CARDINAL RATZINGER: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger urged fellow cardinals yesterday not to bow to modern trends but defend traditional Vatican doctrines.
Spelling out his views before their conclave, Pope John Paul's top doctrinal expert told the electors to stand up for an "adult faith" that withstood ideologies, sects and an "anything goes" mentality that marked modern times.
While Dr Ratzinger at 78 may be too old to win, his doctrinal orthodoxy has strong support among conservatives while his moderate critics have yet to line up a clear alternative.
"We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires," the German cardinal declared at a pre-conclave Mass in St Peter's Basilica.
The church needs to withstand the "tides of trends and the latest novelties", he said in remarks hinting that the collapse of religion in Europe was his main concern.
"We must become mature in this adult faith, we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith," he said in a homily that sounded almost like a policy speech by a candidate.
The sermon, delivered in his role as dean of the College of Cardinals, touched on many of the issues Dr Ratzinger fought for over the past 23 years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The homily made no mention of concerns other cardinals have expressed such as poverty and justice, Islam, bioethics, sexual morality, church reform or the role of women in Catholicism.
"How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking," Cardinal Ratzinger, a former liberal theologian who reacted against the 1968 student unrest in his native Germany, declared.
Christians had been buffeted "from Marxism to free-market liberalism to even libertarianism, from collectivism to radical individualism, from atheism to a vague religious mysticism, from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth," he said.
"Every day, new sects are created," he continued.
"Having a clear faith based on the creed of the church is often labelled today as a fundamentalism ... Relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable by today's standards."
Relativism has also been one of his long-standing targets. Relativism holds that truth and moral values are not absolute but relative to the persons or groups holding them.
Cardinal Ratzinger published a book last week in Germany arguing Europe must reclaim its Christian heritage if it is to survive its "life-threatening crisis".
In Values in Times of Upheaval, the cardinal criticised the collapse of traditional families and the drive to legalise gay marriage, a trend he said meant "the entire moral history of mankind is being left behind".