During his homily at the Mass pro eligendo Romano Pontifice (for the election of the Roman Pontiff) on April 18, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger cautioned his fellow-cardinals that John Paul II\u2019s successor would have to deal with an emerging \u201cdictatorship of relativism\u201d\u009d throughout the western world: the use of coercive state power to impose an agenda of dramatic moral deconstruction on all of society.<\/p>\n
Some Catholic commentators charged that Ratzinger\u2019s warning was so over-the-top that he could never be elected pope. Others thought the formula \u201cdictatorship of relativism\u201d\u009d a neat summary of a grave threat to freedom and believed that a man with the courage to call things by their true names would make a fine pontiff.<\/p>\n
Recent events throughout the western world have fully vindicated the latter.<\/p>\n