Twenty years after then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned of a “dictatorship of relativism” on the eve of his election as Pope Benedict XVI, his former secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, has echoed that warning. Source: CNA.
The former prefect of the papal household and longtime personal secretary to Pope Benedict, Archbishop Gänswein drew deeply on the late pontiff’s philosophy as he delivered the keynote address at a conference in Lithuania, which brought together academics, civic leaders, public intellectuals, and clergy to discuss the principles of the 2021 Šiluva Declaration.
The declaration advocates the defence of fundamental human rights, the fostering of virtue, and the promotion of societal common good.
It recognises the importance of a society built upon the pillars of truth, family values, human dignity, and faith in God and has since become a moral reference point for Catholic social thinkers in Lithuania.
Archbishop Gänswein’s lecture offered a rich philosophical and theological reflection on faith, reason, and relativism, aspects that he described as a “constant theme in Ratzinger’s work.”
The archbishop, who now serves as nuncio to the Baltic states, warned that when either faith or reason is diminished, that inevitably leads to “pathologies and the disintegration of the human person.”
This is the third such conference dedicated to reflecting on the Šiluva Declaration, published on September 12, 2021, during the town’s annual Marian festival. Šiluva is the location of a Marian shrine dedicated to one of Europe’s earliest approved apparitions.
Archbishop Gänswein said that in the face of today’s great challenges, such as technical thinking and globalisation, the first step must be to recover the full scope of reason.
He described true reason as inherently truthful, contrasting it with relativism, which he called “an expression of weak and narrow-minded thinking … based on the false pride of believing humans cannot recognise the truth and the false humility of refusing to accept it.”
Archbishop Gänswein concluded by warning that relativism – the defining mindset of modernity, which he described as “a creeping poison” – ultimately undermines human freedom. Driven by self-sufficiency and amplified by social media, relativism blinds people to truth and their ultimate purpose.
Humanity’s true goal, he affirmed, is “to come to the knowledge of the truth, which is God, and thus to attain eternal life.”
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Archbishop Gänswein echoes Pope Benedict XVI’s warning on ‘dictatorship of relativism’ (By Bryan Lawrence Gonsalves, CNA)
