Benedict XVI: from guard dog to pastor

Catholic New Times, March 8, 2005

"The servility of the sycophants--false prophets--as they were branded by the true Old Testament prophets, those who shy from and shun every collision, who prize above all their calm complacency is not true obedience. What the church needs are not adulators of the status quo, but men whose humility and obedience are not less than their passion for the truth."

--Josef Ratzinger, 1962

"Conscience is the supreme and ultimate tribunal, even beyond the official church, and it must be obeyed."

--Josef Ratzinger, 1966

"Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development."

--Alfred North Whitehead

"Religions commit suicide when they find their inspirations in their dogmas."

--Alfred North Whitehead

In a remarkably quick conclave, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, the dean of the College of Cardinals, prefect of the Congregation of the Faith (CDF), president of the Pontifical Biblical commission and of the International Theological Commission succeeded Pope John Paul II as the new pope.

The rapid confirmation of Ratzinger surprised many people, but in retrospect it should not have. One hundred and fifteen of the 117 cardinals chose the former pope's right-hand man. There was to be no "fat pope to follow a lean one" this time.

In the short run, it appears to be a lamentable failure of nerve for the church, a paralyzing inability to address its many festering problems.

The church, acting more as a sclerotic institution than as a communio, opted to stay the course of the centralized John Paul II pontificate. A conclave lasting more than two days might actually have signalled to the world that there are divisions in the church. Now, it seems to say there are not even any differing opinions.

There are cardinals who will be disappointed, certainly the other two Germans, Kasper and Lehmann. Millions of lay people as well will be upset that the male leadership of the church appears to be burying its head in the sand on urgent issues of women, contraception, church governance and justice. For many, it will be the last straw. The optics of the conclave with aging celibate men dressed in medieval costumes parading into the Sistine chapel spoke volumes to the modern mind, particularly to half the human race not represented.

The new pontificate does not look promising. Cardinal Ratzinger comes with a lot of negative baggage. He has shown that despite his many refined personal qualities, he can be both petty and a bully. His long and persistent ideological campaign against fellow theologians has been severe and ruthless. He is deeply authoritarian and almost totalitarian in his defence of the faith. There seems to be but one truth which of course is that of the Magisterium. For both John Paul II and Ratzinger, the church alone teaches the truth about humanity, despite the same Magisterium changing its mind on slavery, usury, democracy and freedom of conscience. For him, the church is hardly ever a learner. Ratzinger's past as head of the Holy Office is deeply troubling. Can he change now that he is in the role of universal pastor?

It is not to be ruled out. Every benefit of doubt must be given to him. In the end, his deeds will speak more than his words. The fact that the Cardinal chose the name of Benedict seems to indicate that he wishes to be seen as a reconciler, much as the last Benedict (1914-1922) was. In that period, Giacomo della Chiesa came to the Petrine office after the Modernist crisis, which had become a similar open season on theologians, an ugly time of an ecclesiastical witch-hunt. This would be a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Ratzinger is nobody's fool. He knows he is despised by many for his energetic proscription of fellow theologians. Can he, as Benedict, move beyond his lamentable role as the Grand Inquisitor? Let us wait and see.

His history

The pope's history may help us understand how a progressive churchman and a first-rate theologian became a rabid hierarch, with seemingly no toleration of ambiguity or appreciation of nuance.

First, Benedict XVI has shown he is terrified of anything approaching disorder or chaos. Much like the previous pope, he saw war first-hand. Forced into the military at age 17 at the end of WWII, he experienced the fruits of chaos.

Here a deep irony appears. The great moral theologian of the past century, another German, Bernard Haring, was a chaplain during the same conflict. For Haring, reflecting on the German nation's sheep-like attitude toward the maniacal Hitler moved his theory of moral reasoning past stark obedience to responsibility.

Ratzinger, the son of a policeman, was trained in a Bavarian tradition which was Augustinian, that is, skeptical of fallen humanity to do anything without grace. John Paul II's theology, on the other hand, was tempered by the always hopeful Thomistic theology. Benedict, by all descriptions, is almost ethereal, a man who seems to walk above the human condition, a sublime spirit whose total identity is rooted in church as institution and in the life of the mind, but not in the muck and mire of the messy world. Bear in mind he has little pastoral experience, floating from professorship to professorship then to the Holy Office with a brief (and unsuccessful) stop as Archbishop of Munich.