The Catholic Church Steps Backwards
By Derrick Z. Jackson
Globe Columnist
Boston Globe
April 20, 2005
Posted by Bulatlat
With the election of
Joseph Ratzinger to be Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church is not
joining the 21st century anytime soon. After all the speculation that it
was time for a pope from a developing country and after the debate of
whether the conclave of cardinals would pick someone who would build
bridges toward the church's outcasts and second-class citizens, the church
fled to yesteryear, hoping to avoid facing today.
The cardinals made a
choice so cautious as to verge on the callous. If Ratzinger's past words
guide his rule, his papacy has the potential to irritate and inflame
religious and cultural tensions around the world.
Ratzinger was the
late Pope John Paul II's enforcer of stark views on many issues that, for
all the church's proclamations of love, fuel disdain. In 2003, Ratzinger
issued a proclamation condemning government recognition of same-sex unions
saying that instead it was the government's responsibility to "avoid
exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage."
Calling civil unions the "legalization of evil," Ratzinger said
politicians who vote for them are "gravely immoral."
Ratzinger went on to
condemn adoption by gay parents, saying, "Allowing children to be adopted
by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to the
children." This is the same Vatican that had barely a thing to say about
the American clergy child sex-abuse scandal. And when it did, Ratzinger
downplayed it.
During the emerging
news on the scandals in December 2002, Ratzinger said, "I am personally
convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic
priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the
percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other
categories and perhaps it is even lower. Less than 1 percent of (American)
priests are guilty of acts of this type . . . Therefore, one comes to the
conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to
discredit the church."
In 2004, a study
commissioned by US bishops would conclude that 4 percent of US priests
were sexual abusers.
While the Vatican
turned an even more blind eye to clergy sex-abuse than even the
US
bishops did, Ratzinger had his eyes out for priests and theologians who
strayed over the party line. In the mid 1980s, he cracked down on
"liberation theology" among the poor in Latin America, saying it was too
much allied with Marxists. He led the Vatican in revoking the
authorization of the Rev. Charles Curran of Catholic University for his
challenge to the ban on contraception. Ratzinger disciplined several other
priests and nuns for their liberal views.
In 1997, Ratzinger
and the Vatican reaffirmed its ban on women priests. In 1998, John Paul
wrote a papal letter rejecting liberalism in the church, including the
ordination of women. Last year Ratzinger led the Vatican's attack on
"radical feminism," blaming assertive women for calling into question the
"natural two-parent structure of mother and father and to make
homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent."
More recent words by
Ratzinger are equally gloomy. Just as the world economy and science and
communications technologies are connecting the planet and as religions try
to make meaning out of everything from the Middle East
to 9/11 to genocides, Ratzinger suggests with a whiff of superiority that
Europe look inward. He opposed
Turkey joining the European Union. Turkey happens to be predominantly
Muslim and Ratzinger said that nation "represented a different continent,
always in contrast with Europe."
In his new book,
"Values in a Time of Upheaval," Ratzinger wrote, according to German
newspapers, "The ever more passionately demanded multiculturalism is often
above all a renunciation of what is one's own, a fleeing from what is
one's own." He also wrote,
"Marriage and family
are essential for European identity."
Why Ratzinger found
it necessary to narrowly describe marriage and family as part of a
European identity only he knows. The world will soon know how broad or how
narrow is the world view of Pope Benedict XVI, just when the world needs
religious leaders who can look across, reach across, and embrace humanity
across all its borders.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is
jackson@globe.com.
c) Copyright 2005 The
New York Times Company
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/
2005/04/20/the_catholic_church_steps_backwards/
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