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)
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)
posted by Silabilm at 9:26 AM
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