Or, should I say, Pope Benedict?
For a while, being a Catholic, I tried to get myself to call Ratzinger by the name he chose, Pope Benedict. But I've given up on it. He's not a Pope to me anymore than Bush is a President to me.
Re. Bush: not only did Bush lose the popular election in 2000, but he was (in my opinion) selected by the Supreme Court, effectively, when they stopped the Florida recount, and I regard that as illegal. So does the Supreme Court! They themselves stated that their decision on Bush v. Gore was not to be used as precedent! That's the same as admitting that it was a bogus decision.
So what about Ratzinger?
A little known fact about Ratzinger is that, just as Jeb Bush (with the help of Katherine Harris) basically installed the election ambush that got his brother into the White House, Ratzinger himself installed the papal election system that got him into the papal tiara (which they don't actually have anymore, but you know what I mean).
See, for many years towards the end of John Paul 2's life, as JP2 declined, Ratzinger effectively co-ruled the Catholic Church with him. How much that is true is up for debate, but I think no one disputes that JP2 relied heavily on Ratzinger, in particular for help with the selection of (conservative) cardinals. This created a large body of cardinals in the church who owed their advancement partly to Ratzinger.
But that's not all. Ratzinger also worked with John Paul 2 to change the system for electing popes. It used to be that once the conclave had begun, voting went on until someone reached the two thirds it took to elect a pope. That process could take a long time and it could produce surprises. John 23rd, who convened Vatican 2, the Church Council that modernized the Catholic Church, was not the favorite going into his conclave. But the Pope who followed John, Pope Paul, WAS the favorite going into his.
Ratzinger changed the rules. Now, after a conclave has gone to fifteen votes, which takes about a week, the percentage required to 'win' changes to a simple majority, not a two thirds majority. See how that changes things? Now, anyone who goes into a conclave as a strong frontrunner is almost sure to win. It's an approach that rewards the kind of wnner-takes-all strategy we see in this country from the Republicans. Once you have your 51%, screw the rest.
And who was better positioned going into the conclave after JohnPaul 2 died than Ratzinger? Not only had he effectively been co-ruling the Church already, but he had helped select many of the cardinals. In the days between JP2's death and the conclave, he made what amounted to campaign speechs to the cardinals gathered to Rome - in itself, this was a departure from tradition.
The way I see it, Ratzo rigged his election as Pope. Oh sure, once elected, he affected great humility, just like Bush, once elected, mouthed empty bipartisan rhetoric. This guy was determined to be Pope and had a death grip on the job. As I see it, he basically just waited for JP2 to slip out of the Seat of Saint Peter and slipped right in.
The whole point of the way the conclaves used-to-be WAS that they were inefficient. It wasn't intended to be a process that rewarded the jackrabbit candidate. It wasn't intended to be a process that encouraged cardinals to come in with their minds made up. It was intended to be a process that forced the cardinals to communicate with each other until they came up with a candidate that most of them could agree to. It was intended as a system that encouraged consensus and NOT a winner-takes-all mentality.
Don't say Ratzinger didn't warn us what kind of Pope he was going to be. Before the conclave he stated that he thought the Church might have to become smaller, to become more pure. That's just another way of saying that he was rolling for keeps and if you weren't with him, you were against him. Winner takes all.
He also declared that modernism was the enemy of the Church, or words to that affect, echoing complaints that reactionary popes have been ranting about for two centuries now.
Looking back over the past two centuries, it's interesting to see how reactionary and forward-looking popes have tended to alternate, apart from two 30-plus year periods: the leadup to and aftermath of WW2 (and we know how well the Church handled that!) and now:
Pius VII (1800-23) (reactionary)
Leo XII (1823-29) (forward-looking)
Pius VIII (1829-30) (r)
Gregory XVI (1831-46) (f)
Blessed Pius IX (1846-78) (r)
Leo XIII (1878-1903) (f)
St. Pius X (1903-14) (r)
Benedict XV (1914-22) (f)
Pius XI (1922-39) (r)
Pius XII (1939-58) (r)
Blessed John XXIII (1958-63) (f) (very short reign)
Paul VI (1963-78) (f)
John Paul I (1978) (f) (very short reign)
John Paul II (1978-2005) (r)
Benedict XVI (2005?) (r)
These are very rough categorizations, of course. But I think it's fair to say that the system works better when a current Pope cannot program the next Pope, as JP2 did Ratzinger (and with Ratzinger's help). They are supposed to trust God a little.
We all just saw what the battle between reactionaries and progressives looks like in American politics. Fervently we hope, many of us, that progressives are on the rise, but the recent funding bill showed us that the journey is long and hard and fraught with step-by-step battles, many of which we may lose and more of which end inconclusively.
Here's what a step the 'battle' looks like in the Catholic Church. According to an article I read today, Ratzo is trying to bring back the Latin Mass (which actually never entirely went away):
Pope Benedict XVI has drafted a document allowing wider use of the Tridentine Mass, the Latin rite that was largely replaced in the 1960s by Masses in English and other modern languages, a church official said yesterday.
Personally, I love Latin and love the Latin Mass and I don't think it should ever have been done away with. But look at what is at stake symbolically:
... Nathan D. Mitchell, professor of liturgical studies at the University of Notre Dame... acknowledged, the Tridentine Mass has become "an icon for all the things that people thought had been forfeited and lost at, and after, the Second Vatican Council. That includes not only the liturgy but also a church of visible discipline and hierarchical structure, the ancient discipline of the priesthood, the moral authority of bishops and the pope, a way of looking at the human relationship to God."
In other words, the revival of the Latin Mass is a key symbolic move by this reactionary 'leader' of the Church, as affirmed by an associate of Ratzinger's:
"People are tired of not knowing what they're going to find" when they go to Mass, said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, the pope's English-language publisher and a leading conservative in the U.S. church. "Benedict is saying, 'The people have a right to the immemorial spiritual customs of the church.' "
But there's a deeper game afoot here. Benedict is also trying to heal the split that ocurred in 1988 between the Roman Catholic Church and the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre, who vehemently opposed Vatican 2, vehemently opposed modernism, and for whom the Latin Mass was a key symbol:
The change might, however, help to heal a rift between the Vatican and followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a French prelate who bitterly opposed the Second Vatican Council's decisions. Benedict has reached out to Lefebvre's followers, signaling that he would allow them to use the old Mass in return for their recognition of his authority.
http://www.washingto...
Healing a split in the Church is a good thing, right? But remember, this Pope has proclaimed that he envisions a smaller, more pure (from his point of view) Church. So healing splits is not generally his thing. I do not know of any case in which he has reached out to the left wing of the Catholic Church, except that he did invite the suppressed theologian Hans Kung, now a very old man, to dinner.
I read one of Lefebvre's books once. While one could not help but admire his fervor, his ignorance was patent. For example, he complained that new liturgies that used earthenware vessels did not show respect to the body and blood of Christ the way such dainties as fancy gold chalices supposedly do.
Now, I love gold chalices, but I also know the deep love and respect many potters put into their earthenware vessels.
And for all his vaunted scholarship chops, Ratzinger has made his share of patently absurd statements. According to Ratzinger, at least as I understand bits of his writing that I have perused, Liberation Theology is just Marxism dressed up as theology. That might be true of SOME Liberation Theologians, though I doubt it. Ratzinger has, as I understand it, declared that Galileo was at fault, and not the Inquisition, when he was condemned, because it was Galileo who meddled in religion and not theologians who meddled in science. That might be partially true, in some niggling way, but the Church has already offically apologized for its interference with Galileo and for good reason.
And of course, many of us remember the stick Ratzinger shoved into the Islamic hornets' nest a while back, with an offhand comment (a quote from someone else, to be literal) about the evil affects of Islam on civilization.
Imagine George W. Bush, but smarter, and better educated, and with less swagger, and I think you've got a pretty fair picture of Ratzo.
The Church has survived bad popes before. It will survive this one.