February 12, 2013
sullivan on the pope
For me, the great tragedy of Benedict was his panic after the Second Council. There is no disputing the elegance of his mind or the exquisite meticulousness of his perfect, orderly German theology – and his work alongside the more consistently modernist Hans Kung will stand the test of time. But his post-1960s theology had as much relationship to the real challenges of the 21st Century as the effete, secluded German scholar, embalmed in clerical privilege for his entire adult life. And his early promise as a theologian calcified into the purest form of reaction and fear when given the power to enforce orthodoxy, which is what he essentially did for well over two decades. It was excruciating to watch such a careful, often illuminating scholar turn into a Grand Inquisitor. It was revealing that a bureaucrat who never missed even a scintilla of heresy was able to turn such a blind eye to the monstrous rapes of so many children.more from Andrew Sullivan here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 08:07 AM | Permalink
Comments
Sullivan calls it.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 12, 2013 10:01:43 AM
Infallibility has a difficult go of it during those times that stoke the fires of social evolution.
Posted by: Dredd | Feb 12, 2013 10:45:52 AM
Maybe when he resigns as pope and becomes a mere mortal again, it will be possible to finally prosecute him for being an enabler of child abuse.
Posted by: Georg | Feb 12, 2013 8:42:15 PM
Georg, I believe the confession of increasing frailty and -- to use the pope's own words -- failure of "strength of mind" are intended to head off exactly that outcome. If he is too ill to cope, and failing mentally, then he cannot for the sake of justice be legally pursued. Any attempt to call him to account will look vengeful and misguided, and will not meet with the wide, if reluctant, support of Catholic people. The next pope will have a chance to come clean and make amends, but I am guessing that's not the kind of pope we'll get.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 12, 2013 10:22:01 PM
Georg, I believe the confession of increasing frailty and -- to use the pope's own words -- failure of "strength of mind" are intended to head off exactly that outcome. If he is too ill to cope, and failing mentally, then he cannot for the sake of justice be legally pursued. Any attempt to call him to account will look vengeful and misguided, and will not meet with the wide, if reluctant, support of Catholic people. The next pope will have a chance to come clean and make amends, but I am guessing that's not the kind of pope we'll get.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 12, 2013 10:26:47 PM
Elatia, I once worked in an office located opposite the mansion of a famous tycoon whose doctor conveniently pronounced him 'mentally and physically incapacitated' just before he was to due to go to court. I'd see him almost everyday sneaking out through his back gate to the local cafe or for a jog on the beach, chatting away avidly on his mobile phone.
It's a wonder anyone would want to be Pope what with the burgeoning legal sword of Damocles hanging over the post.
Posted by: Georg | Feb 12, 2013 11:27:57 PM
He's still sharper at 85 than Reagan was at 75.
Posted by: mr.ed | Feb 13, 2013 6:54:46 AM
Think mafia boss Vincent Gigante, and Chile dictator Auguste Pinochet.
A criminal indictment of a ruling Pope would be a disaster for the Roman Catholic Church. Even a prolonged petitioning of the International Criminal Court, currently underway, to bring a criminal indictment against Pope Benedict XVI - not to mention proceedings elsewhere - would gravely undermine the authority and influence of the Vatican.
It would provoke a crisis of faith unknown since the posting of Martin Luther's 'Ninety-five Theses.' It would raise the specter of a financial liability that would rise into the many billions of US Dollars. Not only could it bankrupt the Roman Church, but the process could lay bare the inner workings - and books - of the secret Vatican finances.
Andrew Sullivan and Elatia Harris are spot on. My personal view is that the decision to abdicate was not brought about by the sole and lonely deliberations of a prayerful BXVI. Rather, the decision was a joint agreement among the most powerful in the Curia, BXVI, and possibly the 'Black Pope.' Nothing in the Vatican is ever done in isolation, without a detailed script, nor without contingencies.
There is only one place in the world where a Pope could find virtual refuge and virtual protection. That is the United States. No, the Pope is not moving to America. But, an American Pope could set the stage for a hands-off-the-Pope arrangement. That is why my prediction is for Timothy Cardinal Dolan of the NY Archdiocese to be made Pope. He is charming, most combative, and without sentiment or scruple in protecting his power and that of the Church.
Posted by: Norman Costa | Feb 13, 2013 10:59:59 AM
Good point mr.ed, but Reagan was never the brightest porch light on the block.
It is time for the Grand Warlock to retire and knit doilies, and remember fondly the days of his Hitler Youth.
Serial pedophilia was always found in the "Church" , often a safe haven for morally corrupt and perverse outcasts, so we need to have some equanimity when judging.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Feb 13, 2013 11:48:17 AM
He was an anachronism from day one... out of time.... out of place. He may in some narrow sense have been an "illuminating scholar" but he failed to connect in a human way, and lacked empathy. At times he managed to outright alienate his listeners... the Regensberg speech comes to mind.
Posted by: j_93 | Feb 13, 2013 8:22:10 PM
Resignation is sort of against the rules for the papacy, and it would be surprisingly out of character for an arch-dogmatist like Ratzinger to have decided not to live out his term, unless he has been advised to by his legal team.
@ Dave. There has always been child abuse in the Church, but during Ratzinger's watch enabling child abuse has been made a crime, and rightly so. It is not a matter for you or me to judge, it is a matter for criminal courts. I am not judging, I am saying he ought to face investigation like anyone else, regardless of age, health, or perceived holiness.
Posted by: Georg | Feb 14, 2013 12:59:37 AM
I would have difficulty denying that the Catholic Church teaches, feeds and provides medical care to countless people who would otherwise go without. The element of beauty, belonging and comfort that the Church provides to everyone who wants it is not in my book something to laugh off, unless you feel free to despise what people who disagree with you find central to their lives.
The Church is at a turning point whether it wants to be or not, whether its uppermost powers even see that or not. If the pedophile culture now in place is enabled for a few more decades by a pope who digs in and brazens it out, that will go hand in hand with the continued suppression of Catholic women who want to be priests. The culture of pedophilia IS in place because women within the church are relatively powerless.
The result of all this will be increasing irrelevancy and finally schism. You don't think the rape of children will stop if there's a pretend crackdown on outed and outrageous rapist-priests, do you? Or that women will remain interested to play the role of handmaidens to the very rapists who are set above them forever?
For the sake of the good the Church does, which is immeasurable, I hope the next pope is the kind of person who can rule over a transitional era and head off self-destruction. I fear Norman is right -- a combative and charming and scruple-free pope is the one they may be looking for. If that's who they choose, all they'll be getting is someone who can fight to the finish, who can, as Mitt Romney put it in the concession speech he never thought he'd have to give, "leave everything on the field."
Someone should read a little history to the College of Cardinals. The tale of Napoleon and the Mamelukes, perhaps -- that invincible army of fighting men who were braver and more fierce than any in the known world, who were terrifying because they would do anything to win, but who fell to France because their weapons were out of date.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 14, 2013 10:34:57 AM
For the sake of the good the Church does, which is immeasurable
Orwell would be blushing!
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Feb 14, 2013 11:22:00 AM
Dave, I understand your feelings about the subject BUT feeding the hungry, tending the sick and educating children who would otherwise grow up innumerate and illiterate add up to immeasurable good. When a broad-based, international organization of atheists gets close to doing that, we can compare notes.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 14, 2013 1:28:57 PM
Elatia, Buddism, as taught by The Buddha, is arguably atheistic, yet there are millions of buddhist organisations around the world which do a similar job to the C Church.
the CC has done a lot of good but has also created poverty by opposing birth control, and supporting exploitative regimes it sees as a boulster against communism.
Atheist communists in Cuba provide superior and free education and health services compared to the US. So you don't need to believe in God to help others. I'm sure, if governments were not afraid of socialism, there could be an international organisation of atheists that could do what the CC does. The trouble is, they would no doubt seek to indoctrinate the poor in the same way as the churches do.
Posted by: Ilya Repin | Feb 15, 2013 6:27:51 AM
I meant to write "milions of Buddhists in countless organisations" not "millions of organisations"
Posted by: Ilya Repin | Feb 15, 2013 6:31:10 AM
When a broad-based, international organization of atheists gets close to doing that, we can compare notes.
They already have:
Atheist Countries have Highest Societal Health
No need for medieval superstition based religious hierarchy, rampant with corruption and pedophilia.
Can you possibly believe Catholicism is a good thing?
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Feb 15, 2013 11:13:49 AM
" In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world
is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. Youth suicide is an exception to the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular factors. No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are
usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developed democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes
outstandingly so."
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Feb 15, 2013 11:26:51 AM
Good article by Matthew Fox:
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/ratzingerpope-benedicts-destructive-legacy-2-catholic-theologians-speak-out-and-call-christians-to-action-to-save-christianity
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Feb 15, 2013 1:08:46 PM
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/ratzingerpope-benedicts-destructive-legacy-2-catholic-theologians-speak-out-and-call-christians-to-action-to-save-christianity
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Feb 15, 2013 1:10:06 PM
I am still grateful that my Catholic experience forever innoculated me against worshipping.
And I am forever grateful that I'm a woman; it made that much clearer the depth of error and hypocrisy of 'the Church'.
No religion can be free of major error, though, because worshipping is itself the error.
It can only ultimately be antithetical to human love, and, well, we're humans. The sooner we can stop giving an imaginary being all the credit for every good thing that humans do, the closer we will be to what Sullivan calls 'the wonderment of caritas', and the sooner we will believe that we have to save ourselves, and that maybe we can.
Posted by: Alice de Tocqueville | Feb 15, 2013 1:18:16 PM
Matthew Fox
Please! I've encountered and spared with the guy frequently.
The poster boy for religious apologists.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Feb 15, 2013 2:08:45 PM
I wasn't recommending him as a religious apologist. But he gave a good run down of Popie's, er, sins.
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Feb 15, 2013 2:38:33 PM
Everyone who points out non-religious governments and societies do better by many metrics than theocracies is not wrong. While the Catholic Church indeed brings pressure to bear on governments -- as does every other church -- I am looking at it as a religious organization, not as a government organization. So Dave -- I think you cannot compare Denmark and Norway, for instance, to the Catholic Church, only to countries in which most people, and nearly all people in government, are Roman Catholics. Also, a secularist welfare state is not the same as a worldwide church, by any means. By contrast, Evangelical prot churches in the US are known for having no particular mission to the poor -- only an active interest in the direct experience of God for their own members. If you want to make a point with cogency, you should probably compare apples to apples.
Not liking religion, and not being religious, ought not to blind people to the good things done by religious organizations. The Friends Service Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Church are very active in relieving suffering and addressing ignorance -- are they okay? Or not really? If the teaching and medical missions of the Catholic Church are dirty -- that is, about nothing but establishing a beach head for Church interests -- to a greater degree than those of the Episcopal Church or the Mormons, I would love to know it.
As a non-religious person who tries to live by the simple ethics sacred to most religions, I think it's distinctly possible to concede the good done by religious people and organizations I don't much agree with. Is that so hard?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 15, 2013 3:34:57 PM
Please pull my posts out of the spam trap.
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Feb 15, 2013 4:38:06 PM
Or not really? If the teaching and medical missions of the Catholic Church are dirty -- that is, about nothing but establishing a beach head for Church interests -- to a greater degree than those of the Episcopal Church or the Mormons, I would love to know it.
“Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.”
― Jon Stewart
HT: mirel
Please, we must have higher standards.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Feb 15, 2013 7:44:25 PM
Is it ever possible to draw a distinction between earnest people in a faith community who are examples of selfless service to others, and the selfish, one-gender oligarchs who preside over administration and orthodoxies of dogma and religion as an organization?
I remember a call to progressive women in the Catholic Church, about the middle of last year, to leave the Church as an expression of opposition to whatever the latest nonsense perpetrated by the Vatican and its functionaries. Frankly, this is a stupid and uninformed challenge. The Church, in Catholic teaching, is not the Vatican. The Church is the people of God, not the Pope, nor the Princes of the Church, and not Curia. The call should have been for the resignation of the hierarchy, beginning with BVXI. The call should have been for progressive women in the Church to oust the criminals, and the morally corrupt.
At the Parish level priests and nuns are supporting Catholic couples who are childless and resort to IVF for the conception of their children. Gay couples are being married in secret by compassionate (need I say progressive) priests. Retired bishops are ordaining women, in secret. Most priests are indifferent to artificial birth control. And there are those who see the good in using condoms to prevent the spread of deadly, sexually transmitted diseases.
Catholics, and Christians of many denominations are stocking and staffing soup kitchens, food pantries, and food delivery vans for the hungry. At any point in time, there are thousands of Catholic missionaries who are ministering to the most wretched human beings in the most squalid of circumstances. [Please note that I agree with Christopher Hitchen's evaluation of Mother Teresa.]
Religion is structure, organization, administration, edifice, orthodoxy, purse strings, theological courts of justice, and self-aggrandizing ritual. A faith community and spiritual fellowship that practices selfless service toward their fellow creatures, and thank the God of their faith for the opportunity to do so, are entirely different. No atheist nor agnostic has to ascribe to the reality of a supernatural creator in order to acknowledge the Church as the people of God.
A good dose of discernment is required here.
Posted by: Norman Costa | Feb 15, 2013 9:51:45 PM
At the Parish level priests and nuns are supporting Catholic couples who are childless and resort to IVF for the conception of their children. Gay couples are being married in secret by compassionate (need I say progressive) priests. Retired bishops are ordaining women, in secret. Most priests are indifferent to artificial birth control. And there are those who see the good in using condoms to prevent the spread of deadly, sexually transmitted diseases.
And this is considered brave, and out of bounds for the "Church"?
Any normal person would consider these actions as part of daily life.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Feb 16, 2013 12:09:45 AM
Dave,
You hit the nail on the head. These members of a faith community are normal, and consider these actions part of their daily life. You help me make the point that it's the corrupt oligarchy who should leave the Church, not those who believe in, and practice, selfless service to others. You help me make another point that legitimate criticism of 'religion' should not paint the people of God with the same broad brush.
Posted by: Norman Costa | Feb 16, 2013 1:02:58 AM
It was hard for Hitchens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG-lgmPvYA
Film on pedophilia:
http://viooz.eu/movies/15909-mea-maxima-culpa-silence-in-the-house-of-god-2012.html
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Feb 16, 2013 9:07:04 AM
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21484252
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Feb 17, 2013 12:20:48 AM
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