BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

All the criticism by media
of Benedict XVI's Pontificate
is manufactured or false

Some eight years ago, most media commentators contemplated with utter chagrin the election of Joseph Ratzinge as Pope. For decades their favorite whipping boy for everything they dislike about the Catholic Church, he was now her spiritual leader.

To salvage their devastated spirits, they struck back right away by saying he would be a transitional Pope at best (i.e., they didn’t expect him to live long), and that, in any case, he would never be able to ‘fill the shoes’ of the great John Paul II. As if he were nothing but a midget compared to a giant.

He did not need to fill anyone’s shoes because his own shoes were uniquely exceptional. He had a pre-papal biography that is arguably unparalleled in the history of the Papacy.

He was no transitional Pope because even if he ‘reigned’ less than a third of the time that his predecessor did, he accomplished quite a lot in less than eight years. As a head-to-head comparison with the first eight years of his predecessors in modern times would show. He may not have called an ecumenical council as John XXIII did, or helped bring about the collapse of Communism, as John Paul II did, but those are unique events that cannot be created spontaneously.

Meanwhile, he quickly stamped his own gentle and joyful style on his Pontificate, amplified in untold ways by the clarity of his teaching and the power of his personal witness.

After he announced his renunciation of the Pontificate, not one of those detractors has dared go back to dismissing him as a transitional Pope. Not one now says he was unworthy at all to have followed the great John Paul II. And even those who called him a reactionary obscurantist have had to admit that his decision to give up the Papacy was truly revolutionary and radical.

But instead of acknowledging his achievements, they have taken the insidious tack of presenting his Pontificate as if it were the alpha and omega of everything that’s wrong with the Church, or that the major problems the Church has to face in the world are exclusive to his Pontificate alone.

Even so, those who had been consistent in their admiration and adherence to him have not hesitated to call him a great Pope and have been doing so since after his first two to three years as Pope.

My intention here is not to review the achievements and attributes that make him great in every sense of the word - they are obvious to those who love him, and they deserve better than the cursory comments I can make – but to point out how not even his worst critics can come up with anything substantial to fault him with.

My starting point is the AP’s pre-conclave story on March 11 (see earlier post) which echoes Marco Politi’s brief list of Benedict’s supposed ‘failures’.

To begin with, the fresh furor that is whipped up at will by the media over abusive priests and permissive bishops - for cases that had mostly taken place decades before Benedict became Pope. This issue had been thoroughly worked over in 2000-2002, but was revived to peak intensity in 2009-2010, it seems with the sole purpose of getting Benedict XVI to resign out of shame. MSM’s biggest guns in the US and Germany huffed and puffed to find anything in his past that they could defile him with but found nothing.

You'd think from the continual harping in the media that only Catholic priests had ever been guilty of sex crimes against children, that all Catholic priests were sex predators, and that the Church, and especially Benedict XVI, had not done anything to redress a past in which such shameless deeds took place and were tolerated and/or covered up. But on this front, Benedict acted in a way his sainted predecessor did not, and everyone knows it. The sex-abuse scandals attributed to him patently constitute a false charge.

Then, consider the mediagenic and media-generated false controversies like Regensburg and the Williamson case - which were pumped up far beyond the actual significance of the almost trivial details on which MSM (and the public opinion they shape willy nilly) chose to focus to the exclusion of everything else. But which did notimpede Benedict from proceeding to build bridges to Islam, to the Jews and to non-believers. In concrete ways that were visible to everyone.

And finally, 'Vatileaks' - the most over-hyped petty felony in history, more than Watergate which had been a case of inept housebreaking into rival party headquarters raised to epic proportions by an unnecessary and stupid cover-up.

Here we had rank thievery of private documents by the Pope's own valet. He may have been acting on behalf of still unnamed others, but he himself was on a monomaniacal mission of his own - 'to save the Church' from a Pope he considered uninformed, and from everything and everyone in the Vatican whom he sanctimoniously considered 'evil and corrupt' with the shining exception of himself! Yet MSM gladly used his line as if it were gospel truth, without looking for any substantiation at all of that generic accusation.

The media treated this episode as if they were covering the crime of the century - even if the stolen documents showed nothing negative about Benedict XVI himself, nor any outrageous scandal in the Church, nor any previously unreported power games in the Curia. There was not even a show attempt by the media to investigate any lead that might yield a genuine expose of the much-bandied 'evil and corruption' in the Vatican.

Moreover, Vatileaks provided the cue for open season by all and sundry to eviscerate 'the Curia' as if it were a single amorphous monstrous organism that is the Church's heart of darkness. And so the Curia has become the scapegoat of this Conclave, the villain of villains in a vile and thoroughly villainous Vatican.

When someone I have respected and admired a great deal like Mons. Charles Chaput - whom I had secretly thought would make the ideal first North American Pope - tells an Italian newspaper that the next Pope "should clean the Vatican bureaucracy from the ground up (as) a pressing task that would require an energy that Benedict XVI could no longer provide", then I truly despair.

If the media meme can get to someone as intelligent and perceptive as Archbishop Chaput, no wonder the whole world is ready to toss the Church into the dustbin of history. Is it a surprise then when a Catholic anchor like Bill O'Reilly, whose following is astronomical, declares ex cathedra that "the Church has really damaged itself with the sex abuse scandals that I do not see how it can ever repair the damage"?

Although he ought to be better informed, but is not in this case, he is speaking for the many who consider that a few rotten apples in a silo full of fruit means that everything else is tainted and spoiled beyond salvage and must be condemned.

And there is the sideshow of IOR, rightly criticized for its lack of transparency for most of its history. But who was it who, for the first time in Vatican history, decreed that all Vatican offices should follow minimum standards of transparency and be subject to a Financial Information Authority? Who first sought to bring IOR in line with commercial banks that are certified for efficient financial controls by an international authority?

Benedict XVI decreed financial transparency at the Vatican in the same way that he sought zero tolerance for abuses committed by priests and dismissed bishops shown to have failed to apply canon law to erring priests or even covered up for them.

But MSM is blind to anything clean and shining, and can only see what is sordid and sinister, because bad news is news, and good news is no news. Meanwhile, their current meme for the Ratzinger Pontificate is 'evil and corruption, upheaval and uncertainty' without an objective basis, but only because that is what they choose to tell the world about the Church. Without a single good word.

As I said in my comments on Marco Politi's 'making nice' after years of Benedict-bashing, if he could only mention the few 'topics' that he does, and cited above, as the major criticisms of Benedict XVI's Pontificate, then we are talking of manufactured crises (Regensburg, Williamson and Vatileaks), or of conditions left to fester for decades without any redress (abusive priests and IOR) until Benedict XVI took a hand, or conditions endemic to any bureaucracy (‘the Curia’).

No one can name a major problem ‘caused’ directly by Benedict XVI or his administrators. But certainly a major problem for the Church now is the widespread perception created by MSM and the ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ that the above-mentioned problems are genuine crises that have 'rocked and damaged' the Church – even those that have been addressed well and positively, such as priestly perversions and financial opacity.

They have established a black myth about the Church that is as pernicious and dishonest – and unfortunately as devastatingly effective - as that which Soviet propagandists constructed around Pius XII.

My only consolation is that those who appreciate Benedict XVI for who he is and what he has accomplished are not just a few scattered voices among those who write the chronicles which future historians will use as sources to report on his Pontificate.

Whatever judgment secular historians make of Benedict XVI's Pontificate, Church history will get it right. Especially when it concerns the Pontificate of a potential and future Doctor of the Church.

As a sort of complement to the above, here is an account by a French priest who lived in Rome at the time of the 2005 Conclave - and his reaction to Benedict XVI's election, and how he had been conditioned by what he had read in the media about Cardinal Ratzinger. From the thread 'THE EXPERIENCE OF APRIL 19, 2005' in the PAPA RATZINGER FORUM.



Beatrice in the French section found this article in which a French priest who lives in Rome recounts his reaction to Benedict’s election on April 19. The article appeared in the June 2005 issue of “Feu et Lumiere”, a monthly Catholic magazine.

Joseph Ratzinger:
His heart was 'Christified'
during two decades of calumny
while he was Prefect of CDF

Editor's Note: Many things have been said about Benedict XVI since his election. It seemed important to us to allow our readers to make their own judgment. Father Ide, who lives in Rome, tells us how he experienced the event and the immense hope that fills his heart.

I think I will remember all my life the moment when Benedict XVI was elected. I was in my office which overlooks St. Peter’s Square. It was around 4:30 p.m. I had to make a long-distance call, and the operator said:”We have a new Pope!” -“No!”- “Yes!”…Well in that case, my call could wait…

I looked out the window. The police were clearing the sagrato, the space right in front of the entrance to St. Peter’s, where important celebrations take place. The crowd was swelling fast. Then, the bells of St. Peter’s started ringing, driving away all my doubts. After 4 ballots and within less than 24 hours, a new Pope had been chosen. The Piazza filled up with unprecedented speed: businessmen, familes, children, all Rome seemed to arrive, running to St. Peter's.

16:40 The window on the Loggia of Benedictions had hardly started to open when a cry of joy ran through the crowd.

What followed, you have all seen. First, we found out who the new Pope is – “Josephum…Ratzinger”. And then the name he had chosen, “Benedictus XVI”.

Nevertheless, I felt myself oddly ambivalent. On the one hand, I thought, “How well-prepared this new Pope is!” On the other hand, I could not bring myself to rejoice. For me, Cardinal Ratzinger was and could only be the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, chosen by John Paul II to help him guard the treasury of the Faith, though with an incomparable openness to doctrinal debate.

I also remembered some opinions that had been reported of his years as Archbishop of Munich: that he was more a doctor rather than a pastor. But most of all, I imagined all the negative reactions that would come and I was saddened in advance.

Unfortunately, I was not wrong. The same evening, the false judgments, the caricatures, the unfair criticisms started to air. We have since heard everything said against him, including the unimaginable and the unsupportable. But these criticisms require our discernment, because they mask a diversity of different internal attitudes towards Joseph Ratzinger.

At one extreme, we find a hatred that is destructive and lying, that dares to say Benedict XVI had colluded with Nazism, a charge that amounts to the most inadmissible calumny. In his admirable autobiography, which has been translated in French, Ratzinger tells how at age 17, he refused, despite the jeers of his friends, to join the SS militia by affirming that he planned to become a Catholic priest.

The more moderate feed their anger by trite arguments that “he is too conservative.” Behind all this misinformed and sectarian anger, one senses fear.

One person told me: “I love the Church. I loved John Paul II. I did not have any a priori objections to Benedict XVI as I did not know anything about him. On the contrary, when I saw his face on television, I liked him at first sight. But afterwards, all that I have heard of him makes me afraid that the Church will lose the beautiful openness that his predecessor had brought to it.” We then talked about the new Pope’s personality, and I could see confidence gradually replacing my friend’s fear.

But there is also sadness. We need some time to mourn John Paul II and to fully welcome his successor without comparing them. The Vicar of Christ is not Christ, and if Benedict XVI does not have all the qualities of John Paul, the reverse is equally true.

Some anecdotes often reveal the man far more than long discourses. For instance, a group of American pilgrims now recall that one day, at St. Peter’s Square, they asked a priest to take their pictures. He did so, gladly, and they asked him to pose with them. Imagine their surprise to see that the obliging priest in the picture is now the Pope!

After the Pope’s inaugural Mass, a simple man, who says he barely knows how to write, said wondrously: “I understood everything he said in his homily. And yet, it lasted all of 35 minutes.”

A theologian on the prestigious International Theologic Commission, of which Cardinal Ratzinger was president [ex-officio, as CDF Prefect], recalls: “It often happened that we would lose ourselves in endless debates that were increasingly complex. After listening, the Cardinal had his say, offering his point of view which, almost always, reconciled opposing views, and even better, clarified them.”

And someone told me: “When the time comes that the world will say goodbye to Ratzinger, the high and the mighty will be surprised to see they will be surrounded by beggars and hobos, those whom the Cardinal greeted each day when he met them on the street, stopping to exchange a few words and to hand them alms.”

How better to describe the man’s simplicity, his concern for the poorest, his openness, his exceptional intelligence? These are qualities that the faithful began to discover in the first few days of his Papacy. But they were always there, even when he was a cardinal.

There are those who are concerned about his “intransigence.” But they mistake his sense (and defense) of the truth for intransigence. Today, to speak of love and solidarity and compassion will elicit only unanimity. But some contrast what they take to be all-tolerant love with a truth they consider to be “exclusive”. But isn’t truth the greatest good needed by the soul? Benedict XVI, who in his inaugural homily recalled at length the significance of the pallium, does not separate love and truth.

There are those who are unhappy about his “conservatism.” But didn’t Christ himself say that "not the smallest letter…will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished”(Mt 5, 18)? And who will dare to say that Christ is “conservative”?

There are those who are concerned about his stand in matters of ecumenism and inter-religious dialog. It is to forget that Ratzinger worked alongside Protestant theology faculties during his university career, that he sent his first Papal letter to the Jewish community in Rome, that he speaks modern Greek fluently, that he is a friend of the Patriarch of Moscow, that in all the liturgical celebrations since the death of John-Paul, the Vatican has allowed [to use John Paul’s metaphor] both lungs of the Church, the East and the West, to breathe freely.

I think hope will prevail over any fears if we adopt a resolutely theological attitude towards the election process itself at the Conclave. First, it required a two-thirds majority. And it required that each cardinal, before placing his ballot into the urn, pronounce the following oath: “I take as my witness Christ who will judge me, that I cast my vote for the person who I judge should be elected.”

Benedict was elected by a great majority of his brother cardinals from all over the world. The fact was more evident and significant because the process was quite short.

Afterwards, a passage from his homily on April 24 gave me a sense of joyous hope about the new Pope: “I do not need to present a program of government…My true program of government is not do my will, not to pursue my ideas, but, with the whole Church, to listen to the word and the will of the Lord and to let myself be guided by him in such a way that it will be God himself who will guide the Church at this hour in our history.”

A man endowed with all the gifts he has, who puts himself entirely in the hands of God – that is a winning formula! After more than 20 years of testing and calumnies of all sorts that have come his way, he has learned to pardon unconditionally. A gentle and humble man, his heart was “Christified” in his previous office, preparing him in turn for his new and crushing mission as Vicar of Christ.

Finally, how can one not think that John Paul II must have prayed for his successor, and prayed in particular for this successor? Benedict has said he feels his predecessor’s hand holding him firmly by the hand. From the day after he was elected, my heart has felt much lighter – now it is in a state of thanksgiving and deep confidence.

The past has proven that our predictions often go wrong. Who would have thought that John XXIII, whom everyone said would simply be a “transitional” Pope, would call the Second Vatican Council?

Moreover, the history of the past two centuries shows that the Church has often been blessed with Popes who have led incontestably saintly lives.