I heard nothing but good about Ratzinger.
But Inquisitor he is not. In the past, a special office would be set by the Pope to sit in judgement of the clergy of a particular region, exact confession, determine penance and call for conversion. So we know them as Venetian Inquisition, Albigensian Inquisition, Spanish Inquisition, etc. Each would employ methods compatible with the jurisprudence of the time and locale. That system, despite widespread ignorance about it today, worked well.
In America we have wholesale refusal to preach on matters of great concern to the Vatican: contraception, abortion, dissolution of Christian marriage. The Liturgy is systematically abused, -- not through inadvertence but wilfully. Of roughly a 100 bishops 6 had the good sense to advise against offering communion to pro-abortion "Catholic" politicians, and that was after the matter was pressed by the laity. This is at the time when the clergy's reputation has already suffered when pederasty among the priests was exposed. I don't want a cardinal attempting to beat sense into American clergy from Rome; I want a canon law prosecutor installed in each American bishopric who would make wayward priests answer specific questions of doctrine, opinion and behavior, and defrock the impostors.
It's actually worse than that. The USCCB is comprised of 186 bishops. The total number of Catholic bishops running around the U.S. is about 275 I believe.
By my calculations only 2.18% of the American episcopate took a stand to protect life. These are the leaders we are forced to suffer with.
What he has done with the office is another story.
"In America we have wholesale refusal [among Newchurch parish priests] to preach on matters [that SHOULD BE] of great concern to the Vatican: contraception, abortion, dissolution of Christian marriage."
You say some things but omit things "that should be" included. You ought to drop in to some independent Traditional Latin Masses now and then. You will discover that these things ARE preached, if you know where to go so you aren't wasting your time on the irsatz version.
And please beware: what you see coming out of the Vatican in WORDS has no value when there is no TEETH in it. Ever since Vatican II there have been lofty statements, engineered to placate the Catholic sense of those who really want to believe everything will be okay, but no penalties are attached to the words. Nobody will ever be brought to correction when they will not suffer consequences. The only ones punished are those who would be too traditional. Diabolical disorientation again. "D2" for short.
Since you’ve been under the impression that you’ve “heard nothing but good about Ratzinger,” perhaps you would be willing to become better informed. Then again, maybe not. But I’ll give it a try.
In 2001, Ratzinger approved as “valid” a Eucharisitc prayer which lacks the words of consecration. Criticism of that move has come from many voices, but there has not been any reversal or any papal decree in this controversial matter of 4 years’ standing.
Another “beastly” approval from his hands is that he’s approved a plan to have canonizations without any need for there having been miracles attributed to the intercession of the candidate. The affirmation by miracles of the work of God is of apostolic origin, used by Jesus Himself, and holds prominent place even in the Old Testament. But in spite of the traditional requirement of 4 miracles for canonization, John Paul II reduced it in 1983 (early in his pontificate) to only 2, and for martyrs, only one. Ratzinger apparently is urging him now to declare all miracles unnecessary for canonizations, in yet further defiance of tradition.
This amounts to the secularization and politicization of the very existence of saints in the minds of the Faithful. Subjectively speaking, the elimination of the special nature of sainthood destroys the veneration of saints, as then anyone can be thought of as a “saintly person” regardless of any objective verification by miraculous intervention.
At this rate, pretty soon EVERYBODY will be a saint, and the Scripture will be fulfilled: “And it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them” (Apocalypse 13:7).