We, today, as men in all ages, cannot do without the anchoring of faith, which begins in an attachment to the unchanging. The detachment from “breaking news” follows from this. I pass by the profound theological observation, that underlies all faith — that it originates in the grace of God, not in some human intention — only because I am giving an external description. A man of any culture — East or West — who is not by desire rooted in the unchanging, is not rooted at all. He is not prepared to see things whole, when he deals as he must with what is constantly changing. He is adrift in a world liquid and not only uncharted, but unchartable.

Ratzinger, especially as Pope Benedict XVI, set a wonderful example for us, of freedom from the “breaking news.” To my mind it is exhibited at its best in such documents as Summorum Pontificum, a masterpiece of careful construction, in which the Old Mass was restored to common access, without upsetting the current order. In answering to a grievance from one side, he did not give grievance to the other, and it took extraordinary skill to avoid doing so. He then turned his full attention to completing the task of removing demonstrable defects in the wording of the New Mass. Only good was accomplished.

He did not “take sides.” Rather he kept his attention firmly on the good that either side must, at its best, intend to serve. He had no choice, in his office, but to play ecclesiastical statesman, but with a diplomacy fixed upon the cause of the Holy.

To take responsibility in this way — to know in one’s heart, and also on one’s lips, that one must finally serve the common interest beneath and beyond any faction’s reach — requires just this anchoring in what is changeless. It has been the wisdom of Holy Church herself, confronted by so many distractions, through the last twenty centuries or so.