“Fighting against pain and injustice in the world is a genuinely Christian impulse. However, the idea that a world free of pain can be brought to life through social reform, as well as the desire to achieve it here and now, is a false doctrine that implies a profound ignorance of the being we call man. In this world, pain does not come solely from inequality of wealth and power. For the rest, it is not just something unpleasant that man must remove. Whoever wants to do such a thing has to flee to the merely apparent world of narcotics, in order to completely destroy himself and contradict reality. Only through suffering and his ability to free himself from the tyranny of selfishness does man come to know himself: therein lies his truth, his joy and his happiness. Man will be all the happier the more willing he is to bear the abysses of existence and the effort that it entails. The measure of the capacity for happiness depends on the amount of the premium paid, the degree of willingness to passionately welcome the human being. Whoever wants to flee from all this, whoever wants to make us believe that one can become a man without persisting in being oneself, without the patience of renunciation and the effort of self-denial; The fact that we are taught that the hardness involved in fulfilling the entrusted task is not necessary, nor the patient suffering that the tension between the duty of man and his being effective entails: all of this essentially configures the crisis of our days. Deprived of effort and secluded in the Land of Jauja of dreams, man loses the most genuine part of his being: his own self of him ».
(Joseph Ratzinger: truth cooperators. . . . Rialp, 2021, pp. 101-1 83-4 Introduction, translation and notes by José Luis del Barco. The original German text is found in Joseph Ratzinger: The situation of the church today. hopes and dangers. Published by the Press Office of the Archdiocese of Cologne, 1977).