Posted on 08/04/2003 6:43:48 AM PDT by dead
THE man who wrote the Vatican document ruling out same-sex marriage is a soft-spoken Bavarian who was once a liberal but has served as the Pope's ultra-conservative guardian of doctrine for more than 20 years.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has been at the Pope's side as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for so long that he has been nicknamed 'The Enforcer' or the 'Panzerkardinal'.
Cardinal Ratzinger is regarded as "the second most powerful man" in the Church.
If anything, he is even more zealous than the Pope, whom he meets every Friday evening, in laying down the line on social or sexual mores.
One joke told in the Vatican has Cardinal Ratzinger arriving in Heaven together with the church dissidents he has suppressed.
The dissenters, the joke runs, emerge after meeting God, crying: "How could I have been so wrong?" Cardinal Ratzinger goes in to meet the Almighty, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth - and God emerges, crying: "How could I have been so wrong?"
So indispensable has Cardinal Ratzinger become that when he turned 75 in April - the usual retirement age for senior churchmen - the Pope asked him to stay on.
Last week's 12-page document outlawing same-sex unions and adoptions by homosexuals was first mooted in January, when the Pope urged Catholic politicians to use their votes to "safeguard the family". It took shape in March, when the Vatican reiterated that those involved in gay marriage had "disordered minds".
Behind the latest broadside lies the Pope's growing fear that this legal and social taboo is rapidly slipping in both America and Europe, and must be shored up at all costs. The document was signed by Cardinal Ratzinger on behalf of the Pope, and bore all the hallmarks of his uncompromising battle against unorthodox ideas.
Homosexual acts "go against natural moral law", while to legitimise same-sex unions was "evil" - a word the Vatican does not use lightly.
But then Cardinal Ratzinger has dedicated his life to "holding the line" in a world he regards as lacking in moral fibre. The papal adviser's most withering words are reserved not for the external enemies of the Church, but for Catholic liberals whom he believes to be undermining faith and papal authority by flirting with the "rampant individualism" and "anything goes" culture of the Western world. The cardinal is charming and cultured, with a ready smile and a love of Mozart. He plays the piano well. In his youth in Nazi Germany he came to be regarded as something of a liberal.
Although he was a member of the Hitler Youth, and in 1943 was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a teenager, he came to believe that Hitler was the Antichrist. He deserted in 1945 and was held as a prisoner of war by American forces.
He shares the view of the the Polish Pope - who as a young man experienced the Nazi occupation of his homeland - that only a united Catholic Church with absolute values can stand against both totalitarianism and the temptations of Western materialism.
But the cardinal was shocked by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, when the old certainties gave way to intellectual and theological ferment. He owed his job teaching theology at Tubingen University to Hans Kung, the distinguished dissident theologian. Yet he later had no hesitation in turning on his old mentor by revoking his licence to teach, prompting Dr Kung to compare the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the KGB.
After five years as Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Ratzinger (he was made cardinal in 1977) was summoned to Rome to be the Pope's "enforcer" in 1981, swiftly gaining a reputation for ruthlessly quashing dissenters who dared to question papal infallibility or doctrine.
The cardinal has also condemned Buddhism, Hinduism and other Eastern religions as offering false hope through "auto-erotic spirituality", accused the media of "exaggerating" the extent of the paedophilia scandal in the American Church and encouraged a return to the Latin Mass.To the relief of Catholic liberals, he is unlikely to become the next Pope. He will, however, play a key role in deciding who that will be.
As Dean of the College of Cardinals, he will chair the conclave - and can be expected to do his utmost to ensure that the successful candidate is a man in his own image.
As Dean of the College of Cardinals, he will chair the conclave - and can be expected to do his utmost to ensure that the successful candidate is a man in his own image.
I don't know too much about his reputation other than what is printed here. However, if this is an accurate depiction (and I think the author wasn't a fan...) then I like him and welcome his help in selecting a conservative pope.
Too bad I already have a screen name.
Finally, I said to her, "Aren't you a little presumptious to pretend that you know what makes a good Catholic better than the pope?"
Really? So God will welcome kiddie-diddlers and butt pirates into the Kingdom of God? I don't think so.
That the publication is the "Irish Independent" does not mean that the publication is Catholic, or even that contradiction in terms: liberal "Catholic." Atheist with an axe to grind is a lot more likely.
The author does indeed seem no fan of the distinguished Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. We are left to speculate as to the reasons for his hostility as the author has apparently, without basis, speculated as to Cardinal Ratzinger's personal history and motivations.
If Cardinal Ratzinger is now 75, he is 58 years older than he was in 1945 at the end of the war. That would make him a prisoner of war at 17 years of age, two years after being drafted into the Wehrmacht (assuming that such is not a sheer fabrication).
One cannot very well be a conservative AND a disciple of the execrable Hans Kung. Stripping Kung of his license as Catholic theologian was the job of the Holy Office headed by the efficient Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Excommunicating him would have been easily justified and in prior centuries...... If the Holy Office were the KGB, Hans Kung would be an enthusiastic supporter of the Holy Office.
As I understand it, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in his relative youth during Vatican II, made the mistake of serving as a house intellectual to the Council radicals, a so-called peritus just like Malachi Martin. It did not take either of them very long to realize the enormity of the evil being done in the name and "spirit" of the Council and both then dedicated the rest of their lives to undoing the wrong they had helped to do.
And just imagine, Ratzinger has condemned Buddhism, Hinduism and Eastern (pagan) religions! How politically incorrect! How consistent with the command of Jesus Christ to teach all nations, but never mind.
I had also thought that the Dean of the College of Cardinals was the senior or longest-serving cardinal (by curret rules ineligible by age in excess of eighty to even vote much less preside over conclave) and that the conclave's initial presiding officer will be that cardinal designated by the pope as camerlengo (often the Secretary of the Vatican State). At least that is what I gathered from Malachi Martin's magnificent 1978 novel The Final Conclave which goes into minute detail, though not infallibly, as to conclave rules and procedures.
"(a) reputation for ruthlessly quashing dissenters who dared to question papal infallibility or doctrine" Yes, and thankfully so since that is one of the prime qualities to be sought in one who would head the Holy Office. AND Cardinal Ratzinger has the effrontery to issue a document condemning "homosexual marriage", "civil unions" and fudgie adoptions. Can you just imagine! The New York Times will surely hear about this!
I suspect that this business of lavender lifestyle and prerogatives is the author's real concern. If an Irishman is going to live life in the pre-repentance Oscar Wilde lane, he cannot be very comfortable with either God's permanent word or God's permanent Church.
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