Tablighi Jamaat: article and references

Muslim Group in France Is Fertile Soil for Militancy

Craig S Smith

New York Times 28 April 2005

ST.-DENIS, France - Raouf Ben Halima, 39, sleeps on his side, never on his stomach. He enters the bathroom leading with his left foot but puts his pants on leading with his right. Instead of using a fork when he eats, he uses his index finger, middle finger and thumb.
Mr. Halima is a member of the Tablighi Jamaat, or Preaching Party, a global army of Muslim missionaries helping to expand their religion and reinforce their faith. They believe that emulating the habits of the Prophet Muhammad is the surest way to restore Islam to its intended path.
So Mr. Halima and his associates shave their upper lips but let their beards grow. They wear their pants or robes above the ankle because the prophet said letting clothes drag on the ground is a sign of arrogance.
"Halfway between the knee and the ankle is best," Mr. Halima explains, sitting amid stacks of religious tracts in his small home.
His comments, made recently to a reporter during conversations about the growth of militant Islam, offered a rare window on the beliefs of a group that is unsettling to many here. The Tablighi are one of the primary forces spreading Islamic fundamentalism in Europe today, and many young Muslim men pass through the group on the way toward an extreme, militant interpretation of the religion.
Beyond that, little about the group is known.
The window Mr. Halima offered was open only briefly: he spoke only about his own experience and refused to accompany a reporter to France's main Tablighi mosque for fear of being seen breaching the sect's strict rules of secrecy.
European terrorism officials who follow Tablighi closely say they know many cases in which terrorists have emerged from the movement, but they say they have never been able to penetrate the group sufficiently to prove that it plays any direct role. "It is definitely fertile ground for breeding terrorism," said a French intelligence official who has traced many militants' religious awakening to their membership in the movement.
Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to be charged in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, was once a Tablighi adherent in France. Hervé Djamel Loiseau, a young Frenchman who died fleeing the 2001 American bombardment of Tora Bora in Afghanistan was, too. Djamel Beghal, an Algerian-born Frenchman and confessed Qaeda member recently convicted in Paris for plotting to blow up the American Embassy, was a Tablighi follower in the French town of Corbeil a decade ago.
The movement got its start in the mid-1920's when a man named Mawlana Muhammad Ilyas, disturbed by distortions of Islam in the face of India's predominant Hinduism, began preaching in the poor neighborhoods of Delhi. It is now considered the largest Muslim missionary movement in the world. Its yearly November gathering in Raiwind, Pakistan, may be second only to the hajj in drawing Muslims.
On the Continent, the group's main base is in France, where most of its adherents are North Africans, according to experts watching it. Introduced here in the early 1960's, it grew quickly during the 70's and 80's, one the country's few Islamic organizations at a time when Europe's economic slump had left many Muslim immigrants unemployed.
"They were the first Islamic movement in France and the rest of Europe to target young people who were destabilized," said Gilles Kepel, author of "The War for Muslim Minds." "They targeted young people who were lost in their identity, were involved in delinquency, drinking, petty crime, and proposed reorganizing their life."
Mr. Halima, a senior Tablighi activist who once spent a week with the movement's governing council in Pakistan, estimated that 50,000 to 100,000 people had passed through the Tablighi movement in France and that there were about 5,000 active members. But there is no way to confirm these figures.
Shortly after Islam's twilight prayer here, bearded and robed men stream out of the Tablighi's central mosque in France, a small two-story house freshly painted eggshell white not far from Mr. Halima's home.
Their approach to idle young men in this working-class town on the northern outskirts of Paris is usually the same: they offer a handshake, touch their hand to their heart, and ask, "Do you go to the mosque?"
Only occasionally do the missionaries return to the mosque with someone in tow.
Mr. Halima was once such a person. Now a cheerful proselytizer who publishes pamphlets promoting the Tablighi Jamaat and other aspects of fundamentalist Islam, he took a path to the Tablighi that may well be typical of European recruits. He said he was born to a Tunisian father and an American mother who divorced and moved to Britain when he was a child and brought up with no particular religious training. He began to seek spiritual sustenance by the time he left adolescence.

At 16, he met a Tablighi member in southwest London and soon attended a three-day mosque retreat. Before long, he was joining outings to visit other mosques across Britain as a missionary.
The Tablighi's obligation includes proselytizing 3 days every month and 40 days once a year. Every devoted Tablighi is also expected to make one four-month trip to Pakistan to study at the organization's central mosque.
"The Tablighi only care about bringing people back to Islam," Mr. Halima insisted. "We are not political." But he said Tablighi-sponsored trips to Pakistan put young men in contact with fundamentalists of many stripes, including adherents of Salafism, a fundamentalist school of Islam whose radical fringe advocates war against non-Muslims.
Abandoning the Tablighi during such trips is discouraged, he said, but there is no stigma for those who wished to leave for more radical groups later.
He acknowledged that young men wishing to migrate from the Tablighi to more militant forms of Islam had no trouble finding their way. "Everyone knows which mosques attract Salafists, and if you go and ask, it's easy to get into the jihadi network," he said.
He said most people touched by the Tablighi eventually moved on to practice a more moderate form of Islam, but of the hundreds that remain engaged in fundamentalism, he estimated, half are recruited by Salafists.
"The Salafists are very aggressive," Mr. Halima said, adding that they are growing faster than the Tablighi.
In the Tablighi's central mosque here, across a park from the 12th-century basilica where many of France's kings are interred, a young man with a long beard and a long stick watches over the tiled front room where visitors remove their shoes and those coming for prayer perform ablutions in communal sinks. In the small, carpeted worship room, the only decoration is a lone shelf of religious books and a row of clock faces showing the times of Islam's five daily prayers.
A group of bearded men sit on the floor, talking quietly beside a low wooden box that serves as a desk. Seeing a visitor, one of them gets up and introduces himself, whispering so as not to disturb another man praying in a corner. "Happiness is inside us all, you only need the right glasses to find it," he begins. "Those glasses are faith."

Some more articles on the Tablighi

http://www.meforum.org/article/686 (9 pages)

http://uacblog.blogspot.com/ (repeats the above article but also has others)

http://www.socialcapital-foundation.org/journal/volume%202000/issue4/Zainuddin.htm (a diffrerent view to the April 2005 article)

http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/metcalf.html (Women and the Tablighi Jamaat)

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5643697&cKey=1112271300000
(a West Africa perspective)

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=2969&l=1 (includes reports on the Tablighi and the Salafiyya)

http://www.time.com/time/asia/2004/journey/photoessays/india14.html (photoessay)

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20020301faessay7971/graham-e-fuller/the-future-of-political-islam.html (long article which can be purchased online for a small fee)

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030701faessay15403-p0/jessica-stern/the-protean-enemy.html (full text)

http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/bobuk/scripts/adv_search.jsp (two studies on the Tablighi)

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?y=6&tn=tablighi&x=31 (contains two other titles)

Saudi Arabia is safer: UK Ambassador

Saudi Arabia is safer than Nottingham, says envoy

Richard Beeston and Liz Chong

The Times 22 April 2005

THE British envoy to Saudi Arabia has suggested that security in the country has improved so much that it is now safer for a British businessman to visit a Saudi city than to go to Nottingham.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador, risked kicking up a diplomatic storm at home when he told an audience of several hundred people in the eastern Saudi city of al-Khobar an anecdote about a British expatriate worker visiting Nottingham.
"He was saying he felt completely ridiculous having to give British businessmen from Nottingham assurances about the security here when Nottingham is the murder capital of the UK at the moment," he told a reception for the Queen’s birthday.
"It is far more dangerous, statistically, to be in Nottingham than to be in al-Khobar, Dammam or Riyadh."
The remarks sparked an angry response from the Midlands city. Jon Collins, the leader of Nottingham City Council, said that his city had been unfairly stereotyped.
"People in positions of responsibility should be responsible about what they say and not get caught up in media hyperbole which is not only damaging to Nottingham but also unfair and unnecessary," Mr Collins told The Times.
"Presumably, the ambassador has formed his view without having been to Nottingham, but if he cares to come here we’d be delighted to show him what a great place it is."
Since Islamic militants started their campaign against the regime in Saudi Arabia two years ago 250 people have been killed, including six Britons. Two militants and two soldiers were killed in a gun battle near Mecca yesterday, and six soldiers were wounded.
Last year in Nottingham 13 people were murdered and this year so far 11 have been murdered.
Nottingham is reeling from a wave of gun crime and murders fuelled by its thriving drugs trade. Steve Green, the Chief Constable, has said his force is struggling to cope. More than 40 per cent of murders are "straightforward assassinations," and the number of murders had risen by 30 per cent in 12 months, according to a government report.
Gang culture has shown no signs of abating, with the head of Nottinghamshire CID and his family moving to a secret address after

Pope Benedict XVI: comments on; the Cardinal's Good Friday 2005 Meditations

Pope Benedict has a sense of history

Charles Moore

Daily Telegraph 20 April 2005
In some ways, it is even more extraordinary to have a German Pope than it was to have a Polish one. Much of Polish society retained its Catholic integrity under Communist persecution. Most of German society succumbed to Hitler, compromising itself.
To choose a man brought up at that time and in that place is to state that the most corrupted human society can be redeemed. If the world accepts the new Pope, Germany's atonement will be recognised and its honour among the nations will be restored.
In Pope Benedict XVI, as Ratzinger has now become, the German experience inspired a particular respect for the Jews. At school, though not at home, he was taught by Nazis that Christ had been an Aryan but in his religious instruction it was insisted that Jesus was indeed a Jew. Jews and Christians, Ratzinger believes, say "a common 'yes' to the living God".
He does not believe that you cannot speak of God after Auschwitz. "I would say," he has declared, "that the Cross recapitulates in advance the horror of Auschwitz."
Why has this learned man, the theologian who debated with John Paul, the philosopher, chosen the name Benedict? In part, maybe, out of respect for the last pope of that name, who was mocked by both sides for trying to bring peace in the First World War.
But I would suggest a historically more distant inspiration as well: St Benedict, the man who had given birth to monasticism in the twilight of the Roman Empire. His "rule" - his instructions to monks - laid the foundations, Ratzinger believes, for the methods of democracy. His spiritual spark kept the light of Christianity alive through centuries of darkness.
"Think of late antiquity," Ratzinger once told an interviewer. "Where St Benedict probably wasn't noted at all. He was also a dropout who came from noble Roman society and did something bizarre, something that later turned out to be the 'ark on which the West survived'. "
This, I suspect, is Ratzinger's model. He strongly supports the documents of the Second Vatican Council, but his experience of the subsequent turmoil in the Church has taught him that Western culture is profoundly hostile to the message of Christianity.

He is fascinated by Herman Hesse's novel Steppenwolf, with its portrait of the self-isolating man. Because today egotism is exalted rather than the love of God, "this destruction of the capacity to live gives birth to deadly boredom. It is the poisoning of man. If it carried the day, man, and with him also the world, would be destroyed".
That destruction will be avoided, Benedict XVI believes, not by the Church trying to recover worldly power, but by renewing, as Benedict did, its intellectual and moral reverence for the truth.
In his cast of mind the new Pope is rather more sombre than his predecessor. He is more disturbed by false argument, less optimistic about the immediate prospects for mankind. He believes, as he told the conclave this week, that the "dictatorship of relativism" is tyrannising the modern world.
And so his favoured images are of survival, preservation of treasure, and of the regrowth of the Church from a tiny grain of mustard seed. He admires Englishmen such as Thomas More and Cardinal Newman - "a man who listens to his conscience and for whom the truth that he has recognised... is above approval and acceptance, is really an ideal and a model for me".
The answer to the question of our time, the new Pope believes, may be to challenge the spirit of that time: "The Church can be contemporary by being anti-contemporary." He is stern, yes; obscurantist, no.
On the only occasion that I met Cardinal Ratzinger, I was struck by three things. The first was his embarrassing courtesy. I handed him an article I had written about becoming a Catholic, assuming he would put it "on file". Instead he read the whole thing right through as I sat before him.
The second was his intellectual curiosity: he was not a man living in the past, but rather one tackling with a civilised and clear mind the new challenges of human thought. The third, surprising characteristic, was his openness: friendly, relaxed, almost chatty, always trying to answer any question put.
The cardinal struck me as a man happy in himself, though sorrowful about the state of the world. He was hopeful, however. He takes inspiration from the chance that he was born on Easter Eve: "I find that a very good day, which... hints at my conception of history and my own situation; on the threshold of Easter but not yet through the door."

The last pope from Europe

Andrew Brown

Guardian April 20, 2005

So, the papacy has left Italy, probably forever. The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI looks very much like the continuation of John Paul II's papacy by other means. It is not Italian, and not in the least bit liberal. But whereas John Paul II was in many respects a radical pope who transformed the relationship between his office and the world, Benedict XVI lacks his extraordinary theatrical gifts and his joy at overturning formality. There was no candidate who could live up to that part of the old pope's legacy - but it would be wrong to underestimate its importance.

John Paul II was loved and admired by Catholics who disagreed with him profoundly. That is not the reputation that Ratzinger had as a cardinal. Those Catholics who disagreed with him - and they number in millions - saw nothing especially admirable or lovable about his personality. A recent poll among German Catholics suggested that even there opponents of his papacy outnumbered supporters by a clear margin. Now he is the Pope there will be some transfer of loyalty, but the underlying tensions must remain.
This matters because he is walking into a crisis, in which he has himself played a symbolic role. The Roman Catholic church is in the final analysis a voluntary organisation that depends on the hearts and minds of its members. Where its teachings appear incredible or impractical they are quietly ignored; and this is a necessary safety valve in such a global organisation. It is well understood by all concerned that the church will not rupture itself to enforce a ban on birth control in western Europe, nor to abolish the death penalty in the US; nor even to ensure that priests in Africa live up to their vows of celibacy.
On all those subjects, the church's official teaching is wildly out of line with the local culture's understanding of human nature. Pope John Paul II, by his evident theatrical humanity, was able to bridge this gap, even though he believed in all the things his various flocks rejected. Benedict XVI, no less an intellectual, is more closely identified with struggles within the church; and with the suppression of dissent by force when argument fails.
The cardinals have chosen a man whose chief preoccupation ever since 1968 has been to preserve the church and its teachings from the corruptions of the modern age and from the collapse of hierarchy. One of the defining moments of his intellectual development was during the student revolts of 1968, when, as a theology professor, he discovered that the students could no longer be forced to listen to him or to accept his authority. This seemed to him to threaten the breakdown of civilisation, and perhaps there's something in that.
Teaching depends upon authority sometimes. But there are many different sorts of authority and when the force of argument failed Ratzinger fell back increasingly on Rome's power to sack or silence dissenting theologians. Those who have feared him in his capacity as head of the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith - and that means almost every professional Catholic intellectual - will not find it easy to love him or to suppose that he is any more right now that he is the Pope.
Pope John Paul II saw that a large part of his task was to stiffen the sinews of the church and make it stronger. But he came from a country where the church had grown strong in the face of persecution, and where there was never any shortage of candidates for the priesthood. Benedict XVI - Ratzinger - comes from a country where the church has grown weak in the face of a tolerant secularism, congregations are falling and there are fewer vocations to the priesthood every year.
Inflexibility might make such a church not stronger but more brittle. Liberals have muttered for years that Ratzinger might just be the man to stiffen the authoritarian model of the papacy until it breaks. This is unlikely, if only because he is 78 and so won't be around for more than 10 years. Besides, there is one reform that even a doctrinally conservative pope might make, which would follow the line of Pope John Paul II's experiments with former Anglican priests. He might allow the ordination of men who are already married. Anything is possible.
But perhaps the lesson of the new pope's election is that if the church has to choose between its authoritarian character and compromise with the rich and secular parts of the world, it will move over further to the places which are neither. It seems impossible that the next pope will be European.

A German Pope chosen to save Europe

The fact that Ratzinger chose not to be John Paul III shows he will be keen to be a distinctive Pope

Catherine Pepinster

Independent 20 April 2005

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - Pope Benedict XVI - is a Pope for Europe. It cannot be by chance that he has taken the name of Benedict, patron saint of Europe, for his papal title.
As prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a post he held under the late Pope John Paul II for 23 years, Joseph Ratzinger became increasingly concerned about the secularisation of Europe, the threats to its very Christian soul. This was a European, after all, who was both steeped in Bavarian piety, and as a child had grown up in Hitler's shadow.
Later, reflecting on the war and on Nazism, he had rejected the lesson drawn by other German theologians, who perceived that its central lesson was the dangers of blind obedience. Instead, he decided that only a faith based on a Church with sound doctrinal values, and a strong central authority could withstand a hostile culture.
It is of course his work in confronting hostile culture for which he has become best known. The enforcer, the panzercardinal, the rottweiler - these are the nicknames by which he has become known by the press in recent years. Joseph Ratzinger was the architect of many of John Paul II's most controversial issues. He has cracked down on liberation theology in Latin America; rejected any idea of gay marriage; countered feminists in the Church, put limits on dissent, and of course, in tandem with his rejection of secularisation, been hostile to pluralism.
Will this be a man in John Paul II's shadow, a man who was chosen to continue his work? The fact that Cardinal Ratzinger chose not to be John Paul III is probably indicative of the fact that Joseph Ratzinger will be keen to assert himself, to be a distinctive Pope.
It seems highly likely that the cardinals in the conclave, of which the majority were Europeans, will have wanted someone who would address their own great concern - that Europe, once the Catholic Church's heartland, is now its lost continent. While some observers suggested the time had come for a Pope from Catholicism's thriving African and Latin American nations, the cardinals and bishops of Europe have been convinced that Europe needed renewed guidance.
They have watched with alarm the falling Mass attendances, the empty seminaries, the laity's disinclination to accept the Church's teaching on contraception, and the failure of Catholic marriages, which have all served to bring about a crisis of confidence.
Not that such a crisis is new in Europe. The Church has faced the Reformation, the Enlightenment, liberalism and capitalism, Marxism and fascism. It has lost some of the battles, and won others. Joseph Ratzinger will have watched John Paul II face down Communism. But in postmodern Europe, the problems have been more insidious. Today not only Catholicism but Christianity has been perceived as little more than a lifestyle option.
The crisis over Christianity was made apparent by the dismay expressed by the Church at the proposal to exclude a reference to Christianity in the European Constitution. And Joseph Ratzinger's views about Europe were made apparent when, last year, he came out against the candidacy of Turkey to join the European Union.
But the fears for Christian Europe are far more profound than concerns over a constitution. There is a sense that the affluent, materialist continent has lost its soul.
Can Benedict XVI help it find it again? This is a Pope who is more of a theologian than a pastor. But the Pope is not just a man of theory. He has to be a shepherd of his flock, guiding one billion Catholics throughout the world. Perhaps this Benedict will take as his mentor the last Pope Benedict - Benedict XV - elected in 1914 as Joseph Ratzinger's own country went to war. Under Benedict XV the papacy had its own war aims - the defence of Austria-Hungary, the last great Catholic power, and the prevention of orthodox influences into Europe. Above all, Benedict XV sought peace, seeking to support peace initiatives from different sides, trying to dissuade the United States from entering the conflict.
Benedict XV found a way to work with people of many opinions. The Church, including those progressives who will have been viewed this election with some dismay will be looking to the new Pope to bring its many disparate strands together, to reveal a talent for understanding the position of those not just on his side, but those who at first glance perceive the Church in a very different way.
Those who know Joseph Ratzinger say he is a man of kindness, of sharp intelligence, who could sometimes be a moderating influence on John Paul II. After all, it was he who opposed John Paul II's desire to make teaching on birth control infallible.
And for those of us who want, not a Church of fashion, but one of compassion, a Church that can start to understand, for instance, why using birth control is surely not a sin, or the use of condoms to counter Aids in Africa should not be seen as an evil, we should take heart that Joseph Ratzinger has taken the name Benedict. For the first word in the Rule of St Benedict, father of Europe, is the most important. It is Listen. Listen, Benedict XVI, to the people of the Church, the people of Europe, and the people of the world.
The writer is editor of 'The Tablet', the Catholic weekly

Evangelizer on the Right, With His Eye on the Future

Laurie Goodstein

New York Times

VATICAN CITY, April 19, 2005 - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was such a close ally of Pope John Paul II that he could have easily chosen the name John Paul III.
But those who expect the 78-year-old Pope Benedict XVI simply to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor may be in for a surprise, say those who know him. They say that he knows he may have a short papacy and that he intends to move quickly to put his own stamp on the Roman Catholic Church and to reverse its decline in the secular West.
As John Paul's alter ego, the new German pope has been training for this role for decades and knows how all the levers of Vatican power work.
"This man is not just going to mind the store," said George Weigel, a conservative American scholar who knows both the former and new popes. "He is going to take re-evangelization, especially of Europe, very seriously. I think this represents a recognition on the part of the cardinals that the great battle in the world remains inside the heads of human beings - that it's a battle of ideas."
Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert at the Italian magazine L'Espresso, said he expected a thorough housecleaning not unlike the Gregorian reforms of the church begun under Pope Gregory VII, who ruled from 1073 to 1085. Those reforms led to the end of both the married clergy and the buying and selling of spiritual favors like indulgences.
Cardinal Ratzinger had spoken and written forcefully about his sense of the threats to the church, both internal and external. Whether they are dissident theologians, pedophile priests, "cafeteria Catholics" who disregard the ban on artificial birth control, or "celibate" third world clergy who keep mistresses, the new pope's solution is likely to be a more forceful reiteration of the church's creed and the necessity of either living by it, or leaving it.
"How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely" to God, he said in Rome on Good Friday last month.
He has singled out the spread of "aggressive secularism," especially in Europe and North America. In the homily he gave Monday, just before the cardinals entered the conclave in which he was chosen, he warned about rival forms of belief, from "a vague religious mysticism" to "syncretism" to "new sects," a term that Catholics in Latin America use to refer to evangelical and Pentecostal churches.
The new pope is not likely to yield on the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, whether dealing with other Christian denominations or Islam. In a document issued in 2000, "Dominus Jesus," the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that Cardinal Ratzinger headed said the Catholic Church was the only true path to salvation and called other faiths "gravely deficient."
In choosing the name Benedict, this German theologian linked himself not only to a long line of former popes but also to St. Benedict, the founder of Christian monasticism, who was proclaimed by Pope Paul VI in 1964 to be the "patron and protector of Europe." The monasteries that St. Benedict founded - and for which he wrote the "Rule," the basic guide to monastic living - became the keepers of culture and piety in medieval Europe.
Church scholars suggested that Pope Benedict XVI may be positioning himself as the new savior of Europe, rescuing the Continent from what he called in his homily on Monday "the dictatorship of relativism."
Cardinal Justin Francis Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, said of the new pope at a news conference on Tuesday, "He intends to do everything he possibly can to promote the well-being of Europe," adding that what the Continent most needs is "to prefer nothing to the love of Christ - Christocentrality."
Jim McAdams, professor of political science and director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at Notre Dame University, said the new pope's form of conservatism should not be conflated with that of American political conservatives. Faith, he said, "is essential to his claims that there is a doctrine of the church, it is clear, Catholics should abide by it, and people who feel that that doctrine is negotiable are wrong."
The selection of Cardinal Ratzinger dashed the hopes of those Catholics who had wanted a new pope to adopt a whole slate of different solutions to the problems of the church, perhaps permitting married priests, women as deacons and softer strictures against birth control and divorce.
"The election of a new pope is a moment of hope for the church, and this choice is nothing but backwards looking," said Paul F. Lakeland, a professor of religious studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut.
Cardinal Ratzinger functioned for years as the purifier of the church's doctrine. For 24 years he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, from which he issued condemnations of renegade theologians, of modern reinterpretations of church liturgy and of the idea that all religions have an equal claim to the truth.
In recent years, as John Paul grew more and more debilitated by Parkinson's disease and old age, Cardinal Ratzinger increasingly became the power behind the throne. Bishops from every country who visit the Vatican on their regular visits spent more time with him than they did with the pope, according to cardinals and Vatican staff.
It may have been this familiarity that led the cardinals to turn to Cardinal Ratzinger as their anchor in this time of transition. The Rev. Joseph Augustine Di Noia, an American priest who serves as under secretary at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told reporters last week that he often observed the cardinal listening intently to bishops on their visits presenting him with all kinds of conundrums on how to apply the faith in their countries. Cardinal Ratzinger would respond with "remarkable profundity" and "distinctions that are immediately illuminating," Father Di Noia said.
But it is already clear that the new pope is likely to deepen the fissures that exist in the church. The reactions from the crowd in the first few minutes after Pope Benedict appeared on the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square suggested the divisions he will have to confront.
"As soon as I heard the name, I had a letdown, sinking feeling that this man is not going to be good for the church," said Eileen, a 53-year-old Catholic from Boston. She said she was afraid to give her last name because she was active in her parish and did not want to cause any problems for her priest, or jeopardize her daughter's imminent church wedding.
A few steps away, the Rev. M. Price Oswalt, a priest who serves two parishes in Oklahoma City, was exultant about the cardinals' choice.
"He'll correct the lackadaisical attitudes that have been able to creep into the lives of Catholics," he said. "He's going to have a German mentality of leadership: either get on the train or get off the track. He will not put up with rebellious children."

Benedykt XVI zadziwi Ratzingera

Jarosław Mikołajewski

Gazeta 20 kwietnia 2005

Papieżem został wczoraj wieczorem człowiek, który jeszcze przedwczoraj wzbudził mój lęk. Kardynał, który w ostatnim przesłaniu przed konklawe więcej miejsca poświęcił grzechowi i jego potępieniu niż miłosierdziu. Który lepiej wczuł się w rolę obrońcy oblężonej twierdzy niż w apostoła miłości. Dziś moje odczucia mogę określić jako szacunek z silną dawką obawy. Słucham komentarzy - Vittorio Messori, przyjaciel Jana Pawła II, gratuluje katolikom i światu, a współczuje nowemu papieżowi. Nazywa go nauczycielem i pedagogiem, który przyjmował wysokie stanowiska wyłącznie z miłości do Kościoła. Rzecznik Watykanu Navarro Valls wspomina, że jednym z najsilniejszych przeżyć było dla niego wsłuchiwanie się w dyskusję papieża Wojtyły i kardynała Ratzingera. "Rozmawiali żarliwie - zaświadcza - i często się różnili, ale z wielkim szacunkiem, w duchu braterstwa".Czemu wierzyć? Pesymizmowi, którym niemiecki kardynał nasączył swoje słowa przed wejściem do kaplicy Sykstyńskiej, czy braterstwu, którego nie szczędził Janowi Pawłowi II? Autorytetowi, jakim cieszy się wśród kardynałów i słowom podziwu jego współpracowników? A może rację ma filozof Pietro Citati, który twierdzi, że przed wyborem i po papież nie jest już tym samym człowiekiem, że zachowuje cnoty, a traci wszelkie małości?We wczorajszym entuzjazmie watykanistów dla surowości kardynała Ratzingera słyszałem potrzebę porządku, nieustępliwości, wyrazistego podziału na dobrą i złą stronę świata. Sam nie umiem w sobie tego entuzjazmu odnaleźć. Kiedy myślałem o przyszłym papieżu wierzyłem, że zostanie nim ktoś, kto nie będzie wytykał błędów tylko wskaże błądzącym lepszą drogę życia. Ktoś kto ludziom rozwiedzionym, lecz szczęśliwym w nowej miłości powie, że ich związek może być sakramentalny, członkom sekt zaproponuje ocalający dialog, a narkomanom wsparcie i opiekę.Patrząc na skupioną, poważną twarz nowego papieża odczuwam zaskoczenie. Ale i nadzieję, że moje oczekiwania spełni osoba, po której zupełnie się tego nie spodziewałem. Wierzę, że Benedykt XVI zadziwi samym sobą kardynała Josepha Ratzingera.Chyba więc spróbuję tak o nim myśleć - jako o przyjacielu i uczniu miłosiernego Karola Wojtyły.

Benedykt XVI - władza i serce

Jan Turnau

Gazeta 20 kwietnia 2005

Nowy Papież obejmuje najwyższy urząd w Kościele katolickim, najgodniejszy w całym chrześcijaństwie, w całym świecie, w momencie bardzo trudnym. Trudnym dla niego samego jako następcy Jana Pawła II: bardzo trudna to rola - któż choć w części dorówna poprzednikowi o takiej mocy ducha i takiej świętości?Jednak i same nasze czasy są olbrzymim wyzwaniem. Wojny wiele, pokoju mało, co więcej, w tej sprawie etycznej Kościół katolicki jako całość nie ma jednolitego stanowiska: Jan Paweł II był na przykład przeciwny wojnie w Iraku, ale były inne opinie wśród hierarchów. Która wojna daje się jakoś usprawiedliwić?Bo w ogóle Kościół katolicki jest w wielu sprawach podzielony. Także w innych kwestiach publicznych, takich jak globalizacja, ogólniej - w ocenie ustroju kapitalistycznego, który zwycięża w świecie coraz większego bogactwa i coraz większej nędzy.Największy Kościół chrześcijański podzielony jest nie mniej w sprawach moralności bardziej prywatnej: surowa etyka seksualna wykluczająca nie tylko aborcję, także antykoncepcję, była podawana w wątpliwość również przez biskupów - bo pandemia AIDS jest faktem przeraźliwie oczywistym.Można powiedzieć ogólniej - po Soborze Watykańskim II toczy się wciąż wielka kościelna debata, jak odpowiedzieć na wyzwania świata, w którym ideałem nie jest asceza, a argumentem nie jest po prostu zakaz. W którym prawa człowieka to także prawa kobiet, ludzi o innej orientacji seksualnej. W którym celibat księży jest pod znakiem zapytania. Dialog ze światem, ale przecież również z innymi chrześcijanami: tu żaden papież nie może machnąć ręką na mnożące się trudności, nie może zamykać swego Kościoła w opłotkach wyznaniowych. Byłby to antyapostolat. Jeszcze bardziej naglący jest dialog z islamem, bo konfrontacja dwóch cywilizacji grozi ludobójstwem.Co z tym wszystkim zrobi Benedykt XVI? W jednej sprawie wydaje się pewne, że pójdzie bez wahania drogą Poprzednika: w dalszym ocieplaniu stosunków z judaizmem. Świadczą o tym dotychczasowe publikacje kardynała Ratzingera. Ale ciepła wymaga każda sprawa stojąca przed następcą Jana Pawła II. W każdej trzeba łączyć zdecydowanie z szacunkiem dla innych poglądów. Trzeba spajać Kościół nie tylko jasną myślą i silną władzą: także sercem. Wytarte słowo dialog wciąż jest receptą uniwersalną.


Cardinal Ratzinger's Meditations for Way of the Cross
24 March 2005
Full text:
http://www.catholic.org/cathcom/international_story.php?id=13446
(16 pages; see especially no 7 and 9)

Pope Benedict XVI: articles about and interviews with

The man who should be Pope

Piers Paul Read

The Spectator 5 March 2005

Pope John Paul II’s recovery from his tracheotomy in the Gemelli Hospital in Rome will have delighted his well-wishers, but it may have come as a disappointment to the Pope himself. He would like to die in harness and, realising that he can no longer pull the barque of the Church with the same vigour as before, hopes that God will call him sooner rather than later to enjoy an eternal repose. Journalists, too, are impatient to start the circus that they have prepared for so long, and some Curial cardinals seem to think that it is time for a change: no Cardinal Secretary of State since the 13th century has suggested the possibility of a Papal resignation as did Cardinal Solano.
That precedent is not a happy one. Pietro di Murrone, a devout hermit, elected Pope Celestine V in July 1294 at the age of 79, could not cope and five months later he was encouraged to resign by Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani. Once Celestine V had taken his advice, Gaetani was himself elected Pope as Boniface VIII and immediately imprisoned his predecessor in Castel Fumone. As was to be made painfully clear a century later with the Great Schism — with one pope in Avignon and another in Rome — it is disastrous to have two popes each claiming to be infallible. Do the powers belong to the office or the person? What if, for example, the new pope decided to permit artificial methods of birth control or ordain women priests? One cannot imagine Pope John Paul II, with or without Parkinson’s disease, letting that pass without comment.
Of course that is precisely what the liberal constituency within the Catholic Church hopes that a new pope would do. He would allow women to be made priests, let priests marry, go easy on gays, let Catholics in second marriage take the Eucharist, and Anglicans too. He would temper the Church’s objection to stem-cell research, take a less absolute line on abortion, permit birth control and allow Catholic agencies to distribute condoms to prevent the spread of Aids.
It is difficult to come up with the name of a cardinal who would meet the liberals’ aspirations were he to be made pope; their best hope would be the Archbishop of Brussels, Cardinal Godfried Danneels. However, 93 per cent of the 135 cardinals entitled to vote in the consistory were appointed by Pope John Paul II and, though there may be nuances in their commitment to the line he has followed on these controversial issues, none is known to have opposed it.
It is possible, of course, that some cardinal may have dissenting ideas that he has thought best to keep to himself, but it seems unlikely that any would or could radically alter Church teaching on matters of faith and morals. Pope John Paul II has not just appointed orthodox bishops and cardinals, he has also drawn a line in the sand which his successors cannot cross without destroying the authority and credibility of the papacy itself.
Thus the teaching that women cannot be ordained as priests has been pronounced infallible and, despite much rhetoric in favour of Christian unity, the Church of England remains, in the words of a recent Vatican document endorsed by the Pope, not a Church ‘in the proper sense’. It is difficult to see how a new pope could alter such a ruling or, for that matter, why he should want to do so. The preoccupations of liberal Catholics in Britain are essentially provincial; they may be vocal among Catholic activists and have the sympathy of some bishops but, since there are only about a million church-going Catholics in Britain out of a worldwide Catholic community of around a billion, they are unlikely to carry much weight in Rome.
Any new pope will have to deal with far more important questions than relations with the Church of England. There is the challenge of Islam. The secular press tends to limit this to the terrorist threat posed by al-Qa’eda or the problematic integration of Muslim communities in Britain. From the perspective of the Vatican, however, it is in Africa and Asia that the gargantuan struggle between the two monotheistic religions is taking place. Christians are persecuted in almost every country with a Muslim majority, whether it be Pakistan or Sudan. In Saudi Arabia it is illegal to say Mass. In Nigeria there is incipient civil war between the Muslim and Catholic communities. It is possible that for this reason the cardinals might elect as pope Cardinal Francis Arinze, the Nigerian Prefect for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in the Roman Curia.
An African pope, however, would be even less likely than Pope John Paul II to compromise with the liberals; at Georgetown University, Cardinal Arinze said that the institution of marriage ‘is mocked by homosexuality’. The same is true of Catholics in Asia. They are harassed and persecuted not just by Muslims but also by the communist regimes in China and Vietnam. The choice of a Polish pope boosted the morale of Polish Catholics under communism, and was instrumental in its downfall.
And then there are the South and Central Americans, whose cardinals make up the biggest block in the College of Cardinals. Here the fashion for liberation theology which caused such havoc in the last decades of the 20th century has run its course. Orthodox bishops are now in place, some of whom are papabile — for example, the Archbishop of Sao Paulo, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, or Cardinal Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras.
Are no Europeans in the running? After the South Americans, the European cardinals comprise the largest block. First there are the Italians who, despite an affected cynicism about their Catholicism, are proud of the Church and have in the past regarded the papacy as theirs by right. Was the Polish Pope the exception that proves the rule? There are strong candidates, such as the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, or Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, or even Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State.
Outside Italy, there are a number of notable cardinals such as the Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger, though, like Sodano, he may be considered too old. A younger cardinal, placed on the fast track by Pope John Paul II, is Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna. It was he who was largely responsible in 1994 for the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, which emphatically restated orthodox Catholic teaching. Alas, the Church in Austria — like the Church in the United States — has been beset by paedophile scandals and, while Cardinal Schönborn was not directly involved, they have mired him in its consequences. The bad taste left by paedophile scandals has spoiled the chances of American cardinals, and the highly intelligent and orthodox Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell.
An Anglo-Saxon pope would in any event be highly unlikely, if only because of the Iraq war; and there is a further black mark against most European cardinals — they have failed to arrest the dramatic decline of religious practice among their flocks. In France, the past four decades has seen a 30 per cent decline in the number of children baptised into the Church and only 10 per cent of the remnant go regularly to Mass. In Britain, the number of church-going Catholics halved between 1958 and 2005. There was an 83 per cent decline in Catholic marriages and a 61 per cent decline in infant baptisms. Despite the widespread esteem felt for the late Cardinal Hume, parishes in his archdiocese of Westminster are sustained not by British converts but by immigrants from Catholic countries.
It has been said that many in the Vatican regard the Church in Western Europe and North America as a lost cause. To choose a new pope from among the European cardinals would be like promoting the regional manager of an unsuccessful branch of a global conglomerate to be its CEO. However, there is one European cardinal who has been forthright and fearless in confronting secularism and defending the orthodox teaching of the Catholic Church — Joseph, Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Cardinal Ratzinger is the liberals’ bête noire — the bad cop to Pope John Paul II’s good cop. The son of a Bavarian police chief, a liberal theologian during Vatican II and later Archbishop of Munich, he is a poacher turned gamekeeper. It was he who ruled that the impossibility of ordaining women was an infallible teaching, and that the Church of England was not a Church ‘in the proper sense’. He also roundly condemned the rejection of Rocco Buttiglioni as a commissioner by the European Parliament as the persecution of a Catholic for his beliefs. Contrast this with the expressed view of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s adviser on foreign affairs, Sir Stephen Wall, that Buttiglioni’s rejection was merely ‘a political attack’ on the Italian President Berlusconi.
On the face of it, all this would make Cardinal Ratzinger a contentious figure and therefore ineligible; but there can be little doubt that his courageous promotion of orthodox Catholic teaching has earned him the respect of his fellow cardinals throughout the world. He is patently holy, highly intelligent and sees clearly what is at stake. Indeed, for those who blame the decline of Catholic practice in the developed world precisely on the propensity of many European bishops to hide their heads in the sand, a pope who confronts it may be just what is required. Ratzinger is no longer young — he is 77 years old: but Angelo Roncalli was the same age when he became Pope as John XXIII. He turned the Church upside-down by calling the Second Vatican Council and was perhaps the best-loved pontiff of modern times. As Jeff Israely, the correspondent of Time, was told by a Vatican insider last month, ‘The Ratzinger solution is definitely on.’

Life of Pope Benedict XVI and some quotations: http://www.ewtn.com/pope/life/index.asp

Back to the future with Joseph Ratzinger

The new Pope Benedict XVI's defence of conservative orthodoxy has not made him popular with more progressive Catholics, writes Stephen Bates

The Guardian 19 April 2005

To many onlookers, the sermon preached by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in St Peter's Basilica yesterday looked almost like a campaign speech for the papacy in which he emerged at the 11th hour as a surprising frontrunner.
Cardinal Ratzinger, the dean of the college of cardinals which today elected him as the new pope, has been the Vatican's defender of doctrinal orthodoxy for many years. It was no surprise that he should lay into modern relativism ahead of the conclave that after only a day resulted in his becoming Pope Benedict XVI. It was the way that he did it that startled.
The softly-spoken, courteous Bavarian cardinal, who turned 78 last Saturday, called on his colleagues, listening in their mitres and scarlet robes, to stand up for an "adult faith", withstanding ideologies and anything-goes philosophies. "We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires ... from Marxism to free-market liberalism to even libertarianism, from collectivism to radical individualism, from atheism to a vague religion, from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth."
It is what the cardinal has spent much of the last quarter-century fighting against as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the institution that was once known as the Inquisition, standing firm for Catholic orthodoxy.
He was one of the late pope's closest and staunchest advisers and, in the conclave that elected him, one of only two cardinals who was not appointed by Pope John Paul II - his red hat having been awarded by Pope Paul VI in the last year of his reign.
Ratzinger's defence of conservative orthodoxy may have been part of his job, but it hasn't made him popular, especially in more progressive corners of the faith. In western Europe and North America, in particular, there is an acute perception that the church is losing ground and needs to reinvigorate the flock with a less uncompromising hostility to the outside world.
His hand has been seen behind most of the Vatican's more hardline messages in recent years, during the waning health of Pope John Paul II, that took away the breath of more progressive elements in the church: from denouncing homosexuality as evil, to insisting that other faiths were defective, and even to suggesting that parishes should not use female altar servers and choristers. Whether or not all of these can be laid at his door, the cardinal has certainly exhibited the stern, unbending face of Catholicism. It has earned him the derogatory titles of "God's rottweiler" and the panzer cardinal.
The latter is particularly unfortunate since it has been revealed that as a very young man, Ratzinger did indeed serve briefly and unenthusiastically with the Hitler Youth and later a German army anti-aircraft unit, though he has claimed never to have fired a shot in anger.
Ratzinger, the son of a Bavarian police officer who opposed the Nazification process (his older brother also became a priest), has defended himself by claiming, not strictly truthfully, that he could not have avoided military service in the circumstances. Others did and maybe he could have used his training in a seminary to have evaded service. But there is no doubt that his heart was not in his military service and he deserted in April 1944.
His theological career has been distinguished - he was formerly and relatively briefly the archbishop of Munich - but he has spent a very long time in the Vatican since his appointment by Pope John Paul II to defend the faith in 1981.
Critics, including those from his native Germany, detect a lack of sympathy and understanding for the outside world, or much pastoral experience. An opinion poll in the German newspaper Der Spiegel found opponents of his election as pope outnumbering supporters by 36% to 29%.
So why did he suddenly emerge as a credible candidate? His name was certainly run hard by more conservative (a relative term of course) elements in recent days, largely since his well-received homily at Pope John Paul II's funeral. He is seen by them as the continuity candidate: the man to uphold and safeguard the legacy of the old pope and to cement doctrinal orthodoxy ever more firmly in place.
This is a message that is attractive to the cardinals from the Curia in the Vatican - its senior civil servants, who see him as one of themselves - and probably to elements from the developing world, especially Africa where any deviation is regarded as a lapse in faith.
But some will be surprised that he has so quickly won the support of the cardinals of Europe and America, essential for the two-thirds' backing necessary for election as pope. The strategy of Ratzinger's supporters was two-pronged: either to stampede the elderly, orthodox, conservatively-inclined cardinals into a quick decision, endorsing an apparently irresistible tide of support, or, failing that, to lay down a marker and build a power bloc and then consensus for a compromise conservative candidate to emerge during the voting.
The more liberal cardinals were caught flat-footed by this manoeuvring, failing to find a stop-Ratzinger candidate.
Cardinal Ratzinger set down some clear markers yesterday: "Every day new sects are created. Having a clear faith based on the creed of the Church is often labelled today as fundamentalism. Relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards," he said.
It appears the cardinals, liberal and conservative, have heeded his plea to shun the "dictatorship of relativism".

Cardinals choose conservative Ratzinger as the next Pope

Chris Johnston

The Times 19 April 2005

The conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany has been elected the 265th Pope and will be known as Benedict XVI.
The new pontiff appeared on the balcony of St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City at 1748 BST to rapturous applause and cheers from the tens of thousands who had gathered in St Peter's Square below.
"After the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me as a simple, humble worker of the Lord. I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to act even with insufficient instruments and above all I trust in your prayers," he told the crowd.
The 78-year-old Vatican doctrinal "enforcer" was regarded a favourite, but his election has still come as a surprise to many observers who predicted either a return to an Italian pontiff or one from Latin America, where the majority of the world's Catholics live.
Although he chaired the conclave in his previous capacity as Dean of the College of Cardinals, his appointment was initially opposed by liberal cardinals who felt that he would be a divisive force in the Roman Catholic Church.
But the 115 cardinals of the conclave elected him to succeed John Paul II after five rounds of voting, a decision that was heralded by white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel shortly after 1700 BST.
Richard Owen, Rome Correspondent of The Times, said that there was confusion initially because it was not clear whether the smoke was black or white, then one news agency put out a flash saying that it was white, but that was not accompanied by bells.
"When the bells finally did sound, St Peter's Basilica was filled with a human tide of people. Thousands and thousands of people flocked to be here for this surprisingly early announcement," he said.
The election was a swift one in historic terms. The 115 cardinals entered the conclave on Monday and spent just one night in the Vatican hotel that John Paul II had specially constructed for the vote that would come after his death.
Cardinal Ratzinger's reputation was one of an inflexible Grand Inquisitor and he was controversial also for his Second World War record as a member — though mandatory — of the Hitler Youth. His supporters said that he was 18 at the time and came from an anti-Nazi family.
The cardinal is the oldest to be named pope since Clement XII, who was also 78 when he was chosen in 1730, and he is the first German pope since Victor II (1055-1057).
Roger Boyes, Berlin Correspondent for The Times, said: "Germans were surprised at his election, and now they’re quite proud. Germans really never thought that there would never be another pope from the land of Martin Luther, who was so defiant to the papacy.
"Ratzinger himself is known as an arch conservative, whereas most German Catholics are quite liberal. Only 15 per cent of Germans go to mass, it’s a very sceptical country in religious terms, apart from in small pockets, like Bavaria, where he comes from."
Cardinal Ratzinger was ordained a priest, along with his brother, in 1951 and then spent several years teaching theology. In 1977 he was appointed bishop of Munich and elevated to cardinal three months later by Pope Paul VI.
Pope John Paul II named Cardinal Ratzinger the Leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981, and he was then responsible for enforcing Catholic orthodoxy and was one of the key men in the drive to shore up the faith of the world’s Roman Catholics. He speaks several languages, among them Italian and English, as well as his native German.

Ratzinger in Charge of Doctrine Crackdowns

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

New York Times April 19, 2005

TRAUNSTEIN, Germany (AP) -- A man of deep personal faith who choked up as he delivered the homily at Pope John Paul II's funeral, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger also has alienated some Roman Catholics with his zeal in enforcing church orthodoxy.
And on those issues, the new Pope Benedict XVI is immovable.
Even as the cardinals who elected him prayed before the conclave, Ratzinger urged them to cling to church tradition and warned about the dangers of abandoning it.
''Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism,'' he said Monday. ''Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.''
''We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires,'' he warned.
They were words that would go over well in the conservative Alpine foothills of Bavaria where Ratzinger grew up and remains a favorite son. Now, at 78, he has become the 265th pope of the Catholic Church and the first Germanic pope since monarchs imposed four men from that region in a row in the 11th century.
''Only someone who knows tradition is able to shape the future,'' said the Rev. Thomas Frauenlob, who heads the seminary in Traunstein where Ratzinger studied and regularly returns to visit.
But opinion about him remains deeply divided in Germany, a sharp contrast to John Paul, who was revered in his native Poland. A recent poll for Der Spiegel news weekly said Germans opposed to Ratzinger becoming pope outnumbered supporters 36 percent to 29 percent, with 17 percent having no preference. The poll of 1,000 people, taken April 5-7, gave no margin of error.
Many blame Ratzinger for decrees from Rome barring Catholic priests from counseling pregnant teens on their options and blocking German Catholics from sharing communion with their Lutheran brethren at a joint gathering in 2003.
Ratzinger has clashed with prominent theologians at home, most notably the liberal Hans Kueng, who helped him get a teaching post at the University of Tuebingen in the 1960s. The cardinal later publicly criticized Kueng, whose license to teach theology was revoked by the Vatican in 1979.
He has also sparred openly in articles with fellow German Cardinal Walter Kasper, a moderate who has urged less centralized church governance and was considered a dark horse papal candidate.
''He has hurt many people and far overstepped his boundaries in Germany,'' said Christian Wiesner, spokesman for the pro-reform Wir Sind Kirche, or We Are Church movement.
Ratzinger may have softened his image -- at least among his colleagues -- with the delivery of the homily at John Paul II's funeral. Choking back tears, the cardinal said that ''we can be sure our beloved pope is standing today at the window of the father's house, that he sees us and blesses us.''
In his autobiography, Ratzinger said he sensed was out of step with his fellow Germans as early as the 1960s, when he was a young assistant at the Second Vatican Council in Rome.
Returning to Germany between sessions, ''I found the mood in the church and among theologians to be agitated,'' he wrote. ''More and more there was the impression that nothing stood fast in the church, that everything was up for revision.''
Ratzinger left Tuebingen during student protests in the late 1960s and moved to the more conservative University of Regensburg in his home state of Bavaria.
Catholics and Protestants each account for about 34 percent of the German population, but Bavaria is one of the more heavily Catholic areas.
''What Wadowice was for John Paul, Bavaria is for Ratzinger,'' said Frauenlob, referring to John Paul II's hometown in southern Poland. ''He has very deep roots here, it's his home.''
The cardinal was born in Marktl Am Inn, but his father, a policeman, moved frequently and the family left when he was 2.
He and his older brother, Georg -- former director of the renowned Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir -- return annually to the peaceful halls of St. Michael's Seminary to stay in the elegant, but sparsely furnished bishop's apartment next to the church.
An accomplished pianist who loves Mozart, Ratzinger enjoys playing the grand piano in the seminary's main hall, and walking through downtown Traunstein greeting people, Frauenlob said.
Traunstein was also where Ratzinger went through the harrowing years of Nazi rule and World War II.
In his memoirs, Ratzinger wrote that he was enrolled in the Nazi youth movement against his will when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory. He said he was soon let out because of his studies for the priesthood.
Two years later he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit as a helper, a common taks for teenage boys too young to be soldiers. A year later he was released, only to be sent to the Austrian-Hungarian border to construct tank barriers.
He deserted the Germany army in April 1945, in the final weeks of the war in Europe, and returned to Traunstein -- a risky move, since deserters were shot on the spot if caught, or publicly hanged as examples to others.
When he arrived home, U.S. soldiers took him prisoner and held him in a POW camp for several weeks. Upon his release, he re-entered the seminary.
Ratzinger was ordained, along with his brother, in 1951. He then spent several years teaching theology. In 1977, he was appointed bishop of Munich and elevated to cardinal three months later by Pope Paul VI.
John Paul II named him leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981, where he was responsible for enforcing Catholic orthodoxy and was one of the key men in the drive to shore up the faith of the world's Roman Catholics.
Ratzinger speaks several languages, among them Italian and English, as well as his native language German.
Frauenlob calls him a subtle thinker with a deep understanding of Catholic tradition and a personal touch he's not often given credit for.
He cites the example of the seminary's 2003 confirmation service where no bishop was available. Ratzinger swiftly agreed to come, confirming the 14 boys, then taking time to speak personally to each one after the ceremony.
''I find it hurtful to see him described as a hard-liner,'' Frauenlob said. ''People are too quick to say that, it's not an accurate reflection of his personality.''

Surowy strażnik wiary

Kim jest człowiek, który już w pierwszych głosowaniach może zgromadzić prawie połowę głosów uczestników konklawe?

Jacek Moskal

Rzeczpospolita 19 4 2005

Niemiecki teolog i arcybiskup Monachium został w 1981 roku powołany przez Jana Pawła II na kluczowe w Kościele stanowisko prefekta Kongregacji Nauki Wiary. Zyskał opinię niezmordowanego tropiciela odstępstw od doktryny katolickiej. Temu zawdzięcza "czarną legendę" w mediach.
Rzadko był wymieniany jako kandydat na papieża. Okazuje się jednak, że cieszy się sporą popularnością nie tylko wśród innych kardynałów, ale także w szerokich kręgach świeckich katolików oraz intelektualistów innych orientacji.
Bardzo charakterystyczne było zdarzenie, które o kilka tygodni poprzedziło śmierć Jana Pawła II. Pod koniec lutego umarł Don Luigi Giussani - ksiądz, który założył w latach sześćdziesiątych ruch katolicki Wspólnota i Wyzwolenie ("Communione e liberazione"). Kardynał Ratzinger przyjechał na jego pogrzeb jako specjalny legat papieski. Gospodarzem był tam inny "papabile", zaliczany do faworytów - arcybiskup Mediolanu kard. Dionigi Tettamanzi. Członkowie ruchu, wśród których było wielu studentów, a także przedstawicieli intelektualnej i gospodarczej elity lombardzkiej stolicy, przyjęli swojego metropolitę lodowatym chłodem. Cały aplauz zarezerwowali dla Ratzingera. Dla nich, podobnie jak dla członków wielu podobnych organizacji katolickiego laikatu, stał się symbolem obrony zagrożonych fundamentów wiary.
Przed konklawe na łamach prasy włoskiej pojawiły się określenia w rodzaju "panzerkardinal", stanowiące aluzje zarówno do pochodzenia, jak stanowczości niemieckiego purpurata. W jego sylwetce trudno jednak dostrzec coś pancernego. Szczupły i siwowłosy, przypomina raczej uniwersyteckiego profesora teologii. W jego twarzy o regularnych, łagodnych rysach jedni znajdują skromność, a nawet pokorę, inni zaś rezerwę i chłód. Znany jest z subtelnego poczucia humoru, zabarwionego autoironią. Często można go spotkać w okolicach Watykanu, gdy szybkim krokiem zmierza do pałacu Świętego Oficjum.
Jako prefekt kongregacji wymaga wiele od swoich podwładnych, ale otacza ich życzliwością, także wtedy, gdy opuszczą już Rzym. Przyjechał do Radomia na ingres biskupi ks. Zygmunta Zimowskiego, który pracował z nim wiele lat.
Przede wszystkim teolog
Ratzingerowie to chłopska rodzina z okolic Passawy (Passau) w Dolnej Bawarii, bardzo silnie związana - jak większość ludzi z tamtych stron - z Kościołem katolickim. Joseph urodził się 16 kwietnia 1927 roku w miasteczku Markt nad rzeką Inn. Jego ojciec był komisarzem żandarmerii, ale kariery w czasach hitlerowskich nie zrobił. Przeciwnie. Z powodów materialnych przez pewien czas nie mógł posyłać syna do szkoły - uczył go wtedy sam. Pod koniec wojny Joseph odbywał służbę jako obserwator obrony przeciwlotniczej. Po upadku III Rzeszy rozpoczął studia filozoficzne na uniwersytecie w Monachium, a w 1951 r. złożył śluby kapłańskie.
Kariera akademicka w dziedzinie teologii dogmatycznej przebiegała błyskotliwie: po uzyskaniu doktoratu Ratzinger uczył na uniwersytetach w Münster, Bonn i Tybindze. Na tym ostatnim poznał blisko innego teologa, Hansa Künga, który stał się w przyszłości jednym z jego najbardziej zaciętych przeciwników. Wśród studentów młodego profesora był też brazylijski franciszkanin Leonardo Boff - później jedna z czołowych postaci teologii wyzwolenia. Na razie jednak Ratzinger i Küng współpracują, a nawet przyjaźnią się. Obydwaj są wybitnymi przedstawicielami nowych prądów, które nurtują zachodnioeuropejską teologię. Z taką famą wyjeżdżają na Sobór Watykański II.
35-letni Ratzinger jest tam doradcą kardynała Fringsa. Wtedy też poznał nieco od niego starszego biskupa krakowskiego Karola Wojtyłę. W 1969 obejmuje Katedrę Dogmatyki w Ratyzbonie. W 1977 Paweł VI mianował go arcybiskupem Monachium i nadał mu kapelusz kardynalski.
Nieoficjalnie wiadomo, że w październiku 1978 roku Ratzinger głosował, podobnie jak inni niemieccy kardynałowie,na Karola Wojtyłę. Metropolita krakowski wywarł bardzo dobre wrażenie na episkopacie niemieckim podczas wizyty, którą złożył w tym kraju razem z prymasem Wyszyńskim.
Krytycznie o efektach soboru
W 1981 roku nowy papież wezwał Ratzingera do Watykanu. Dlaczego właśnie jego? Sam był przede wszystkim duszpasterzem. W czasie studiów i pracy naukowej uformował się jako filozof, specjalista w zakresie etyki. W dziedzinie teologii zajmował się mistyką, która z trudem mieści się w ramach dogmatów Kościoła. Na Stolicy Apostolskiej potrzebował kogoś, kto zapewni nauczanie od tej strony.
Ewolucja Josepha Ratzingera i Hansa Künga przebiegała w przeciwnych kierunkach. Küng skupił się na podważaniu uchwalonego na Soborze Watykańskim I dogmatu o nieomylności papieża w sprawach wiary i moralności. Kolejne publikacje na ten temat przyniosły mu zakaz nauczania w imieniu Kościoła.
Ratzinger bardziej krytycznie patrzył na efekty Soboru Watykańskiego II. Obok otwarcia na świat przyniósł on wiele zjawisk negatywnych, takich jak kryzys powołań kapłańskich. Niemiecki kardynał dostrzegał główną przyczynę w nadmiernej swobodzie poszukiwań teologicznych. W niektórych przypadkach prowadzą one do podważenia prawd stanowiących istotę chrześcijaństwa - jak wiara w bóstwo i zmartwychwstanie Chrystusa.
To nie inkwizycja
- Nie jestem wielkim inkwizytorem - powtarzał często w minionych latach kardynał Ratzinger. Kierowana przezeń kongregacja jest spadkobierczynią Świętego Oficjum - inkwizycji rzymskiej. Działa jednak znacznie łagodniejszymi metodami. Może najwyżej zadecydować - po długich dociekaniach i rozmowach - o tym, że dana publikacja lub całokształt poglądów jej autora nie mieści się już w granicach nauczania Kościoła. - Dobro polega także na umiejętności mówienia "nie", a nie na przyznawaniu wszystkim racji - to inne z ulubionych powiedzeń Ratzingera.
Swój sprzeciw kardynał i jego podwładni wyrażali często. W połowie lat osiemdziesiątych głośne było potępienie teologii wyzwolenia, która próbowała wprowadzić do chrześcijaństwa marksistowską ideologię walki klas i przemocy rewolucyjnej. W roku 2000 ochłodzenie stosunków z innymi Kościołami, a także innymi religiami spowodowała deklaracja "Dominus Jesus", która przypominała, że Chrystus jest jedynym zbawicielem ludzkości, a tylko Kościół katolicki w pełni wyraża jego naukę. Dokument powstał jednak z inspiracji Jana Pawła II.
Jak tonący okręt
Podczas długiego pontyfikatu polskiego papieża Kościół ukazywał dwa oblicza. Z jednej strony otwierał się na świat - na inne wyznania chrześcijańskie oraz na judaizm i islam. Z drugiej starał się umacniać zagrożone fundamenty własnej wiary i nauki moralnej.
Jan Paweł II wyrażał obydwie te tendencje. Kardynał Ratzinger raczej tylko tę drugą, dając wyraz pesymistycznemu spojrzeniu na cywilizację zachodnią i stan związanego z nią Kościoła.
Mówił o tym w książce-wywiadzie "Raport o stanie wiary". 1 kwietnia, w przeddzień śmierci Jana Pawła II, w klasztorze św. Benedykta w Subiaco polemizował z tymi, którzy chcieliby pozbawić religię jej metafizycznej treści, sprowadzając posłanie Jezusa o Królestwie Bożym do swoistej politycznej moralistyki.
Ratzinger napisał teksty rozważań i modlitw do tegorocznej drogi krzyżowej w rzymskim Koloseum. Przejmujący fragment modlitwy trafił następnego dnia na nagłówki wielu gazet: "Panie, tak często Twój Kościół wydaje się nam tonącym okrętem, łodzią, która ze wszystkich stron nabiera wody (...) Przeraża nas brud na szatach i obliczu Twojego Kościoła. (...) Ale to właśnie my zdradzamy Cię za każdym razem, po wszystkich wielkich słowach i szumnych gestach".
Być może powodem rosnącej popularności bawarskiego teologa w Kolegium Kardynalskim i poza nim jest fakt, że wielu podziela ten pogląd.

ROZMOWA Kardynał Joseph Ratzinger

Relatywizm zagrożeniem dla Kościoła

Najważniejszym problemem Kościoła katolickiego stał się relatywizm. Niebezpieczeństwo relatywizmu polega na tym, że wydaje się on tak jasny i tak bliski dzisiejszym ludziom. Jednak jego przyjęcie oznacza, że odpowiedzi na wszystkie wielkie pytania ludzkiego bytu - pytanie o sens życia, o śmierć, o Boga, a także kwestie etyczne - stają się czymś arbitralnym i dowolnym. A gdy odpowiedzi na wielkie pytania etyki są czymś dowolnym, gdy te pytania nie znajdują żadnej wspólnej odpowiedzi, człowiek znajduje się w niebezpieczeństwie. W tej mierze relatywizm zagraża nie tylko naszej wierze, która staje się jedynie jedną odmianą wśród wielu światopoglądów, ale także moralnej więzi łączącej ludzkość.
W żadnym razie nie można powiedzieć, że wszystkie religie są prawdziwe. Raczej: we wszystkich religiach, albo w większości religii, są - obok aspektów błędnych i wątpliwych - elementy prawdy. W tej mierze religie nie tylko w jakiś sposób zbiegają się ze sobą, ale też niosą w sobie wewnętrzną dynamikę ku wierze chrześcijańskiej.
Powtórzę: religie nie są ani zupełnie prawdziwe, ani zupełnie fałszywe; znajdują się w nich, w bardzo różnym stopniu, tak elementy prawdy, jak i fałszu. Bowiem religie pochodzą w części z naturalnego objawienia. Człowiek nie stał się przecież zupełnie ślepy na Boga; jako katolicy nie uważamy, że grzech pierworodny spowodował całkowitą ślepotę i absolutne zniszczenie. Wciąż jeszcze Bóg mówi w człowieku. Tak więc w religiach możemy odnaleźć to pierwotne odsłonięcie się Boga, chociaż jest ono w różny sposób zaciemnione. W tym sensie zatem, uważam, nie wolno traktować religii jako po prostu zamkniętych w sobie istot, ale trzeba na nie patrzeć jako na realności dynamiczne. To znaczy z jednej strony, że pochodzą one od Stwórcy, ale z drugiej strony - czekają na pełniejsze objawienie. Widzimy, że przez zniekształcenia, pochodzące z grzechu, odbija się w religiach w pewien sposób prawda Stwórcy. Ale też one same wskazują, że są czymś niewystarczającym i ukrywają w sobie oczekiwanie na Zbawiciela, które ostatecznie jest oczekiwaniem na Chrystusa.

Z wywiadu przeprowadzonego dla "Rzeczpospolitej" przez Grzegorza Górnego, Pawła Lisickiego i Rafała Smoczyńskiego w 1999 roku

Kardynał Joseph Ratzinger dla KAI w lipcu 2004 o Europie, rozumie i dialogu

[Wyjatki]

Gazeta 19 4 2005

Katolik nie powinien zatem narzucać innym swoich religijnych przekonań, lecz winien wspomagać racjonalny dyskurs.Chrześcijaństwo od samego początku chciało przemawiać głosem rozumu i - by tak rzec - zmuszać rozum do pracy, przywrócić go jemu samemu, obdarzając słaby rozum wewnętrzną siłą.Gdyby przezwyciężenie subiektywizmu nie było możliwe, w jaki sposób mielibyśmy budować wspólne życie?Kościół katolicki jest bardzo odważny w wychodzeniu naprzeciw innym wyznaniom [...] Jest to problem stopniowego wewnętrznego otwierania się i przezwyciężania różnic zbudowanych przez historię, co wymaga czasumożemy mieć nadzieję na nową wiosnę chrześcijaństwa.
Caly wywiad (in Polish only) na http://serwisy.gazeta.pl/kosciol/1,64807,2194949.html
(6 stron)

THE WORLD OVER: CARDINAL RATZINGER INTERVIEW

Raymond Arroyo with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

The following is a transcript of the interview by EWTN News Director Raymond Arroyo of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, which first aired on EWTN on 5 September 2003. Cardinal Ratzinger is the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, an office to which he was appointed by Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Full text on http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/RATZINTV.HTM
(11 pages)

The Problem of Christian Prophecy

30Giorni, No 1 - 1999

Christianity always carries within it a structure of hope "It is increasingly urgent that the authentic structure of promise and fulfilment inherent in the Christian faith be presented in a comprehensible and liveable way".
Interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger by Niels Christian Hvidt
Full text on http://www.tlig.org/ratzfull.html
(11 pages)


Memories of a destructive mind

Joseph Cardinal Ratzingers Milestones

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger published an in-depth interview of himself titled Salt of the Earth and in 1997 an autobiography called Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977. These books are important if we consider the high post the Cardinal holds in the Vatican. In this article, which will be printed in two parts (Part II to appear in The Angelus, May, 1999), we will review Milestones to better understand the current crisis in the Catholic Church [Reviews]
Part 1: http://www.sspxasia.com/Documents/SiSiNoNo/1999_March/The_Memories_of_a_Destructive_Mind.htm
Part 2: http://www.sspxasia.com/Documents/SiSiNoNo/1999_May/The_Memories_of_a_Destructive_Mind.htm
(23 pages in total)

Papal conclave: three articles

Cardinals Align as Time Nears to Select Pope

Laurie Goodstein and Ian Fisher

New York Times 16 April 2005

ROME, April 16 - There was never doubt that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's hard-line defender of the faith, would have a strong hand in selecting the next pope. But in the days of prayer and politics before the conclave, which begins on Monday, he has emerged as perhaps the surprise central figure: the man who could become the 265th pope, choose him or be the one other cardinals knock from the running.
Any talk of who will become the next pope is guesswork, echoes from cardinals and their staffs sworn to silence about one of the world's most elite and secretive gatherings.
But one bit of wisdom has emerged in the Italian press as conventional: that Cardinal Ratzinger, a German close to John Paul II, has up to 50 votes among the 115 elector cardinals, or at least that is the strength his supporters claim.
That is short of the two-thirds, or 77 votes, needed in the early stages of voting. Still, he appears to command the largest and most cohesive block, and at a minimum, it seems unlikely that the next pope will be chosen without his blessing.
But interviews with more than a dozen Vatican experts and church officials suggest that forces are lining up against Cardinal Ratzinger - who, at 78, may be judged too old, too uncharismatic and, perhaps most important, too rigid to hold together a polarized church that is a billion people strong.
Some believe the church needs a more moderate man, a less authoritarian leader or one from outside of Europe.
"Ratzinger represents continuity - he was the right-hand man of the pope," said Giuseppe De Carli, head of Italian public television's Vatican bureau, who in recent years has interviewed most of 115 cardinals who will begin the secretive process of selecting the new pope on Monday.
"But the cardinals need both continuity and discontinuity," he added. "They can't create a pope that will be the photocopy of the preceding one."
Some experts say that is precisely the problem: that Cardinal Ratzinger has ambitions higher than being a photocopy of John Paul.
Based on Cardinal Ratzinger's record and pronouncements, his agenda seems clear. Inside the church, he would like to impose more doctrinal discipline, reining in priests who experiment with liturgy or seminaries that permit a broad interpretation of doctrine. Outside, he would like the church to assert itself more forcefully against the trend he sees as most threatening: globalization leading eventually to global secularization.
But some cardinals worry that it is healing, not confrontation, that the church needs. Most cardinals eligible to vote are now refusing media interviews - a consequence of the media blackout the cardinals decided to impose eight days ago. But some are talking on background to Vatican colleagues, church scholars, leaders of Catholic organizations and to Italian journalists who specialize in covering the Vatican. The New York Times spoke with several cardinals and more than a dozen people in recent contact with the cardinals. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The top candidate of the forces opposing the Ratzinger bloc appears to be Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan, who could also have a chance of peeling off a few votes from the Ratzinger camp. His profile offers a little something for each flank. A conservative moral theologian who has written on bioethics, he collaborated with John Paul on the encyclical laying out the justifications for opposing abortion, birth control and euthanasia.
In recent years, however, Cardinal Tettamanzi has began to sound off on issues of poverty and social justice. When protesters went to Genoa, Italy, for the Group of 8 summit meeting of industrialized nations in 2001, he spoke to the crowd on the evils of globalization.
Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert who writes for L'Espresso magazine, said the cardinal could unite conservatives and liberals. "He is an exponent of compromise, but a real honest conservative," Mr. Magister said.
The interviews suggest that the standard-bearer for the liberals among the anti-Ratzinger forces is, at least for the moment, the retired archbishop of Milan, Carlo Maria Martini. There is a strange sort of symmetry to the two men: both are 78-year-old scholars with stratospheric intellects who command the respect of their colleagues.
But Cardinal Martini appears to control far fewer votes. He has said he has not ruled out changes to priestly celibacy or the bans on contraception and on women serving as deacons. He has a form of Parkinson's disease and, unlike Cardinal Ratzinger, is not considered an active candidate. Experts say that while he respects Cardinal Ratzinger, Cardinal Martini does not support his vision of the church.
"Martini," said Alberto Melloni, a papal historian, "thinks that if the church does not move on in terms of doctrine, it is condemned to lose the content of Christian truth."
If the cardinals could start from scratch and order up the perfect pope, the candidate to lead the Roman Catholic Church of 2005 might look like this:
Charismatic and basically conservative. Intellectual but accessible. Speaks Italian, Spanish and English. Not too old, not too young, since the cardinals want neither a 26-year papacy like John Paul's nor a pope who will be bedridden in two or three years. A pastor, but one familiar with Vatican bureaucracy. Someone willing to let local bishops go their own way - within limits. Perhaps he would be from the third world, where the church is growing, but he has ties to Europe and could reinvigorate the flagging faith there.
Holding this template against the men in the running gives some clues, with the caution that the candidate who comes closest does not necessarily win. Politicking will also play a major role - and at this moment the central player is indisputably Cardinal Ratzinger.
A close associate of John Paul for nearly 30 years, he has a soft voice, a shy manner and a full head of white hair. Friends say that he gets wrongly portrayed as "God's Rottweiler" and that he is actually a warm and spiritual man.
"In the last months of John Paul's papacy, Ratzinger was visible as the supporting column of the church, and so they are following him," Mr. Magister said.
Several church sources said Cardinal Ratzinger had the support of an international array of cardinals, including Francis George of Chicago; Christoph Schönborn of Austria; Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina; Camillo Ruini and Angelo Scola of Italy; and Marc Ouellet of Quebec.
But some cardinals said in interviews before this week that he might centralize power even more than John Paul, just when many cardinals are hoping for their local dioceses to have a greater say in their affairs.
Cardinal Martini's progressive bloc could not wield enough votes to block Cardinal Ratzinger. But the opposition is being joined, several Vatican watchers said, by other groups, in particular a group of Italian cardinals, who by several accounts include Angelo Sodano, John Paul's last secretary of state, and Giovanni Battista Re, who had been in charge of bishops under the late pope.
The members of the Ratzinger contingent are well aware that their candidate may lose, and so are ready to shift their votes. The most obvious backup, several experts said, is Cardinal Ruini, the vicar of Rome.
He is as a forceful figure in Italian politics, opposing rights for gays and lesbians and some forms of assisted reproduction, and supporting immigrants' rights.
But he faces the opposition of those Italian cardinals supporting Cardinal Tettamanzi, so other Ratzinger protégés could emerge.
One is Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina, a conservative Jesuit who early in his career distanced himself from proponents of liberation theology. Born to Italian parents, he could be a bridge between Latin America and Europe.
A second is Cardinal Scola, patriarch of Venice, a scholar and a tireless pastor. He has spotless conservative credentials, softened by a grass-roots style.
Another is Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna. An aristocrat, he has often made lists of potential popes because of his intellect, language skills and conservatism, but his administrative skills may seem lacking.
The Latin American cardinals, with 18 percent of the cardinal electors, match the strength of the Italians. But they do not all share the same vision of the church's needs. Nor, it seems, are they all rooting for the home team.
Alejandro Bermúdez, the Peruvian editor in chief of ACI Prensa, a Catholic news agency in Latin America, said those prelates held no conviction that the next pope must be from Latin America. "They would not be opposed to it," he said, "but at this time it is not their priority."
Still, several Latin Americans were frequently mentioned as strong candidates: Cardinal Bergoglio; Claudio Hummes of Brazil, a progressive who moved to the right; and Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, a conservative on social issues.
Also mentioned were Norberto Rivera Carrera, archbishop of Mexico, who at 62 may be considered too young, and Juan Sandoval Iñíguez, 72, archbishop of Guadalajara.
With so many candidates and so much apparent division, another familiar situation is looking more and more possible.
In the last conclave in 1978, Vatican-watchers had concocted lists of potential popes 20 to 30 names long, hoping that would cover all the possibilities. But Karol Wojtyla, the cardinal from Poland who became Pope John Paul II after three days, made practically none of them.
"Do not underestimate the power of the microculture that is generated among the cardinals when they are together," said Mr. Bermúdez, the Peruvian editor. "The kind of reflections that end up influencing them are completely unpredictable."

Papal hopeful is a former Hitler Youth

Justin Sparks, Munich, John Follain and Christopher Morgan, Rome

Sunday Times 17 April 2005

THE wartime past of a leading German contender to succeed John Paul II may return to haunt him as cardinals begin voting in the Sistine Chapel tomorrow to choose a new leader for 1 billion Catholics.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose strong defence of Catholic orthodoxy has earned him a variety of sobriquets — including "the enforcer", "the panzer cardinal" and "God’s rottweiler" — is expected to poll around 40 votes in the first ballot as conservatives rally behind him.
Although far short of the requisite two-thirds majority of the 115 votes, this would almost certainly give Ratzinger, 78 yesterday, an early lead in the voting. Liberals have yet to settle on a rival candidate who could come close to his tally.
Unknown to many members of the church, however, Ratzinger’s past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army anti- aircraft unit.
Although there is no suggestion that he was involved in any atrocities, his service may be contrasted by opponents with the attitude of John Paul II, who took part in anti-Nazi theatre performances in his native Poland and in 1986 became the first pope to visit Rome’s synagogue.
"John Paul was hugely appreciated for what he did for and with the Jewish people," said Lord Janner, head of the Holocaust Education Trust, who is due to attend ceremonies today to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
"If they were to appoint someone who was on the other side in the war, he would start at a disadvantage, although it wouldn’t mean in the long run he wouldn’t be equally understanding of the concerns of the Jewish world."
The son of a rural Bavarian police officer, Ratzinger was six when Hitler came to power in 1933. His father, also called Joseph, was an anti-Nazi whose attempts to rein in Hitler’s Brown Shirts forced the family to move home several times.
In 1937 Ratzinger’s father retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a staunchly Catholic town in Bavaria close to the Führer’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941.
He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. "Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one," concluded John Allen, his biographer.
Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp.
Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot — adding that his gun was not even loaded — because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps. He deserted in April 1944 and spent a few weeks in a prisoner of war camp.
He has since said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile — comments echoed this weekend by his elder brother Georg, a retired priest ordained along with the cardinal in 1951.
"Resistance was truly impossible," Georg Ratzinger said. "Before we were conscripted, one of our teachers said we should fight and become heroic Nazis and another told us not to worry as only one soldier in a thousand was killed. But neither of us ever used a rifle against the enemy."
Some locals in Traunstein, like Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, dismiss such suggestions. "It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others," she said. "The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice."
In 1937 another family a few hundred yards away in Traunstein hid Hans Braxenthaler, a local resistance fighter. SS troops repeatedly searched homes in the area looking for the fugitive and his fellow conspirators.
"When he was betrayed and the Nazis came for him, Braxenthaler shot himself because he knew he couldn’t escape," said Frieda Meyer, 82, Ratzinger’s neighbour and childhood friend. "Even though they had tortured him in Dachau concentration camp he refused to give up his resistance efforts."
Despite question marks over Ratzinger’s wartime conduct, the main obstacle to his prospects in the conclave — the assembly of cardinals to elect the new pope — is the conservative stance he has adopted as guardian of Catholic orthodoxy since John Paul named him to head the congregation for the doctrine of the faith in 1981.
His condemnations are legion — of women priests, married priests, dissident theologians and homosexuals, whom he has declared to be suffering from an "objective disorder".
He upset many Jews with a statement in 1987 that Jewish history and scripture reach fulfilment only in Christ — a position denounced by critics as "theological anti-semitism". He made more enemies among other religions in 2000, when he signed a document, Dominus Jesus, in which he argued: "Only in the Catholic church is there eternal salvation".
Some of his staunchest critics are in Germany. A recent poll in Der Spiegel, the news magazine, showed opponents of a Ratzinger papacy outnumbered supporters by 36% to 29%.
As one western cardinal who was in two minds about him put it: "He would probably be a great pope, but I have no idea how I would explain his election back home."
One liberal theologian,when asked what he thought of a Ratzinger papacy, was more direct: "It fills me with horror."

Cardinals Finish Preparations for Conclave

By Daniel J WatkinNew York Times April 17, 2005

ROME, April 16 - The cooks and elevator operators have been sworn to secrecy. A smokestack has been placed on the Sistine Chapel's roof. And on Saturday, the cardinals who will elect Pope John Paul II's successor held their last formal meeting.
Most details have been tied up ahead of Monday's conclave, the secret gathering of the princes of the church that will end when white smoke emerges to signal that they have chosen a new pope.
Saturday was also the end of the official nine days of mourning for John Paul that began with his funeral on April 8. And the cardinals watched as John Paul's Fisherman's Ring, a symbol of the papacy, was destroyed.
Joaquín Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesman, said the cardinals had conducted their final gathering Saturday morning in an atmosphere of "great familiarity."
Dr. Navarro-Valls said no individual candidates for the papacy were discussed during the meetings. But several cardinals, their aides and Vatican analysts have all said that such discussions were liberally taking place outside the meetings.
After the cardinals move into their sequestered residence during the conclave, Santa Marta, on Sunday, they will have dinner together there, the spokesman said.
Dr. Navarro-Valls said the cardinals' procession into the Sistine Chapel on Monday would be televised by the Vatican, along with their taking the oath of secrecy and obedience to the rules of papal succession.
He said Vatican security officials had ensured that there would be no leaks about the highly secretive proceedings, and hinted that measures had been taken to prevent cellphone reception. "Try testing them when you go into the Sistine Chapel," he told reporters who were later given a special tour on Saturday.
And in fact, cellphones did not work, as they usually do. A Swiss guard said a jamming device had been placed under the platform floor in the chapel.
A three-foot-high metal stove that is used to burn the ballots, with the dates of past conclaves etched on its surface, sat in the front part of the chapel. Scaffolding held the bright copper stove pipe that will emit black or white smoke to signal the election's outcome. Another device that looked like a more modern stove sat next to it and was connected to the stove pipe, apparently to speed up the movement of smoke. Two fire extinguishers stood nearby.
On Friday, workers installed a narrow smokestack on the roof to be linked to the stove pipe.
Staff members and others involved in the conclave took an oath of secrecy the same day.
They included important clerics but also priests assigned to hear the cardinals' confessions, waiters and cleaning staff, the bus drivers shuttling the cardinals between Santa Marta and the Sistine Chapel, and elevator operators who will bring the cardinals to the chapel.

John Paul II: articles and funeral homily

The first world leader
The greatest political actor of our time leaves us the challenge of moral globalisation

Timothy Garton Ash

Guardian April 4, 2005

The world lived this death. It was a global Calvary. People from every corner of the earth gathered in St Peter's Square, peering up at those two windows of the papal apartment, illuminated against the night sky. Across five continents, Christians, Jews and Muslims joined them through television. Marcello, from Rio de Janeiro, emailed CNN: "We are watching the agony of the greatest man of our time." Mohamed, from Birmingham, emailed the BBC: "He will be missed by Catholics and non-Catholics alike."
What does this tell us? It tells us that Pope John Paul II was the first world leader. We talk of Bush, Blair or Hu Jintao as "world leaders", but they are merely national leaders who have a world impact. That's true even of Nelson Mandela, his closest contender for Marcello's title of "greatest man of our time".
Pope John Paul II uniquely combined three elements. He was the head of the world's largest supranational organisation of individual human beings. (The UN is an organisation of states; the Islamic umma is not an organisation.) He believed withunshakeable conviction that his message was universal, applying equally to every man, woman and child - Catholics and non-Catholics alike. And he seized the technological opportunity of bringing that message personally to almost every country on earth, thanks to jet aeroplanes and television. In short, he made the world his parish. No one had ever done this before. No one could.
As an agnostic liberal, I don't feel qualified to judge what he meant for the Catholic church. But I think I can judge what he meant for the world. John Paul II was, quite simply, the greatest political actor of the last quarter-century. I use the word "actor" in a double sense. Theatre was the second passion of the young Karol Wojtyla, even in Nazi-occupied Poland, and he was a talented stage performer. Before the onset of Parkinson's disease, he had a lovely voice. The actor John Gielgud described his delivery as "perfect". He had this extraordinary ability to speak to a crowd of a million people so that each and every one felt he was talking to them individually. He spoke in images as well as words (look at that photo of him in a sombrero carrying a Mexican child) and his personal warmth came across on television.
We also use the words "political actor" to mean a person who makes things happen in the world, as in the portentous American phase "a global player". I watched at close quarters John Paul II's impact on the Soviet bloc, from his election in 1978 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. No one can prove conclusively that he was a primary cause of the end of communism. However, the major figures on all sides - not just Lech Walesa, the Polish Solidarity leader, but also Solidarity's arch-opponent, General Wojciech Jaruzelski; not just the former American president George Bush Senior but also the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev - now agree that he was. I would argue the historical case in three steps: without the Polish Pope, no Solidarity revolution in Poland in 1980; without Solidarity, no dramatic change in Soviet policy towards eastern Europe under Gorbachev; without that change, no velvet revolutions in 1989.
Karol Wojtyla's political vision included the reunification of Europe. So long as he still had breath enough to speak, he talked of eastern and western Europe as the continent's two lungs. He lived to see this vision realised, as eight central and east European states, including his beloved Poland, joined the European Union last May.
Yet his largest legacy may lie not in the first world (of democratic capitalism), which he inhabited and enlarged, or the second world (of communism), which he destroyed, but in what we used to call the third world. John Paul II was a consistent spokesman for the half of humankind who live on less than $2 a day. This is also the part of the world where most Catholics are now to be found. He preached, tirelessly, every person's right to a minimum of human dignity. "I speak," he said, "in the name of those who have no voice." It was not just in communist-ruled eastern Europe that he spoke up for freedom. Opening an old file of newspaper cuttings, the first one I find is headlined "Pope takes issue with Stroessner on freedom". It records him reading the Paraguayan military dictator a fierce lesson about the importance of human rights and of free speech.
The familiar claim that he was "socially conservative" is a gross oversimplification. He consistently admonished third world dictators and western capitalists about the need for social justice. In a small Polish-speaking group I once heard him say, very plainly, that he deplored unbridled capitalism as much as communism. He was also utterly consistent in his advocacy of peace, from criticising the impending Falklands war when he came to Britain in 1982 to opposing the Iraq war in 2003. In Japan, he cried: "Never again Hiroshima! Never again Auschwitz!"
One of his policies did great damage in the developing world. Maintaining and reinforcing Pope Paul VI's ban on artificial means of contraception, he caused unwanted children to be born into poverty and, increasingly, with HIV/Aids. Challenged by a friend, he said: "I can't change what I've been teaching all my life." We must hope that his successor will reverse this policy.
Some say he was lost in the post-9/11 world. Actually, no one has done more to avert a "clash of civilisations". He reached out to Jews and Muslims, as well as to Christians of other churches, in a way no pope had ever done before. And the message got through - witness that email from Mohamed in Birmingham.
"What will survive of us is love," wrote the poet Philip Larkin. John Paul II will survive in the memories of millions who loved him. But even for those who did not love him, including many western secular liberals, protestants and liberal Catholics, the legacy of this first world leader is a challenge.
At the beginning of the third millennium, we have economic globalisation. We have the globalisation of information, represented by the internet and CNN. We should have international institutions and laws to match. But that in turn requires what has been called moral globalisation. Whether or not we share John Paul II's motivating beliefs, we can acknowledge that his was the most impressive attempt so far made by any single human being to spell out what moral globalisation might mean, starting with a lived practice of universal sympathy. After he preached at Auschwitz in 1979, a nun, kneeling before him, whispered: "I am a Polish nun. But I am also a Russian Jew." In 2005, we need to say: "I am a prosperous westerner. But I am also a woman of Darfur." And then to act accordingly.
Now we must do this on our own.
· Timothy Garton Ash is the author of The Polish Revolution: Solidarity and, most recently, Free World


A GRATEFUL CHURCH MUST MOVE ON
Editorial

The Tablet 09/04/2005

THE WORLD has been immensely moved by the death of Pope John Paul II in a manner that is as significant an event in the history of his papacy as any during his lifetime. He is said to have met and addressed more people face to face in Rome and abroad in his 26-year reign than any human being in history, and many of them reacted as if the encounter established a personal bond. Television magnified that effect many times, and he seemed to instinctively understand its demands even on his deathbed.
What explains this spontaneous, overwhelming reaction? Partly it was his character, for he had a natural ability to communicate warmly with every member of a vast crowd. Partly it was his humanity, honed in prayer and burnished in intense and prolonged suffering, which seemed to make visible in his person, as it were, his profound teaching about the dignity of every human being. Young people who flocked to him en masse saw the real heart of the man. He made them feel better about themselves. He gave Catholic Christianity a human face.
This character was also key to his impact on world events. The people of Eastern Europe, his native Poland in particular, resented living under Communist rule, but were also resigned to it. He knew from his experience as a Polish cardinal that changing this mood to one of courage and hope might be enough to destabilise the entire regime. He understood the profound contradiction at the heart of Marxist philosophy which claimed to liberate the workers but had instead oppressed them. The message that later made him so attractive to young people in the West was the message he brought to the striking members of Solidarity, the free Polish trade union: that each one of them had infinite value in the sight of God, therefore they should not be afraid. It was from these reflections that Pope John Paul II developed what will be one of his most important legacies, the updating of Catholic social teaching so that it could offer a relevant and realistic ethical judgement on the modern global economy.

His most important legacies

Thus did his roots in Poland shape his papacy from the start. The same is true of his reconciliation with the Jews. As a Pole he, unusually, had Jewish boyhood friends. John Paul II’s deep sorrow and shame at the way Christians had treated the Jews throughout history revolutionised the Catholic theological perception of Judaism for ever. But this also taught him how religious conflict could have devastating consequences for human life, an insight which impelled him to begin to build bridges with the Muslim world. By his efforts, the dangerously self-fulfilling scenario of a "clash of civilisations" between the Christian West and the Islamic world has largely been neutralised. Muslims knew that the Pope supported neither of the wars against Iraq, and was their true friend.
All these effects and influences of his papacy can be admired as much from outside the Catholic Church as from within. These are what those who wish to attach the rare appellation "Great" to his name have in mind. But greatness in Popes is more usually associated with reform than with reaction, and there was undoubtedly a reactionary side to his papacy. The Vatican under his leadership increased its central control of the local Church to the extent that loosening the ties may well be a priority among the cardinals who will begin meeting in conclave to elect his successor on 18 April. While air travel and the media made him the world’s most famous public figure, modern technology and his sheer longevity introduced an inevitable distortion in the balance between centre and periphery.
His prolific intellectual output left little room for disagreement; and on a series of issues, notably the ordination of women, debate was prematurely curtailed. He wanted a Church of one mind, his mind. It was not a good time to be a theologian.
A negative response to liberation theologyUnder his leadership, and exploiting his immense prestige, the Vatican frequently overruled pastoral judgements made by bishops in their own dioceses, especially in Germany over the issues of abortion counselling clinics, and over the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion. The German cardinal-archbishops will now be looking to reassert the rights of the local Church against the universal, an issue over which there is ongoing public disagreement between two of the curia’s most influential figures, both German papabili, Cardinals Ratzinger and Kasper. This mood will be shared by many others, including English-speaking cardinals who have not appreciated insensitive Vatican interference over reform of the English liturgy; and they will find allies not least in Latin America, where the Vatican under this Pope has tried consistently, but contrary to the local Church’s instinct, to disengage it from difficult issues of social justice.
The Pope’s negative response to liberation theology, above all his failure to help Archbishop Oscar Romero before he was assassinated, was one of the calamities of his papacy. It was as if he were determined to apply to his task in other countries and indeed continents all that he had learned in Poland, but only what he had learned in Poland, including a conviction that it was the destiny of his native country, crucified and resurrected, to act as "Christ among the nations". And that included a refusal to heed any of the signs of the times in the profound changes over the last half-century in interpersonal or sexual relations, especially in the West. He saw no need to replace the sexual mores of the conservative Polish culture in which he grew up with anything new.

The task of the conclave

That had been, above all, a world without Aids. Of all the judgements made by the Vatican under this papacy, that concerning the prohibition of the use of condoms in the fight against this disastrous epidemic in Africa was rightly the most notorious. It symbolised a commitment to dogmatism in the face of appalling human suffering. It is one of the great mysteries of the last 26 years why this pope of immense humanity failed to respond adequately to the Calvary that Aids has become. It is Africa that is being crucified today, not Poland.
History should be given time to reach a fair and balanced judgement. That is why calls for instant canonisation are inappropriate, sometimes motivated by a desire to bathe all positions and policies in the glow of sanctity and thus to bind his successors. The task of the conclave of cardinals will be to distinguish the man from the message, and not to let their immense admiration for the former, commit them uncritically to the latter. It needs to pray, but also to think.


His Church, His State Crowds in Rome, yes. But in Poland, too.

BY MATTHEW KAMINSKI

Wall Street Journal April 8, 2005

On the evening of Oct. 16, 1978, no doubt well past bedtime for the six-year-old that I was, the telephone rang and rang in our Warsaw house. Hello? "Habemus Papam!" answered the voice in Latin, a great uncle from Paris, exiled in the free world and eager to share the stunning, wondrous news. We have a pope. We Catholics, we the world, but really, he meant, we the Poles.
A first light of hope, like someone opening the window in a fetid room, is how my father remembers it. Early images: Karol Wojtyla, the new pope from Krakow, kneeling contrary to protocol to kiss the hand of a mentor, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the head of the Polish church. Early impressions: A few weeks into his pontificate, people start to notice that this pope never seems to utter the words "Eastern Europe," ever so subtly but clearly refusing to recognize the artificial, unjust division of Europe.
Another memory: In June of 1979, my grandfather Antoni, a cavalry officer and entrepreneur before the war, got a prized invitation to sit up front at a Papal Mass in Warsaw's St. Anne's church. "He had this wonderful voice, this wonderful diction," says Wanda, my grandmother, who had attended the Mass too. "Everyone there was smitten by him." In his homilies, John Paul II never spoke a word against communism--and yet every word uttered was anticommunist. He looked strong and told the nation, "Do not be afraid." Suddenly "they," the rulers, seemed small and weak.
Starting in those early days, the stories about this pope have touched on his love for Poland's mountains and his humanism, which grew out of his formative years in Krakow, a cradle of cultural and intellectual life. His sense of humor was especially appreciated in a country longing for relief. During a Polish airlines flight on that first trip home from the Vatican, a stewardess offered the pope a cognac. He declined, pointing mischievously upward: "Too close to the boss."
In the months that followed, the mood shifted in a way that even a child could pick up. The clandestine news bulletins from Radio Free Europe spoke about restless workers at a tractor factory near Warsaw, something going on in Gdansk. Poland rumbled and came together, in solidarity and then Solidarity. While 1980 and 1981 were the beginning of the end, it took a long decade for the end to come.
The formal death of communism in Poland was fittingly celebrated at a Mass. On Aug. 20, 1989, Tadeusz Mazowiecki came up to St. Brygida's Church in Gdansk, a day after becoming Poland's first postcommunist prime minister. St. Brygida's was and is Lech Walesa's church. Between the speeches, people sang the national anthem and raised their hands in a victory sign. The Mass was a political rally, and no one saw any contradiction in that.
It is often said that in Poland the church is as much a national institution as a religious one. During the partitions of the 18th and 19th centuries, the church kept alive a national idea when the state no longer existed. During communism, as Adam Michnik once noted, the church taught Poles to bow only before God. It gave believers and nonbelievers shelter and comfort from "them."
That day at St. Brygida's marked the beginning of the freedom that brought run-of-the-mill political divisions. Some clerics unwisely pushed into politics in a democratic Poland and got burned. People close to the pope said that he hoped Poland would lead a revival of Catholicism in Europe and was disappointed to see the country turn more secular. Perhaps. As elsewhere, Poles adored their "Holy Father" without agreeing with everything he preached. But when it mattered, the pope stayed faithful to a vision of a unified Europe--as when he nudged skeptical church conservatives to support Poland's bid for European Union membership.
I saw Karol Wojtyla for the first time in 1979, as I perched on my father's shoulders and the pope's motorcade made its way through Warsaw's streets. I saw him a second time in September 1993 in Vilnius, the capital of a then young and fragile independent Lithuania. I ran with a crowd through the city's narrow cobbled streets to catch a glimpse. The man ushered into the Gates of Dawn Chapel was stooped and, even then, evidently ailing. He was in Vilnius to support a free Lithuania and in his own understated way bring about a reconciliation with Poland, a historical rival. As with so many of his plans, this one bore fruit.
Our Pope: So many people around the world, even non-Catholics, have made that claim in mourning. For millions of Poles, his death brought back memories that had receded in the past 15 years of "normal" life. The thousands gathered again in Warsaw and Krakow this past week can, for a last time, give thanks for a national hero who, in his homeland at least, left this world with his life's work done.
Mr. Kaminski is deputy editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe


Reflection on a Polish Catholic Pope

By Rev. Gerald Zandstra

Tulsa Today 7 April 2005

I am an ordained Protestant of the Reformed or Dutch Calvinist persuasion. My experience with Catholics, specifically Polish Catholics, began in the neighborhood in which I was raised. Most on my block were either Dutch Reformed or Polish Catholics. The line between us was bright and clear. Each attended their own church and school (non-public) and each kept to their own kind.
A marriage between children would be a scandal for both families. Nothing in my childhood challenged this reality. Little in my college or various seminary experiences countered what I learned in my youth. Catholicism, especially the papacy, was discussed primarily in courses focusing on the early church or the Middle Ages. Having served several churches for a period of 12 years, I joined the Acton Institute in January of 2001. This would be my first significant experience working with Catholics as the co-founders of the Institute were a Catholic priest and a Catholic economist. Roughly half our staff is Catholic. The other half is made up of Protestants of various stripes. As I became friends with my co-workers, levels of trust grew. I was able to ask all the questions I had occasionally wondered about but had never had the opportunity to ask a real, breathing Catholic. I discovered much. Some of the theological differences were significant and remain so. Some of what I thought were theological differences were merely caricatures on my part. Mostly, I began to develop a strong interest in this Polish freedom fighter who became the pope.
Several biographies later and a deeper understanding of recent history led from an interest to a profound appreciation for Pope John Paul II. John Paul II was the pope of human liberty and human dignity. His upbringing in Poland under the rule of various forms of totalitarianism taught him a lesson via negativa that he would never forget, even in his death. Human life, no matter what a particular person's abilities or inabilities, is precious and must be protected. When I first heard his comparison between "culture of life" and the "culture of death," I was struck by the power of the two concepts. The culture of life is that which upholds the dignity of life in the context of freedom. All human institutions are judged from the standpoint of their contribution to this culture of life and the context of freedom. The culture of death is ominous, utilitarian, destructive, and treats life as a commodity or worse. The individual person's dignity is subsumed by the needs of the state or society or some other greater good or evil
In John Paul's vision of society holds things in tension. He was about neither complete freedom nor enforced virtue. Freedom and virtue are intertwined. They are dependent on one another. Liberty is the context within which people make virtuous choices. Liberty, for Pope John Paul II, was not some ethereal concept. The 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus was a call to Catholics and, indeed, to all Christians, to take freedom seriously, especially in the realm of economics. It is not an endorsement of a particular economic structure. His condemnation of communism was matched by his fear that those emerging from totalitarianism would immerse themselves in consumerism. The pope's vision and perspective was always broader than particular issues in a given political or economic situation. What is remarkable is its vision of liberty and morality. Christians in business are not participating in necessary evil. Rather, they are called to elevate their thinking so that their work became their vocation and one of the prime means by which they serve God.
Pope John Paul II knew that pervasive welfare states could never match the salvific power of private charity for both the wealthy and the poor. Liberation theology, with its bizarre mixture of Marxism and Christian thought, could only lead to greater oppression and poverty. Communism would fall because at its root, it was morally and economically bankrupt which matched bad anthropology with faulty economics. It was only a matter of time. In many ways, despite theological differences, I found in the life and thought of John Paul II an ally and a well-formed defense of a society that is both free and virtuous. I have two regrets upon hearing of his decline and death. The first is that I did not have an opportunity to meet him. The second is that I did not learn more of him earlier in my academic career. Protestants, in the coming weeks and months, will have an opportunity to meet him and know him through numerous articles and books. I hope that they take the opportunity to do so. About the Author: Rev. Gerald Zandstra is an ordained pastor of the Christian Reformed Church and director of programs at the Acton Institute (www.acton.org) in Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Power of Faith

By Charles Krauthammer

Washington Post April 4, 2005

It was Stalin who gave us the most famous formulation of that cynical (and today quite fashionable) philosophy known as "realism" -- the idea that all that ultimately matters in the relations among nations is power: "The pope? How many divisions does he have?"
Stalin could have said that only because he never met John Paul II. We have just lost the man whose life was the ultimate refutation of "realism." Within 10 years of his elevation to the papacy, John Paul II had given his answer to Stalin and to the ages: More than you have. More than you can imagine.

History will remember many of the achievements of John Paul II, particularly his zealous guarding of the church's traditional belief in the sanctity of life, not permitting it to be unmoored by the fashionable currents of thought about abortion, euthanasia and "quality of life." But above all, he will be remembered for having sparked, tended and fanned the flames of freedom in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, leading ultimately and astonishingly to the total collapse of the Soviet empire.
I am not much of a believer, but I find it hard not to suspect some providential hand at play when the white smoke went up at the Vatican 27 years ago and the Polish cardinal was chosen to lead the Catholic Church. Precisely at the moment that the West most desperately needed it, we were sent a champion. It is hard to remember now how dark those days were. The 15 months following the pope's elevation marked the high tide of Soviet communism and the nadir of the free world's post-Vietnam collapse.
It was a time of one defeat after another. Vietnam invaded Cambodia, consolidating Soviet hegemony over all of Indochina. The Khomeini revolution swept away America's strategic anchor in the Middle East. Nicaragua fell to the Sandinistas, the first Soviet-allied regime on the mainland of the Western Hemisphere. (As an unnoticed but ironic coda, Marxists came to power in Grenada too.) Then, finally, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
And yet precisely at the time of this free-world retreat and disarray, a miracle happens. The Catholic Church, breaking nearly 500 years of tradition, puts itself in the hands of an obscure non-Italian -- a Pole who, deeply understanding the East European predicament, rose to become, along with Roosevelt, Churchill and Reagan, one of the great liberators of the 20th century.
John Paul II's first great mission was to reclaim his native Eastern Europe for civilization. It began with his visit to Poland in 1979, symbolizing and embodying a spiritual humanism that was the antithesis of the soulless materialism and decay of late Marxist-Leninism. As millions gathered to hear him and worship with him, they began to feel their own power and to find the institutional structure -- the vibrant Polish church -- around which to mobilize.
And mobilize they did. It is no accident that Solidarity, the leading edge of the East European revolution, was born just a year after the pope's first visit. Deploying a brilliantly subtle diplomacy that never openly challenged the Soviet system but nurtured and justified every oppositional trend, often within the bosom of the local church, John Paul II became the pivotal figure of the people power revolutions of Eastern Europe.
While the success of these popular movements demonstrated the power of ideas and proved realism wrong, let us have no idealist illusions either: People power can succeed only against oppression that has lost confidence in itself. When Soviet communism still had enough sense of its own historical inevitability to send tanks against people in the street -- Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968 -- people power was useless.
By the 1980s, however, the Soviet sphere was both large and decadent. And a new pope brought not only hope but political cunning to the captive nations yearning to be free. He demonstrated what Europe had forgotten and Stalin never knew: the power of faith as an instrument of political mobilization.
Under the benign and deeply humane vision of this pope, the power of faith led to the liberation of half a continent. Under the barbaric and nihilistic vision of Islam's jihadists, the power of faith has produced terror and chaos. That contrast alone, which has dawned upon us unmistakably ever since Sept. 11, should be reason enough to be grateful for John Paul II. But we mourn him for more than that. We mourn him for restoring strength to the Western idea of the free human spirit at a moment of deepest doubt and despair. And for seeing us through to today's great moment of possibility for both faith and freedom.

Pope John Paul II

Washington Post Editorial April 3, 2005

"I REMEMBER raising my head,'' recalls a priest who was at the Vatican II council 40 years ago, "and thinking, 'Who is that prophet?' " The speaker who had caught his attention was a Polish prelate named Karol Wojtyla, and his subject was a proposed declaration renouncing the ancient accusation of enduring Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus. "Wojtyla spoke of the church's obligation to change its teaching on the Jews with a passion that could only have come from personal experience," the priest said. "For an unknown bishop from Poland it was amazing. Wojtyla made the difference."
This incident, related in James Carroll's book "Constantine's Sword" -- a study of the church's tortured dealings over the centuries with the Jewish people -- was a precursor to what Mr. Carroll regards as "the most momentous act" of the papacy of John Paul II: the day when the pontiff formerly known as Wojtyla stood before the Western Wall in Jerusalem "to offer a prayer that did not invoke the name of Jesus . . . to leave a sorrowful kvitel, a written prayer, in a crevice of the wall." The speech at Vatican II was also a sign that this was a man with considerable ability to lead and inspire -- charisma, as it's been called since long before politicians discovered the term.
He came on the world scene in 1978 as a refreshing new personality: Possessed of a sunny smile, athletic bearing and a friendly manner, he was a media dream. His willingness -- eagerness, really -- to be out among the people extended his appeal well beyond the church, as did his courageous survival of and recovery from an assassination attempt. But John Paul II made it clear early on that he was no public-relations pope, seeking to accommodate the church to modernity. A man of considerable depth and learning -- more so perhaps than the public understood at the time of his election -- he acted and spoke boldly and confidently over his quarter-century as pope, often in ways that were neither popular nor politic.
He could be -- and was -- called conservative in matters of Catholic doctrine, in his determination to maintain such institutions as the male celibate clergy and in his strict adherence to the church's positions on birth control and abortion. He provoked debate and dissent within the church with his stands in these areas, as well as opposition from outside, including from these pages, for policies that affect the temporal realm, especially in matters of population control. The sexual abuse scandal in the American church that troubled his last years as pope was attributed by many, at least in part, to his adherence to the hierarchical chain of command and to a lack of democracy in the church.
But this pope might equally well have been called liberal -- even radical -- in such areas as workers' rights, capital punishment, disarmament and human freedom, and in the message of hope that he carried literally across the globe. He was indisputably a visionary in seeking to lead the church out into the greater world -- traveling, evangelizing and preaching the unity of humankind in places that no pope before him could have hoped to reach.
And certainly no pope ever made a trip like John Paul's journey back to Poland in 1979 -- the most joyous conquest in the long and tragic history of his country. How many divisions has the pope? For John Paul they were many and powerful, all seemingly armed with guitars and flowers as they converged by the hundreds of thousands in Poland to celebrate his presence, sending an unmistakable message of national solidarity to the rulers of Central Europe and helping set in motion the peaceful revolution that was to bring down a Communist empire within a decade.
As the priest who observed him at Vatican II sensed, there was much of the personal in John Paul's fervor on certain matters. The pope who sought a new relationship with Judaism had been a friend of his Jewish neighbors from childhood, in a time and place darkened by anti-Semitism. Brought up in a close, tolerant and deeply religious family, the future pope was made aware of the fragility of life by the loss of his mother when he was 9, of his father when he was 18, and of his older brother, a physician who contracted a fatal disease from one of his patients. In his lifetime, he lived under two cruel, seemingly all-powerful social ideologies with millennial pretensions, worked against them and saw both fall, while the church to which he had committed himself endured. It may be that this personal experience has something to do with a conservatism grounded in preservation of what he thought good in his church and in human life -- but not in fear of change.
"The pope is a thoroughly modern man who nevertheless challenged a lot of the conventional wisdom of self-consciously modern people," his biographer George Weigel said in a magazine interview some years ago. "In a world dominated by the pleasure principle and by personal willfulness, he insists that suffering can be redemptive and that self-giving is far more important to human fulfillment than self-assertion. In an intellectual climate where the human capacity to know anything with certainty is under attack, he has taught that there are universal moral truths . . . and that, in knowing them, we encounter real obligations. To a world that often measures human beings by their utility, he has insisted that every human being has an inviolable dignity and worth."
One who exercises as much power as the pope will never be free of controversy, no matter how exemplary his life; the secular world is not in the habit of conferring sainthood on people. But John Paul II, after his death yesterday at 84, will be seen by most, we think, as a remarkable witness, to use a favorite term of his -- witness to a vision characterized by humaneness, honesty and integrity throughout his reign and his life.

Papal funeral: Text of homily

CNN April 8, 2005

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Text of the homily read, in Italian, by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, dean of the College of Cardinals, during the funeral Mass of Pope John Paul II. Translation given by the Vatican.

"Follow me." The Risen Lord says these words to Peter. They are his last words to this disciple, chosen to shepherd his flock. "Follow me" -- this lapidary saying of Christ can be taken as the key to understanding the message which comes to us from the life of our late beloved Pope John Paul II. Today we bury his remains in the earth as a seed of immortality -- our hearts are full of sadness, yet at the same time of joyful hope and profound gratitude.
These are the sentiments that inspire us, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, present here in St. Peter's Square, in neighboring streets and in various other locations within the city of Rome, where an immense crowd, silently praying, has gathered over the last few days. I greet all of you from my heart. In the name of the College of Cardinals, I also wish to express my respects to Heads of State, Heads of Government and the delegations from various countries. I greet the Authorities and official representatives of other Churches and Christian Communities, and likewise those of different religions. Next I greet the Archbishops, Bishops, priests, religious men and women and the faithful who have come here from every Continent; especially the young, whom John Paul II liked to call the future and the hope of the Church. My greeting is extended, moreover, to all those throughout the world who are united with us through radio and television in this solemn celebration of our beloved Holy Father's funeral.
Follow me -- as a young student Karol Wojtyla was thrilled by literature, the theater, and poetry. Working in a chemical plant, surrounded and threatened by the Nazi terror, he heard the voice of the Lord: Follow me! In this extraordinary setting he began to read books of philosophy and theology, and then entered the clandestine seminary established by Cardinal Sapieha. After the war he was able to complete his studies in the faculty of theology of the Jagiellonian University of Krakow. How often, in his letters to priests and in his autobiographical books has he spoken to us about his priesthood, to which he was ordained on Nov. 1, 1946. In these texts he interprets his priesthood with particular reference to three sayings of the Lord. First: "You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last" (John 15:16). The second saying is: "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11). And then: "As the father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love" (John 15:9). In these three sayings we see the heart and soul of our Holy Father. He really went everywhere, untiringly, in order to bear fruit, fruit that lasts. "Rise, Let us be on our Way!" is the title of his next-to-last book. "Rise, let us be on our way!" -- with these words he roused us from a lethargic faith, from the sleep of the disciples of both yesterday and today. "Rise, let us be on our way!" he continues to say to us even today. The Holy Father was a priest to the last, for he offered his life to God for his flock and for the entire human family, in a daily self-oblation for the service of the Church, especially amid the sufferings of his final months. And this way he became one with Christ, the Good Shepherd who loves his sheep. Finally, "abide in my love:" the Pope who tried to meet everyone, who had an ability to forgive and to open his heart to all, tells us once again today, with these words of the Lord, that by abiding in the love of Christ we learn, at the school of Christ, the art of true love.
Follow me! In July 1958 the young priest Karol Wojtyla began a new stage in his journey with the Lord in the footsteps of the Lord. Karol had gone to the Masuri Lakes for his usual vacation, along with a group of young people who loved canoeing. But he brought with him a letter inviting him to call on the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Wyszynski. He could guess the purpose of the meeting: he was to be appointed as the auxiliary Bishop of Krakow. Leaving the academic world, leaving this challenging engagement with young people, leaving the great intellectual endeavor of striving to understand and to interpret the mystery of that creature which is man and of communicating to today's world the Christian interpretation of our being -- all this must have seemed to him like losing his very self, losing what had become the very human identity of this young priest. Follow me -- Karol Wojtyla accepted the appointment for he heard in the Church's call the voice of Christ. And then he realized how true are the Lord's words: "Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it" (Luke 17:53). Our pope -- and we all know this -- never wanted to make his own life secure, to keep it for himself, he wanted to give of himself unreservedly, to the very last moment, for Christ and thus also for us. And thus he came to experience how everything which he had given over into the Lord's hands came back to him in a new way. His love of words, of poetry, of literature became an essential part of his pastoral mission and gave his new vitality, new urgency, new attractiveness to the preaching of the Gospel, even when it is a sign of contradiction.
Follow me! In October 1978, Cardinal Wojtyla once again heard the voice of the Lord. Once more there took place that dialogue with Peter reported in the Gospel of this Mass: "Simon, son of John, do you love me? Feed my sheep!' To the Lord's question, `Karol, do you love me?' the archbishop of Krakow answered from the depths of his heart: "Lord, you know everything: you know that I love you." The love of Christ was the dominant force in the life of our beloved Holy Father. Anyone who ever saw him pray, who ever heard him preach, knows that. Thanks to his being profoundly rooted in Christ, he was able to bear a burden which transcends merely human abilities: that of being the shepherd of Christ's flock, his universal Church. This is not the time to speak of the specific content of this rich pontificate. I would like only to read two passages of today's liturgy which reflect the central elements of his message. In the first reading, St. Peter says -- and with St. Peter, the pope himself -- "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ -- he is Lord of all" (Acts of the Apostles 10:34-36). And in the second reading, St. Paul -- and with St. Paul, our late Pope -- exhorts us, crying out: "My brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved" (Philippians 4:1).
Follow me! Together with the command to feed his flock, Christ proclaimed to Peter that he would die a martyr's death. With those words, which conclude and sum up the dialogue on the love and on the mandate of the universal shepherd, the Lord recalls another dialogue, which took place during the Last Supper. There Jesus had said: "Where I am going, you cannot come." Peter said to him, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus replied: "Where I cam going, you cannot follow me now: but you will follow me afterward." (John 13:33-36). Jesus from the Supper went toward the Cross, went toward his resurrection -- he entered into the paschal mystery; and Peter could not follow him. Now -- after the resurrection -- comes the time, comes this "afterward." By shepherding the flock of Christ, Peter enters into the paschal mystery, he goes toward the cross and the resurrection. The Lord says this in these words: "`....when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go; (John 21:18) In the first years of his pontificate, still young and full of energy, the Holy Father went to very ends of the earth, guided by Christ. But afterward, he increasingly entered into the communion of Christ's sufferings; increasingly he understood the truth of the words: "Someone else will fasten a belt around you." And in the very communion with the suffering Lord, tirelessly and with renewed intensity, he proclaimed the Gospel, the mystery of that love which goes to the end (John 13:1).
He interpreted for us the paschal mystery as a mystery of divine mercy. In his last book, he wrote: The limit imposed upon evil "is ultimately Divine Mercy" ("Memory and Identity," p. 60-61). And reflecting on the assassination attempt, he said: "In sacrificing himself for us all, Christ gave a new meaning to suffering, opening up a new dimension, a new order: the order of love .... It is this suffering which burns and consumes evil with the flame of love and draws forth even from sin a great flowering of good." Impelled by this vision, the Pope suffered and loved in communion with Christ, and that is why the message of his suffering and his silence proved so eloquent and so fruitful.
Divine Mercy: the Holy Father found the purest reflection of God's mercy in the Mother of God. He who at an early age had lost his own mother, loved his divine mother all the more. He heard the words of the crucified Lord as addressed personally to him: "Behold your Mother." And so he did as the beloved disciple did: he took her into his own home;" (John 19:27)
Totus tuus. And from the mother he learned to conform himself to Christ.
None of us can ever forget how in that last Easter Sunday of his life, the Holy Father, marked by suffering, came once more to the window of the Apostolic Palace and one last time gave his blessing urbi et orbi. We can be sure that our beloved pope is standing today at the window of the Father's house, that he sees us and blesses us. Yes, bless us, Holy Father. We entrust your dear soul to the Mother of God, your Mother, who guided you each day and who will guide you now to the eternal glory of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.