From Grand
InquisitorTo Pope
By Peter Schwarz
23 April 2005
World
Socialist Web
With
the selection of Josef Ratzinger as the new pope, the Roman Catholic
hierarchy has placed at its head a hard-line enforcer of Church dogma,
and one of the Vaticans fiercest opponents of not only Marxism,
but liberalism, secularism, science and virtually all things modern.
The 78-year-old
cardinal, who took the name Pope Benedict XVI, served for 23 years as
Pope John Paul IIs arbiter of doctrinal orthodoxy, disciplining
clerics and theologians who questioned Catholic dogma on such issues
a birth control, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and papal infallibility.
As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the successor
institution to the Inquisition, Ratzinger persecuted and suppressed
the so-called liberation theology in Latin America, and
banned, censored or excommunicated liberal clerics in Europe and North
America, earning himself such nicknames as grand inquisitor
and, among his fellow Germans, Der Panzerkardinal.
On the eve of his
election as pope, Ratzinger delivered a sermon in which he implicitly
reaffirmed his position that all religions outside of Roman Catholicism
are defective, denouncing what he called the dictatorship
of relativism.
Ratzingers
ascendancy to the pinnacle of the Catholic Church progressed initially
through academic channels, and later within the Curia in Rome. With
the exception of a short period as an assistant priest and curate in
Munich immediately following his appointment as a priest in 1951, and
his four years as the archbishop of Munich and Freising (1977 to 1981),
he lacks any close connection to ordinary churchgoers.
With the selection
of Ratzinger, the Curia has elevated to its highest post the consummate
insidera man whose allegiances lie above all with the apparatus
and hierarchy of the Church. This point has been largely ignored in
the media hoopla surrounding the death of his predecessor, John Paul
II, and the selection process for the new pope.
Hours of media coverage
were devoted to the minutiae of the medieval election ritual, with endless
commentaries on the significance of white vs. black smoke from the papal
chimney. Cameras focused lovingly on the flowing purple robes of the
cardinals, but the thoroughly undemocratic and conspiratorial character
of the selection process was passed over in silence.
In fact, nearly
all of the 115 cardinals (average age of 71) who were eligible to vote
had been appointed by Ratzingers predecessoroften in the
face of bitter opposition from their dioceses, and with the likely participation
of Ratzinger himself. John Paul IIs closest confidant, Ratzinger
belonged to the small group of cardinals who had participated in the
election of the two previous popes. According to media reports, based
on his influence in the Curia, Ratzinger already had a solid block of
50 votes behind him when the cardinals entered the conclave on Monday.
For the election, he needed 77 votes.
As a result, so-called
reform candidates, such as the Italian Carlo Maria Martini and a number
of cardinals from South America, had no real chance of being elected.
The Curias control of the election process had been made even
more firm by a new method of voting introduced by John Paul II, whereby,
after 30 rounds of voting, a simple majority, rather than a two-thirds
margin, was sufficient to elect the new pontiff. This rule weakened
the position of minority candidates and factions. It meant that opponents
of Ratzinger could not stall his election to the point where his supporters
would be prepared to accept a compromise candidate.
Ordinary churchgoersaccording
to the Church, one billion worldwidewere, of course, not allowed
to play any role whatsoever. They had not the slightest influence on
the selection of the head of one of the richest and most powerful institutions
in the world.
The pope, moreover,
exercises dictatorial powers within the Church. He reigns for the remainder
of his life; his decrees are regarded as infallible; he
can personally appoint all those who occupy major positions in the Church
hierarchy; and he can change the rules governing the functioning of
the Church as he wishes.
From policemans son to grand inquisitor
Josef Ratzinger
was born in the Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn in 1927, the son of a
policeman. At the age of 14, Josef joined the Hitler youth movement.
Later he declared he had been forced to join. There is little to indicate
otherwise. Despite the good relations between Church leaders and the
Nazi leadership, the Catholic circles in which he grew up tended to
keep their distance from the Nazis. Antagonisms arose because the Nazis
intervened in aspects of life which the Catholic Church regarded as
its own preserve.
What is without
doubt, however, is that, following his experiences with the Nazi dictatorship,
Ratzinger developed into a dogmatic Catholic, rather than a convinced
democrat.
At the end of the
war, he took up studies in theology and philosophy, and in 1951 was
appointed to the priesthood. In 1953 he graduated as a doctor of theology
and in 1957 the 30-year-old qualified as a university lecturer in fundamental
theology at the University of Munich. From 1954 to 1981 he taught fundamental
theology, doctrine and the history of doctrine at a number of German
universities.
During the same
period he began his ascent within the Church hierarchy. Between 1962
and 1965 he took part in the Second Vatican Council as official council
theologian. In March 1977, he was appointed archbishop of Munich and
Freising, and elevated to the post of cardinal just three months later.
His acquaintance with the Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the future
John Paul II, stems from this period.
In 1981, three years
after his appointment as pope, John Paul called upon Ratzinger to take
up the position of supreme guardian of the faith in Rome.
In the 1960s, at
the time of the Second Vatican Council, Ratzinger was regarded as relatively
liberal. In 1968, together with the theologian Hans Küng from Tübingen,
he opposed coercive measures adopted against erroneous theological
standpoints.
According to his
biographers and his own memoirs, the eruption of left-wing student protest
and mass workers struggles in the late 1960s had a profound impact
on Ratzinger, propelling him to the right and bringing to the fore his
deepest political instinct: hatred and fear of socialist revolution.
Subsequently, as
head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he imposed coercive
measures against a range of critical theologiansincluding Küng,
who was removed from office following pressure from the Vatican.
As grand inquisitor,
he rigidly enforced reactionary positions that provoked opposition even
among many Catholics. Papal decrees denouncing contraception and abortion,
confirming the subordination of women, denouncing stem-cell research,
opposing an increased role for laymen in the life of the Church, barring
marriage for priests and abhorring same-sex relationshipsall bear
the signature of Ratzinger. He went so far as to officially condemn
masturbation.
Just last year,
the Congregation published a 37-page Letter on the Collaboration
of Men and Women in the Church and in the World. Drawing upon
the Bible, the letter defined the role of women in terms of virginity
followed by marriage, motherhood and support for the male head of family.
The letter approvingly cited Genesis 3:16: Your desire shall be
for your husband, and he shall rule over you.
In Germany, Ratzinger
incurred opposition not only from churchgoers, but also from the majority
of bishops, when he opposed a more liberal attitude toward divorced
couples and demanded that the Church withdraw from advising pregnant
women. Such consultation has been part of legal abortion procedures
since 1995.
In South America,
he organized a systematic campaign against liberation theologians
who called for the Church to play a greater role in protecting the interests
of the poor and oppressed. At Ratzingers behest, the well known
liberation theologian Leonardo Boff was driven out of the priesthood
in 1992.
While Ratzinger
and John Paul II were largely in agreement over these issues, it appears
that the guardian of the faith did not share the views of the pope on
developing closer collaboration between the Catholic Church and other
confessions. This is evident in the paper Dominus Jesus
that Ratzinger prepared in 2000 for the Congregation, which was then
signed by the pope. It asserted the supreme role of the Catholic Church,
and was regarded as an affront by officials of other churches, Christian
and non-Christian alike.
The paper stated:
Just as there is one Christ, so there exists a single body of
Christ, a single Bride of Christ: a single Catholic and apostolic Church.
The core of Ratzingers
world view is the rejection of modernity and the Enlightenment.
The German newspaper
Die Zeit summarized his views a year ago as follows: If one is
to believe Ratzingers older writings, liberal philosophy going
back to the Enlightenment is a dangerous superstition. It has severed
the godly link between belief and science and does not tolerate any
truth greater then itself. Liberal philosophers confuse subjective desires
with the cosmic meaning of the world. They are blind to a truth which
precedes their reasonthe pre-political truth of religion.
Another German press
commentary declared: That the highly developed industrial countries
are losing their beliefs and soul, that ancient institutions such as
families and marriage are breaking up, and that such social erosion
brings with it considerable risks and dangersthis is also a favorite
theme of Ratzinger. In this respect as well he was at one with his predecessor.
He once wrote: Our culture based on technology and prosperity
is based on the conviction that basically anything is possible. The
issue of God is then no longer relevant.
While Ratzinger
criticized and fought tendencies within the Church that were sympathetic
to social struggles, such as liberation theology, he was receptive to
authoritarian, right-wing tendencies. At a ceremony in Pamploma in 1998,
for example, the head of the reactionary Opus Dei order, Javier Echevarria
Rodriguez, awarded Ratzinger an honorary doctorate.
Ratzinger and the peace pope
Ratzingers
choice of name Benedict XVI surprised many. It had been generally expected
that he would adopt the name John Paul III in appreciation of his predecessor.
Bearing in mind that the name of a newly appointed pope has programmatic
significance, it is worth recalling the papacy of Benedict XV, who occupied
the Holy See during the First World War, from 1914 to 1922.
Benedict XV is often
described as a pope of peace, and the fact that Ratzinger
has sought to link up with his tradition has led to some positive commentary
in liberal and left circles.
The leader of the
Green Party faction in the German parliament, Katrin Göring-Eckard,
declared that a German pope was a source of satisfaction irrespective
of how one regarded the former Cardinal Ratzinger. He had made
a good choice by naming himself Benedict, she went on, because
the last Benedict was a great advocate of peace who, during his
papacy, tirelessly campaigned for an end to the First World War.
In reality, the
neutral stance adopted by the Vatican during the First World War and
Benedicts endeavors for a peace settlement had nothing to do with
a principled opposition to the imperialist slaughter. The Vatican, as
a state as well as a Church, could only lose from the war, and was therefore
interested in its rapid end. On both sides of the battle lines, major
powers with considerable Catholic populations were involved in the fightingFrance
on one side and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other. By taking
sides, the Vatican would have risked splitting the Church.
Even before the
war began, the Vatican sought to establish greater political independence
from the major powers. It abolished the right of Catholic great powers,
in particular Austria-Hungary, to exercise a veto in the selection of
a pope, and introduced papal elections by a secret conclave.
Giacomo della Chiesa,
elected as Pope Benedict XV just one month after the outbreak of war,
was an experienced diplomat. Born into a noble family in Genoa, he had
worked for years as a diplomat for the Vatican. He insisted on the neutrality
of the Vatican during the entire war and from 1917 onwards encouraged
US President Woodrow Wilson to initiate peace negotiations.
Ratzinger may well
have had Benedict XV in mind when he chose his name. Not because of
the earlier popes diplomatic activities, but because he was, like
Ratzinger himself, a bitter opponent of modernity, i.e.,
of rationalism, democracy and, above all, socialism.
In an apostolic
letter which he published only few months after taking office, Benedict
XV vehemently opposed all those who put their trust in understanding
and reason. Ratzingers precursor thundered: Infatuated and
carried away by a lofty idea of the human intellect, by which Gods
good gift has certainly made incredible progress in the study of nature,
confident in their own judgment, and contemptuous of the authority of
the Church, they have reached such a degree of rashness as not to hesitate
to measure by the standard of their own mind even the hidden things
of God and all that God has revealed to men. Hence arose the monstrous
errors of Modernism, which Our Predecessor rightly declared
to be the synthesis of all heresies, and solemnly condemned.
... Therefore it is Our will that the law of our forefathers should
still be held sacred: Let there be no innovation; keep to what
has been handed down.
These words are
contained in the encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum from
November 1, 1914, which also condemns the World War. As the text of
the encyclical demonstrates, the main objective of the pope was the
defense of the existing order that was threatened by the impact of the
war. The Vatican was motivated by fears of social upheavals and socialist
uprisings, which did, in fact, take place at the end of the warin
Russia, Germany, Hungary and many other countries. For this reason,
the encyclical categorically defends the existing authorities.
It condemns every
form of democracy: Ever since the source of human powers has been
sought apart from God the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, in the
free will of men, the bonds of duty, which should exist between superior
and inferior, have been so weakened as almost to have ceased to exist.
Benedict XV regarded
the crisis of bourgeois society as the product of the turn away from
faith and religion: For ever since the precepts and practices
of Christian wisdom ceased to be observed in the ruling of states, it
followed that, as they contained the peace and stability of institutions,
the very foundations of states necessarily began to be shaken. Such,
moreover, has been the change in the ideas and the morals of men, that
unless God comes soon to our help, the end of civilization would seem
to be at hand.
This, it seems,
is how Ratzinger sees the world today.
The term of office
of his predecessor, John Paul II, was dominated by the collapse of the
Stalinist regimes in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, in which the
pope played an important and active role. He ensured that the powerful
movement of the Polish working class, which developed under the banner
of the Solidarity movement, remained under the influence of the Catholic
Church and did not develop in an independent socialist direction.
Ratzinger has taken
office in the shadow of the Iraq war, growing tensions between the major
imperialist powers, and a deep social and political crisis of bourgeois
society. He reacts in a manner similar to that of the pope whose name
he has assumed: by encouraging the most backward religious, anti-enlightenment
and anti-democratic prejudices.
Even more than his
predecessor, who traveled the world and sought conciliation with other
confessions, including the Jewish and Islamic, Benedict XVI emphasizes
the necessity of a strong, Christian Europe. A number of commentators
have made the point that the best known Benedict in the history of the
church, the founder of the Benedictine order, Benedict of Nursia, was
declared patron saint of Europe by Pope Paul VI in 1964.