POPE BENEDICT XVI IS LEADING THE CHURCH ASTRAY

By Leonardo Boff and - - Reprint | | Print |

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 13 2007 (IPS) - The world is suffering from a clear crisis of meaning caused by the irrationality of world economics and politics and the general crisis of religion, which is the natural source of hope and ethics. Today almost all religions are contaminated by the evil of fundamentalism, which is frequently the basis of terrorism, Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian theologian and environmentalist, is a member of the Commission of the Earth Charter. In this article Boff writes that the search for religious peace has not been joined by the Roman Catholic Church which has exhibited an increasingly closed attitude that has lead to positions that are clearly fundamentalist and exclusionary and are reflected in the speeches of the current Pope. The doctrinal strategy of Benedict XVI consists of a direct confrontation with modernity guided by a cultural pessimism that is unacceptable in someone who should know that the Spirit is in humanity and is not a monopoly of the Church, and that salvation is open to all. Its principal social base now lies in lay movements characterised by mediocre thought, submission to the authorities, obedience to the laws of the market, and a preference for big media spectacles over the confrontation of poverty, injustice, and threats to the environment.

Theologian Hans Kung, who has focused more than anyone else in these years on the political and ethical significance of religion, is right to conclude that there cannot be political peace if there is not first religious peace, that there cannot be religious peace without dialogue among religions, and that such dialogue is not effective if it doesn’t build on common ground and seek to bridge differences. But this search for religious peace has not been joined by the Roman Catholic Church. In recent years it has exhibited an increasingly closed attitude that has lead to positions that are clearly fundamentalist and exclusionary and are reflected in the speeches of the current Pope.

Benedict XVI is leading the Catholic Church down a dangerous path that has drawn intense criticism not only from theologians but even cardinals, episcopates like that of France, groups of bishops from Germany and, surprisingly, certain bishops from Italy, the most Roman of all, in addition to leaders of other religions and ecumenical organisations around the world.

Since the days he was a cardinal, Benedict XVI has tried to stifle progressive groups and liberation theology while catering to conservatives, traditionalists, and the followers of extremist bishop Marcel Lefevre, excommunicated in 1988 for ordaining priests and bishops against the orders of Rome. The Vatican ended up accepting Lefevre’s seminarians, who upheld the traditional rites, and now the Pope has adopted one of his most important demands: the return to the Latin mass of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), with all of the limitations this would impose on communication by reintroducing a dead language accessible only to scholars.

The most serious development followed later, with the publication of a document on five questions regarding the Church prepared for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and approved by the Pope. In it Benedict XVI repeated what he had said in 2000 as Cardinal Ratzinger in the Dominus Jesus, which amounts to the kiss of death for the future of ecumenism: that the only church of Christ is the Catholic Church and there is no salvation outside of it. The other ”churches” only have ”ecclesiastical elements”, and the Christian Orthodox Church –the second lung of Catholicism, to use the expression of Pope John Paul II– was categorised as a simple, particular church. Such positions generate disappointment and bitterness, which are hardly helpful to the search for peace.

In short, the Church is behaving these days like a large sect. It is worth remembering that in its early days Christianity was called a sect because it was a Jewish dissident group that followed Christ. Used thus, the word sect is a neutral term referring to a group that takes a different position from the majority. Later when conflicts emerged among the faiths, the word sect took on a negative connotation, as seen in Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians, Romans, and Galatians. Saint Peter spoke of ”pernicious sects” that closed themselves off from others.

This is what the Catholic Church now risks by isolating itself more and more. Its principal social base lies in lay movements characterised by mediocre thought, submission to the authorities, obedience to the laws of the market, and a preference for big media spectacles over the confrontation of poverty, injustice, and threats to the environment.

A church behaves as a sect, according to classic thinkers like Troeltsch and Weber, when it claims exclusive possession of truth, refuses dialogue, and rejects ecumenical work. A clear sign of the Church’s sectarianism is the fact that it did not sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 because it did not mention God; its refusal to participate in the World Council of Churches because it considered itself superior to the other churches; for rejecting the convening of a universal Christian council in the context of world peace, for similar reasons; for discouraging the purchase of UNICEF cards to benefit poor children alleging that the organisation favoured the use of condoms.

The doctrinal strategy of Benedict XVI consists of a direct confrontation with modernity guided by a cultural pessimism that is unacceptable in someone who should know that the Spirit is in humanity and is not a monopoly of the Church, and that salvation is open to all. Thus the Church is presenting itself as an anti-world, an attitude scholars like Sequy agree is typical of sects.

I would not be surprised if some of the most radical conservatives, animated by certain moves by this Pope, tried to provoke a schism within the church. In the fourth century almost all bishops embraced the heresy of Arianism, which held that Jesus was inferior to God the Father. It was the lay people who saved the church by proclaiming Jesus was the Son of God. We must apply this lesson to today, given the narrow-mindedness and theological vapidity that reigns in the upper of the Vatican. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)