The journalist whose in-depth interview with Pope Benedict XVI became the book Light of the World has dismissed a public protest by German-speaking theologians as “a rebellion in the nursing home.”
Peter Seewald told the Kath.net news agency that a highly-publicized
statement of dissent-- signed by one-third of the theology professors at
Catholic universities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland—should not
be interpreted as a popular uprising against Church teaching.
Rather, he
said, it is a protest by the same people who have caused a crisis in
Catholic teaching.
The dissident theologians, Seewald charged, are seeking to remodel the
Church in their own image, adapting Catholic teachings to popular
standards.
Their approach, he said, is to measure Church doctrines by
the standards of popular opinion, putting themselves in the role of
“chief priests of the Zeitgeist.”
In his acerbic remarks on the theologians’ public statement, Seewald referred to St. Paul’s words (2 Tim 4:3):
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachings to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.