A Japanese author, in a book about Benedict XVI, has described the Catholic Church as an “East” in a West determined to impose its values on other cultures.
Hajime Konno, in his book “Benedictus PP XVI, Renovatio Europae Renovatio”, draws attention to the Western presumption that wants to impose its values on the entire world.
The author wrote that this leads to cultural conflicts, not only in the West between progressives and conservatives, but also in the East, as for example in Japan between universalists and nationalists.
Konno wrote that Christianity was the source of modern values in the West.
But the Church is now in conflict with the anti-Christian consequences and impositions of this modernity.
The Catholic Church is therefore like an “East” in the West.
And Joseph Ratzinger, first as a theologian and finally as Pope, was a lucid protagonist of this global encounter/clash between the Church and modernity.