Quote of the Day (from 1985)

Fr. Z. shared this in a recent post, and it's worth another reposting:

The now dominant mentality attacks the very foundations of the morality of the Church, which, as I have already said, if she remains true to herself risks appearing like an anachronistic construct, a bothersome, alien body. Thus the moral theologians of the Western Hemisphere, in their efforts to still remain "credible" in our society, find themselves facing a difficult alternative: it seems to them that they must choose between opposing modern society and opposing the Magisterium.

The number of those who prefer the latter type of opposition is larger or smaller depending on how the question is posed: consequently they set out on a search for theories and systems that allow compromises between Catholicism and current conceptions. But this growing difference between the Magisterium and the "new" moral theologies leads to unforeseeable consequences, also precisely for the reason that the Church with her schools and her hospitals still occupies an important social role (especially in America). Thus we stand before the difficult alternative: either the Church finds an understanding, a compromise with the values propounded by society which she wants to continue to serve, or she decides to remain faithful to her own values (and in the Church's view these are the values that protect man in his deepest needs) as the result of which she finds herself on the margin of society.

— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (interviewed by Vittorio Messori), The Ratzinger Report (Ignatius Press, 1985), p. 86. A number of other, related quotes from the book can be found here.