Peritus Ratzinger
In a recent article in the New York Review of Books on the morass of pedophilia crimes and cover-ups facing Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church, Anthony Grafton offers these words of encouragement and hope for bewildered Catholics: “Again and again, Catholics have proved astonishingly resilient and inventive, and have come forward to offer what the hierarchical Church was not providing.”
That rather uplifting statement brought back to my mind similar words that I heard from the lips of none other than the young Father Josef Ratzinger, way back in 1963, in Rome, when he was attending the Second Vatican Council as a theological “peritus” (expert).
I was an even younger seminarian in Rome at the time, just beginning my theological studies at the Gregorian University. Every evening when the Council was in session, there would be talks given all over Rome by the periti which we seminarians and the general public could attend. It was a theological candy shop — with offerings from the likes of Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, Ives Congar, Edward Schillebeeckx, John Courtney Murray, Gregory Baum (sorry, at the time, there were no peritae).
Josef Ratzinger was a rather new name. But one evening, we thought we’d give him a hearing. He was giving a talk on the church, and if I remember correctly it was in a press office on the Via della Conciliazione, right in St. Peter’s front yard. He was brilliant. And I remember one particular statement that both stunned and encouraged us. It was something like: “There have been times in the history of the Catholic Church when the bishops have so fallen away from the spirit of the Gospel, that it becomes necessary for the laity to exercise the rights given them in baptism and to stand up, speak up, resist — even to the point of disobedience!”
I don’t think that the present clerical pedophilia morass is calling us Catholics to disobey. But it is calling us to stand up and speak up and demand that the Pope and the bishops make a public confession of the way they have mishandled so many cases of offending priests and bishops.
All they have to do is follow the rules for a “good confession” that are still given in any orthodox Catholic catechism: a careful examination of conscience, an honest confession of sins (in detail if they are mortal sins), a sincere act of contrition, and a firm purpose of amendment. If the Pope and bishops would do that, publicly, they would surely be forgiven by God — and the Catholic laity.
So, Pope Benedict, may I remind you that Josef Ratzinger is encouraging us to speak up….
Now I don’t see whether you are a Buddhist or a Catholic or both, but you put in a good photo of Ratzinger. It is a tell tale portrait. I also have had it in my computer for a long time. Have you read him?
It would be a miracle if the present pope would have the presence of mind to follow his own advice. Do you think that he would be able to identify himself as the author of these words? I was born in 1964 so Pope John the 23rd has only been a reference for people of my generation. How we long to have someone like him back in charge of the hierarchy. Is it any wonder why so many “cradle Catholics” leave? They wake up and say maybe God wants me to get the hell out of here.