Posted on 04/24/2005 2:53:30 PM PDT by prairiebreeze
ROME — Because of his roles as chief enforcer of Vatican orthodoxy and closest advisor of Pope John Paul II, reaction around the world to the election of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was unusually pointed.
The day before Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he declared in a sermon during a public Mass that a “dictatorship of relativism” threatens the church’s claims to absolute religious truth. That observation could easily have come from conservative evangelical leaders in the United States, who, despite theological differences, are cheering the choice of a pontiff who seems to speak the same moral language they do.
“Relativism, pluralism and naturalism are the three main foes of evangelicalism today, and they’re the main foes of conservative Roman Catholics,” said Norman Geisler, the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC, and co author of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences.
"We rejoice in the choice, because he's going to hold the line, and he’s not going to allow the liberal element in the Catholic Church to reverse any of those things.”
Richard Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said Ratzinger will be an ally of U.S. religious conservatives on a host of moral issues such as abortion, gay rights, cloning and doctor‑assisted suicide.
“This is a reaffirmation of ... Pope John Paul II’s policies in all those areas,” said Land, who described Ratzinger as “a known quantity.”
The Southern Baptist leader said he isn’t bothered “in the least” by Ratzinger’s contention in the Vatican’s 2000 document, “Declaration Dominus Iesus,” that non-Catholic churches are “gravely deficient” and Catholics alone have the “fullness of the means of salvation.” The document was prepared by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which Ratzinger headed.
“His views have no authority over us, and I realize that it’s an official opinion in Catholicism, but for us, it’s just one guy’s idea,” Land said. “I can disagree with that theological statement and I can at the same time work with them as I would with people of other denominations on issues where we find common cause, like fighting the culture of death and fighting for the culture of life.”
Chuck Colson, a founder of the Prison Fellowship who in 1994 helped draft a paper, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” that aimed to foster cooperation between the two groups, hailed Ratzinger’s election as “a great choice.”
“The College of Cardinals has opted for orthodoxy over geopolitical considerations,” Colson said. “Cardinal Ratzinger is strong, solid, and will carry on the tradition of John Paul II. That is very good news indeed for Catholics, for all Christians and for the world.”
John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, said the choice of Ratzinger as the new pope is likely to hearten those still involved in the “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” movement, as well as evangelical opponents to abortion and euthanasia. But he said the German’s writings on Christ also will appeal to those outside the Catholic world.
"The vast majority of his writings are about the person and nature of Jesus, the beauty of God, and the nature of the church as source of healing and mission in the world,” Witvliet said. “Those, of course, are all topics that resonate not just with Catholics, but with Protestants as well.
Liberal American Catholics responded less enthusiastically to the elevation of a cardinal nicknamed “God’s Rottweiler” for his dogged defense of church doctrine. While they are bracing for the worst, they’re hoping Pope Benedict won’t be as doctrinaire and conservative as advertised — particularly toward women and gays.
“We would be very pleased if the new pope would tone down the virulence of the anti GLBT (gay, lesbian,bisexual,transgendered) rhetoric, and give the tones of love and inclusion a chance to be heard,” said Sam Sinnett, president of the gay Catholic group Dignity USA.
But, given Ratzinger’s statement that gay marriage is “destructive for the family and for society,” and his pronouncement that homosexual behavior is an “intrinsic moral evil,” liberals aren’t holding their breath.
“Today, the princes of the Roman Catholic Church elected as pope a man whose record has been one of unrelenting, venomous hatred for gay people,” said Matt Foreman, a Catholic who is executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Even for non-Catholics, Ratzinger’s hard line approach to gay issues is a bit frightening.
“He is perhaps the biggest homophobe in Europe,” said Mel White, a non Catholic who heads the gay rights group Soulforce. “We couldn’t have had worse news. This man is taking us back to the days of the Inquisition.”
During his debut as a young theologian during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Ratzinger exhibited a relatively progressive streak; but he turned conservative in reaction to the student uprisings in the late 1960s.
“I’m hoping this pope will surprise us” by reconnecting with the progressive sensibilities he expressed as a younger man, said the Rev. Donald Cozzens, a religious studies professor and author at John Carroll University in Ohio.
In the past four decades, however, Ratzinger has honed a decidedly conservative approach, serving as Pope John Paul II’s doctrinal watchdog and disciplinarian.
In his role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger lashed out at dissident theologians and rebellious Catholics and closed the door to discussions of any kind that strayed too far from the official line.
“I think that it will only be a matter of days before quarters within the church that have fallen under his investigatory eye will begin speaking of the chilling effect his papacy might have,” said Diana Eck, director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University.
Ratzinger has shown little tolerance for talk of opening the priesthood to women. He excommunicated Dagmar Celeste, a former Ohio first lady, and six other women who underwent an illicit ordination ceremony in 2002.
“I have absolutely no hard feelings toward this man or the church,” Celeste said after the cardinals announced their choice. “As Catholics, we believe that these elections are not just politics. There is God’s hand in it.”
She held out optimism for the new pope, noting that his roots are democratic and predicting that, “as all older people do, he will return to his roots.”
After the clergy sexual abuse scandal erupted in Boston in 2002, the pope transferred jurisdiction over the matter to Ratzinger, who decided whether accused priests should be stripped of their ordinations
Ratzinger also agreed to investigate allegations against the Rev. Marciel Macial, a founder of the Legion of Christ, and a close friend of John Paul II.
“Some Catholics will be discouraged because of his reputation for authoritarianism, but we’re trying to just remain optimistic and hopeful,” said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “His nickname is ‘God’s Rottweiler,’ and we hope that he brings that tenacity to the issue of children’s safety in the church.”
Some lay reformers are withholding judgment, at least for now. Jim Post, the president of the Boston lay group Voice of the Faithful, which emerged from the abuse scandal with calls for more involvement by lay people in the administration of the church, said the new pope — at age 78 — may not be in the job for long.
“The most important factor that influences all of the cardinals is their judgment of the holiness of the man, and clearly the cardinals were convinced that he had the right spirituality for the early years of the 21st century,” Post said. “Clearly they have faith that he will be a good bridge builder, and we shall see."
Some church observers, including veterans of the ecumenical movement, said Ratzinger’s election may not portend a “doomsday scenario” for Catholics’ relations with other churches or with the broader world.
“I’m not going to measure this pope’s commitment to deeper unity in the Body of Christ solely on the basis of (‘Declaration Dominus Iesus’), said the Rev. Mark Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and president of the Lutheran World Federation.
Ratzinger helped orchestrate a 1999 agreement between Catholics and Lutherans that settled centuries-old disputes on the nature of salvation. That agreement, Hanson said, is much more important than "Dominus Iesus," which he said took some positions that "were somewhere between bewildering and of concern."
“The fact that he was a theologian in Germany and a bishop in Germany means he ... knows Lutherans,” Hanson said. “He brings to our relationship a deep theological understanding, as well as contextual experience.”
"Dominus Iesus," a 15 page treatise intended to clarify the Catholic Church’s views on salvation in a world of religious pluralism, deeply angered Protestant and Orthodox Christians, who wondered if they were now to be viewed as second class Christians. Many Jewish groups questioned whether the document was a retreat from John Paul II’s warming relations with Christianity’s “elder brothers.”
Hans Kung, the dissident Swiss theologian, dismissed it as a “mixture of medieval backwardness and Vatican megalomania.” The Lutheran World Federation called it “painful.” The Anglican Communion said it “does not for one moment accept” inferior status.
Echoes of “Dominus Iesus” could be heard in Ratzinger’s homily opening the cardinals’ conclave on Monday, in which he condemned the “dictatorship of relativism” and defended the church’s claim to absolute truth.
Many Christians appreciated the document for reaffirming in no uncertain terms that salvation is found through Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, but the tone struck many as a betrayal of the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.
Terry Tilley, a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio, said “Dominus Iesus” broke little new ground, but was a complete disaster in its delivery. “Most of us think it was a diplomatic blunder, yet only a blunder in diplomacy, not in substance,” he said.
Veteran ecumenists caution that the statement was not intended as a comment on ecumenism and should not be mined for ecumenical implications.
“What I think we all have to understand is that Cardinal Ratzinger, his mandate, was to be the church disciplinarian,” said the Rev. Wes Granberg& Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America and architect of a new Catholic& Protestant ecumenical group, Christian Churches Together in the USA.
Supporters of the “liberation theology” movement in Latin America found little to cheer in Ratzinger’s election. He has been one of the sharpest critics of liberation theology, which advocates for the poor and oppressed in the church’s faith and life, as Marxist.
Ratzinger authored two Vatican “instructions” — “On Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’” in 1984 and “On Christian Freedom and Liberation” in 1986 — upbraiding some liberation theologians for what he saw as reducing salvation to freedom from political and economic oppression.
In 1984, he censured Leonardo Boff, a Franciscan priest considered by many the father of liberation theology, forbidding him to speak publicly or publish his ideas.
“Obviously the new pope is not a friend of liberation theology,” said the Rev. Kevin Burke, a Jesuit and professor of systematic theology at Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, MA. “He clearly sees liberation theology as a threat to the church.”
The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Jesuit and founder of the Washington based School of the Americas Watch, a Latin American human rights organization, said his response to Ratzinger’s election as pope was disappointment rather than fear.
“This will cause a lot of pain for many in Latin America who are knowledgeable about the destruction he caused liberation theology,” Bourgeois said. “Liberation theology gave hope to many in Latin America, and brought about new models of church, a more circular model and less top-down.”
Many supporters of liberation theology in Latin America have lived through autocratic regimes in their nations, Bourgeois said, and “see Ratzinger as another dictator, in his style of leadership.”
The most divisive group out there is the gays and lesbians. The so-called divisive GOP has nothing on them.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Anytime I see the words "spirit of the Second Vatican Council" it brings to mind that the "spirit" only became warped by those who misunderstood the reality of Vatican II's call to holiness. The TRUE Spirit of Vatican II can be seen in Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI.
As a protest-ant, I rankled at anything that indicated that Catholicism is the One True Faith. However, having studied the early Church Fathers and having "returned" to my Catholic "roots" (there has to be a Catholic in the mix somewhere on my Paternal side), I more clearly understand the sentiment and spirit in which the statement is made.
I guess it's one of those, "you have to be here to get it" kind of things.
Salvation is through Jesus Christ for those who call themselves Christian. The Church He founded when He gave Peter the Keys to the Kingdom becomes disputed by those who protest that action. But that doesn't negate the action.
Will there be others in Heaven besides Catholics? SURELY. Will there be Catholics in Hell? More than likely.
Will there be "non" Christians in Heaven? That is a question only God can answer and He's not given me or you or anyone privy to that information.
Will there be Jews in Heaven? Oh, yes. The Covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob still exists. It has not been negated.
Don't for a minute think that the Almighty has given "this soothsayer" or "that prognosticator" some kind of advanced directive about the when, who, what, where and how of the Final Judgment Day. No human alive knows anything and everything you read and hear is just speculation. No human has been given any gift of foretelling the end of times by reading the book of Revelation or the book of Daniel or any other Canonical Book. All that we know for sure is that each of us will be judged based on our faith AND our works (which prove our faith) and that GOD alone will do the judging.
+Pace e Bene+
"Sophia" is not necessarily Goddess worship. It is the word, "Wisdom" in Greek, as in "Philosophia," the love of Wisdom.
In many places in the Old Testament, especially the Book of Wisdom, (The ancient Church, including modern Catholic and Orthodox churches, considered the "Book of Wisdom" to be Holy Scripture.) the Holy Spirit is referred to as Sophia.
The danger is that the ancient Greeks named gods and goddesses after vices and virtues. Hence, there were Greeks who worshipped Sophia personnified as a goddess of wisdom. In SOME radical-feminist groups, Sophia becomes less identifiable with the Holy Spirit, and more with the Greek goddess OF wisdom.
This is relatively rare, however: Pagan-leaning groups usually go all the way to rebelling against the God the Father, not content with merely emphasizing the feminine nature of the Holy Spirit. As such, they often worship the false goddess Gaia, a creator-goddess, rather than Sophia.
Sorry, but I can't help think of a twist of the old NY Times biolerplate:
CATHOLICS ELECT NEW POPE! WOMEN AND MINORITIES TO BE HIT HARDEST!
Good info. I consider substituting milk and honey for bread and wine in a communion service in order to "celebrate our feminity" to be pretty far out there though.
Waaaaay far out there.
Plenty WAAAAY far out there. Any group using those has gone pagan. They may justify themselves by citing references to Israel as a land of milk and honey, but the reason those materials began being used in worship was neo-pagan rituals which saw milk and honey as sexual secretions.
T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6
Uh, why are you posting in this forum instead of cruising the bathhouse in whatever blue state/college town hellhole you crawled out from?
Go to church and purify your soul.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
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