German Newspaper - They Hate Pope Benedict Because He is A Happy Catholic

Father Z has a important post here at The seeping cracks are spliting open . The people that hate the Faith within the Church and outside are going to after Pope Benedict.

The Ratzinger Forum has translated a wonderful article that appeared in Germany's most prestigious paper, Frankfuerter Allgemeine Zeitung.

A few notes the translator has done his best to translate the title. In English it comes out The well-contented Pope . The German word Der Grundzufriedene [literal meaning, 'the one who is fundamentally satisfied'], to mean 'perfectly contented', the article says that the controversy unleashed in the past few days "has to do with the fact that Joseph Ratzinger is above all a Catholic who is perfectly contented to be one."

The other German word used at toward the end of the piece Kulturkampf is the term used to define the inflamed political and cultural struggles between the Catholic Church and the German states during the period that began after the First Vatican Council (1967-1870) to the decades (1871-1919) following the establishment of the German Empire. More specifically, the term sums up all the anti-Curial and anti-clerical legislation put into place by the German government during those years.

Here is the piece long but worth the read for many of us that will be called on to defend the Church and its Vicar. (ALL BOLDING IS MINE).

The well-contented Pope
by Heinz-Joachim Fischer
Translated from Feb. 1, 2009

Joseph Ratzinger, who has been Pope for almost four years now, has in his life (born 1927) stirred up quite a bit - arousing contradiction and outrage in some, enthusiastic agreement in others. As an 'extraordinary' Professor of Theology (starting in 1958), he disquieted conservative Catholics, because he drew forth new insights from the old and virtually ignored treasury of the Church, and amplified these insights persuasively at the Second Vatican Council.

As 'ordinary' [in the academic sense] university lecturer (since 1959) in Bonn, Munster, Tuebingen and Regensburg, he irritated the 'progressives' because he refused to swim with the mainstream of 'acceptable' ideas in the 1960s and 1970s.

As Archbishop of Munich and Freising (1977-1981), he embarrassed some of the faithful because of his erudition. And as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that he became since (1981), he was soon labelled as a Panzer in the army of John Paul II.

He drew the ire of peace movements because as early as September 1984, he called Communism 'the shame of our time', and of Protestants, because from the front ranks of the Church hierarchy, he reminded the world of the fundamentals of Catholic belief that it is the only Church of Christ.

As Pope (since 2005), Benedict XVI provoked the ire of Muslims in a lecture in Regensburg where he sought to shed light on the relationship between faith and reason, and on the misuse of religion to justify violence - not unimportant in our time - by using a citation that was critical of Mohammed. And now Benedict stands accused - after revoking the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, among them Richard Williamson, who has questioned the Holocaust - of rehabilitating a Holocaust-denier, of sympathizing with the extreme right, and of once again harboring anti-Semitism and other dark and reactionary tendencies within the Catholic Church.

But one hopes this devilish operation may be stopped once and for all. For some time now, some Jewish leaders have from time to time professed to be offended by certain actions of Benedict, criticizing what they claim to be his lack of goodwill for Israel and his veneration of his predecessor Pius XII.

And now it seems Benedict - the humble Pope who visited Auschwitz in May 2006 - has thoroughly ruined himself with them. With quite a long list of sins. What is it then that makes Joseph Ratzinger from Marktl am Inn seem to provoke so much?

He certainly does not appear aggressive by nature. Gun salutes and the weapons of rifle clubs still terrify him. It must be for what Joseph Ratzinger is, above all: a perfectly contented Catholic.

This is quite rare in intellectual Europe and where it exists, it is often hidden. And that is why, like St. Sebastian, he appears to draw all the arrows towards him at every opportunity. Catholic - and happy about it:

What a provocation! But so he is. Since his childhood in a devout family, since his early years in Bavaria. His intelligence has led him to draw forth all the good there is in his Church, to demonstrate what is joyful in her history, to explain what is best about its present. He cannot do otherwise. He is not constrained by her shortcomings - he knows very well what they are, and that the Church is dealing with them.

He looks around him and finds that under God's earth, the ideas of the Catholic Church on what is good for mankind are, all in all, particularly right. In which, he is certainly opposed by critics within the Church itself and by skeptics outside it.

His contentment is surprising, Because since John XXIII 50 years ago, on January 25, 1959, in the Chapter Hall of the Monastery of St. Paul outside the Walls, announced that he was calling a Council of all the bishops of the world, and opened it in October 1962, the whole world interpreted it to mean that the Catholic Church would change itself fundamentally and in detail, in order to keep abreast of the times and its progress.

It was thought Catholics themselves would seek out the smallest splinter in the beam and make every effort to smooth it. That, the outside world thought, was what the Good Pope John meant by 'aggiornamento'. Since then, the pressure for change has weighed heavily on the Church.

In that same year of 1959, on April 15, one day before his 32nd birthday, Ratzinger, as Professor of fundamental theology, the foundation of the doctrine of the faith, began lecturing at the University of Bonn. In a 'new tone', as he describes the reaction of his students in his memoir Aus meinem Leben(Milestones, English edition). The theology professor experienced then that the announcement made by the rotund Pope "had reanimated and, for many, even intensified to the point of euphoria, the atmosphere of renewal and hope" in the Church.

The young Ratzinger shared the enthusiasm for the coming Council of the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne, Josef Frings, 40 years older than he, and as his expert consultant in Rome - who came to be called a 'teenage theologian' half- admiringly, half in jest - he was able to have some influence through four Council sessions, from 1962 to 1965.

Therefore Ratzinger rather quickly distinguished between 'true and false renewal' in the Church. Such that after a lecture Ratzinger gave at the Katholikentag [Catholic Day] in Bamberg in 1966, the then chairman of the German bishops' conference, Cardinal Julius Doepfner, one of the four influential moderators of the Council, publicly and frowningly reproached him for his 'conservative streak'.

But the Professor was 'deeply disturbed' by the Church in Germany and German Catholicism. Because, as he wrote: "Now everything in the Catholic Church, at least in its public consciousness, seemed to be open to revision... subject to control by academics.

Behind this tendency towards domination by the specialists, one could already sense another tendency - the idea of a people's sovereignty in the Church, in which the faithful themselves would decide what they understand by 'Church', which seemed to be defined only as 'the people of God'. The idea of a Church from beneath, the 'people's Church',... was introduced." A people's democracy in the Church? No. Rather, the opposite - the Pope thinks.

Now, with the revocation of the excommunications, it is Benedict's intention to heal an unnecessary schism between tradition and renewal within the Church. Perhaps he also desires to tone down the blind defamation of conservatives within the Church itself, the hysterical fear towards those who happen to love the conventional and the orthodox.

That some traditionalists may also have gross ideas - some that need to be dramatically condemned even - and that their politics may be rightwing, is nothing new. Thus it seems most remarkable that because of condemnable statements made by the marginalized Bishop Williamson - who has never been accepted as a bishop by the Church [and still is not, formally, as none of his other three colleagues are] - there is now this campaign against the Pope, this accusation of anti-Semitism against the Roman Catholic Hierarchy.

Is this just an over-dramatization by the media or a mini-Kulturkampf? The theologian Ratzinger, in all his post-Council actions, has never rejected any iota of the constitutions, decrees and declarations of the Second Vatican Council. He has always demonstrated with impressive words and actions that the Catholic Church has brought itself alongside the spirit of the times without falling victim to it. So says the Pope. Who will berate him for that?