I haven’t read any of Benedict’s writings, so I obviously can’t claim to be an expert on his thinking. The laudatory columns from people such as Sohrab Ahmari, however, have made it clear that Benedict supported the Thomist approach of marrying reason to Catholic dogma against prominent 13th and 14th Catholic theologians. You would have thought those battles were over several centuries ago, but apparently not. Which leads to the obvious question: how logical and empirically sound is Catholic doctrine?
Let’s examine the record, which includes the following:
- While the story of the creation of the universe in Genesis is arguably consistent with the available empirical evidence, the part about the creation and fall of man is not. The religious implications of the relationship between humans and animals have never been addressed in any satisfactory way by Benedict or any other Christian theologian.
- The Bible then goes on to identify the Jews as God’s chosen people, to discuss other civilizations in the Middle East only as foils for the Jews, and to completely ignore all of the other great civilizations in the world, which makes no sense whatsoever if you’re trying to make sense of the human experience.
- The God of the Old Testament is about as far from a philosopher’s God as possible; he’s basically a capricious tyrant–more like Zeus than Jesus.
- After millennia of human history, God then changes the rules, decides the Jews aren’t really the chosen people anymore, and sends his son into the world. I guess the people before him didn’t really count.
- The Christian God is, of course, three parts somehow magically woven into one. The Holy Spirit part is ill-defined; why it even exists as sort of an independent manifestation of God is hardly clear to me.
- Jesus is both completely man and completely God. He dies on the cross, even though God by definition is immortal, and then is resurrected by God, even though, as God, he could have resurrected himself. Try finding the logic in that; as I understand it, even Aquinas couldn’t do it.
- Rome becomes the center of the Christian universe solely by virtue of the fact that it was the capital of a powerful pagan entity–the Roman Empire.
- Catholics engage in clerical politics for centuries. Oceans of blood are shed over minor doctrinal differences. Historical practices and accidents (e.g., the use of Latin and clerical celibacy) somehow turn into the word of God. Priests magically gain the power to turn wine into the blood of Christ. Popes openly deny and suppress scientific discoveries. The world moves on, leaving the Church behind.
That doesn’t sound like a very “reasonable” religion to me.