Brazilian writer and priest Frei Betto fears the consequences of Joseph Ratzinger’s election to the papacy.
The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope is a worrying sign that the direction of the Catholic Church is more confused and lost than we imagined. The opposite of fear is not courage, it is faith. Many cardinals appear to be more imbued with fear than with faith. To elect as pope a man responsible for the Church’s orthodoxy, head of the ancient Holy Office, constitutes a gesture of retraction and defence before a world which is perturbed, which expects from Rome more than anathema, censure, mistrust and segregation.
Ratzinger was a moderate theologian, open to interreligious dialogue and to modern science, to the contribution of Protestant theologians for a better understanding of the Bible, until he left Germany to take on, in Rome, the position of Grand Inquisitor. During the period in which he headed the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith, he punished 140 Catholic theologians, among whom was Leonardo Boff. His obsession is Nietzsche, whose ghost he identifies in post-modern culture.
It seems like a joke to remember, today, that in the 19th century Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) condemned freedom of thought and of opinion, secular education, progress, and even electric light! For him, the modern world was created in the devil’s workshop. Author of Syllabus of Errors, a catalogue of ecclesiastical anathemas, he was against the autonomous and lay state and in 1850 he prohibited the Jews in Rome from testifying against Christians in penal and civil trials, possessing property; having access to the public school and university (excepting medicine).
Pope Pius IX condemned freedom of thought and of opinion, secular education, progress, and even electric light!
I fear that a similar regression will occur in Ratzinger’s pontificate. In his last sermon as cardinal, before the start of the conclave, he declared himself a candidate, making it very clear how he thinks: he accused Western culture of being relativistic, he condemned Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and syncretism. He will not accept cultural and religious pluralism, diversity of cultures. He even dreams of a Church which is institutionally sovereign amongst peoples and governments, imposing on all its values and norms of behaviour. It is a return to Christendom, when the Church reigned in medieval times.
Before condemning the legitimate expressions of modern culture, Ratzinger should ask himself if the Church has not failed in the evangelisation of Europe, where churches seem more full of tourists than of the faithful. Why was the Church not in the forefront defending the victims of the Industrial Revolution as Marxism was? Are not atheism and agnosticism the fruit of our failure to witness to the gospel? And how can someone in the Vatican speak about syncretism, when in the Vatican’s own rituals, protocol and etiquette which stem from the Roman Empire and from European nobility mingle together? ‘Supreme Pontiff’ is the pagan title adopted by Roman emperors.
The new pope will not accept cultural and religious pluralism, diversity of cultures. It is a return to Christendom.
I am not aware of whether the new pope has any social sensitivity. The image of the poor and the tragedy of poverty are not recurrent in his pronouncements and writings. But I pray that he will keep up the habit of meditating on the words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth, who preferred to love rather than condemn, defended the adulterous woman, did not preach a moralistic sermon to the Samaritan woman who was with her sixth man, cured the Phoenician woman and the Roman centurion’s servant without demanding that they profess his faith, identified with the poorest (the hungry, the migrants, the sick and the oppressed), did not remain indifferent to the hungry crowd and taught that to govern is not to rule, but to serve.
What offers a thread of hope is the fact that Ratzinger adopted the name Benedict XVI. Usually this signals the interest of the new pontiff in following the work of his predecessor of the same name. Benedict XV, pope between 1914 and 1922, was an open man. He stopped the persecution of the ‘modernists’, valued ecumenism, promoted dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans, showed an interest in Eastern Churches and, above all, fought colonialism and struggled with impartiality for the ending of the First World War. We can only pray that the new pope will come down from his pedestal of theological academicism and become a pastor, embracing the most evangelical and forgotten papal title: ‘Servant to the servants of God’.
Translated from the Portuguese by Helen Hughes. Frei Betto is a Brazilian writer and priest. He is a special Assistant to President Lula and advises on the government’s Zero Hunger Programme