Year: 2005

The response of some non-Catholics to those of us who are appalled by the selection of the new Pope goes something like this: What did you expect? The Church never changes. Having a new Pope who adheres to doctrine is not a big deal. Expecting big changes in a church whose main selling point is eternal verities is stupid. All these non-Catholics like their Catholic church authoritarian, unchanging, eternal. All I can say is: what would they have said about, say, John XXIII or even John Paul II? In the last forty years or so, the Church has officially revoked its previous anti-Semitism, it has changed the very structure and vernacular of the mass, it has doubled the number of saints in heaven, it has shifted its position on religious and political liberty, it has apologized for the Inquisition, it has declared that homosexuality is innate and without sin as a condition, it has ordained married priests, it has innovated a new policy against all forms of artificial birth control, and dramatically strengthened its teachings against the death penalty. If you were to believe James Lileks, none of this would have been even faintly possible.

THE ISSUE IS OXYGEN: The issue is not change itself. The Church has changed dramatically – and will continue to change dramatically. The issue now is whether the Church can even debate its own issues and future. Some caricatures of my position, for example, say that I oppose this Pope because I want the Church to endorse gay marriage. Puhlease. I cannot see any basis within Catholic theology for granting the sacrament of marriage to gay couples. Such a simple inclusion strikes me as completely out of bounds. What many of us are asking for is simply the ability for lay Catholics and indeed priests and theologians to be able to debate respectfully such pressing issues as mandatory celibacy for the priesthood, a less rigid biological understanding of the rights and dignity of women, and a real dialogue with gay Catholics about how we can practically live lives that reflect our human dignity and our profound human need for intimacy and sexual expression. We’d also like to see greater autonomy for national churches, a respect for political secularism, and a more open hierarchy that cannot get away with a criminal conspiracy to hide the widespread sexual abuse of children and teens. None of this is that radical in the context of change in the last fifty years. None of it is subject to infallibility. And what we object to is the arrogant notion that lay people – let alone theologians or priests – do not even have the right to raise these questions within a formal church context. But our opponents want to construct a straw man in which Ratzinger presents orthodoxy and critics represent revolution. The truth is almost the direct opposite. Ratzinger’s views on freedom of thought within the church are deeply authoritarian; his views on what conscience is are totalitarian; his conflation of his own views with the Holy Spirit are offensive. But he is Pope now. And fairness suggests we should wait and see. I can only say that I do so with dread and fear.

RATZINGER ON SEXUAL ABUSE: “I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offences among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower… One comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the church,” – Pope Benedict XVI, 2002. He has also written about the need to rid the Church of “filth.” By “filth,” I suspect he means gay people, regardless of their conduct or holiness. My prediction: the pedophiles and their protectors will remain. (I have a pretty good idea whom Cardinal Law voted for.) The gay men will be scapegoated and purged.

I was trying to explain last night to a non-Catholic just how dumb-struck many reformist Catholics are by the elevation of Ratzinger. And then I found a way to explain. This is the religious equivalent of having had four terms of George W. Bush only to find that his successor as president is Karl Rove. Get it now?

ME ON RATZINGER: From back in 1988, when I became interested in the man’s theology. It’s a PDF and can be found here. I just re-read it after many years. It’s closely focused on Ratzinger’s Augustinian theology and how his exercise of power came to corrupt the idealism of his earlier thought. And it benefits from not being clouded by the inevitable emotions of the present. Money quote:

The most telling difference between the pope [Wojtila] and the prefect [Ratzinger] is John Paul II’s more successful blend of Augustinian otherworldliness and Thomist trust. His admonitions, while increasingly firm, have never lacked the compassion and optimism that ally themselves with a countervailing confidence in God’s will working its way through nature. Ratzinger is an altogether more jaundiced figure … His bleakness, while theologically a way in which the extremity of grace can be radically described, is – once in power – a recipe for authoritarianism… What Ratzinger’s elevation [to chief enforcer of orthodoxy in the Church] unleashed – the wild card in Ratzinger’s development – was the factor of power. His theology did not change. But its new context was to tansform the purity of its intent.
The Dostoyevskian ironies are acute, and they are getting sharper. The theologian who stressed the apolitical as Christians’ first resort has become an official who has sacrificed theological argument for political coercion and control. The otherworldly cleric has become the first prefect to give an extended, published interview to the international press. The thinker who wrote above all about the central conceptions of the faith, of the mystery of the Incarnation, of the Last Things, of the core truths of Christianity, has begun to show signs of a creeping obsession with sex and concern with the passing phenomena of a secular agenda.

Since I wrote those words, Ratzinger’s immersion in political culture wars has become even deeper. I also cover his radical innovations on the role of women, gays and conscience. A woman should follow the “roles inscribed in her biology”; gays are inherently disposed to “intrinsic moral evil”; conscience as the modern world understands it is illusory. Yes, we have a new Pope. Just like the old one, but without any of his redeeming features.

A POLITICAL THEORY: I have no idea how this insular and regressive choice was made. But I would not be surprised if John Paul II’s electoral rule change had an effect. The change was to ensure that a pope need not get the two-thirds of cardinals’ support if such a super-majority hadn’t emerged after a long series of votes. At that time, a mere majority would be all that was needed. My hunch is that Ratzinger carefully lined up a narrow majority of cardinals who pledged they would never vote for someone else. He had enough power in the waning years of John Paul II to ensure that kind of loyalty. So the conclave knew after the first couple of votes that at some point, therefore, Ratzinger would prevail. And that he was so intent on maintaining control of the Church that he would sit through as many votes as necessary to get it. Under the old rules, after too many votes in which Ratzinger had failed to make the two-thirds, his name would have been withdrawn. Under the new rules, time was on his side. So the cardinals caved early. Why prolong the agony? Just a theory.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “The Church must make claims and demands on public law and cannot simply retreat into the private sphere.” – pope Benedict XVI, in “Church, Ecumenism and Politics,” 1988. This was as much a political decision as a pastoral one.

JUST LEAVE: An arresting email:

I can understand your sense that you cannot leave the church. But I know from experience that it is just that–a sense. You have felt the presence of God at Mass? I have too. You can feel it elsewhere but you cannot know that until you look. The gospels speak to you? I know you don’t seriously think they speak only though the Catholic Church. As for the family/mother analogy, it simply isn’t a good one. There is no biology here no matter how like that it may feel. Still, it can be valid in this way: If the church is your mother you have been, still are, and if the events of today are any indication, will increasingly be abused by her. Mentally, spiritually, and perhaps even physically abused. I feel for the pain I see in your writing. I have felt it too. But you have to take the advice you would give to anyone in an abusive relationship: get out.
It may be difficult, seem almost impossible, but that is the bottom line. I got out myself. I can assure you there is a rich and rewarding spiritual life to be had elsewhere. Religion is a choice. Please, for your own sake, choose a non-abusive one.

Just a link to an interview I had with America, the Jesuit magazine, a while back. I’ve changed over the last decade. In the interview, I said I felt no anger toward the church. Obviously, I do now. What pushed me over the edge was the sex abuse crisis and the hierarchy’s response to it. But I stand by my questions and by my faith. You know I wish in many ways I could simply leave this church, and say to hell with it. But I cannot. For one, I keep believing. This is not experienced as a choice. It is just my reality. When I read the Gospels, they speak the truth to me. When in the past, I have been at Mass, I have felt as a reality the presence of God. As I sometimes tell people, I can say the creed at mass with very few reservations. But believing in the basic creed is not enough any more. We are required to assent in every way to every papal pronouncement, even if it belies what one can see with one’s own eyes and see in one’s own experience. Ratzinger’s elevation means that will be even more stringently enforced. Even then, according to the new Pope, my conscience is not valid. To ratchet the rack still further, we are forbidden from even discussing changes that we sincerely believe may be essential for keeping the Church alive. This is my family. I can no more divorce myself from it than I can my biological mother. And today, many parts of that family are reeling with grief and anger and despair. If the insular cardinals believe that they have helped save the faith in the West, I fear they are mistaken. They may have ensured its final death rattle.

“Along with many others, both within and beyond the Roman Catholic Church, I offer my prayers for Pope Benedict XVI as he takes up the august responsibility of his office. I pray that the Holy Spirit will guide him in his words and his actions and that he may become a focus of unity and a minister of reconciliation in a church and a world in which faithfulness and truth wear many faces.” – Bishop Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church. Ouch. The choice of Ratzinger will undoubtedly set back attempts at ecumenical cooperation. Remember that Ratzinger has publicly opposed the entry of Turkey into the European Union. Heathens are to be kept out.

One more hopeful:

As one who is on a similar wavelength with you regarding the direction our Church should take and the reforms that are needed to prevent its extinction in the West, I find myself far less pessimistic than you on the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Pontiff. Perhaps it’s simply because I was looking at the election as a realist. To put a twist on the infamous Rumsfeld quote, you elect a pope with the Conclave you have, not the Conclave you’d like to have. In regards to this election, the Conclave that Western Catholics like me and thee had was an older, more conservative group appointed almost entirely by JPII to reflect his conservative views on doctrine and his populist-conservative views on political and social world issues. The result was about what I expected: an older, doctrinaire Cardinal from John Paul’s inner circle ascending to the papacy.
The political rationale for Ratzinger was predictable, at least from my end. To repeat a phrase that’s been uttered ad nauseum for the last few weeks, after a fat pope, a thin pope. JPII’s successor, based on the way the Church has long operated, would have to be someone who would have a short reign and who was serious and pensive as opposed to personable and charismatic. But, like John Paul, the new pope would also have to be a non-Italian as to recognize the global nature of the modern Church. Further, the last thing the College of Cardinals would want is to elect a transitional pope who ends up being another John XXIII and surprises them all with the Third Vatican Council. Hence, the new pope would also have to be someone they could trust, someone within John Paul’s inner circle whose views were so well known that there would be no surprises while the College deliberated the future of the Church over the next decade.
Once you examine the political parameters that were before the Conclave we had, you can see how few choices fit the bill. I personally thought the new pope would end up being Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop Emeritus of Paris and sort of a kinder, gentler version of Ratzinger with an intense personal story (converted Jew, escaped the Nazis, etc). But, once again, Ratzinger proved a safer, more conservative choice for a Conclave that wanted to continue to debate the major doctrinal and administrative issues facing the Church for just a few more years without commiting to a new direction in any regard just yet.
In sum, Pope Benedict XVI (and I do call him that because, as of now, he is my Pope) has a tough job ahead of him and time will only tell just how he will govern and what he will accomplish. But, based on the current realities of the Church and the composition and disposition of its hierarchy, to expect a liberal reformer from the heart of the developing world who would begin cleaning house and make doctrinal changes on a dozen social issues is but an exercise in idealism. Perhaps someday, but not today. Yet this heterodox Catholic remains eternally optimistic for the future of the Church. Maybe I’m being a bit idealistic too.

One less so:

I share your dismay and bewilderment at the election as Pope of the one man who makes John Paul II look moderate. As a gay Catholic deeply committed emotionally to the Church I love but all but separated from it in thought and practice, I had had great hope that a miracle would occur. That perhaps the Holy Spirit would in fact guide the hands of the Cardinal Electors and that the new Pope would be a man of both deep faith and profound reason but, as well, of modesty and humility in understanding our shared human quest to enlighten the path to goodness and truest, deepest humanity. Surely this headstrong, self-assured, anti-democratic and egotistical little man who thinks he has a personal line on the God-ordained right answer to all our deepest questions – surely he will not be that kind of pope. The Lord works in mysterious ways indeed.

In this case, I don’t expect surprises from Ratzinger. And I think that’s why he was selected. And, please, no one is asking or expecting the Church to revise or reverse over night its peripheral docrines on human sexuality or even how to run the church (celibacy, women priests, etc.). What some of us were hoping for was more openness to discussion of the real problems facing the church, some attempt to square teachings with the actual experience of lay Catholics (the sensus fidelium, as the Second Council put it), and a spirit able to reach out to the poor, the marginalized and the faithless. I hope I’m wrong, but in Ratzinger, the cardinals have chosen someone who will make all these things much harder. This was a statement as much as a selection. And the statement is that the church is circling the wagons. They simply could not have picked a more extreme candidate. And that tells us something important.

Some of your emails on the astonishing selection of the new Pope:

As a fellow Catholic with a questioning brain and a personal conscience, your blog was my only comfort this morning as I absorbed the impact of Ratzinger’s election. This was a “circle the wagons” decision. The sex abuse crisis was a wake-up call that the church urgently needs to grow and change- the selection of Ratzinger is a signal that the Vatican still believes they can solve all problems with raw power (theirs) and blind obedience (ours). I never, never thought I would say this, but I really wonder if I can be a Catholic three years from now.

I certainly sympathize with the deep disappointment you and all Catholics with a remotely modern or progressive outlook on life must have felt to see the Vatican’s enforcer of arch-conservative dogma elected Pope. There are some reasons not to lose all hope, however, if we see this election in its broader context.
1. The guy’s 78 years old. I give this papacy 3-5 years tops, given that guys like him don’t exactly jog 3 miles a day and stick to a low cholesterol diet. His election was for a classic “stay the course” place-holder to give the church a few years to take stock of where it wants to go in the long term.
2. He did take the name Benedict rather than Pius, suggesting he wants to see himself as a force of moderation and reconciliation in the church. Benedict XV, who was Pope during World War I, succeeded the infamously conservative papacy of Pius X and attempted to smooth over a lot of the contentiousness sown by his predecessor. It was an interesting choice of name. This may be wishful thinking, but cardinals generally give great consideration to what name they take and the message it sends about their agenda as pope.
3. Ratzinger/Benedict represents the apogee of anti-modern conservative dogma in the Vatican. If you look at the next generation of cardinals who will be in line for the next papacy, guys like Schonborn of Austria, or Maradiaga of Honduras, they’re orthodox to be sure, but also much more liberal and forward-looking than someone like Ratzinger or John Paul II. It’s the /next/ Pope who will matter.
My guess is that Ratzinger will have a brief and rather unremarkable papacy that, at the most, will maintain the status quo in terms of doctrine and social teachings. That, of course, means several more years of heartache and disillusionment for people like you, Andrew. On the other hand, I don’t think he can seriously do more damage in these areas than John Paul did and, indeed, will reinforce the notion over the next couple of years that, ok, the old boys have had their heyday and now it’s time for a new generation to take the reins of the church leadership.

Ratzinger as pope scares me, too–the worst aspects of John Paul II, without the warmth. Maybe we need this to bring about intense demand for change. But oh how this will help perpetuate the crisis of AIDS in Africa, the shortage of priests, the waste of resources talented laypersons could bring to managing church affairs, conflicts with other faiths. The love of Jesus feels so far away.

I should shut up now. And pray.

Thanks for your emails both sympathizing and telling me to leave the Church entirely. But I am still in shock. This was not an act of continuity. There is simply no other figure more extreme than the new Pope on the issues that divide the Church. No one. He raised the stakes even further by his extraordinarily bold homily at the beginning of the conclave, where he all but declared a war on modernity, liberalism (meaning modern liberal democracy of all stripes) and freedom of thought and conscience. And the speed of the decision must be interpreted as an enthusiastic endoprsement of his views. What this says to American Catholics is quite striking: it’s not just a disagreement, it’s a full-scale assault. This new Pope has no pastoral experience as such. He is a creature of theological discourse, a man of books and treatises and arguments. He proclaims his version of the truth as God-given and therefore unalterable and undebatable. His theology is indeed distinguished, if somewhat esoteric and at times a little odd. But his response to dialogue within the church is to silence those who disagree with him. He has no experience dealing with people en masse, no hands-on experience of the challenges of the church in the developing world, and complete contempt for dissent in the West. His views on the subordinate role of women in the Church and society, the marginalization of homosexuals (he once argued that violence against them was predictable if they kept pushing for rights), the impermissibility of any sexual act that does not involve the depositing of semen in a fertile uterus, and the inadmissability of any open discourse with other faiths reveal him as even more hardline than the previous pope. I expected continuity. I didn’t expect intensification of the fundamentalism and insularity of the current hierarchy. I expect an imminent ban on all gay seminarians, celibate or otherwise. And I expect the Church’s immersion in the culture wars in the West – on every imaginable issue. For American Catholics, I foresee an accelerating exodus. But that, remember, is the plan. The Ratzingerians want to empty the pews in America and start over. They will, in that sense, be successful.

“How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. 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 towards 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.” – Pope Benedict XVI, yesterday. And what is the creed of the Church? That is for the Grand Inquisitor to decide. Everything else – especially faithful attempts to question and understand the faith itself – is “human trickery.” It would be hard to over-state the radicalism of this decision. It’s not simply a continuation of John Paul II. It’s a full-scale attack on the reformist wing of the church. The swiftness of the decision and the polarizing nature of this selection foretell a coming civil war within Catholicism. The space for dissidence, previously tiny, is now extinct. And the attack on individual political freedom is just beginning.

And so the Catholic church accelerates its turn toward authoritarianism, hostility to modernity, assertion of papal supremacy and quashing of internal debate and dissent. We are back to the nineteenth century. Maybe this is a necessary moment. Maybe pressing this movement to its logical conclusion will clarify things. But those of us who are struggling against what our Church is becoming, and the repressive priorities it is embracing, can only contemplate a form of despair. The Grand Inquisitor, who has essentially run the Church for the last few years, is now the public face. John Paul II will soon be seen as a liberal. The hard right has now cemented its complete control of the Catholic church. And so … to prayer. What else do we now have?

So quick? So soon? What can that mean? Ratzinger?? The dread rises.