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.
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.