Pope Warns Theologians to Not Seek Applause

Pope Warns Theologians to Not Seek Applause
In Homily, He Recommends Fidelity to Truth

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 6, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A theologian prostitutes himself when he subjects himself to the "dictatorship of common opinions," Benedict XVI told members of the International Theological Commission.

The Pope delivered that message today in a homily during a Mass he celebrated in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel of the Vatican Apostolic Palace for some 30 theologians of the commission.

"To speak to meet with applause, to speak oriented to what men want to hear, to speak obeying the dictatorship of common opinions, is considered a sort of prostitution of the word and of the soul," said the Holy Father quoting the First Letter of St. Peter.

The theologian needs a form of "chastity," which implies "not to be subjected to such standards, not to seek applause, but to seek obedience to the truth," the Pontiff said.

Benedict XVI continued: "And I believe this is the fundamental virtue of the theologian, this discipline, even hard, of obedience to the truth, which makes us collaborators of the truth, a mouth of truth, so that we will not speak in this river of words of today, but that we are really purified and chaste through obedience to the truth, so that truth may speak in us."

Recalling an experience of St. Thomas Aquinas (1221-1274), the Holy Father explained: "In theology, God is not the object of our speech. This is our normal conception. In reality, God is not the object; God is the subject of theology."

Room for God

"He who speaks in theology should be God himself," said the Pope. "And our speaking and thinking should only serve to have him heard, so that the world of God can find room in the world."

For theologians to attain this kind of purification, he recommended "silence and contemplation," which "serve, in the dispersion of daily life, to keep a permanent union with God."

The Pontiff added: "This is the objective: that union with God be always present in our soul and transform our whole being."

Silence and contemplation "serve to be able to find in the dispersion of every day this profound, continuous union with God," Benedict XVI continued.

Yet, "the beautiful vocation of the theologian is to speak," he added. "This is his mission: in the talkativeness of our time and of other times, in the inflation of words, to make the essential words present. In words make the Word present, the Word that proceeds from God, the Word that is God."
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