Posted on 08/12/2005 10:29:56 AM PDT by NYer
When Benedict was elected pope, a new word was instantly coined on the Internet by Catholics delighted over his election: Ratzenfreude.
Unreality on the Right and the Left Carping Conservatives We Don't Want a Teacher, We Want a Warrior King! Pope Benedict is Not the One on Trial
I must confess I indulged in a bit of Ratzenfreude myself. It was hard not to as the Usual Suspects in the Media shrieked that he was a Nazi and emitted the usual blah blah about our need to remain faithful to the teachings of the Third Vatican Council which will soon make abortion a sacrament and guarantee God's blessing on whatever it is Americans want to do with our groins today.
But at the same time, I was aware that, precisely because the media portrayals of Pope Benedict were so unrealistic, there was a danger that even the people who were delighted with his election were delighted for unrealistic reasons as well. The more I listened to Internet chatter, the more it seemed to me that many conservative Catholics assumed he would apply the full might of the papal office to the task of rooting out all the Bad Catholics and sending them packing. Hopes began to rise among conservatives (just as terrors were rising on the Left) that he was at long last going to inaugurate the show trials, purges and excommunications. The Church was about to pass through the Great Benedictine Cleansing Fire!
This seemed to me as wildly unrealistic as the hysterical notions on the Left that Benedict was the enemy of democracy who wants homosexuals stoned to death, women barefoot and pregnant, and Protestants burnt at the stake. As the gleeful hope for The Purge continued to rise on the Right, I made a prediction on an Internet forum to the effect that, within six months, many of those cheering Benedict's election would be complaining about his failure to be Der PanzerPapa.
I was wrong. It only took about two weeks.
Conservative critics on Internet fora whose sense of failure, doom, and despair sustains them through moments of hope and happiness soon began to sniff that, "Many of us have greatly lowered our expectations of this pope."
Benedict's crimes? Among other things, "He's participated in... which were much less than what traditionalists expected from a Ratzinger papacy. Contemporary hymns, flutes, oboes, etc." More terrible still, "Doing away with the papal tiara on his coat of arms was another unpleasant shock of this new pontificate." Worst of all, there is the sin of imitating Pope John Paul with "a trip to a synagogue added to his itinerary for World Youth Day in Germany, excessive emphasis on ecumenism, even down to simple things like continuing to wear the same vestments at all papal functions that John Paul II wore. Popes always had their own new set of liturgical vestments. This made it all very disappointing."
Now one of the common polemical boasts of conservative Catholics (when Protestants are in the room) is that Catholics have a universal shepherd and teacher, while Protestants are "scattered sheep." We have (it is boasted at Protestants) this glorious treasure of a Petrine teaching office given us by Christ Himself.
But when Protestants leave the room, it is stunning how often the very conservative Catholics who make such boasts seem to be singularly bent on complaining about where the shepherd is leading and what the teacher is teaching. The author of Dominus Iesus is condemned for engaging in ecumenism (frequently with tired and ignorant claims that this is equal to indifferentism). He is scolded for supporting Jews in an increasingly anti-semitic Europe.
His conservative critics (so recently shouting "Hosanna" at his election) don't seem to be interested in what the pope teaches. They appear to long instead for him to finally fulfil the pre-Christian Messianic dream of a Davidic Warrior King who will establish righteousness by force. They are impatient for Benedict to kick out the Bad People and create a Pure Church. They roll their eyes when he lives out wimpy drivel like charity, gentleness, and respect for non-Catholics (a.k.a. "excessive ecumenism"). Warrior Kings don't dialogue! They conquer and rule! That's why the departure of Thomas Reese from America caused such glee on the Right. It was, some hoped, the First Fruits of the Long-Hoped-For Purge!
Except that it wasn't. Reese resigned: he wasn't fired. There was no General Order from Rome calling for the roundup and execution of Undesirables in Catholic media. For Benedict is not going to fulfil either that fantasy or many others. So people like the critic quoted above are disappointed. Instead of ruling o'er time and space with an iron fist, Benedict talks to Jews! He labors at "excessive ecumenism" instead of telling the Protestants, "Go to hell! We don't need you." He is not about Power.
I can't help but think that, for those who regard the pope as a flag — not as a shepherd or teacher in any living sense — this will continue to constitute an increasingly sore trial. I hope such folk pass it. For it is they who are being tried, not Benedict.
He also engages in a rather uncharitable form of insinuation, suggesting that anyone critical of the Holy Father's ecumenism is really just an anti-Semite.
If conservative Catholics are looking for justice and judgement of the wicked, they're looking at the wrong person. That is what CHRIST will do when the time has come.
Mark Shea tries the Limbaugh formula, and again fails in terms of how he frams arguements, I ought to know based on how he tries to debate on Amy Welborns blogs commment boxes. I used to respect him a few years ago, but based on how he tries to debate, it makes me wonder how he survives doing what he does, because his arguements only consist of strawmen now, of course, Limbuagh himself for that matter has declined to a similar state of disrepair.
All Mark Shea does is throw stones, and puts dubious at best "logic" behind his arguements. When the appointment of LeVada came up, he was the main person kicking up dirt with overtly trollish behavior. On a similar thread on Welborns blog on immigration, he went into bayourod territory. Mark Shea is to authentic Catholicism as Bill Kristol is to authentic conservatism.
I suggest that people look at what the Holy Father has said about anti- semitism. During the interwar period, sentiments against the Jews everywhere in Europe was really vicious. To be sure, some of it had to do with bad behavior of some Jews, but has to be revisited to see that it infected even good men like Chesterton. The pope knows this,knows that it blinded the German people to the horrible implications of Nazi policy, to the fact that the Nazis did not just DISLIKE or DESPISE Jews but hated them as the devil hates God.
That's great!
"... We believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church..."; The Nicene Creed, c 325 AD
"Nevertheless, let us speak out and say plainly what worries us today at this point in the Creed. We are tempted to say, if we are honest with ourselves, the the church is neither holy nor Catholic: the Second Vatican council itself ventured to the point of speaking no longer merely of the holy Church but of the sinful Church, and the only reproach it incurred was that of still being far too timorous; so deeply aware of we all of the sinfulness of the church... The catholicity of the Church seems just as questionable as its holiness. The one rock of the Lord is torn between the disputing parties, the one Church is divided up into many Churches, every one of which claims more or less insistently to be alone in the right. And so for many people today the Church has become the main obstacle to belief. They can no longer see in it anything but the human struggle for power, the petty spectacle of those who, with their claim to administer official Christianity, seem to stand most in the way of the true Spirit of Christianity.
There is no theory in existence which could refute such ideas by mere reason, just as conversely these ideas themselves do not proceed from mere reason, but from bitterness of a heart which may perhaps have been disappointed in its high hopes and now, in the pain of wronged love, can see only the destruction of its hopes. How, then, are we to reply? In the last analysis, one can only confess why one can still love this Church in Faith, why one still dares to recognize in the distorted features the countenance of the holy Church. Nevertheless, let us start from the objective elements. As we have already seen, in all these statements of faith the word "holy" does not apply in the first place to the holiness of human persons but refers to the gift which bestows holiness in the midst of human unholiness. The Church is not called "holy" in the Creed because its members, collectively and individually , are holy, sinless men--this dream which appears afresh in every century, has no place in the waking world of our text, however movingly it may express a human longing which man will never abandon until a new heaven and a new earth really grant him what this age will never give him. Even at this point we can say that the sharpest critics of the Church in our time secretly live on this dream and, when they find it disappointed, bang the door of the house shut again and denounce it as a deceit. but to return to our argument; the holiness of the Church consists in that power of sanctification which God exerts in it inspite of human sinfulness. We come up here against the real mark of the "New Covenant"; in Christ God has bound himself to men, has let himself be bound by them. The New Covenant no longer rests on the reciprocal keeping go of the agreement; it is granted by God as grace which abides even in face of man's faithlessness. It is the expression of God's love, which will not let itself be defeated by man's incapacity but always remains well-disposed towards him, welcomes him again and again precisely because he is sinful, turns to him, sanctifies him, and loves him.........
Let us go a step further . In the human dream of a perfect world, holiness is always visualized as untouchable by sin and evil, as something unmixed with the latter; there always remains in some form or other a tendency to think in terms of black and white, a tendency to cut out and reject mercilessly the current form of the negative (which can be conceived in widely varying terms). In contemporary criticism of society and in the action in which it vents itself, this merciless side always present in human ideals is once again only too evident. That is why the aspect of Christ's holiness that upset his contemporaries was the complete absence of this condemnatory note--fire did not fall on the unworthy, nor were the zealous allowed to pull up the weeds which they saw growing luxuriantly on all sides. On the contrary, this holiness expressed itself precisely as mingling with the sinners whom Jesus drew into his vicinity; as mingling to the point where he himself was made "to be sin" and bore the curse of the law in execution as a criminal--complete community of fate with the lost (cf 2 Cor.5.21; Gal 3;13) He has drawn sin to himself, made it his lot and so revealed what true "holiness" is; not separation but union, not judgment but redeeming love. Is the Church not simply the continuation of God's deliberate plunge into human wretchedness; is it not simply the continuation of Jesus' habit of sitting at table with sinners, of his mingling with the misery of sin to the point where he actually seems to sink under its weight? Is there not revealed in the Church, as opposed to man's expectation of purity, God's true holiness, which is love, love which does not keep its distance in a sort of aristocratic, untouchable purity but mixes with the dirt of the world, in order thus to overcome it. Can therefor the holiness of the Church be anything else but he mutual support which comes of course, from the fact that all of us are supported by Christ?"
.....Who would dare to assert of himself that he did not need to be borne by others, indeed borne up by them: and how can someone who lives-on the forbearance of others himself renounce forbearance? Is it not the only gift remaining he can offer in return, the only comfort remaining to him that he endures just as he too is endured? Holiness in the Church begins with forbearance, and leads to uplifting. Where there is no more bearing, there is no more bearing up either and existence, lacking support, can only sink into the void. People may well say that such words express a weakly existence--but it is part of being a Christian to accept the impossibility of autonomy and the weakness of one's own resources. At bottom there is always hidden pride at work when criticism of the church adopts that tone of rancorous bitterness which today is already beginning to become a fashionable habit.
Unfortunately, it is accompanied only too often by a spiritual emptiness in which the specific nature of the Church as a whole is no longer seen, in which it is only regarded as a political instrument whose organization is felt to be be pitiable or brutal, as the case may be, as if the real function of the Church did not lie beyond organization, in the comfort of the Word and of the sacraments which she provides in good and bad days alike....Only he who has experienced how, regardless of changes in her ministers and forms, the Church raises men up, gives them a home and a hope, a home that is hope--path to eternal life-only he who has experienced this knows what the Church is, both in days gone by and now..... This does not mean that everything must be left unchanged and endured as it is......After all the church does not live otherwise than in us; she lives from the struggle of the unholy to attain holiness.... but this effort only becomes fruitful and productive if it is inspired by forbearance, by real love. And here we have arrived at our criterion by which that critical struggle for better holiness must be judged... and that criteria is forbearance. A bitterness that can only destroy stands condemned. A slammed door can, it is true, become a signal that shakes up those inside. But the idea that one can do more constructive work in isolation than in fellowship with others is just as much of an illusion a the notion of a Church of "holy people" instead of a "holy Church" that is holy because the Lord bestows holiness on her as a quite unmerited gift.....In a world torn apart, she is a sign and means of unity, she is to bridge nations, races and classes, and unite them. How often she has failed in this, we know; even in antiquity it was infinitely difficult for her to be simultaneously the Church of the barbarians and of the Romans; in modern times she was unable to prevent strife between the Christian nations; and today she is still not succeeding in so uniting rich and the poor that the excess of the former becomes the satisfaction of the latter--the ideal of sitting at a common table remains unfulfilled. Yet even so one must not forget all the imperative that have issued from the claim of catholicity; above all, instead of reckoning up the past, we should face the challenge of the present and try not only to profess catholicity in the Creed but make it a reality in the life of our torn world."
Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, commenting on the Nicene Creed in, "An Introduction to Christianity," -1968
I really enjoyed reading this. It is so dead on accurate, and funny as well.
I wasn't talking about the Holy Father's views on anti-Semitism. What I was getting at was what I perceived as a vile insinuation that people (I am not among them) who criticize the Holy Father's ecumenical visit to a synagogue are somehow automatically anti-Semitic.
I just thought it was kind of a low blow; that's all. I've seen this kind of thing from Mr. Shea in the past. He's a good guy, but he gets carried away rhetorically.
I think we need to remember that the remark of Pius XI(?) that spiritually we are all Semites was more than a rhetorical flourish, that a visit to a synagogue is more than a symbolic gesture. After all we worship a Jew.
And I agree...Christianity is really fulfilled Judaism, so we are also Jews, in a certain respect. And we should always be respectful of the particular people through whom God has chosen to reveal Himself, in the most special way imaginable.
That the Church is, but the example Christ gave us is evangelization, not ecumenism.
Personally, I'd draw the line at prayers in non-Christian houses of worship, no matter how well-intentioned.
The word Jew implies someone who follows the modern religion of Rabbinic Judaism.
Jesus Christ condemned the Rabbinic Judaism of His times for its hypocrisy and voiding of the Law. He certainly did not follow them.
Moreover, Blessed Mary was a Galilean, not a Judean (St. Joseph was a Judean from Bethlehem, but St. Mary was from Nazareth). The Jews had not lived in Galilee since the time of the Maccabean revolt (1 Maccabees 5.14-23). The people there who followed the Law were not genetically Judean, but were the mixed remnant of the 10 tribes of Israel and the gentiles who had moved in. Thus the utter contempt of the Rabbinic clique of Jesus' day for Him because of His Galilean roots (St. John 7.52), and even some of his own Apostles before they met Him (St. John 1.46). After all, it was "Galilee of the Gentiles" (Isaiah 9.1, St. Matthew 4.15). Galilee was a microcosm of the world, with all manner of ethnicities living amongst each other - Greeks, Arameans, Phoenicians, Israelites.
Jesus was purposefully born in Galilee of a woman of unknown ancestry because He came for all people. He certainly was not some Yeshiva Rebbe hunched over a desk muttering Talmudic verses.
If He is to be said to be anything, He should be called a wandering Aramean, like His father Abraham (Deuteronomy 26.5, St. Luke 1.55)
You have a different take on history than I do. In my view, rabbinical Judaism was established after the destruction of the temple, a development of certain strands of the Pharisees.
A woman of unknown ancestery? Galilee was a frontier region for the Hasmonean government. It may be speculated that Joseph was a native of of means who had relatives in Nazareth, of whom Mary may have been one. In any case, Mary was a woman of Israel, otherwise Jesus was not a Jew, which is, of course what you choose to believe. It is strange therefore that he limited his ministry to the Jews, with the exception of his mission into Samaria. He did say that salvation is from the Jews, unless you are trying to spin that as an ironical statement.
"They are impatient for Benedict to kick out the Bad People and create a Pure Church....He labors at "excessive ecumenism" instead of telling the Protestants, "Go to hell! We don't need you." He is not about Power. "
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This is only a minor detail, but I think that the Pope IS about "P"ower--Power in the purest form that a human may accept.
http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/matthew/matthew20.htm
But Jesus summoned them and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt.
26
But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;
27
whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.
28
Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."
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What I like about the article: "Bad" people are those in most need of staying in Church rather than being kicked out and having the Church made "Pure". Keeping "Bad" people close to Christ is the Purification that WE need. If all "Bad" people were kicked out, I suppose the "Pure" Church on earth would only have Jesus and Pope B16...and I would be 100% about the mere mortal dude of the two.
There is an excellent article in this week's edition of 'The Wanderer' that merits posting. Sans link, that means I will have to transcribe it. It is written by an esteemed Catholic priest with regard to the upcoming Synod convened by B-16 on the liturgy. Look for the ping! Your comments will be appreciated.
Again, kudos on your post ... do you have a link?
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