Amid all of the furore surrounding the resignation of the Head of the Catholic Church, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, I am sure that I am not alone in musing upon the following:
| Young Ratzinger -in both his guises. |
Ratzinger was a member of the SS
Ratzinger was head of the sucessor organisation to the Inquisition
Ratzinger still is, at the time of writing, head of one of the most, if not the most, arrogant, corrupt, hypocritical, murderous and opaque religious sects known in the history of mankind.
Ratzinger's predecessor arrives at the Pearly
Gates.
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Today, the murder and torture of its opponents may have ceased, but what can we say about the systematic abuse of children all over the globe by its perverted priesthood, the subsequent clumsy attempts at covering it up and the sect's undignified twisting and turning as it tried to avoid paying compensation?
Why resign now? Is he getting a conscience? I think not. Or is Ratzinger fleeing office, as he deserted the SS when he realised which way the wind was blowing?
I think he is going into a retirement of prayer and contemplation in much the same way as a discredited (or soon-to-be-discredited) politician leaves office in order to "spend more time with my family".
What the truth is we shall never know. We can, however, still speculate - in spite of the media's high praises of this ex-Nazi, this ex-Inquisitor. This ex-Bishop of Rome.
I have seen many comments by observers whom one would suppose were both knowledgeable and unbiased and yet all seem to accept without demur that the reasons for the Pope's resignation are those given in his speech. Yet I think that we cannot but question this and wonder whether there is more to this than meets the eye.
ReplyDeleteDuring the current Pope's reign, the Catholic Church has endured an unprecedents loss of prestige, reputation and honour. This, not only in the world beyond the Church but also within it, as shown by the large numbers of Catholics who have left the Church in disgust.
There has been a seemingly endless series of revelations of wrongdoing and these, by general agreement, have been dealt with extremely badly within the Church, increasing anger and resentment. We have no way of knowing whether the accusations are now exhausted. Could there be some major revelation about to appear over the horizon such that the Pope thinks it better to leave now before the storm hits? Time will tell.
In what can be seen to be a disaster for the Church, the Pope, rather than mitigating the trouble as he would be expected to do, has in fact made it worse, firstly by being himself culpably involved in the scandal and secondly by his inept attempts to deal with it - or to avoid dealing with it.
In industry, banking and politics, a leader who has presided over a disaster is expected to resign. If we apply this principle to the Vatican, then the Pope's resignation is seen to be perfectly reasonable without the need to cite old age and infirmity to give it extra weight.
The Catholic Church now has the opportunity to elect a leader who, untainted by the scandal, will be forward-looking, modernizing and ready to build bridges with the rest of the world rather than pursue the medieval hardline policies of the incumbent. Will it take this opportunity? I would like to think so but I do not have very high hopes.