How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition? Joseph Ratzinger attempted to do just that for the Roman Catholic Church during a grandiose display of Vatican penance ”” the Day of Pardon on March 12, 2000, a ritual presided over by Pope John Paul II and meant to purify two millenniums of church history. In the presence of a wooden crucifix that had survived every siege of Rome since the 15th century, high-ranking Cardinals and bishops stood up to confess to sins against indigenous peoples, women, Jews, cultural minorities and other Christians and religions. Ratzinger was the appropriate choice to represent the fearsome Holy Office of the Inquisition: the German Cardinal was, at the time, head of its historical successor, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. When his turn came, Ratzinger, the church’s premier theologian, intoned a short prayer that said “that even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth.”
If you detect ambivalence in those words, you are on the road to understanding the difficulty Ratzinger ”” now Pope Benedict XVI ”” faces in leading the Catholic Church to properly atone for another stain on its history: the decades of cases of child abuse by priests and cover-ups by their bishops. And while a well-placed Cardinal has publicly speculated that Benedict will deliver a mea culpa in early June, the words of that apology ”” if that is what it proves to be ”” will be severely limited by theology, history and the very person and office of the Pope. It is unlikely to satisfy the many members of Benedict’s flock who want a very modern kind of accountability, not just mealymouthed declarations buttressed by arcane religious philosophy. “Someone once told me that if the church survived the Inquisition, it can survive this,” says Olan Horne, 50, an American victim of priestly abuse. “But these are different times. And right now, the modern world is wrapping its head around the Catholic Church in a major way.” (See pictures of the path of Pope Benedict XVI.)
The crisis facing the church is deeply complicated by the fact that in 1980, as Archbishop of Munich, the future Benedict XVI appears to have mismanaged the assignment of an accused pedophile priest under his charge. That revelation ”” and questions about Ratzinger’s subsequent oversight of cases as a top Vatican official ”” has been the trigger in turning a rolling series of national scandals into an epic and existential test for the universal church, its leader and its faithful alike. It has blunted Benedict’s ambitious enterprise of re-evangelizing Europe, the old Christendom. Over the past two months, the Pope has led the Holy See’s shift from silence and denial to calls to face the enemies from within the church. What is still missing, however, is any mention of the Holy Father’s alleged role in the scandal. Can the Pope, the living embodiment of the ancient Gospel and absolute spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, publicly atone for his sins and yet preserve the theological impregnability of the papacy?
There is so much wrong with this article.
And all of its errors in reporting each story have already been refuted elsewhere.
Cardinal Ratzinger himself did nothing wrong, and he has been the one who has done more than anyone else to change how these issues are handled.
It is really funny to hear people speculate about whether “the Catholic Church can survive this.”
Susan Peterson
What purpose is served by posting this hatchet job?
Susan, I stopped reading at “two millenniums [sic]”.
The Pope has apologized over and over again, in direct, heartfelt language. Regardless, this writer seems to want yet more atonement, yet more detail of a complex history which even the Vatican itself does not fully know, because like the rest of us it is in the middle of an unfolding story. No amount of apology can undo the wrongs perpetrated. But clearly also no amount of apology will ever satisfy the critics, some of whom, at least, give me the impression that they will only be satisfied if they bring the Pope down.