About Events Publications Media Search Shop Donate
About Events Publications Media Search Shop Donate
Samuel Gregg — Benedict XVI: God’s Revolutionary
Religion & Liberty Online

Samuel Gregg — Benedict XVI: God’s Revolutionary

by John Couretas • April 16, 2012

The pope turns 85 today. On the website of Crisis Magazine, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg looks at this most prominent of “status-quo challengers.”

While regularly derided by his critics as “decrepit” and “out-of-touch,” Benedict XVI continues to do what he’s done since his election as pope seven years ago: which is to shake up not just the Catholic Church but also the world it’s called upon to evangelize. His means of doing so doesn’t involve “occupying” anything. Instead, it is Benedict’s calm, consistent, and, above all, coherent engagement with the world of ideas that marks him out as very different from most other contemporary world leaders – religious or otherwise.

Benedict has long understood a truth that escapes many contemporary political activists: that the world’s most significant changes don’t normally begin in the arena of politics. Invariably, they start with people who labor – for better or worse – in the realm of ideas. The scribblings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau helped make possible the French Revolution, Robespierre, and the Terror. Likewise, it’s hard to imagine Lenin and the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia without the indispensible backdrop of Karl Marx. Outside of academic legal circles, the name of the Oxford don, H.L.A. Hart, is virtually unknown. Yet few individuals more decisively enabled the West’s twentieth-century embrace of the permissive society.

Read “Benedict XVI: God’s Revolutionary” by Samuel Gregg on Crisis.

John Couretas

John Couretas

is a writer and editor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Posted in Christian Social Thought, News and Events, VaticanTagged catholic church, Catholilc Social Thought, deus caritas est, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, karl marx, pope benedict xvi, Roman Catholic, Samuel Gregg, Social teachings of the papacy, The Modern Papacy, Theology of Pope Benedict XVI

Related posts

  • Samuel Gregg: ‘Benedict XVI: Reason’s Revolutionary’
  • Samuel Gregg: Benedict XVI and the Irrelevance of ‘Relevance’
  • Samuel Gregg: Benedict XVI and the Pathologies of Religion
  • Samuel Gregg: Looking Back on Benedict’s Regensburg Speech

About

Our Mission & Core Principles Acton Grants and Awards Acton Research Our Team Careers Internships News

Events

Events Calendar Lecture Series Conference Series Acton University

Publications

Religion & Liberty Online Acton Notes Religion & Liberty Religion & Liberty Transatlantic Acton Books Journal of Markets & Morality

Multimedia

Videos Podcasts Films

Shop

Donate

Contact Us

© 2022 Acton Institute | Privacy Policy