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I have many Catholic friends and there is much I have to thank the Catholic church for but what comes next may offend some.
The last couple of weeks have been an interesting time from a media watchers perspective. The huge spectacle that surrounded the death of Pope John Paul II, his funeral and the process of selecting a new Pope has been beamed around the world. Acres of news print and hours of radio and TV time have been taken up with this matter. Of course this means that other, perhaps more important issues have been excluded from our media coverage. The first one to spring to my mind is the British election and Tony Blair’s fate. But more on that at other time.
Pope Benedict XV I, otherwise known as Joseph Ratzinger, a Cardinal of Munich, the Grand Inquisitor and Defender of the Faith is going to have to do a complete faith make-over if he is to do what his supporters say he wants to do. These supporters declare him to be a man of the times, a great theologian, a unifier and one who will build up the Catholic faith and restore harmony within its 1.2 billion membership.
Prior to becoming Pope Ratzinger had spent the last 24 years as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the secretive and widely feared organisation set up in the 16th century to "maintain and defend the integrity of the faith and to examine and proscribe errors and false doctrines". What was never made clear was how the Church came to decide what were "errors and false doctrines". Those who find his ascension "odious", to quote Leonardo Boff, say we have more to fear than an old man with a chip on his shoulder. They tell us the new Pope is an ideologue who believes firmly that the grand traditions of the Inquisition should be the guiding light of the church hierarchy and form the basis for enforcing Church law. Indeed, his reputation as a hard liner saw him dubbed "The Enforcer" and according to a Washington Post article in 2004, he was also known as "the Fundamentalist and Panzerkardinal, a German neologism that compares the Bavarian-born prelate to a battle tank".
We cant go back an find out the reasons why thousands were burned at the stake, drowned, flogged, drawn and quartered or in other ways tortured to death but what we can do is examine the recorded words of the man who, until a couple of days ago, held the office of the Defender of the faith. Time and space precludes a full and detailed exposition of Ratzinger’s ideology, but a few examples of his version of what faith is and how people should live their lives should suffice to give us some insight into his world view.
In the mid 1980’s, only a short time after taking on his role as Grand Inquisitor, he railed against what is known as the Liberation Theology, a movement that grew out of the slums and oppression of South American peoples who were being ruled by tyrants and dictators, many of whom were supported by the US and tacitly endorsed by the Catholic Church. This movement saw the corruption of church officials as no different to that of politicians and some Bishops began to preach against their superiors. Many encouraged resistance to their oppressors and some died believing that Christ taught that love was not enough. In order to bring about the Kingdom of heaven, they preached, one had to bring about justice here on earth.
This doctrine threatened the viability of some parts of the church as congregations voted to not send their money to the central coffers but decided instead to use it to build schools and run programs that would benefit their local communities. Ratzinger and others saw this as a threat and, dressing their wrath up in the clothes of faith, declared the Liberation movement nothing short of a Marxist takeover. In the mid 80’s Pope John Paul II, at the behest of Ratzinger did a tour of South America in a bid to quell the growing disquiet as the oppressed catholic people asked why their church was abandoning them. In the mainstream media this aspect of the Pope’s tour, heralded as a "success", was never revealed.
In short, under Ratzinger’s ideology the people are subordinate to the Church and the truth, only found in the Church, may mean some have to be, figuratively or literally, sacrificed for the greater ‘good’. He continued his attack on those Catholics in South America trying to assist the poor and oppressed right up until his last days as the Prefect.
In 1998 he ordered the destruction of a book titled "Women at the Altar" and thus confirmed his place in the minds of some as a woman hater. In 1999 he declared that the only true Mass was one delivered in Latin stating that those who had a "desire to be with divinity" could only achieve that if the Mass was delivered in the ‘original’ tongue. In 2000 he sought to have the Pope declare an apology for the "past sins" of the Church in a bid to absolve and clean up the image of the organisation he headed. While the mainstream media focused on the aspect of the apology that addressed the Church’s attitude to the Jews in WWII, it failed to report on the deeper implication of the apology which was to absolve those who committed acts of barbarity in the name of the Church while carrying out their acts under the protection of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In 2002 Ratzinger put on the public record his distain for women who wished to become priests by excommunicating seven women who took priestly vows offered by an Argentine priest, Romulo Antonio Braschi. In 2003 he issued an "LIBRERIA EDITRICE VATICANA" stating that the church viewed homosexuality as "deviant" and that to endorse the practice of marriage between gay couples would make "it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity." What those basic values are is not fully explained.
In 2004 he addressed the right wing, Center for Political Orientation in Rome and declared that while Islam was correct to perceive Europe as a secular society, Muslims had no right to make claims on any territory because, "Europe was founded not on a geography, but on a common faith." That faith, of course, was Catholicism to the exclusion of all others. Also in 2004, under his seal as the Defender of the Faith, he wrote a directive that begins, "The Church, expert in humanity…". It goes on to state that women should be subordinate to their husbands, that women are responsible for sin (because Eve bit the apple first) and that women are meant to serve not lead. According to Section 13 of the document, they must stay home, stay pregnant and do what comes ‘naturally’.
So let us not be fooled by the PR campaign being run by the holders of the keys to power in Rome. The few "on the record" examples given here present a picture of a man driven by anything but compassion, a wide and inclusive world view or a sense of unity. As George Pell, the arch conservative said of the new Pope, he is one that will enforce the "hard teachings of Christ". A tough love if you like. A love that like his secular counterpart, George Bush, this current Pope, is prepared to put aside in order to use pre-emptive strikes to destroy imaginary enemies and put down revolutions before they begin. In a time of pre-emptive war and unequal conflicts, we must ask, do we really want such a man presiding over the second largest religious faith on earth?
To my Catholic friends I say be prepared to defend your rights to determine your own futures. Be prepared to accept the support of those of us who are outside your faith and finally, be prepared to continue to work with us as we seek to make this place we call home, a little more like the Kingdom you hope for in the afterlife.
An interesting place to start your research into the new Pope’s history is at his website http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/