Why do I feel uneasy about Papa Ratzi
Posted on Jan 1st by William in Faith & practice
Reflecting on the Pope’s new year message (and having offended one or two friends with an intemperate Tweet) I now have to ask – why do I feel uneasy about Papa Ratzi?
It’s said (though last year contradicted by his spokesman) that Benedict XVI was conscripted into the Hitler Youth. If so, it’s correct to say “he was a Nazi”, given he belonged to a Nazi paramilitary organisation. But nothing suggests he supported Nazi ideology then or now, so I accept that it’s irrelevant and provocative to call him “a former Nazi”. After all Hans Scholl of the White Rose movement was also in the HJ, and we do not diss his memory for it.
As my new-year hostess – a keen Tablet reader – briskly says, Benedict XVI is authoritarian, doesn’t get it on interfaith relations, and makes ill-advised remarks about Muslims. More broadly (as The Tablet argues this month) the Catholic Church has a serious problem with endemic clericalism.
He has described homosexuality as a
strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder
He’s ready to call for mutual respect between people regardless of ethnicity or faith, but finds it “not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account”. This is a serious moral shortcoming, guaranteed to increase suffering and conflict in society, which suggests to me a flawed spiritual process underlying it.
Furthermore, if I read this right, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Inquisition) since 1981 he has been responsible for jurisdiction over clerical sexual misconduct, including maintaining confidentiality of internal Church investigations which has allowed such additional unnecessary suffering. On a 25-year performance review he gets low marks for this: straight gamma.
My friend Adriana found Catholicism an indispensible bulwark against totalitarian Communism. It strikes me as an incredible religion, capable of extraordinarily profound insights (though I see Benedict formally denounced the writings of my favourite Jesuit thinker Antony de Mello as incompatible with the Chritian faith and capable of causing great harm). Catholicism has also been the foundation some fabulous artistic achievements, so there’s something pretty powerful going on in there.
But for me the present Pope isn’t the opposite of communism at all. He still embodies some of the unattractive aspects of concentration of power in a bureaucracy. He’s not oppressive to the same degree as a dictator, but there’s something distinctly stifling in his Weltauffassung, and a significant amount that is wrong and damaging.
I once met JPII. The immediate impression was of an overpowering personal warmth, and a hand like sandpaper. But I’ve never been able to shake off the feeling that a God who moves the body of Cardinals to declare his present successor the infallible spiritual leader of the one true church is moving in a pretty damn mysterious way.
I’d far rather call Joanna Lumley, more or less any Buddhist, even Barack Obama for a moral steer on big tricky issues. If I had to choose on whose knee to see my child bounce the present Pope would be at the same level as Gordon Brown wearing his fake smile; narrowly above convicted prisoners like Jonathan Aitken, but well below Stephen Fry, Stevie Wonder or the late Jimi Hendrix.
As for Beardie, he’s just in a different league. The CofE is luckier than it realises.
[I updated the language a bit to try to say what I really meant. Also: article on Ugandan "death to gays" law - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Frightening how fast religious support for (protestant-evangelical in this case) discrimintation as "not unjust" leads to this end point: lynching or state-sanctioned execution. Religion is a great responsibility...]
The trouble with your line of reasoning, William, is that is does not mean what you think it does.
All of your views about Benedict also apply to JPII (which is hardly surprising given that Ratzinger was JPII’s mover-and-shaker/enforcer).
Your beef is not with this pope, it is with Roman Catholicism itself, because you are actually criticizing him for being a Catholic. The Catholic position on homosexuality is clear and constant: it is a sin. To criticise the pope for taking this position is to say he should be less Catholic, which seems an odd thing to suggest to the head of the Catholic Church. The Catholic position on Islam (and indeed all other religions) is that they are in error and all muslims (etc.) should become Catholics.
This has always been the Catholic position. So to act as if Ratzinger/Benedict somehow represents a qualitative change in the position of the Catholic Church is simply untrue. You may not like him for his unambiguous turn of phrase, but regardless of what you (or any Tablet reader) might like to think, he is just presenting the mainstream Catholic orthodoxy (he is the pope after all, so that is kind of his job) without the usual fudge that people from the Anglican tradition prefer religious statements to be couched in
The Catholic church is authoritarian in nature *by design* and they have never made any bones about that (papal statements on doctrine are “infallible” etc., which means “believe this or you ain’t a Catholic”)… but unlike an authoritarian *state*, you can just stop being a Catholic if you no longer wish to follow the papal line.
Personally I am an atheist so I do not actually have a dog in this fight, but I think it is not a good idea to take Pope Benedict to task on one hand and say nice things about JPII on the other when there are no meaningful doctrinal differences between them.
And the ‘Nazi’ thing just means “Ratzinger grew up in German during WW2″ and is the rhetorical equivalent of a tactical foul.
Entirely fair and helpful comment Perry; thanks. I quite accept that my personal encounter and impression of JP2 never touched his theology of which I have only a dim and somewhat ominous impression.
Also, I accept the “former Nazi” point (indeed had just revised wording in post). I think “tactical foul” is a good description.
However, I was introduced in greater depth to Catholicism by a gay Catholic priest. I found his theology (which was far more intellectual and detailed than anyting I’d encountered, including superb ancient language skills) very persuasive. I have no doubt he was a good Catholic, and have no grounds to reject his Catholicism as anti-gay.
However he was emotionally one of the most screwed-up people one could ever meet, which is at best odd in someone giving an extraordinarily lucid description of a doctrine which is all about love.
I wonder what the FSM would make of all this…