On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 18:19:43 -0700 (PDT) Mike Ballard
<swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> writes:
> BTW, I'm glad the new pope opposes the invasion/occupation of Iraq.
>
> Regards,
> Mike B)
>
>
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>
>
> In the 1960s, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, Ratzinger
> was
> regarded as relatively liberal. In 1968, together with the
> theologian
> Hans Küng from Tübingen, he opposed “coercive measures adopted
> against
> erroneous theological standpoints.”
>
> According to his biographers and his own memoirs, the eruption of
> left-wing student protest and mass workers’ struggles in the late
> 1960s
> had a profound impact on Ratzinger, propelling him to the right and
> bringing to the fore his deepest political instinct: hatred and fear
> of
> socialist revolution.
That sort of reminds me of the evolution of the views of Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono), who began his pontificate as a liberal but swung sharply to the right in response to the revolutionary unrest of 1848. Even in his rhetoric denouncing relativism, Marxism, atheism, the new Pope comes across as a bit reminiscent of Pio Nono's Syllabus of Errors.
>
> Subsequently, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
> Faith, he imposed coercive measures against a range of critical
> theologians—including Küng, who was removed from office following
> pressure from the Vatican.
Someday, somebody ought to do a book on Ratzinger's relationship with Küng, since apparently they used to be good friends. It was Küng who appointed Ratzinger to the chair of dogmatics at Tübingen, and it said that the two men often socialized together. Ratzinger's swing to the right, by all accounts including his own, began as a reaction to the student movement of the late 1960s, particularly as that movement impinged on the theological faculties at Tübingen. Later on Cardinal Ratzinger as leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he would condemn Küng's theological positions as heretical and he withdrew Küng's licence to teach Catholic theology.
>
> As “grand inquisitor,” he rigidly enforced reactionary positions
> that
> provoked opposition even among many Catholics. Papal decrees
> denouncing
> contraception and abortion, confirming the subordination of women,
> denouncing stem-cell research, opposing an increased role for laymen
> in
> the life of the Church, barring marriage for priests and abhorring
> same-sex relationships—all bear the signature of Ratzinger. He went
> so
> far as to officially condemn masturbation.
>