Two months ago Pope Benedict XVI marked the second anniversary of his election to the papacy.The early assessments of his pontificate can be summarized as follows:
---Liberal, reform-minded Catholics have been relieved that the new pope has not cracked down as they feared he would.
---Conservative Catholics, who rejoiced in Cardinal Ratzinger's election, have been disappointed that he has not, in fact, continued the hard-line approach adopted by his predecessor, John Paul II, and in keeping with the former cardinal's record as long-time head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
However, now that the pope, at age 80, is in his third year in office, some pundits are insisting that the situation has changed and that the "old Ratzinger" is beginning to show his teeth.
David Gibson, author of a recent book on Benedict XVI, advanced this interpretation in an op-ed piece in The New York Times, "His Own Pope Yet?" (April 23). Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent for the London-based Tablet, took a similar approach in his April report from Rome, "Pope Benedict Looking More and More Like the Old Ratzinger." Because of space limitations, I'll focus on the Gibson column in The Times.
There is at least an attempt at balance in his piece. Gibson points out, accurately enough, that Benedict XVI "remains an enigma to many...and something of a blank slate to a world curious to see what this new pontiff would be like."
However, he stumbles when he describes Cardinal Ratzinger as "the most prominent and controversial head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in memory."
Perhaps Mr. Gibson is too young to remember the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), but the unquestioned leader of its resistant minority was Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, head of the Holy Office (the forerunner of the CDF).
During a portion of the long reign of Pius XII (1939-58), Ottaviani was the all-powerful defender of the faith and punisher of all who would dare tamper with it. Cardinal Ratzinger was relatively benign in comparison with Ottaviani, whose motto on his ecclesiastical coat-of-arms was "Semper Idem" ("Always the same").
Gibson, however, is right in noting that Benedict has "tried to tone down the emphasis on the person of the pope --- a motif of his predecessor's style --- and put it back on the basics of the faith."
He also accurately underscores the more positive approach in his writings and pronouncements, citing the pope's first and only encyclical thus far, "God Is Love."
But then Mr. Gibson tries to make something of the pope's insistence that "divine love does not brook anything that smacks of change in church teachings or traditions." That may be right as far as it goes, but there are many degrees of church teachings and many levels of "traditions."
Most recently, for example, the pope approved the International Theological Commission's call for a re-consideration of the long-standing belief in Limbo.
I have pointed out several times in this column that a setting aside of Limbo would cause serious problems for fundamentalist Catholics who sincerely, but wrongly, believe that no one can be saved without the sacrament of Baptism.
I have also pointed out (but cannot go into it again here) that the disappearance of Limbo would also require a re-consideration of the Church's traditional understanding of Original Sin --- another neuralgic issue for Catholic fundamentalists.
Halfway through his Times column, David Gibson begins to fashion his argument that Pope Benedict XVI is already re-emerging as his former, intransigent self, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the feared CDF.
He points to the ban on gays in the priesthood (a ban that is almost totally unenforceable), the long-rumored restoration of the old Tridentine Latin Mass, with the altar facing the back wall, and his renewed stands against married priests, and against divorced-and-remarried Catholics receiving Holy Communion.
Curiously, Gibson also notes that Benedict "has reinforced the primacy of the pope --- an issue his predecessor had opened for debate." This is simply inaccurate. In his 1995 encyclical, Ut unum sint ("That All May be One"), Pope John Paul II made it clear that, while the exercise of the papacy can be improved upon, the primacy itself is non-negotiable and, therefore, not open to debate.
Gibson refers, finally, to the recent censure of the prominent Latin American liberation theologian, Jesuit Father Jon Sobrino, as yet another sign of the "old Ratzinger" returning in full force.
But the Vatican's criticism was not of Sobrino's concern for the poor, but of his Christology, which is, after all, at least a debatable item.
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Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce