The ABC blog ran an article written by a Christian Science Monitor reporter and in fact was on the Monitor just a few days ago. The article is so bad and one sided one hopes it is not an warning that the reporting in the usually excellent Monitor reporter has gone down.
This is a long post but it is worth posting this whole article and commenting on it it full.
In the past 30 years, the Vatican has moved strongly to reassert the authority of a traditional, even orthodox Roman Catholicism --
Horrors even Orthodox Catholicism!!
to bring the notion of a "one true church" to Europe and then the larger world. The intent was to reverse the "open" or liberalizing trend of the church represented by Vatican II.
Vatican II never got rid of the concept of the "one true Church". The only trends were those that tried to make Vatican II documents in their own image. How much you want to bet this journalist has never read the Vatican II.
In the past three decades, the Vatican has cracked down on liberation theology, affirmed traditional sexual morality, and is now quietly supporting ultradevout Catholic groups such as Opus Dei and the Legions of Christ -- while curbing ecumenical outreach and describing Protestant churches as not authentic.
Actually it should clear that the Vatican has cracked down on a variation of Liberation theology based on Marxism and that salvation could come from the fount of a machine gun.
Yes the Vatican has reaffirmed things like sex before marriage is wrong- HORRORS
As to Opus Dei and Legions of Christ, it is true the Vatican has supported these groups. Though it should be pointed out that the Vatican under Benedict and in fact before he was Pope wanted to crack down on the abuses of the Legionnaires of Christ. Further the Vatican has encouraged other groups that certain traditionalisst do not like such as the charismatic renewal.
I have no idea where this reporter learned the Vatican has "curbed" ecumenical outreach. Was not the whole recent year of St Paul an effort in part to do ecumenical relations.. Has he visited the Vatican web page where one sees outreach to our those separated from us. Goodness is he aware that Benedict as a Cardinal was crucial on the major Catholic / Lutheran Document that settled many matters and in fact was signed on by the world wide body of Methodists. In fact he is familar at all on any of Benedicts writings on Protestants at all. Further how did John Paul the II hinder Protestant relations. I think it was the most loved Pope by Protestants in history,
As to "Protestant churches as not authentic" I have to think he is referring to "DOMINUS IESUS" . Please read the whole thing. Here is what is crucial. That a Church must have apostolic succession and must be be centered around the Eucharist to have the proper title of Church. As to other Christian communities and I quote:
In fact, “the elements of this already-given Church exist, joined together in their fullness in the Catholic Church and, without this fullness, in the other communities”.65 “Therefore, these separated Churches and communities as such, though we believe they suffer from defects, have by no means been deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church”
Again it is tad more complex than the reporter lets on. Ahh so many error in just a few sentences.
he most constant, diligent, and serious champion of these moves is a shy but brilliant German theologian, Josef Ratzinger -- now Pope Benedict XVI.
Yes I agree at least he is "brilliant".
Princeton University Renaissance scholar Anthony Grafton, not a Catholic, says Pope Benedict is "probably the greatest scholar to rule the church since [Pope] Innocent III," in the 13th century.
Well maybe. We are talking a lot of Popes there.
"There is no great issue, no direction in Catholic theology, not dominated by Ratzinger over the past three decades," says Hermann Haring, a liberal Jesuit theologian who studied with Ratzinger and has written a book about his theology.
No direction in all of Catholic theology? I doubt that.
Yet a grand effort to restore authority and make the church purer coincides with an epic impurity -- abuse of children by thousands of priests and many bishops in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. To understand Pope Benedict's past, present, and perhaps future responses to the sexual abuse crisis, one must examine the arc of his religious life.
Of course Benedict might see a connection between a false Catholic faith and the current crisis.
His vision for reforming the Catholic Church was often so all-absorbing that pedophilia got swept under the Vatican carpet, sources say. At the same time, a crackdown on Vatican II -- the controversial three-year papal council in the mid-1960s -- amplified a culture of fear, secrecy, and hierarchy.
Good God. Who are these "sources'. All right lets be honest here. . Does anyone thing he spent week on this checking on the reliability of sources? Also how has Vatican II been enduring a "crackdown".
"Many rules and codes came down, but efforts to talk 'up' were thwarted," says a Jesuit official in Germany with knowledge of the issue.
What? I suppose it is true Canon lawyers were arguing if certain procedures and sanctions were correct. However Benedict was in the lead of trying to over overrule them
"[Pope] John Paul II was the face of the church's world mission, while Ratzinger stayed in Rome, working the books, making rules as the pope's enforcer," says Karl Josef Kuschel at the University of Tubingen seminary in Germany.
The "Pope's enforcer" how original. Again this has all the aspect of a google written article done between a person morning coffee break and long lunch.
"Ratzinger has been appointing bishops for 30 years. It is now his church. The bishops today were chosen exactly because they agreed with him."
What? No Pope John Paul the II was appointing Bishops and many other Cardinals had more influence on the process than Ratzinger. In fact even among Catholic haters of Ratizinger I rarely heard this charge that he was the real Godfather of Cardinals. What is this based on?
In dozens of interviews with church officials and theologians in Germany, the U.S., Spain and France, many Catholics say the Vatican is not missing cues nor "tone deaf" in its handling of pedophilia. Rather, the abuse cases are playing out fitfully within the pope's vision of the church as ultimate arbiter of spiritual authority, Scripture and holiness on earth.
In this sense, the Vatican is not looking to adapt, modernize or open itself to new interpretations. Recent Vatican statements against women's ordination, and reaffirming priestly celibacy, are small examples.
Notice how to handle the crisis of sex abuse is for some reason linked to these unrelated doctrinal issues.
"The world is evil and the church is pure," says an Austrian church official. "This is serious for Benedict. He doesn't want the church to be a joke. He's suspicious of chaos and avoidance of discipline and order, and of human efforts to adopt popular culture and create church out of the world, instead of a church that transforms the world. This deeply upsets him. He sees all salvation taking place inside the Catholic Church. He believes that."
Again quoting the above cited document on this issue:
Yet ironically, child abuse has arguably brought greater disorder than the ferment of Vatican II in the late 1960s. This spring, the pope described pedophilia as "the petty gossip of dominant opinion" before shifting 180 degrees and asking contrition from St. Peter's Basilica on June 11: "We ... insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again."
This right here shows the sloppiness of this "reporting". First the translation of what was said in Italian is not exactly what we mean by petty gossip in the English world .HOWEVER THE POPE NEVER SAID THAT ANYWAY in reference to sexual abuse. In the 2010 Palm Sunday homily (please note this journalist never cited the date or text so you could read it yourself) the Pope said:
But what direction is this? How do we find it? Our Gospel passage offers two clues in this regard. In the first place it says that it is an ascent. This has first of all a very concrete meaning. Jericho, where the last part of Jesus' pilgrimage began, is 250 metres below sea-level, whereas Jerusalem the destination is located at 740 to 780 metres above sea level: a climb of almost 1,000 metres. But this external route is above all an image of the internal movement of existence that occurs in the following of Christ: it is an ascent to the true heights of being human. Man can choose an easy path and avoid every effort. He can also sink to the low and the vulgar. He can flounder in the swamps of falsehood and dishonesty. Jesus walks before us and towards the heights. He leads us to what is great, pure. He leads us to that healthy air of the heights: to life in accordance with the truth; to courage that does not let itself be intimidated by the gossip of prevalent opinions; to patience that bears with and sustains the other. He guides people to be open towards the suffering, to those who are neglected. He leads us to stand loyally by the other, even when the situation becomes difficult. He leads us to the readiness to give help; to the goodness that does not let itself be disarmed, even by ingratitude. He leads us to love he leads us to God.
He was not talking about the sexual abuse crisis but just Christian living!!
From Progressive to Traditionalist
Ratzinger was not always seen as the conservative enforcer of Catholic doctrine. In 1965, the arrival of Ratzinger to the theology faculty at Tubingen brought a stir of anticipation. Ratzinger's bestselling "Introduction to Christianity" seemed a new impulse for democracy and freedom. The school had a joint Protestant-Catholic faculty. Change was in the air. Ratzinger was brought in by Hans Kung, a progressive young Swiss lion of Vatican II; for a time, it looked as if the two men were at the start of a beautiful friendship.
Nazism and the war had disturbed young German Catholics who were suspicious of absolute ideology. Vatican II appeared to "open" the church and allow dialogue and airing of views without fear of ecclesiastical reprisal.
At Tubingen, Protestants partook of Catholic learning; Catholics learned Protestant concepts of scriptural interpretation and subjective ideas about spirituality from the teachings of Swiss theologian Karl Barth and German theologian Rudolph Bultmann.
Yet Ratzinger's first lecture to the joint faculty, an important tradition for new professors, was surprising. He spoke on "The significance of the church fathers for Christianity."
Forgive me if I don't take the radical "Father Kung on this. I also suspect the Protestant faculty was not shocked that he talked on the Father of the Church. I suspect they talked on them themselves, Now one that has even kept up with the Pope's recent talks and writing know this recount is very probable misleading. Benedict touched on this theme on his now controversial talk about the Muslim world.
Gregorian Catholic caught this article earlier thankfully and hits this part of misinformation:
In the first place, "Hellenism" is part of the Scriptures themselves, if one bothers to read the Gospel of John (and the rest of the Johannine corpus, the Epistle to the Hebrews, Colossians, etc.), not to mention the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Apart from that, however, Father Ratzinger's point was that sola Scriptura was invalid as a hermeneutic, an insight he had gained by studying St. Bonaventura for his Habilitationsschrift at Munich: "These insights gained through my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important for me at the time of the conciliar discussion on revelation, Scripture, and tradition. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura, because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given" (Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Ignatius Press, 1998, 108-109; cf. Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology. Fundamentals of Ecclesiology, Maximilian Heinrich Heim, Ignatius Press, 2007, 160-161). In other words, revelation precedes the writing down of Scriptures. Even more drastically, revelation must precede the reading of Scripture for every person. And the written Scriptures themselves are words on a page; they do not offer up their contents without interpreters. And the Church Fathers to whom Father Ratzinger was "returning" were the gold standard by which one measured one's fidelity to the Church because their interpretations of Scripture were in conformity with those of the Church on the crucial subjects of Christology, theology, ecclesiology, eschatology, Biblical hermeneutics, sacramental theology, anthropology, and the appropriation and limits of the reception of classical antiquity. It was not a matter of temporal proximity, but of faithfulness.
The student protest marches at Tubingen in the '60s were a watershed for Ratzinger, moving him toward conservatism. He departed to a quiet Bavarian college. He wrote against democracy in the church, berated the influence of Marxism, and criticized what he called "the dictatorship of relativism." He disliked the language of individualism, of crisis of faith, the search for freedom and meaning, and existential moments.
"He saw it as individuals separated from the collective institution of church, where salvation and meaning are found. In service to the true church, one found a new life," says Kuschel.
In 1977, Ratzinger became archbishop of Munich and Freising. Former Jesuit Paul Imhoff remembers Ratzinger as absorbed in medieval Catholicism.
Imhoff, who was ordained by Ratzinger before leaving the church to marry a theology student, went to a "professors' carnival" with him.
"We had jokes, dancing, harmless fun," he says. "Ratzinger was charming. But the whole time he spoke about restoring the old Europe ... where the church takes precedence over the state."
Well it would not be a hit piece if it not mention "medieval". First how many times has in fact Benedict talked against this alot as least as the author tries to portray it:
I would be very surprised if the Holy Father went the route of Unam Sanctam [However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: 'There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God' (Rom 13:1-2), but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other.]. But it's always good to remember that one reason the Catholic Church even has a "Social Doctrine" is because the Church had to claim "citizenship status" for itself in the public arena (Caritas in Veritate, #56). Thus traditional Catholic moral teaching was recast as "social justice" teaching for the benefit of the greater polity being addressed.Pedophilia cases started mounting in Vatican files in the 1980s. But now, as head of church discipline, Ratzinger was primarily focused on silencing priests or liberation theologians, such as the Brazilian, Leonardo Boff, who tried to empower farmers and peasants.
What we have here is the media theme of Ratzinger being the "VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY"of the Vatican. Part of this is because the secular media has no clue who else is in the Curia of the Vatican. In all reality the Vatican Secretary of State is more akin to a American VP than Ratzinger ever was.
Further Sex abuse cases were never under Ratzingers jurisdiction except in the most narrow of cases. He had a lot on his plate, not included a lot more than "persecuting" people that were just trying to hurt the poor peasants.
The 1990s brought strictures against abortion, gay rights, same-sex marriage, contraception and promotion of abstinence and celibacy -- just as U.S. bishops were reporting hundreds of child abuse cases, but getting little clarity on how to handle them.
Ratzinger again had very little juridiction or access to the case files unless they involed sins against the integrity of the confessional and Sacrament of Penance.
Most heads of the church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) serve two terms, or 10 years. Ratzinger served 24, then became pope.
In recent years, a Vatican focus on ecumenical outreach has given way to evangelical outreach. In June, a new pontifical office to "evangelize" areas of the world that have suffered "an eclipse of the sense of God" was announced.
The church has rebuffed Protestants and drawn sharp lines on Islam. But Rome has improved ties to Eastern Orthodox churches.
I must have missed the massive rebuffing of Protestants.
On July 21, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill praised the pope for holding firm against women priests and not succumbing to "sinful elements of the world" that have entered Protestant churches via gays and female clergy, and offered to work with the pope on world issues.
Well I am all for that.
Today, after his 30-year quest to reshape the church, the sex scandal may be a sizable legacy. It is unclear where the pope is headed.
In the past month, there's been some shift in tone and attention. In late July, the church extended to 20 years the period that victims' claims can be investigated. But the key question of whether offending priests should be reported to civil authorities is undecided in Rome.
The key question the Church is struggling with here is what to do in areas of the world where the Government does not look like the league of women voters.
Beyond his few pronouncements, the pope's views on the sex scandal are an enigma.
What? Few pronouncement? I think the Pope's views are quite clear.
Vatican sources say the pontiff spends time writing books and only sees two church officials regularly.
Oh please!! The pope is meeting with a lot more than just two Church offiicals as a look at his daily calender can tell us. This is so absurd it is beyond belief.
"Even bishops now wait two weeks or more for a meeting," says a church official who is concerned about the pope's isolation.
Why Even BISHOPS!!!! Lord as of 2009 the Catholic Church had 5100 total Bishops in the World. So yes I suspect they might have to wait a bit to get an appointment. Further The Pope cannot be swamped. Much like the President of the United States there is a gatekeeper. In the USA that is the Chief of Staff. Everyone wants to see the President but if met with them all he could get nothing done So even if the Bishops cannot see the Pope they do go to another high ranking person in the Vatican Curia. The Pope is a human being and he cannot micro manage a Church of over a billion souls
On the whole a very one sided article.
2 comments:
As to the last few lines, we might add that Bishops would need over 2 weeks - more like 2 months if not over a year - to clear their calendars to arrange a trip to Rome themselves.
So true!!
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