BY SHAY CULLEN
POPE Benedict XVI has gone to his eternal rest after a life of service, teaching and ruling the Catholic Church. He was pope from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013.
Many remember him as a much revered and greatly respected priest, bishop and Pope. He had been lauded by many on the conservative side of the Catholic Church.
Before becoming pope, he was known as Joseph Ratzinger of German nationality. He became a priest in 1951 and later, in 1977, was made a bishop and then Pope in 2005.
As priest, bishop and cardinal he was a renowned academic and theologian and author of 66 books, three encyclical letters on love (2005), hope (2007) and “charity in truth” (2009). He was a conservative traditional Pope and he reinstated the pre-Vatican II Latin liturgy with mass in Latin, later reversed by Pope Francis.
Although a kind and thoughtful person with a wide theological reputation, he was unable to cope with the reality of the widespread child sexual abuse by priests in the church like many bishops today.
The stark reality was totally repugnant for a theologian that had taught, preached and campaigned against modern secularism and sexual promiscuity. He was against liberation theology, a movement in the church that taught Gospel values of social justice, compassion and the active defense of human rights and the formation of basic Christian communities.
Cardinal Ratzinger rejected this challenging movement in the church that was led by progressive bishops and socially committed priests and lay people and was widespread in Latin America and the Philippines.
Benedict challenged all liberal movements, anti-celibacy, women priests, divorce, contraception, and rights for gay people, as manifestations of an age of sinfulness that had abandoned Christianity as if the world had opted for the rule of Satan. Benedict, the theologian, had built up a theological fortress around the reputation and the elevated status of the priesthood by calling the priest the representative of God on earth, placing him on a pedestal.
The priest was, for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a model of human sanctity, and bishops and the reputation of the institutional church were on an even higher pedestal. He believed, it seems, that they could do no wrong and some bishops apparently believe it, too.
The very suggestion that clerical child abuse was widespread was anathema and a priest, let alone a bishop or a cardinal, could sexually molest, rape and abuse children was unthinkable, abhorrent, inadmissible and denied for some time. The Vatican for years dismissed clerical child abuse claims as false, frame-ups or as vicious attacks on the Church in retaliation for the anti-secular critical statements and writings of Cardinal Ratzinger.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was appointed by Pope St. John Paul II as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Nov. 25, 1981. He was then the strict enforcer of “the doctrine on the faith and morals throughout the Catholic world.”
Yet there were hundreds, if not thousands, of credible reports and evidence of heinous crimes of child sexual abuse by priests piling up on his desk. (To be continued)/PN
