REJOINDER TO 'THE YEAR OF TWO POPES'
I beg your indulgence, and your excuse ahead of time, if what I am about to do is going overboard, so I trust you will let me know ASAP. Paul Elie's article is composed of seven parts in 21 printed pages on a magazine, so even if I limited myself to commenting only on the most egregious statements, it still adds up to quite a lot. This is my rejoinder to the first three parts ...
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I must confess my first reaction was to the choice of picture for the cover – one of the overhead shots taken of the Pope as he walked towards a statue of the Opus Dei founder that he unveiled at St. Peter’s a few months ago. The picture was obviously chosen because it was the closest they could get to illustrate the teaser blurb for the article: HOW ‘MR INSIDE’ STEPPED INTO THE SHOES OF ‘MR. OUTSIDE’, AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
And then, on reading the article, it was clear from the third paragraph on, that Mr. Elie was using the so-called “secret diary” of the Conclave as his basis for his “reconstruction” of the Conclave, without saying so! His only reference to this “diary” was a sentence – “At least one (cardinal) wrote in his diary, which he would show to a reporter after the conclave” – without mentioning that this alleged “diary’ was the source of what he was recounting as to how many votes were obtained by who at each of the four ballots. That is disingenuous, to say the least, but indicative of bias.
Mr. Elie starts with the events of the Conclave, to which he adds nothing we have not read before. And I had wanted to start by citing the positive things that Mr. Elie had to write about Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, before I went on to cite the negatives. But that was not possible, because the positives are not always unequivocally so, as the following paragraphs will show. (Positive reporting/comments in bold, negative reporting/comments underscored):
“This is the story of how Joseph Ratzinger
took hold of the papacy and of what his accession meant for the Church today. It is the story of a man “outwardly seized by Christianity” (as he once wrote), seen
preparing to seize the moment, putting human ambition in the service of suprahuman demands.
It is a story of power and its exercise, though not in the usual pejorative sense. Ratzinger’s stern stewardship of the Congregation for the Doctine of the Faith had led the press to dub him “Ratzweiler” – and to luridly point out that the CDF was the successor to the Inquisition. But Ratzinger was at once more and less than an inquisitor. On the one hand, he was
a crack theologian reduced to vetting Vatican documents; on the other,
he was an intellectual with portfolio, speaking truth from power rather than to it.
“
Ratzinger had no need to grasp for the keys of St. Peter’s. As John Paul’s most trusted associate he didn’t have to pull rank or trade favors to make his influence felt. Rather, he drew near to the papal office by degrees. Over a period of years he
laid claim to the role of leader of the Church by making a series of strong interventions in the Vatican’s internal affairs, largely out of sight of the press and the vast Catholic populace, but very much in the gaze of the people who elect popes…..
“The events of the twelve months from the onset of John Paul’s last illness up to the present – a year of two Popes – complete a process that has been under way since the turn of the millenium. John Paul’s poor health prompted Ratzinger, always confident of the soundness of his own approach, to speak and act more boldly than ever. John Paul’s physical weakness made Ratzinger (7 years younger) seem spry and vigorous beneath his head of white hair; John Paul’s thick, clotted speech-made Ratzinger’s gentle enucniations seem the voice of clarity. John Paul’s struggle to carry on despite his ailments precluded the notion that Ratzinger’s own limitations – advanced age, a divisive public image, an attraction to thoughts more than to thinkers – were drawbacks in any important sense.
"
Did Ratzinger want to be Pope? Certainly – provided that this was what God and the other cardinals wanted of him. More and more, it seemed, he was wanted. Beginning in 2000 circumstances at the Vatican seemed to call Ratzinger to the papacy – to “convert” him or turn him around to the office, as he would put it. He saw the Papacy diminished by the Pope’s illness, and the Church weakened by scandals. He was clearly “head and shoulders above the rest of the cardinals,” one of his aides told me, “and he knew it;” he at once recognized his mastery of the mechanisms of Vatican power and trusted himself to use them properly. He did not – dared not – wait for John Paul to die; the Church was going off course again. So he prayed for guidance and then stepped in.
[
The entire paragraph is an egregious example of what I called presumptuous omniscience – a writer ascribing his thinking about his scenario of events to the protagonist of his story. But this is not fiction, and should not be!!!!]
Then he uses a trick that always works well, one Dan Brown used very effectively in another work of fiction, “The Da Vinci Code,” which the author, post-bestsellerdom, now claims to be all based on historical fact! The trick is to use sources perceived to be authoritative in their field. In Brown’s novel,
his “heroes” (as opposed to the “villain”, an Opus Dei priest) are a professor, a cryptologist-police agent and a world-renowned scholar – so that whatever he makes them say becomes believable to the reader because the characters are perceived to be authoritative, making the gullible forget that they are reading a work of fiction.
Now, Elie. After describing how he spent the summer months following the conclave in Rome seeking out Vatican insiders to interview – “cardinals and archbishops, curial officials and theologians…eager to talk”, he writes:
“My interlocutors told me
how Ratzinger deliberately took charge as John Paul faltered, and described what Ratzinger hadn’t liked about John Paul’s approach to the papacy. They provided the commentary that made it possible to form a clear picture of the conclave."
How exactly does one deliberately take charge in the world’s “last remaining absolute monarchy”? This is a sweeping statement that finds no support in the rest of the article. It is not as if Ratzinger had any power to give any orders or instructions that were outside the scope of his work at the CDF.
“Four men were especially forthcoming. As is common at the Vatican, they spoke with the understanding that they would not be named. I’ll give them pseudonyms. [
And he chooses the names of the four evangelists! Part of the “authoritative” trick!] “Matthew is a scholar who has known Ratzinger for forty years, a man who balances his admiration for the new pope with the skepticism [
or envy perhaps?]of one who has just seen a professional peer acclaimed as God’s vicar on earth. Marlk is a controversialist, a man in the public eye who knows the new pope well – but not as well as he knew John Paul. Luke is a monk who was called to Rome for his literary gifts; although he does not know “Benedetto” the way some of his friends do, he can quote him chapter and verse. John, trained in theology, was brought into contact with Ratzinger through curial service; he knows the new pope thrugh firsthand observation and direct interaction.”
He describes his informants as people “who had taken his (Ratzinger’s) classes, drafted his documents, carries out his directives, shaken his hand without pomp and circumstance.”
“Whereas John Paul seemed most at home when celebrating mass for 100,000 strangers, Benedict is most himself when among fellow churchmen in Rome. [
How does he know this – implying at the same time that Benedict is not at home saying Mass for 100,000 strangers!. Suppose Benedict is really most at home saying Mass, any Mass, anywhere, for a million people or just by himself to celebrate the Lord?] Whereas John Paul made all the world an altar, Benedict’s sphere of action is the compound of churches and offices surrounding St. Peter’s. [
DUH! This was not a function of their character, but of
the offices they happened to hold!] As a symbol of the Papacy, John Paul’s Popemobile has been replaced by Benedict’s personal theological library of several thousand books, which were photographed after his election so that they could be reshelved in the same order in the papal apartments.”
[
Nice thought, but I doubt that the Catholic who goes to St. Peter’s to listen to Benedict has ever thought about the library at all as a symbol for this Pope!]
And now we come to the breathtakingly outrageous conclusion that Mr. Elie spells out on Page 3 of a 21-page article:
“In short, Mr Outside has been succeeded by Mr. Inside; and the story of Ratzinger’s emergence as the Church’s leader reveals the ways in which is ponitificate is likely to affect the Church as a whole. In many ways
the central fact of the Papacy in the modern age is the gap between the pope’s growing power in the Church and his diminishing influence on the religious lives of individual believers. The gap is one that John Paul and his predecessors sought to close.
Under Benedict the gap is open – wide open. He will govern more but matter less than John Paul – and will probably matter less to the lives of individual Catholics than any other pope of the past half century.
Nowhere in the article does Mr. Elie cite anything to support what he calls “the Pope’s growing power in the Church”; and what he sees as the Pope’s, ie, the Church’s “diminishing influence on the religious lives of individual believers” is seen from the prism of cafeteria Catholics who choose to practice only what they want to practice, not what the Church teaches. What about the tens of millions who possess simple faith, both in the sense of belief and trust in the Church?
The same cock-eyed prism leads him to write off Benedict the way he does in terms of influence on the lives of individual Catholics! How does Elie know and what does he know, when in our two forums alone, he has already worked changes in dozens of members!
In Part II of the article, called “ Co-Workers in the Truth”, Elie points out that Wojtyla and Ratzinger were never really friends (“...even now the nature of the friendship is hard to put down”) but more fittingly, “co-workers in the truth.”
He starts by noting that the popular postcard on sale in Rome showing the Pope and the Cardinal in a fraternal embrace was “somewhat misleading” as it was the fealty embrace the Cardinal was obliged to give the new Pope in October of 1978. Could it not have been a sincere friendly embrace at the same time, considering that later, Elie himself mentions the fact that “it was not until the two papal conclaves of 1978 that they got to know each other” [
although, as George Weigel says in his biography of JPII, “they had been exchanging books since 1974,” and Benedict himself said in his October 2005 interview with Polish TV that they first came to know each other through their books] and that “in the second conclave, Ratzinger was quick to join a coalition led by Franz Koenig of Vienna proposing Karol Wojtyla as the next Pope“.
However, Elie also claims that at the time of the Conclave, Ratzinger “was the more prominent of the two” [
Really! In 1978?) being “a well-known theologian across Europe,” while Wojtyla was “a charismatic prelate immersed in the Church’s struggles in far-off Poland.” He does not state, however, that in the context of the 1978 conclave, Ratzinger had only been named archbishop and cardinal the year before (and therefore had had little episcopal or curial experience at all) , whereas Wojtyla had been archbishop Cracow since 1963 and a Cardinal since 1968.
He cites their individual contributions to Vatican II as “
beyond dispute – Ratzinger’s to Dei Verbum, a document about the sources of revelation, and Wojtyla’s to Gaudium et Spes, about the Church’s approach to the modern world…” Curiously, he does
not mention
Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, of which, as George Weigel points out in his biography of John Paul, “Ratzinger was one of the intellectual fathers.” But Elie goes on to say that Communio, the conservative post- Vatican II journal, was founded by Ratzinger, among others, in protest against “an overtly progressive reading of the council’s tests, particularly
Gaudium et Spes, Wojtyla’s key text, whose openness to modernity Ratzinger found unsatisfactory.” [
As though Ratzinger's objections were directed at Wojtyla's text principally!]
Then, inexplicably: “Ratzinger’s support of Wojtyla for pope then, was no simple act of deference to a cardinal older and more magnetic than himself.
It was a placing of his gifts at the service of a man who was in many ways still a question mark – but who would emerge in the short term as greater than he.”
He makes it seem so calculating on Ratzinger’s part! Surely neither Wojtyla nor Ratzinger at the time of the second 1978 conclave were in a position to think of curial appointments, nor was Ratzinger bidding for one as Elie appears to imply. And what is this business of “who would emerge in the short term a greater than he”? He makes it sound as though Ratzinger considered himself a competitor to Wojtyla!
[For a level-headed view of the nature of the relationship between Wojtyla and Ratzinger, one would do well to read pp. 442-444 of George Weigel’s JPII biography, a section titled “A Unique Partnership”, in which Weigel describes how John Paul “made the single most important curial appointment of his Papacy” when he named Joseph Ratzinger to be head of CDF.
In fact, John Paul had wanted to make Ratzinger Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education early in his Papacy, telling him “We’ll have to have you in Rome!” But Ratzinger said it would be impossible to leave Munich so soon after he was appointed! The offer to head the CDF came 3 years later when the position became available.]
Matthew, Elie’s scholar-informant, is quoted as saying that if Ratzinger had not already been Archbishop of Munich,
it would have been unlikely that John Paul would have made him an Archbishop even, from being a mere academic theologian before that, because of “John Paul’s suspicion of strong thinkers”! But, once Ratzinger was in Rome, “John Paul could sense that he knew more than anybody else, and so made heavy use of him…Then, because of the poor quality of John Paul’s episcopal appointments, Ratzinger stood out even more among the bishops, and John Paul leaned on him even more.”
Elie continues:
“For the next two decades he and John Paul represented the Vatican to the world. While John Paul received bishops or drafter encyclcicals from his desk in the papal apartments, Ratzinger supervised the CDF’s thirty experts..scrutinizing fortchoming Vatican documents as well as the work of suspect theologians. Sometimes the prefect would correct the Pope’s theology: when John Paul seemed to declare the restriction of the ordained ministry to men an infallible teaching, Ratzinger, though no supporter of a more open priesthood, made clear that this was not permissible.”
“Their Tuesday lunches and Friday-evening meetings became fixed points in the turning world of John Paul’s pontificate. Describing these appointments a few years ago,
Ratzinger made himself and John Paul seem relative equals, though in different roles. ‘We shake hands, sit down together at the table, and have a little personal chat that doesn’t have anything to do with theology per se. Normally, I then present what I want to say, the Pope asks whatever questions he has, and this starts another converation going.’” [
You will recognize this quote as Ratzi’s answer when Peter Seewald asked him in Salt of the Earth how this meetings went. Who but a determined skeptic would read into that that “Ratzinger made himself and John Paul seem relative equals” – he was describing a meeting between friends!]
Elie does report the following:
“He (Ratzinger) dispelled the idea that they were in lockstep: there were differences – about ecumenism, for example – within an “’nner harmony.’ At the same time, he dismised the notion that he was the architect of John Paul’s thought: ‘I’ve had a say in the Pope’s official teaching and contributed something that has also given shape to the pontificate. But the Pope has very much his own course.’
‘
Then he goes on with another artificial and therefore pointless scheme of comparison:
“..Wojtyla seemed born to wear white, whereas Ratzinger seemed more natural in a black cassock and beret. John Paul travelled the world on a never-ending pilgrimage; Ratzinger made a ritual of the daily walk from his office to his apartment…”
Again, DUH! Ratzinger seemed more natural in a black cassock, because that was how he dressed before he became Pope. Unless he lived in the tropics, he would never have had occasion to wear white before he became Pope! Does he now look unnatural, then, in Papal white? And as for John Paul travelling the world, while Ratzinger went from his office to his apartment - once again, this was a function of the respective offices they held; it had nothing to do with character or personality! Besides, the bare statement ignores the fact that Ratzinger is definitely the most well-travelled cardinal to become Pope, because it was part of his job, too. Wojtyla did not have the chance nor the opportunity to travel outside Europe before he became Pope.
Perhaps a more valid hypothesis by Elie is that “If John Paul’s outlook was defined by his nationality, Ratzinger’s is best understood by his vocation.” But then he goes on to say that “Whereas John Paul, formed by Polish nationalism, sought truth in history….Ratzinger sees the challenge of the Church as finally theological, not historical.” Again, it seems to me, a fallacious analogy, because it implies that John Paul did not see the Church’s challenges as theological as well!
Elie claims “the theologian’s task is to make the substance of the Catholic faith clear amid the continual change (in human society),
not to make it relevant to place and time,” ascribing this indirectly to Ratzinger.
Not to make it relevant to place and time? Ratzinger’s writing and teachings have always sought to make the faith relevant to place and time - firm and unchanging, but relevant. Perhaps Elie meant “not to
adapt it (the faith) to place and time,” because “adaptation” is a liberal mantra, meaning they expect the Church to adapt the faith to the prevailing ideas of place and time. So if feminsim is in – then why not abortion, a woman’s right to her body as the prevailing value, women priests!
He then imputes deliberate ambition to Wojtyla and Ratzinger:
“John Paul read back into his earlier life the signs that he was destined to become Pope and to lead the church into the third millenium.”
“A gifted young German in a generation thinned by war, he grew up expecting to serve as a leader in the Church in his country.” Our Ratzi, who has consistently said he looked forwarrd only to teaching and writing? Who doubted if he had it in him to be able to relate to people in pastoral work - he expetced to be a leader of the German church????
And what are we to make of this statement:
“
He was John the Baptist to the older man, making straight the path for the arrival of a figure whose sandal, as Scripture would have it, he was not fit to untie.”
It is an analogy that is completely wrong! John Paul was already Pope before Ratzinger came to Rome. The Jesus-figure, John Paul, was well into the third year of his Papacy. There was no path to be straightened for him – he was blazing his own trails across all the continents!
Did Elie use the analogy – as blatantly wrong as it is – simply to work in the bit about “a figure whose sandal he was not fit to untie”? If so, why? Ratzi may not be, in the eyes of the world as yet, “santo subito”, but “not fit to untie” John Paul’s sandal is demeaning him too much – it’s worse than just saying “not good enough to fill his shoes”.
But Elie is an equal-opportunity offender. So he says: “At the far end of John Paul’s long pontificate, the pattern was turned around. Now John Paul, for all he had done, was bent double by illness, while Ratzinger, though past retirement age, was invigorated by the challenges placed before him.
Now, John Paul became the lesser man and Ratzinger the greater.” Now, “greatness is measured by physical fitness????
Part III, titled “NOT SO FAST, WOJTYLA”, is probably the most offensive section. It starts by recounting Ratzinger’s weekend at Montecassino for the interviews with Peter Seewald that were put together into the book
God and the World.
When Elie refers to the first interview-book by Ratzinger with the “tabloid-style title
The Ratzinger Report (1985)”, he says: “In fact, Ratzinger had carefully vetted the text (
written by the Italian essayist Vittorio Messori), and it seemed
crafted to counter the image of him as a fearsome reactionary.”
Hold it! Elie does not simply suggest, but writes, that “the text was written by Messori” – how can that be, for an intereview book? Is he claiming Messori went in and rewrote Ratzinger’s answers to his questions to “craft” it with the purpose Elie mentions above? Wasn’t Messori quite clear in the book about how Ratzinger did not ask for questions beforehand and merely asked to review the transcripts before they were published? Of course, as the interviewee, he had every right to “vet” the book and vet it “carefully”! Is Elie saying that a writer, as Ratzinger himself is, would allow somebody else to re-frame his answers for him?
Elie’s verdict on the book was nevertheless positive on balance: “…
his (Ratzinger’s) account of the conflict between Catholicism and modernity was eloquent and forward-looking. He was no throwback but a ‘realist’ who simply thought that the reforms that followed Vatican II went beyond what the council fathers had called for. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was not a new Inquisition but an institution charged with ‘the defense of right belief.’ As prefect he was not an enforcer so much as a kind of physician treating “the pathology of faith.’”
He describes the next interview-book,
Salt of the Earth (1997) as “the best expression of his (Ratzinger’s) point of view.”
“Ratzinger’s voice,” he continues sounds out across the pages, at once gentle and forceful, now lofty in its impersonality, now candid, even intimate. The book
made Ratzinger, and by extension, the Vatican,
seem surprisingly humble and open to criticism.” Note how by the use of two simple words, he suggests yet again that the book was “crafted” for a purpose.
Now comes the most lurid assertion of the article:
“
In the previous interviews Ratzinger had cited John Paul continually and spontaneously. This time
[i.e., in God and the World], he referred to John Paul only a dozen times in three days, and rather distantly at that, calling him ‘the pope’, ‘this pope’, ‘the present pope’ or ‘the Holy Father.’ [
How else should he have referred to him? Was he expected to say “His Holiness John Paul II” every time he had to mention the pope? Or “my friend Lolek”???] At one point he even referred to John Paul’s pontificate in the past tense – ‘It was occupied in dealing with all the basic questions of our time - and over and beyond this, it gave us a running star, a real lead.’ It is a startling moment….Ratzinger’s ‘us’ no longer included Wojtyla, and John Paul’s long pontificate was a thing of the past. Ratzinger was looking beyond John Paul to the church’s next stage.”
If John Paul II was indeed mentioned only a dozen times in the book, it was because of the very structure of the book, whose first 336 pages are devoted to “GOD” (Section titles: Man, God. Creation, Order in Creation, The Two Testaments, The Law, Love) and “JESUS CHRIST” (Section titles: Revelation, The Light, The Way, The Truth, Life, The Mother of God, The Cross) – Would it not have been the most artificial and hypocritical thing if, in order to answer questions on basic Catholic doctrine, Ratzinger had to invoke John Paul at all????
Part III – the last 119 pages - is about ‘THE CHURCH” (Section Titles – The Spirit, Spiritual Gifts, The Sacraments, The Future), in which there are two sections that touch on the Pope – The Pope” (in the generic sense), in a section that includes The Primitive Church, Paul, Mission and The Network of the Church; and “John Paul II” in the section called The Future.
This last is composed of a single question, “
Has John Paul II left the Church the requisite foundation for her to make a good start in the new century?” (The question is posed in the present perfect tense – a past tense, but also a historic present tense.)
And that is the question to which Ratzinger replies, using the exact tense formulation of the question: “…Here you can certainly say that
this pontificate has left an unusually strong imprint. It
was occupied in dealing with all the basic questions of our time – and over and beyond this, it gave us a running start, a real lead.” (Elie conveniently overlooks the previous sentence and the question iself, to make his tendentious point!)
If Elie is suggesting that the statement “It was occupied…” was a Freudian slip by Ratzinger, then no! It was clearly a conscious use of the past tense, deriving its sense from his previous statement, which Elie conveniently omitted in his selective quote), that the pontificate has (already) left its imprint.
And how does Ratzinger end his answer to the question?
“…so today, at the great turning-point between epochs, we have both to preserve undiminished the identify of the whole and at the same time to disover the ability of living faith to express itself anew and to make its presence known. The present Pope has certainly made a quite essential contribution to that.”
Only a malicious mind would say that Ratzinger’s use of “we” and “us” excludes the Pope – he uses “we” and “us” throughout the whole book to refer to the Catholic Church, its faithful and its clergy, including himself and the Pope3!
There follows now a painful recounting of the Pope’s valiant effots to make Jubilee Year 2000 the event it deserved to be and , according to Elie, “the hermeneutical key to his pontificate.” The Pope, despite his worsening health, did open Jubilee Year with great fanfare, and he did go to the Holy Land afterwards, even as the gravity of his illness was becoming alarmingly apparent day by day to the general public.
Elie faults John Paul for being “conservative but not cautious. Wary of innoivation in others, he was jhimself inclined to make grand symbolic gestures whose meaning was either ambiguous or just plain confusing.”
An example was how the Pope allowed the Archbishop of Canterbury near-equal episocopal rights at St. Peter’s, when they both strode together through the Holy Door after the Pope had opened it to mark the start of Jubilee Year.
Elie quotes Avery Cardinal Dulles, the American theologian made cardinal by the Pope after he was 80, as saying: “Sometimes these ecumenical and inter-religious gestures were seen as suggesting something other than what they mean – and would be troubling to Ratzinger who does not like ambiguity. The opening of the holy door is an example of the sort of thing that makes him nervous. He would say, ‘If we don’t recognize Anglican orders but we treat them with all the honor of the episcopal office, then something is wrong here.”
One week later, Ratzinger as CDF Prefect calls the Pope’s attention to the complexities of ecumenical and inter-religious matters in the Jubilee Year, warning that “erroneous and confused ideas” may obscure the uniqueness of Christ and the Catholic Church. Elie claims that the Pope’s reply, a concession
to Ratzinger’s statement, had in fact been scripted by Ratzinger! And Matthew, his scholar-informant, reportedly tells him that he “
saw the hand of his old colleague Ratzinger holding tight to the Pope’s wrist,” by which he meant “They censored him. You could see other people correcting him, checking him.”
Meanwhile, Ratzinger had written a new Preface to his
Introduction to Christianity. Elie claims to see a different tone in the new preface from the body of the book itself, which was a series of lectures Ratzinger had delivered at university: Where the lectures were solicitous toward the unbeliiever, seeing unbelief as merely the shadow side of the yearning for God, the preface now showed unbelief as an outgrowth of noxious social forces.
“Where John Paul saw the 40 years just past as a time of gifts. Ratzinger saw them as a time of despair. Where John Paul was soldiering on despite his ailments, Ratzinger in his study was a professor grown impatient with his students' lack of understanding.” Again, another forced and fallacious analogy.
Then followed the September 2000 news conference at which Ratzinger presented the CDF document,
Dominus Jesus. Elie's take: “It concerned the Catholic Church’s relations with other religions, and
its approach was graceless. Contrary to Vatican procedures, the CDF pushed it through without giving key curial officials the chance to sign off on it, and Ratzinger himself signed the document on August 8, as Rome was emptying for the summer holidays.”
“
In a sharp departure from Vatican II, it treated other Christian denominations as essentially rquivalent to non-Christian religions….” Elie writes, rehashing the misleading reports that had fueled the controversy over the document, and betraying the fact that he probably has not read the document himself.
Because this is what Weigel wrote iabout Dominus Jesus in his JPII biography:
“The most controversial ecumenical and interreligious moment of the Jubilee Year came in September when the CDF issued a declaration titled
Dominus Jesus,
on the unique role of Christ and the distinctive place of the Church in God’s saving plan for history. The declaration was widely reported as a reversal, even a repudiation, of decades of progress…But many of those who read the document (which was written in response to theological speculations, primarily in Asia, that seemed to deny core Christian beliefs) found it a compelling, even humble, confession of Catholic faith: that there is one God, and thus only one “economy” of salvation; that if Jesus is Lord, true God and true man, he is Lord of all; that God, who wishes all to be saved, does not deny anyone the grace necessary for salvation; that all who are saved are saved through God’s action in Christ, whether or not they have ever heard of Jesus Christ; that the Church has a continuing missionary mandate to proclaim Christ. This was precisely what John Paul II had affirmed in the 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio [The Mission of the Redeemer]. Similarly, the document’s teaching on ecumenism reiterated the teaching of Vatican II, down to the Council’s language that the one church of Jesus Christ ‘subsists’ in the Catholic church, even as elements of sanctification are present in communities that are not in communion with the bishop of Rome.
Misleading reporting and gaudy headlines(“We’re Number One! ..Vatican Declares Catholicism Sole Path to Salvation”)
caused weeks of controversy. Yet the controversy was a helpful reminded that ecumenism and interreligiouious dialog are more than exercises in plitical correctness. Truths are at stake here, and the dialogue, in charity and respect, should reflect that fact. That is what Dominus Jesus tried to remind the Church and the world – if, on occasion, more bluntly than the contemporary proprieties usually permit. That prominent evangelical Protestants found Dominus Jesus a bracing reaffirmation of Christian conviction was another straw in the ecumenical wind.”
Elie cites
nothing positive about
Dominus Jesus. On the contrary. He quotes Cardinal Corman Murphy O’connor, Archbishop of Westminster, as saying “We all had a lot of explaining to do. If the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity had seen it, they never would have let it go out. …” Elie also cites German Cardinal Walter Kasper, long-time adversary of Ratzinger, who called the document “doctrinaire”, “clumsy and ambiguous”.
Now informant Mark weighs in:
“The closest I’ve seen Ratzinger pissed was over Kasper’s reaction to Dominus Jesus. We were in his office, just the two of us, and it came up. Now, ‘pissed’ for Ratzinger – I’m not sure ‘pissed’ is quite the word – ‘pissed’ for him is a raised eyebrow and a roll of the eyes. But he was pissed, The eyebrow was raised. The eyes rolled. ‘That is nonsense,” he said – and that, from him, is the equivalent of an outright condemnation from somebody else.”
I am glad Elie chose to use the above quote. It tells us what Ratzinger actually did and said. The rest is Mark’s interpretation. [For us who have seen and enjoyed those candid photographs of Ratzi reacting during press confernces when he is not the speaker, we simply interpreted them as expressions of boredom or exasperation, but pissed????]
Elie’s conclusion of this section: “If Ratzinger’s intention with
Dominus Jesus was to raise a red flag, he was successful. From its title onward it served to cast aspersions on the Jubilee road show, as some in the Vatican called it, and
to make Ratzinger more prominent than ever as John Paul’s alter ego, a cleric who was more Catholic than the Pope.”
[TO BE CONTINUED - IF YOU WISH ME TO]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/01/2006 18.02]