COMMENTARY: The New Pope Has Been More Gentle and Generous Than Critics Predicted

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Everybody is making predictions about how Pope Benedict XVI will, in effect, refurbish the Vatican’s Men Only dining room in which career clerics watch to see what the pope is eating before ordering the same thing for themselves. At the same time, he will shut down the cafeteria in […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Everybody is making predictions about how Pope Benedict XVI will, in effect, refurbish the Vatican’s Men Only dining room in which career clerics watch to see what the pope is eating before ordering the same thing for themselves. At the same time, he will shut down the cafeteria in which it is alleged that many Catholics, especially Americans, eat only what they like and leave dirty plates behind them.

The level of analysis is best revealed in Advertising Age’s headline, “New Pope Confronts Marketing Challenges,” in a story juxtaposed with one on “Mass-market confusion: Now fat is good for you.”


Conceding that the “Roman Catholic Church is a religion, not a brand,” writer Matthew Creamer opines that the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger “indicates that the church is focused on its core base of (conservative) believers and not willing to pander to those in the U.S. … who have called for a more progressive approach.” He sums up with a quote about the new pope from Syracuse University media and religion scholar Gustav Niebuhr, “He’s got an image as an enforcer.”

This dizzying shorthand not only judges the pope without much evidence but presents yet again the popularly accepted cliche that American Catholics believe pretty much what they please and break the commandments casually under the influence of such theologians as Charles E. Curran and Richard McBrien, the “usual suspects” of the holier-than-thou wing of Catholicism in the United States.

The new pope, however, has been gentle and generous in his remarks, urging cardinals to find “pastoral” rather than “legalistic” solutions to problems with their flocks and revealing himself not as a dictator but as a careful listener to others.

The real authoritarians have made their presence and positions clear. These new fascists are in the United States rather than in Rome and they seem to gratify themselves by condemning and throwing other people out of the Catholic Church as rudely and quickly as possible.

One writer voiced his wish that the new pope would call theologians like Curran and McBrien to Rome and set them straight and to shame them publicly for what they claim are their “dissident” views on Catholic teaching.

Such fascists always have matches with them to set people burning at the stake, but they seldom have facts to justify their sweeping indictments of loyal Catholic scholars who, in the great tradition of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s appreciation of how we develop a better sense of doctrine through careful study over time, have tried to deepen our appreciation of Catholic teaching and tradition.

The fascists are in the groups that have suggested priests should be psychologically tested to see if they are potential pedophiles who might act out sexually against children. This is Witch Hunting 101 and an insult to the good priests of America who have remained faithful to their people and their work throughout the siege of the sex abuse scandal.


The fascists have been busy among those who presented Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan with Witch Hunting 201, an edict making priests subject to search and seizure of their rooms and property for evidence of their potential as child molesters. The priests were ordered to cooperate under pressure of losing their paychecks. Archbishop Dolan, who has generously reached out to and met with sex abuse victims, was ill-served by the brownshirts in black cassocks who authored an unconstitutional and immoral plan that would not identify sex abusers but would demoralize already heavily burdened priests.

The statement applied to bishops during the sex abuse crisis, “They don’t get it,” can now be transferred to this torch-bearing wing in search of a pyre, these super-righteous American Catholics who do not seem to understand that the church is more a home than an institution, more a family than an exclusive club.

Fortunately, the new pope seems to understand that the church has many mansions and welcomes people to take shelter in it rather than casting them out into the storm.

MO/RB RNS END

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

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