Benedict XVI has released what amounts to an informal encyclical:
He confirms the sodomite establishment in Catholic clerical circles. More damning evidence from an insider who occupied the highest echelons of the Catholic church.
Yet the problem with his lament is that he writes like a spectator witnessing an accident scene, while first responders intervene. But in addition to his admittedly brief pontificate, he was Prefect for the CDF from 1982-2005. He was JP2's righthand man. So where was the church discipline from the top down? Why does he act like a helpless bystander?
Ratzinger is an intellectual, and like many intellectuals he exaggerates the importance of ideas. Sure the sexual revoluation and all that didn't help, but ultimately it was a failure of the church to take the problem seriously.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, Ratzinger was JP2's right hand man. While I don't think he was responsible for the cult of personality around JP2, I don't think he did anything to stop it. When JP2 allowed Bernard Law to resign and get a plum job in the Vatican, Ratzinger was silent. When he become pope, he didn't discipline Law.
Interesting post, from a Catholic --
ReplyDeletehttp://www.podles.org/dialogue/pope-benedict-on-the-causes-of-the-sexual-abuse-crisis-7534.htm
Does Ratzinger think we all came down in the last shower? Does he blame the Borgia pope and his ilk on the 60s sexual revolution as well.
ReplyDeleteI liked the line in the book "the dark side of the papacy" - whenever the Catholic church had a council it had to be in a big city on a lake. Big so it could accommodate all the prostitutes and on a lake to dispose of all the dead bodies when the fighting broke out.