Italian Newspaper- The Papacy Itself Is Under Attack

I would agree with this.

A unusual editorial today in Il Giornale, a secular newspaper. Translation Via the Ratzinger Forum here

Why the Pope is under attack
By the Editors
February 26, 2009

Theologians, intellectuals and newspapers, unbridled - all have accused Benedict XVI of being a monk isolated in an ivory tower, of living 'castled' in the Vatican "as if he were in the Kremlin" [Marco Politi] and of transforming the Catholic church 'to a sect' [Hans Kueng]. Pope benedict XVU us in the line of fire, enemy fire for the most part, but also 'friendly fire'.

Indeed, enemy fire also clearly has the intention and the hope of potentiating friendly fire. The newspaper La Repubblica is at the center of this double play in Italy. In Marco Politi's book on a Church of 'No's, he mostly talks to 'friendly fire' resource persons - he makes militant progressivist Catholics carry the fight against the Church and the Pope. Yesterday, in an inerview for La Stampa, Hans Kueng attacked the Pope for the nth time, accusing him of 'betraying the spirit of the Second Vatican Council". It is not so much Pope Benedict who is the target but the role of the papacy.

Paul VI had to face ecclesiastical dissent that was even more radical, and thought he had to formally draw up a new creed for the People of God, so much was he alarmed at how the foundations of the faith were being shaken. Many times, especially with the encyclical Humanae Vitae, the dissent from bishops and theologians was strident. But Paul VI sought to fulfill his mission as Pope to keep the unity of the Church in time, keeping tradition intact as the foundation of the Church.

John Paul II circumvented dissenting bishops and theologians through his apostolic travels throughout the world, using the simple faithful as a barrier against the ascendancy of the deformed teachings coming from the dissenters.

As a Pole who had expressed the freedom of the Church in its truth in the face of Communism - and as the straw that finally broke the back of the Soviet empire - earned him universal honor, but not the consensus of those bishops and theologians who thought papal power should be reduced to nothing more than inter-episcopal coordination - and that theological debate should carry on without doctrinal or disciplinary considerations. Pope Benedict is therefore in good company.

The occasion for the most recent barrage of 'friendly fire' was his revocation of the excommunications of the 4 FSSPX bishops, one of whom is a Holocaust denier. The Pope's detractors have circulated an idea of a monkish theologian Pope enclosed in his study and with his liturgies: a Pope intent on being spiritual, when the times demand that he should govern and look after his image in the world along the mediatic model set by John Paul II.

With Pope Benedict, the relationship between the Church and other cultures and religions has become intense and doctrinal. He has acted profoundly on Catholic relations with Judaism and Islam. He has correlated such external relations with the doctrinal identity of the Church instead of simply reducing them to diplomatic relations or relationships pro forma.

Benedict's Pontificate is dense with significances and has not limited external Church relations to Vatican diplomacy - he has sought to imprint these relations unequivocally with the identity of the Church as the mystical Body of Christ. John Paul II's Pontificate derived its greatest strength from his communicative success which depended on the personal qualities of Karol Wojtyla, not to the figure of the Papacy itself. And Benedict XVI has proven the measure of his commitment by seeking a conformity between the doctrine of the Church and its actual life - for instance, asking the Synod of Bishops to confront the line between modernism and anti-modernism, in terms of relating the historico-critical analysis of the Bible to its value as a document of Christian faith impregnated by both Revelation and Tradition.

The decades which divide the early part of the 21st century from the 1960s - the Vatican-II years - weigh like centuries. Modernity ended with the collapse of communism. And in the postmodern world, the crisis of capitalism has brought on new problems added to historic ones. The Muslim challenge ranks alongside the secularist challenge in a common attempt to reduce the Church to an insignificant post-modern miniority.

The West and communism were much more internal to Catholic culture than what we may now call post-capitalism. Meanwhile, benedict XVI has given a spiritual and intellectual profile to the Catholic Church in our time, in which the religious question is reinforced by the very contradictions of the world in which she must function. In the non-Catholic Christian world, the most vital communities today are the Orthodox Churches and the Pentecostal communities - all similarly marked by a deep belief in spiritual experience and the mystery of the Christian event.

On the other hand, the Christan churches which have delivered themselves over to modernity and post-modernity - like the Anglical Communion and the Lutheran and Calvinist churches, the churches of the Reformation - appear to have exhausted their religious life. Benedict XVI as Pope has continued the work and mission of the Popes, placing firmly the identity of the Catholic Church in a historical praxis, uniting mystery and message, orthodoxy and communication. And it is for this that he is the target of both enemy fire and friendly fire.