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The Emperor Has No Clothes: How this “Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time-Pope” Puts his papal foot in his mouth and starts a Holy War between Islam and Christianity Dr. Matthew Fox I know Cardinal Ratzinger rather well insofar as I was in a protracted theological battle with him for twelve years. Though he called my work, “dangerous and deviant,” I try to wear his attacks on me lightly and as a modest badge of honor. Now we have the latest debacle from Cardinal Ratzinger’s poisonous pen and mouth one might call it dangerous and deviant. I refer to his speech in Germany where, to the world’s astonishment and the Muslim world’s profound consternation, he cited a fourteenth century Byzantine Emperor to the tune that Muhammad was evil. Has he set Muslim/Christian relations back 200 years? Has he set fire to the already blazing conflagration and confrontation between the West and Islam? Here is what one Muslim speaker, Salih Kapusuz, who is deputy leader of the Turkish Islamic-rooted party of the prime minister of Turkey thinks: The pope’s comments were either “the result of pitiful ignorance about Islam” or a deliberate distortion. “He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world. It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.” I agree. He is a poor thing who knows nothing even about contemporary Christian theology—which he spent his career shooting down rather than studying—saying nothing of Muslim wisdom. I believe the speaker is correct in his assessment of Cardinal Ratzinger who does indeed represent the dark ages of Christian history and following are the reasons why. 1.Ratzinger is a bully. He was given unbridled power by the late and extreme right pope John Paul II and he used it to threaten, cajole, beat up on, fire and expel theologians from the Roman Catholic Church. I was only one of 107 theologians so expelled for doing our job, i.e. thinking. The first major theologian Ratzinger attacked was the late and esteemed Father Bernard Haring, a Redemptorist priest and moral theologian who was about 78 years old when Ratzinger attacked him. Haring had in fact been tortured by the Nazis in the second world war and he emerged from Ratzinger’s offices saying that the experience with Ratzinger was “more scary” than his experience with the Nazis. A bully does not listen and does not learn. He uses power-over in preference to power-with. He is afraid to meet one to one with his critics but instead has to rely on outside threats and power-over tactics. The Ratzinger I know is a bully. Now we are told—and Muslims are being told—to come to the pope and have a dialog. One Muslim scholar of great stature, Ahmed Al- Tayyib, the president of Al-Azhar University and a former mufti of Egypt, call this invitation “extremely weird.” He says: "It is extremely weird to see someone who insulted you asking for a delegation to go to him to explain reasons behind his insults." A Vatican proposal to invite Pope Benedict to Cairo to deliver a speech on Islam was also rejected by Al-Azhar. I couldn’t agree more with Al-Tayyib—a pope who spent twenty-five years attacking viciously theologians of his own faith hardly seems well grounded for “dialog” between faiths, much less between faith and science. Just to imagine such a situation is “extremely weird.” Why does it take a Muslim to teach Catholics these obvious truths? Ratzinger has made a career of insulting Catholic theologians, women, homosexuals, Protestants, and any one to the left of Hitler. Why should anyone expect a “dialog” with a Chief Inquisitor with a track record like this ones? By choice, Ratzinger is as ignorant of Christian theology as he is of Muslim theology. A truly dangerous religious figure. In response to yesterday's meeting, one of the Muslim participants who represented the Italian Muslim community declared: "We were invited for a dialog but it was a monologue." Welcome to the world of the Inquisitor-in-chief. I know of no instance in which Ratzinger has ever had anything but a monologue with any theologian from his own tradition, much less a Muslim one. 2.History will remember Cardinal Ratzinger for one thing: He brought the Inquisition back (now, with his ridiculous speech in Germany, he seems to want to bring the Crusades back and may have succeeded). Operating out of the exact office in the Vatican that was called for centuries the “Office of the Holy Inquisition” and changed its name to the Office of the Sacred Congregation of the Faith in 1968, Ratzinger and a band of petty and ignorant theological minds killed theological thought in Catholicism and indeed killed theologians themselves. He did this not by reintroducing the rack and physical torture as in the past but by, as Leonardo Boff of Brazil, remarked, “psychological torture” and releasing legions of spitting, extreme right wing ideologues upon theologians. (I experienced such attacks in Seattle among other places by CUFF and other miscreants.) Many Catholic theologians suffered heart attacks and nervous breakdowns as well as loss of dignity and their livelihoods as a result of these attacks (one Dominican theologian in France expelled by Ratzinger was last seen driving a taxi as a way to make a living). 3.Sycophants around this pope love to tell us he is a “first rate theologian” but in fact Ratzinger surrendered all rights to being a theologian when he eagerly and enthusiastically took on the very jaded mantle of Chief Inquisitor and declared “I want a smaller church.” Was Torquemada a theologian? Of course not. He was a religious enforcer. Just like Ratzinger who is rapidly getting his desire for a smaller church in the as his third rate band of kept theologians in the bowels of the Inquisition room in the Vatican assure that no thought beyond the seventeenth century is entertained. One cannot be both a theologian and a Chief Inquisitor. We know which road Ratzinger chose to take some twenty- five years ago. One wonders how many of Ratzinger’s attacks on thinker/theologians is in fact a case of intellectual and theological envy. Envy is a capital sin that trumps most of the others and helps to explain the viciousness and ruthlessness of his language and assaults. 4.His first and only encyclical with the deceptively charming title of “God is Love” was nothing but a pile of dualisms left stinking on the ecclesial doorstep. If a student of mine had written such a paper that does nothing but cite past dualistic shibboleths, he or she would have received an “F” for a grade. 5.His three published diatribes against homosexuals, two of them signed off by Pope John Paul II, reveal an ugliness of tone and a scapegoating reminiscent of his fascist forefathers. The total ignorance of scientific understanding of the phenomenon of homosexuality is, in accordance with Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of ignorance as a “mortal sin” for it deliberately avoids scientific study of the subject (while citing numerous times from his own silly catechism). Like the celebrated Galileo case of four centuries ago, we have here the embarrassing situation of religion going out on the limb once again oblivious of what science knows. Aquinas should be heeded: “A mistake about creation results in a mistake about God.” One wonders seriously if such gross homophobia as arises from Ratzinger (as well as such pre-occupation with sexual issues) can come from anyone except a self-hating homosexual. 6.Ratzinger’s sexism is everywhere on display including his silly position against women’s ordination that so occupies his ecclesiology. (Jesus ordained only men with male genitals we are told oblivious of the fact that 1) Jesus ordained no one and 2) Mary Magdalene and other women, as noted by St. Paul, were integral to the early leadership and spiritual healing ministries of the early church). 7. This is the thinker who forbids condoms in an age of AIDS, forbids birth control in an age of humans swamping the earth with too many children, and does so not because Jesus taught these things but because Augustine, the fourth century theologian for a Christian empire, taught these things saying that all sexual activity had to be legitimized by having children. 8.This first ever Chief Inquisitor-made-pope (who appointed 112 of the 115 cardinals who elected him pope) pushed through in record time the canonization of a Hitler-admiring, Franco-supporting, fascist priest named Jose Escriva founder of the infamous and secretive Opus Dei Society. This clandestine group the present pope and the past one used as a bludgeon to kill off liberation theologian and base communities in Latin American (with CIA assistance) and substitute its motto of “a preferential option for the poor” with a preferential option for the rich and powerful. Ask Mel Gibson, Clarence Thomas, Antonio Scalia, the recent heads of CIA and FBI and the biggest spy turncoat in American history who is now in prison—all of these opus dei members—how sweet it is to carry out extreme right wing missions in the name of this now canonized “saint” who praised Adolf Hitler. 9.Ratzinger joined the Hitler youth as a teen ager. The Vatican “spin” that he was “forced to do this” is contradicted by every German I have spoken with who tell me that no one was forced to join Hitler youth. People chose to join, perhaps there was some peer pressure, but no one was forced. Nonsense. There is a sickness here, the refusal to learn from the evil of the past. 10.Ratzinger went to Auschwitz this past year, and instead of repenting and admitting the guilt of his Southern Bavarian Catholics in particular who voted so enthusiastically for Hitler and of the Roman Catholic Church that succumbed to Hitler’s appeal (and never excommunicated Hitler who was after all a Catholic!), he actually blamed the holocaust on God! This is chutzpah carried to its ‘nth degree. God did not do the holocaust. Right wing, scapegoating, church-going Catholics form Bavaria in particular (Ratzinger’s home area) elected Hitler. Just as today, right wing, scapegoating, fearful church going fundamentalist Christians, aided and abetted by Ratzinger’s interference in the US presidential election of 2004, also elected George Bush, Dick Cheney, and in effect Donald Rumsfeld to carry on this immoral slaughter of Iraqi people and culture that we are all witnessing being done in our name. 11. One former student of Ratzinger’s, an American who did his doctorate under him years ago, went to visit him when he was chief inquisitor under John Paul II and confronted him about his motives and his attacks on theological thinkers. He left the meeting shaking his head and saying: “This man has sold his soul in his quest for the purple.” Meaning his quest for ecclesial power. But power corrupts—and “absolute power corrupts absolutely” as the Catholic historian Lord Action commented in the late nineteenth century when Pope Pius IX came up with the strange dogma of papal infallibility. (Ratzinger’s extreme right wing Vaticanists want to canonize Pius IX who, among other things, condemned democracy; they also tried to canonize Queen Isabella of Spain who, among other accomplishments, expelled Jews and Muslims from Spain and confiscated their property and used it to finance Columbus’ invasion of the Americas and they tried to canonize Junnipero Serra, a Franciscan missionary in California who was beating Indians fifty years after the governor of California—no saint himself—forbade the beating of Indians!) 11. And there arises the ugly head of the priestly pedophilia scandals. These scandals are not restricted to the U.S. church. Indeed, one such scandal sat on Ratzinger’s desk for twenty years (sic!) and he did nothing about it even as he was silencing theologians everywhere. It concerned the Mexican priest and founder of Legionaires for Christ, Father Macel. Only a few months ago did the Vatican discipline this hard right wing ideologue who was so chummy with Pope John Paul II that he was invited onto the papal airplane for numerous trips with him. It turns out over twenty ex-seminarians over the years complained to Ratzinger’s office that they were sexually abused by this priest. But no action was taken until this year. Indeed, Ratzinger and John Paul II were cheerleaders for this extreme right wing organization from Latin America as they were for Opus Dei from Spain and for Communion and Liberation, an extreme right wing group in Italy. 12. Now to the American pedophile scandal. I attribute the scandal directly to the conscious effort by Ratzinger’s office to dumb down the clergy and the hierarchy. The appointment of “Yes men” instead of thinking prelates created the situation where, when these scandals broke, so-called church leaders did not end it but instead sought to shuffle perpetrators from parish to parish and diocese to diocese. A CEO in business said to me, “When this happens in business the CEO is gone in 24 hours no questions asked.” Well, the CEO of the Boston diocese where this scandal first broke, Cardinal Law, stayed on for 2.5 years and then was given a promotion—a plum assignment in Rome overseeing a fourth century basilica by the powers that be in Rome. Meanwhile, Catholic lay people in the U.S. alone are paying upwards of one billion dollars for the sins of their follow-the-leader-at-all-costs hierarchy, all hand picked by Ratzinger. Ecclesial spin not withstanding, Cardinal Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, is no opponent of Hitler or Mussolini (his pal Escriva had three members of Opus Dei on Franco’s cabinet). His shutting down of theological thought and spreading of fear in Catholic theologians is everywhere in evidence. One faculty member of my alma mater in Paris, the Institut catholique, told me several years ago that the Vatican had “killed all theological thought in Europe.” Ratzinger is a carrier of evil. The highest seat of learning in the Sunni world is that of the Grand Iman Al-Azha Sheikh Mohaammad Sayyed Tantawi of Cairo. Just recently he told a group of visiting Catholics that Ratzinger made “a huge religious and scholarly mistake” by citing the 14th century Byzantine emperor has he did. The Iman is correct. How many other “huge religious and scholarly mistakes” will this self-appointed pope and ex-Inquisitor General Ratzinger make? Maybe it is time for him to step down from the papacy that he so coveted that he broke all rules and ran for the office. He is obviously in overhis head. He is not ready for prime time. How amazing it is that it took Muslims to stand up and tell the truth and shed light on the sickness and degeneracy of this papacy while Catholics galore are just hiding in their pews hoping that this nightmare will go away. The Catholic Church, once proudly combating injustice in Latin America and wrestling with issues of science and religion, has been reduced to a preoccupation with sexual trivia as the sole moral issue of our day. Shame, Shame, Shame. The end of an era is upon us. All credibility in the Catholic Church is gone. Islam has shed necessary light on this very dangerous man. Speaking as a theologian, this is by no means a negative accomplishment. The demythologizing of the papacy is necessary for true ecumenism and interfaith to unfold. Now Catholics and recovering Catholics can move on, taking what was valuable in this tradition, especially the mystical, prophetic and intellectual accomplishments and its sacramental spirituality, into fuller and deeper places while lining up with today’s science and the interfaith movement of the world. It is time to ‘let the dead bury the dead,’ as Jesus wisely proposed. Let the Ratzingers of the world go. Take back the power. Religion is dead. Long live spirituality! Recently I met a nineteen year old young man, a college student whose parents are from Vietnam and who still speak only Vietnamese. He was raised Catholic. When I told him a bit about my story and came to the part about the Vatican (i.e. Ratzinger) expelling me from the Dominican Order, he spontaneously spoke up: “Oh, they got you for daring to think.” He gets it. The younger generation gets it. It is pitiful how few Catholic adults and Catholic theologians dare to tell the truth of what is truly going on in their Church. History will not be kind to the fawning media or the kept clerics and theologians who commit profound sins of omission by not telling the truth. Aquinas teaches that sins of omission are so great because they are always sins against justice. As opus dei bishops get appointed all over North America (there are four now and one of them has already dismantled what was once a live diocese of Kansas City) just as they reign today in Central and South America, people will wake up. But it may be too late. Christo-fascism is being spread by this and the past papacy at unprecedented rates. Fascism and religious fundamentalism make good bed partners and are far more dangerous to all the values we hold dear than are, for example, homosexual lovers. |
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