Cardinal Ratzinger on Christianity and the Spirit of the Times: TCF Quoteboard

I ran across this gem from Cardinal Ratzinger, initially published in the German in 1982.  There's such a range of opinion in ministry about how to reach those who are plugged into the world.  The approach is often, 'Be like them, that way they can be who they are and still become us.'  That may be quite oversimplified, but the manifestations of such efforts are plainly obvious.  For those who identify with that model, the following words of the man who would become Pope Benedict offer his perspective on this question:


"That all-too-guileless progressivism of the first postconciliar years [i.e., the years after Vatican II of the early 1960s], which happily proclaimed its solidarity with everything modern, to demonstrate the loyalty of Christians to the trends of contemporary life—that progressivism has today come under suspicion of being merely the apotheosis of the late-capitalistic bourgeoisie, on which, instead of attacking it critically, it sheds a kind of religious glow. … A Christianity that believes it has no other function than to be completely in tune with the spirit of the times has nothing to say and no meaning to offer. It can abdicate without more ado. Those who live vigilantly in the world of today, who recognize its contradictions and its destructive tendencies—from the self destruction of technology by the destruction of the environment to the self-destruction of society by radical and class struggles—such people do not look to Christianity for approbation but for the prophetic salt that burns, consumes, accuses and changes. Nevertheless, a basic aspect of metanoia [conversion] comes into view—for it demands that a man change if he is to be saved. It is not the ideology of adaptation that will rescue Christianity, … nothing can rescue it but the prophetic courage to make its voice heard decisively and unmistakably at this very hour."

Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology,
Ignatius Press, 1987, pp. 56-57
(emphasis mine)