I wasn't going to do this. I'm depressed and anxious and what I really want to do tonight is kill off many, many pints of Guinness. But hamletta
had a point when she observed:
When Tweety has the Kossacks beat for perspective and nuance...well, there's a disturbance in The Force, or something.
That shouldn't be. dKos is the place we all come for the latest, freshest news and the best analysis and commentary (and some really good snark on occasion). With more than 50,000 registered users, this community should represent one of the best places to go to learn about anything--and on our best days, it does.
So, bearing in mind that I'm 0-2 on major election forecasts in the last six months, and bearing in mind that it was only yesterday afternoon that I was expressing a firm opinion that Ratzinger was the last guy the cardinals would ever choose to succeed John Paul II (with a host of what I thought were excellent reasons to come to that conclusion), I'm going to throw out a few thoughts on what his election might mean from my perspective as a gay liberal American Catholic.
First, the bad news. Ratzinger spent the last 20 years as the modern-day equivalent of the Grand Inquisitor. It was his job to play the heavy with any theologian, any priest or religious (in the formal sense of a monk or a nun, not just somebody warming a pew on Sunday mornings--though he could go after them, too, if he'd wanted to), who got too far out of line with the official teachings of the Church. (Properly called the Magisterium: one of the three legs that makes up the stool of Catholic doctrine. The other two are Scripture and Tradition, both capitalized advisedly.)
In that role, he either wrote personally, or else inspired and/or approved, the publication of a number of reactionary documents. Some notable numbers on the Ratzinger hit parade were the 1986 Halloween pastoral On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, in which he declared that homosexuality, while not per se sinful, was nevertheless a "strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." Then there was the 2000 declaration Dominus Iesus, quite the little triumphalist rant, a portion of whose conclusion reads as follows (internal citations omitted):
Indeed, the Church, guided by charity and respect for freedom, must be primarily committed to proclaiming to all people the truth definitively revealed by the Lord, and to announcing the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ and of adherence to the Church through Baptism and the other sacraments, in order to participate fully in communion with God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Ratzinger was also the main architect of the 1990 apostolic constitution Ex corde ecclesiae, which dealt with Catholic universities--and what, exactly, it meant to be called one. He's certainly been the chief sparring partner of the U.S. Catholic bishops as they've fought over the guidelines for implementing the provisions of that constitution in the U.S. over the last decade. The USCC sent up at least two (and maybe more, though my memory isn't clear on this point) proposed drafts, and Ratzinger rejected them both and held out until he got exactly what he wanted--a requirement that anyone who teaches theology at any Catholic university hold a mandatum from the local bishop saying s/he was authorized to teach. No mandatum, no teaching--at least as far as theology is concerned, and at least at a Catholic university. To hell with sissy-pansy considerations like tenure and academic freedom.
Ratzinger and John Paul II were like two peas in a pod when it came to most of the contentious issues in the Church these days. Neither one supported allowing priests to get married (unless they're already married when they convert from Anglicanism, or belong to one of the Eastern Rite churches in communion with Rome) or the ordination of women (despite the fact that the Church has already done so, when it needed undercover help in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia). The modern world is a swamp of evil and vice and sin and is to be resisted and preached at, not listened to. Gay rights are an abomination, and it's probably the gays that are responsible for that filthy pedophilia problem they're having over there in the United States.
[Pre-emptive troll warning: I'm not saying I agree with that last statement--at all. But that's what the man has, if not stated explicitly, at least strongly implied, in public remarks. And his remedy would be to prohibit the ordination of any openly homosexual man to the priesthood, which should have a really interesting effect on the already dire shortage of priests. And I'm gay, remember: I know that gay does not equal pedophile. So don't even go there.]
So. What inferences might we be able to draw from all of that, and from the very little we have to go on from Pope Benedict?
Let's look at his choice of name, for starters. Given the man they elected, I'm not at all surprised he didn't decide to be called John Paul III. Whatever I may think of the man personally (not a lot, in case that's not already apparent), he's not stupid. He knows his reputation--hell, he's probably proud of it. He's been in the thick of things in Rome the last three weeks. He's seen the crowds thronging St. Peter's to file past the late pope's body. He heard that huge crowd chanting Santo subito! ("A saint right away!") at his predecessor's funeral. And he knows damn well that he's never going to beat John Paul II--alive or dead--in a popularity contest. Taking the name John Paul III, for him, would have been tantamount to an insult, and it would probably have cost him some serious points.
So why pick Benedict XVI? He could have become Paul VII, or Pius XIII just as easily. (I doubt he'd have wanted to go for John XXIV, lest he cause a few heart attacks among the guys who had just elected him.)
It's possible that his choice of papal name indicates a desire to have a mediocre papacy. Lord knows the last guy to use that name had one. Elected just after World War I broke out, lasted eight years, and did not a heck of a lot of anything. I don't believe I've ever seen an encyclical of his quoted in anything, and if you go to his page on the Vatican web site, you'll find that most of the links down the left-hand side of the page don't even have any content. Benedict XV's big claim to fame is that he separated Pius X from Pius XI.
The same could be said of the present Benedict's first public utterance after being elected:
Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope, John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard.
The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.
Bear in mind, I'm a cynic where this man is concerned. Anything that comes out of his mouth is automatically going to get a higher level of scrutiny than the same words would if they'd come from anybody else's mouth, just because it was the guy formerly known as Ratzinger who it was saying it. That said, I look at that first statement and I get the distinct impression he really meant what he said. That humble simplicity may wear off after the novelty of the office does--but it might not, too.
The provisions of canon law prohibit the bartering of votes in conclave, or the making of promises to secure them. So there's no possibility that he got the job on the understanding that he'd toe a certain line. But if you ask anybody who's been around the Vatican for longer than a couple of hours, you'll learn that the place is practically built and sustained on nuance and innuendo. You never just look at the words of a Vatican statement, you read, delicately, between the lines. They never use a word without meaning to, and there are shades and shades of meaning to be found in even the simplest gestures.
My guess is that Ratzinger got the nod because he's not a spring chicken, and because he represented a known quantity. The cardinals were not ready for an all-out change from John Paul II's policies and papacy, so they went with a man they could reasonably expect to continue it. It's entirely possible that they will get exactly what they bargained for--John Paul III in everything but name.
Of course, it's also possible that they've elected a maverick who will shake up their comfortable world in ways they never anticipated. That, after all, is what happened the last time they elected a caretaker pope.
So, yes. I am not thrilled with the election of Benedict XVI. I'm going to be very anxious until he's settled in and has made some more public statements that will give me a better read on just where he plans to steer the Barque of Peter--because there are several potential sailing points that are fairly close to our present position that, if he takes us there, would cause me to have to get my ass off the ship. But I'm not jumping ship yet. I'm biding my time, keeping my Rosary beads warm, and looking forward to some heavy drinking with some of my liberal Catholic friends at an unspecified future time.