A little perspective on the Pope
Apr. 20th, 2005 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
demiurgentA lot has been made of Benedict XVI's time spent in Hitler Youth and then as a conscript soldier for the Germans during WWII. These are matters I don't think anyone should put much interest in at this stage -- there are things one has to do under a totalitarianism that one would not otherwise choose to do.
No, if we're going to spend time in grave concern over the new Pope, it should be over his written stance that any pro-choice advocate or politician should be denied communion. In particular, womens' rights advocates and the aforementioned pro-choice advocates should be considering this at best a call to arms, and at worst a sign of things to come.
In the matter of the child abuse scandal, which Benedict XVI's office was directly investigating, the Holy Father stated that the press was to blame for an intentional campaign to discredit Catholicism with these scandals. Now, I happen to live in a town where one of the Priests in question was installed. I'm not Catholic, but I'm friends with Catholics who had to deal with the sudden shock. And the Priest in question is someone I knew, someone I saw at the store. Someone I helped set up with a computer, in fact. After his removal, they actually sent a bishop in to re-consecrate the Church (shifting it from Saint Cecilia to Saint Katherine Drexel in the process).
I think a scandal where multiple churches needed to be re-consecrated and rededicated, where children were abused horribly and traumatically, and where the Church's response through the years has all too often been to quietly move the Priest into a new parish without censure (and often promoting him in the process) deserves better than to be thrown back onto the press that's reporting it. And I think a Cardinal who is so inflexible on Choice that he wrote a position advocating the denial of communion -- for all intents and purposes a silent interdict and the denial of Heaven itself -- to Catholics who voted or advocated pro-Choice positions highlight significant areas of concern not just to Liberals and Liberal Catholics, but to the world. It signifies a potential shift from traditionalism -- the word most often used to describe Benedict XVI -- to a more conservative and orthodox position. That, coupled with the new Pope's characterization of other Christian faiths as deficient and an active position that the Catholic Church is the only Church -- a position that is certainly more conservative than John Paul II's -- leads me to have certain concerns going into this that are all tons more acute than what may have happened to a boy trapped in a horrific country during a horrific moment in our history.
But, on the other hand, he now gets to talk to God. Maybe God will have something to say about all this.
No, if we're going to spend time in grave concern over the new Pope, it should be over his written stance that any pro-choice advocate or politician should be denied communion. In particular, womens' rights advocates and the aforementioned pro-choice advocates should be considering this at best a call to arms, and at worst a sign of things to come.
In the matter of the child abuse scandal, which Benedict XVI's office was directly investigating, the Holy Father stated that the press was to blame for an intentional campaign to discredit Catholicism with these scandals. Now, I happen to live in a town where one of the Priests in question was installed. I'm not Catholic, but I'm friends with Catholics who had to deal with the sudden shock. And the Priest in question is someone I knew, someone I saw at the store. Someone I helped set up with a computer, in fact. After his removal, they actually sent a bishop in to re-consecrate the Church (shifting it from Saint Cecilia to Saint Katherine Drexel in the process).
I think a scandal where multiple churches needed to be re-consecrated and rededicated, where children were abused horribly and traumatically, and where the Church's response through the years has all too often been to quietly move the Priest into a new parish without censure (and often promoting him in the process) deserves better than to be thrown back onto the press that's reporting it. And I think a Cardinal who is so inflexible on Choice that he wrote a position advocating the denial of communion -- for all intents and purposes a silent interdict and the denial of Heaven itself -- to Catholics who voted or advocated pro-Choice positions highlight significant areas of concern not just to Liberals and Liberal Catholics, but to the world. It signifies a potential shift from traditionalism -- the word most often used to describe Benedict XVI -- to a more conservative and orthodox position. That, coupled with the new Pope's characterization of other Christian faiths as deficient and an active position that the Catholic Church is the only Church -- a position that is certainly more conservative than John Paul II's -- leads me to have certain concerns going into this that are all tons more acute than what may have happened to a boy trapped in a horrific country during a horrific moment in our history.
But, on the other hand, he now gets to talk to God. Maybe God will have something to say about all this.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-20 03:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-20 03:59 pm (UTC)More to the point is, does the Catholic Church want to handle it well? I have my doubts, as personally, it seems to me the Vatican would prefer it to be 1005 instead of 2005.
I expect them to take further steps to eradicate the progress that came from Vatican II.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-20 08:51 pm (UTC)I would argue that the church is weathering the modern age just fine in that it's still existing, and in many places growing, as an institution. It's a religion, one based on tradition and a view of truth as an objective constant. As such the Church, IMO, couldn't care less if it's 2005 or 1005. All that the Church is trying to do is to show people the truth in a way that is appicable to them. That's what's bothering people. People expect everything to have progressed in ten centuries, "if something was true back then we must have found something ten times more true by now." Dogma isn't, and can't be, like that. Instead the essential truth has to stay relatively (though not completely) constant while events like Vatican II can change the presentation of that truth to fit realities.