concept of a “ true good.” To accept such a notion, they would have to notice, and give wide berths to, false goods. “False,” save in political rhetoric, isn’t a card we like to deal, lest it injure the feelings or the rights of the recipient.
Relativist Europe --- relativist America – can’t figure these popes and priests and such like who come around with their truth claims, purporting to speak in the name of a deity widely seen as embracing diverse perspectives. The Oneness of Truth wouldn’t qualify as the 2st century’s favorite philosophical proposition. Yet Benedict steps up to assert it with -- many might call it childish naivete. How to break through to them, in Prague, Paris, or Portland?
A good start, naturally, is just to speak the Truth: to say it aloud in every language, every argot. A useful accompanying strategy in Europe is to call to mind Europe’s dependence upon its Christian heritage. No God, no freedom so much as to walk a God-less journey without hindrance.
“If you will not have God, and He is a jealous God, “ T. S. Eliot admonished Europe 70 years ago, “you must pay your respects to Hitler and Stalin.” The Czechs know all too well those angels of darkness and un-freedom. They – we – can always invite them back A holier alternative lies ready at hand.