Negative National Catholic Reporter article on Ratzinger

[blitzen]

http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/041699/041699a.htm

"At the most basic level, many Catholics cannot escape the sense that Ratzinger’s exercise of ecclesial power is not what Jesus had in mind.

Beneath the competing analyses and divergent views, this much is certain: Ratzinger has drawn lines in the sand and wielded the tools of his office on many who cross those lines. Whether necessary prophylaxis or a naked power play, his efforts to curb dissent have left the church more bruised, more divided, than at any point since the close of Vatican II.

Those divisions have made Ratzinger a lightning rod. An anecdote from the mid-1980s underscores the point.

In May 1985, Ratzinger notified Franciscan Fr. Leonardo Boff that he was to be silenced. Boff, a Brazilian, was a leading figure in liberation theology, a Third World theological movement that seeks to place the church on the side of the poor. Boff accepted Ratzinger’s verdict and withdrew to a Franciscan monastery in Petrópolis, outside Rio de Janeiro.

Some days later, a sympathetic Brazilian bishop visited Boff to make an unusual proposal: Boff should study all of Ratzinger’s writings, including the just-published Ratzinger Report (a book-length interview with an Italian journalist in which Ratzinger voiced gloomy views of church and world), and then draw up an indictment accusing the cardinal of heresy. It would be a theological form of fighting fire with fire."

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

1. romero is spinning in his grave

and my gf's catholic, too. i can look forward to many an argument now

[pnorman]

2. Also from the same source:

>
>
His record includes:

* Theologians disciplined, such as Fr. Charles Curran, an American moral theologian who advocates a right to public dissent from official church teaching; Fr. Matthew Fox, an American known for his work on creation spirituality; Sr. Ivone Gebara, a Brazilian whose thinking blends liberation theology with environmental concerns; and Fr. Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lankan interested in how Christianity can be expressed through Eastern concepts;
* Movements blocked, such as liberation theology and, more recently, religious pluralism (the drive to affirm other religions on their own terms);
* Progressive bishops hobbled, including Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, reproached by Rome for his tolerance of ministry to homosexuals and his involvement in progressive political causes, and Bishop Dom Pedro Casaldáliga of Sao Félix, Brazil, criticized for his political engagement beyond the borders of his own diocese;
* Episcopal conferences brought to heel on issues such as inclusive language and their own teaching authority;
* The borders of infallibility expanded, to include such disparate points as the ban on women’s ordination and the invalidity of ordinations in the Anglican church.
>
>
http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/041699/041699a.htm