Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/09/2005 4:50:29 PM PDT by MadIvan
THE rain fell on St Peter’s Square, making puddles through which the pilgrims passed. The dark clouds were forecast for the funeral of Pope John Paul II on Friday but had kept a discreet distance until after the two million mourners who had gathered in the city had dispersed.
Yesterday they unleashed a deluge. Huddled under umbrellas, a few hundred Poles queued to enter the basilica, still imbued with the memory of Karol Wojtyla.
Before 10am a steady stream of cars carrying cardinals from around the globe arrived at the Vatican gates to be waved in by Swiss guards in their distinctive candy-striped uniforms. In their hands rests the future of the Roman Catholic Church and the spiritual direction of its 1.1 billion adherents.
On Monday, April 18, 115 cardinals will process into the Sistine Chapel to the conclave and not re-emerge in public until a new Pope has been chosen.
Although predicting who will come out of a conclave as pope is notoriously difficult, for one man the next eight days will be the most crucial of his distinguished career in the church.
On Friday the world watched as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 77, Dean of the College of Cardinals, led the Pope’s funeral. This week, as either papal candidate or kingmaker, the German theologian, who was raised in Bavaria under the shadow of the Nazis, will wage a battle against the liberal forces of reform.
Yesterday the chief spokesman for the Catholic Church, Dr Joaquin Navarro-Valls, confirmed that no cardinal would speak to the press ahead of the conclave, a move understood to have been initiated by Ratzinger to prevent public debate of the issues now facing the church.
A church source said yesterday: "Cardinal Ratzinger doesn’t want a pope as right wing as Pope John Paul II. He wants a Pope more right wing than Pope John Paul II. There were a lot of things which the Pope chose to do against the wishes of Cardinal Ratzinger."
In 1986 the Pope gathered together representatives of all faiths including a North American Indian shaman for a meeting in the Italian town of Assisi. Ratzinger was bitterly opposed to the conference on the grounds that it could promote "relativism" - the philosophy that all religious beliefs are of equal value.
In 2000, as prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith (CDF) - the successor to the Inquisition - Ratzinger angered ecumenists and leaders of different faiths when he published a church statement, ‘Dominus Iesus’, in which it was stated that only the Catholic Church was a genuine church.
His role during the papacy of John Paul II has been as "the enforcer of the faith" as John L Allen, a journalist for the National Catholic Reporter, described him in his biography of the cardinal. The cardinal has rooted out what he believed is heretical thinking in the books of Catholic theologians and suspended their licence to teach in Catholic universities. The British nun Lavinia Byrne left her religious order after refusing orders from the CDF to pulp her book which discussed the issue of female priests.
"Cardinal Ratzinger wants a church which is pure and disciplined," said another Church source. "He would focus so much on the dogma and on the purity of the church that he would drive people away, and although that would not please him, it wouldn’t bother him that much either. At the moment he will be working to ensure that the papacy of John Paul II is followed by that of another strong right-winger."
Pitted against Ratzinger are his fellow countrymen, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the former Archbishop of Stuttguart, and Cardinal Karl Lehmann, archbishop of Mainz. Ratzinger was understood to be behind the Pope’s decision to refuse a red hat to Lehmann on four separate occasions. He was finally appointed a cardinal in 2001 after intensive German lobbying.
Kasper, on the liberal wing of the church, is considered one of the top 10 papal candidates and has repeatedly crossed crosiers with Ratzinger.
In 1993 Kasper wrote a pastoral letter encouraging divorced Catholics who had remarried to return to take communion. Under the law of the church, remarried Catholics are prohibited from communion. Ratzinger then rejected the letter and blocked its distribution.
The two then clashed over the issue of the German Catholic Church giving advice to women considering abortion, as is necessary under German law. Kasper wished to participate in order to dissuade women; however, Ratzinger insisted they take no part in the process, and won.
No cardinal would ever admit to harbouring a desire for the papacy, and Ratzinger, according to his brother, Georg, had repeatedly asked the Pope for permission to retire. Yet it cannot be ruled out that he might view himself as a stop-gap Pope. Ratzinger is also thought to favour Italian candidates such as Angelo Scola, the patriarch of Venice, over candidates from South America such as Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the Archbishop of Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Ratzinger is also thought to have had a hand in the appointment of the two key speakers who will deliver formal talks entitled: ‘de eligendo pontiface’ - on electing the pontiff. The talks are designed to raise issues which the cardinals should consider when casting their vote and neither choice of cleric is considered controversial.
Fr Raniero Cantalamessa is a Francisan priest who since 1980 has been the Household Preacher to the Pope and is the author of a number of books including Virginity: A Positive Approach to Celibacy. Cardinal Thomas Spidlik, a Czech, is a former professor of patristic and eastern spiritual theology and is a firm advocate, as is Ratzinger, of the spiritual re-conquest of Europe.
In Allen’s biography of Ratzinger, he illustrates his rigorous Catholic faith with a joke in which Ratzinger dies and in heaven he has a meeting with Jesus. Allen explains: "The better part of a day goes by, and periodically sounds of shouting and then weeping fill the air. Eventually the door swings open and Jesus Christ himself walks out, asking: ‘how could I have gotten everything so wrong?’ Many observers see Ratzinger as more Catholic than Jesus."
The historic and highly spiritual assembly of the conclave is steeped in tradition. It is intended as a time for reflection and prayer as the ‘Princes of the Church’ seek inspiration on whom to select.
But before they even set foot beneath Michelangelo’s lavish ceiling inside the Sistine Chapel, each cardinal will first be asked to walk through the arch of an airport scanner.
They will be stripped of all mobile phones, laptop computers, tape recorders and radios before being allowed to begin their profound duty.
This is the confused world that exists inside the Vatican City, where centuries of carefully scripted ceremony and custom collide with modern technology.
Such is the concern that the outside world will intrude upon the deeply religious process, the entire area around the Sistine Chapel is to be swept for bugs.
All letters, phone calls and newspapers are banned from inside the conclave. Cardinals themselves are not allowed to leave unless for a medical emergency. And even staff in the surrounding Vatican grounds are forbidden from speaking to cardinals in case they let something slip.
Father Thomas Reese, author of Inside the Vatican, commented: "Whether this will be sufficient to prevent more sophisticated eavesdropping remains to be seen."
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
These guys know this has been coming, may St. Michael protect and defend us.
BTTT
In my home, we're pulling for Cardinal Ratzinger. My wife and her family know him from when he was a Bishop in Bavaria. They say he is personally and very nice and considerate guy. I'm not Catholic, but I don't exactly see what is wrong with holding up Church Law on communion for re-married people. There's a process for changing that, but ignoring it doesn't make sense. What's the point of having rules, if you don't follow them?
.
Cardinal RATZINGER = FATIMA Fan
Papal Priority Job No. 1
.
I am a member of the Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club (or at least I have a T-shirt that says so!)
I pray that the Lord guides the conclave every step of the way, and they pick the man the Lord leads them to, but in my human, fallible way, I am rooting for Ratzinger.
I would be very happy if Ratzinger were chosen; however, I have a feeling it will be Arinze, who would also be excellent.
Look up your Vatican II history. Ratzinger was right there, arm-in-arm with Rahner, pushing for the same reforms. In fact, Ratzinger himself was criticized by the "conservative" forces at Vatican II--the Ottaviani wing--for taking on the Holy Office (the very position he now holds and under the direction of Cardinal Ottaviani). As periti for the nearly blind Cardinal Frings, he criticized the Holy Office, asserting that its “methods and behavior do not conform to the modern era and are a source of scandal to the world.”
Here is a long article about Ratzinger that summarizes and synthesizes his life, by John Allen who wrote a biography of Ratzinger, and calls him "The Enforcer."
Ratzinger himself will never be Pope, and a sufficient number of cardinals resent him so that anyone he openly campaigns for will not become Pope either.
This man, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is a good man. I doubt that he will have any more influence than any other cardinal, however. The liberals have been trashing him routinely for years.
"Truth is not determined by a majority vote"
"Unlimited trust should only be placed in the real Word of the Revelation that we encounter in the faith transmitted by the Church"
"We do not seek a Christ whom we have invented, for only in the real communion of the Church do we encounter the real Christ."
Stop wasting time in these threads, read Egan....
Methinks Panzerkardinal will become Panzerpope, and I'd be grinning ear to ear if he does (sure there are moderate/liberal cardinals, but too many conservative ones were appointed by Pope John Paul II for the libs to have much power... There's only two or three cardinals left from the papacy of Paul VI (JPI wasn't pope long enough to elevate but one Cardinal, the one to replace him in Venice, and that one since passed--and he wasn't offically Cardinal until after the first consistory under JPII because of how soon JPI died), and they're not exactly kingmakers--not to mention too old to vote. So it will be status quo or a traditionalist-sympathetic Pope, no matter who is chosen.
I've read most of Cardinal Ratzinger's work. It's very impressive. Evangelicals and other Protestants might want to look at his early work, "The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood," which was well received by Protestant theologians at the time.
The Cardinal is especially strong on ecclesiology, the theology of the Church, which suprisingly was almost undeveloped until recent times.
I agree with him about the Assisi meetings, and I imagine most serious Protestants would also agree. You don't bring serious Christians together by trying to water down or gloss over their faith. Evangelicals will find that they are better off with a strong Catholic Church, and Catholics are better off too when Evangelicals remain faithful. Most of the problems in our American culture have arisen because the "mainstream" churches have betrayed their trust.
JPI did not live long enough to replace himself in Venice.
The liberals used to trash Cardinal Ottaviani. Cardinal Ottaviani took himself out of contention for the current election by dying early in Pope John Paul II's pontificate.
God took him out of contention.
I'm pretty sure he named an archbishop to succeed him there, just wasn't named cardinal till after he died...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.