Pope Benedict XVI has just surprised the Christian world with two decisions: to allow Latin in liturgical celebrations and to proclaim the Church of Rome as the only true Church of Christ.

We are all tributaries of our cultural roots. A text taken out of its context cannot be duly esteemed. This also counts for people. Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope, is a German engrossed in the intellectual pessimism of Hannah Arendt and Karl Popper, anti-utopian philosophers. Both were left-wing militants, she in Germany, he in Austria. Both, when they abandoned revolutionary ideas, fell into the error of equating utopia with totalitarianism. That meant closing their minds to the future, to the delight of those who insist on another serious mistake, that of identifying democracy with Capitalism.

When the human being abandons creative imagination, the future appears to him as a threat. What is new frightens. So he takes refuge in nostalgia, as if the best of all worlds belonged to the past. It is the return to the Biblical Eden, the "lost paradise" of Milton, to the security of the mother\'s womb as diagnosed by Freud.

In order to accentuate the elitism of a Church hostage to Constantine in the Latin world, the clerical nobility adopted as their tongue a language that was in decay: Greek. When the Roman Empire collapsed and European unity disintegrated, the Church conserved another language in disuse: Latin. Thus, the sacred mysteries were treated in a language inaccessible to the plebs. In the 16th century, in Pernambuco, Branca Dias was accused by the Inquisition of a serious crime: having a Bible in Portuguese. Not even the confirmation that she was illiterate saved her from punishment. The vernacular was held as profane.

It will not be Latin that will bring the poor people into the Catholic Church; they prefer pastors who can express themselves in their language. Jesus spoke neither Greek nor Latin; he spoke Aramaic and he understood Hebrew. I appreciate Latin in liturgical singing, such as the Gregorian chant. But how many of the faithful understand the mass in Latin? I suspect that those who do prefer the celebration to be a mere aesthetic experience, the remains of a Church exiled in its past, turning its back to the future.

Can the Church of Rome be the only true Church of Christ? Why did Rome suppress from the Creed the pronouncement that we, the Catholics, believe in the "Catholic, apostolic, Roman Church," as I prayed in my childhood? Now we only say: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church", which implies its universal and apostolic character, but not its being Roman.

This affirmation that the recognition of the bishop of Rome, the Pope, as head of all the Churches, is a condition for the Christian communities being united, complicates ecumenism even more. The Second Vatican Council insists on the renovation and conversion of all the Churches, including that of Rome, as a requirement for the reestablishment of the lost unity, first with the schism between East and West in 1054, later with the Reformation of Luther, in the 16th Century. The Council recommends that the Church of Rome recognizes the elements of truth present in the other Churches. To focus on things that unite, not on things that divide.

This is what the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, signed by the cardinal Ratzinger in 1998, says: "Many elements of sanctification and truth exist outside the visible limits of the Catholic Church: the written Word of God, the life of grace, faith, hope and charity and other inner gifts of the Holy Spirit and other visible elements. The Spirit of Christ uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as a means of salvation, whose force comes from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All this goodness comes from Christ and leads to Him, and as such it urges for catholic unity". (819).

Jesus never conditioned meriting his love to adhesion to his word. He did good without minding to whom. He did not demand that the Phoenician woman, the servant of the Roman centurion or the widow of Naim should first believe in his preaching to deserve the cure. Nor did he say to any of them: "my faith saved you", but "your faith saved you".

Christian unity will never be reached by the steep path of authority, but through charity, tolerance, our humility to recognize our own errors and to be capable of emphasizing what is positive and evangelical, in the other Churches and religious denominations.

The primacy of love is the only thing that can ensure the unity of faith in the diversity of cultures. In everything, and always, Christ is the head of the Church, and we, the faithful, are different members of its body. (Translation ALAI)

- Frei Betto is writer, author of the biography of Jesus "Among all men", among other books.