Religion & Law

Michael has kindly posted something "for Rick" written by Gianni Vattimo.  I'm afraid, though, I'm in the position of the person who opens a gift but is not quite sure what it is.  I'd be grateful to Michael if he would help me to appreciate fully his present by explaining it, in his own words.  I'd also like to hear more about whether, and why, in Michael's view, what Vattimo writes is correct.  (What the latter writes does not move me to think that my own "take" on Ratzinger's "relativism" talk is not better than his.)  Paragraphs like this do not inspire confidence (on my part):

[I]nvectives against relativism may well be inspired by a secret nostalgia for youth, or perhaps I mean adolescence. . . .  Perhaps it is not coincidental that both John Paul II and (though a bit less, it seems) Benedict XVI turn their attention so regularly from us prudent and more skeptical elders toward the uncontrollably zealous young. . . .

Neither does this:

 If we genuinely believed what Cardinal Ratzinger told us about truth, about helping others accept the same truths as Catholics do, we would have to obstruct by any means the propagation of false theories (through censorship) and enact laws in contravention of natural human rights (rights that the church now maintains). We would need laws against the free exercise of Protestant and non-Christian practices, against the display of non-Christian religious symbols, against the education of non-Catholic children in non-Catholic schools, against construction of mosques, synagogues, temples, Protestant chapels.

No, we wouldn't.