[Mill John Stuart]

As a world religion that has participated in, and suffered from, harsh religious conflict for two millenia, the Church has found that repression of evil and false doctrine can lead to creation of even greater evils. The Church has made its peace with considerable variation in doctrine and practice: priests with common law wives in Peru, Santeria in the Caribbean, Candomble in Brazil, Americans who use artificial contraceptives, conservatives and liberals. It has apologized for the violent way it has suppressed what it considered false in the past. The experiences of religious conflict have taught the Church and all other world religions that a degree of religious tolerance is necessary, that you cannot prove your love of God by silencing, excommunicating and driving out those who do not conform to the latest doctrinal shifts. The first amendment of the US Constitution embodies a recognition that religious tolerance is necessary for people to get along in the modern world. The Catholic Church, while not a political nation, is the denomination which has the biggest, and perhaps most elastic tent of all the world religions. That is inherent in the name Catholic, all-encompassing. Ratzinger has moved away from this big tent approach that the Church has evolved over centuries. He has been very selective about which currents and which individuals he would suppress, not going after the most violent, or most in violation of Catholic sexual morality, or farthest from official doctrine. There is a clear political bias, reflected, rather than a broad opposition to evil, or even false doctrine.

[aposiopetic]

My sole assertion stands, that you (for whatever reason) reject a simpler and more benign explanation: the discouragement (what you call "suppression" -- a condition which no longer obtains, given the state of worldwide communications in 2005) of the teaching of error is done to fulfill the two great commandments.

For the record, since my comment went to the issue of motive, I never asserted that Ratzinger had somehow succeeded in stopping the teaching of every known or conceivable error among a billion or so Catholics.

Feel free to take that debate up with someone else.