The Pope's Past with the Right Wing By Gunther Latsch, Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ 0,1518,613756,00.html
Pope Benedict XVI admitted that he made mistakes in his handling of the far-right Society of St. Pius X and the Holocaust- denying Bishop Richard Williamson. But the pope has a history of being used by the extreme right.
For weeks, one heard relatively little from him. Pope Benedict XVI seemed to have little to say about the ultra-conservative brothers of the Society of St. Pius X -- about their Bishop, Richard Williamson, about is appalling denial of the Holocaust, and about the storm of criticism launched by many Catholics against the Vatican. Last Tuesday, Pope Benedict XVI finally issued a statement in a letter addressed to the "Dear Brothers in the Episcopal Ministry."
Since then, the world has known that the pope is indeed fallible. That is, of course, a human quality, but it isn't necessarily good for the office of the papacy. According to church doctrine, the pope's preaching of dogma is infallible -- but even errors unrelated to dogma can tarnish his reputation.
"An unforeseen mishap," wrote the pope, "was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication (eds. note: of four Pius brothers)." This created the unfortunate impression that this "discreet gesture of mercy" was the "repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews," which was something that he could "only deeply regret."
But the Williamson affair is not the first case where the theologian Joseph Ratzinger has allowed himself, with inexplicable nonchalance, to be used by right-wing extremists, as previously unpublished documents now show.
In 1997, Ratzinger -- who at the time was head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- allowed Austrian publisher Aula-Verlag to use a text that he had written for a collection of essays to mark the 150th anniversary of 1848, a year of revolution in Germany as elsewhere. The editors of this book entitled "1848 -- Erbe und Auftrag" (1848 -- Heritage and Mission) were Otto Scrinzi and Jürgen Schwab, two well-known leading figures among German-speaking right-wing extremists who have never made a secret of their political beliefs.
In early February 2009, Karl Öllinger, a Green Party member of Austrian parliament, criticized Ratzinger for the publication at Aula-Verlag and urged that Benedict's role in the debate over the ultra- conservative Pius brotherhood be re- evaluated. The spokesman of the archdiocese of Vienna declined to accept the invitation.
According to Kathpress, an Austrian Catholic news agency, Ratzinger was
"evidently No preguntado for his permission to publish the article." According to correspondence between then Aula magazine editor Gerhoch Reisegger and the Vatican -- and seen by SPIEGEL -- that claim is incorrect.
On Sept. 18, 1997 Reisegger asked "His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger" for "permission to reprint" the article that was published in the magazine Communio in 1995. "The monthly magazine Aula of the Libertarian Academic Associations of Austria " wanted to comment on Ratzinger's "exceptional thoughts" on the "confusion" surrounding the 150th anniversary of the Revolution of 1848. Only 12 days later, Ratzinger's secretary, Monsignore Josef Clemens, gave Reisegger the green light: "In response to
your friendly letter … I may on behalf of
Cardinal Ratzinger inform you that he has
approved the printing of his essay … in the
monthly magazine Aula of the Libertarian Academic Associations of Austria
Washington D.C., Nov 17, 2008 / 02:27 pm (CNA).- Cardinal James Francis Stafford,
head of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See, delivered a lecture on Thursday saying that the future under President-
elect Obama will echo Jesus’ agony in
Gethsemane. Criticizing Obama as
“aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic,”
he went on to speak about a decline in respect for human life and the need for Catholics to return to the values of marriage and human dignity. Delivered at the Catholic University of America, the cardinal’s lecture was titled “Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: Being True in
Body and Soul,” the student university
paper The Tower reports. Hosted by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, his words
focused upon Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, whose fortieth
anniversary is marked this year. Commenting on the results of the recent presidential election, Cardinal Stafford
said on Election Day “America suffered a cultural earthquake.” The cardinal argued
that President-elect Obama had
campaigned on an “extremist anti-life
platform” and predicted that the near future would be a time of trial. “If 1968 was the year of America’s ‘suicide attempt,’ 2008 is the year of America’s exhaustion,” he said, contrasting the year
of Humane Vitae’s promulgation with this
election year. “For the next few years,
Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will
know that garden,” Cardinal Stafford told his audience. Catholics who weep the “hot, angry tears of betrayal” should try to
identify with Jesus, who during his agony
in the garden was “sick because of love.” The cardinal attributed America’s decline
to the Supreme Court’s decisions such as
the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which imposed permissive abortion laws nationwide.
“Its scrupulous meanness has had catastrophic effects upon the unity and
integrity of the American republic,”
Cardinal Stafford commented, according to The Tower. His theological remarks
centered upon man’s relationship with God and man’s place in society. “Man is a
sacred element of secular life,” he said,
arguing that therefore “man should not be
held to a supreme power of state, and a
person’s life cannot ultimately be controlled by government.” Cardinal
Stafford also touched on the state of the family, saying that the truest reflection of the relationship between the believer and God is the relationship between husband and wife, and that contraceptive use does not fit within that relationship.(
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new. php?n=14355)
Por triste que sea para muchísimos/as observadores/as, el deber de la sociología empírica en este contexto sólo puede consistir en preguntarse cuántos
“batallones” tendría a su disposición tal estrategia de Roma y en qué países del mundo tal estrategia podría tener todavía cierto éxito.
Para llegar a una conclusión valida desde el punto de vista de la sociología empírica, primero comparamos el porcentaje de la población total que piensa que la democracia es un mal o muy mal sistema, con el porcentaje de los católicos que piensan así y que atienden misa por lo menos una vez al mes. Nuestras cifras, calculadas con el programa SPSS XIV-XVI con base en los datos del “World Values Survey”, sugieren que, sobre todo en Hungría (1999), Sudáfrica (2001), Irlanda del Norte (1999), Lituania (1999), República Dominicana (1996), Países Bajos (1999), Letonia (1999), México (2000), Chile (2000), Brasil (1997), Nigeria (1995) y Eslovenia (1999) en realidad sí hay un problema con los estratos católicos, que de manera notable y más numerosa que el conjunto de la sociedad (2% o más de diferencia) rechazan la democracia. Pero no obstante, cabe destacar también que estos estratos forman minorías inferiores al 20% de la sociedad total, mientras que nuestros datos también sugieren que en Ucrania (1996), Serbia y Montenegro (2001), Bielorrusia (2000), Vietnam (2001), Bosnia - Herzegovina (2001), Estados Unidos (1999), Bélgica (1999), Gran Bretaña (1999), Georgia (1996), Albania (2002) y Alemania (1999), los católicos practicantes eran menos escépticos contra la democracia que el total de la población. La tabla 12 resume estas tendencias. El diagrama 6 resume la metodología empleada:
Tabla 12: católicos practicantes por lo menos una vez al mes con tendencias