← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Gabrielle
Thread ID: 17939 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2005-04-24
2005-04-24 11:46 | User Profile
"TÃÅBINGEN, Germany, April 23 - For all Pope Benedict XVI's decades as a Vatican insider, it may have been the crucible of a university town swept by student radicalism in the late 1960's that definitively shaped the man who now leads the Roman Catholic Church.
During his Bavarian childhood under the Nazis, Joseph Ratzinger became convinced that the moral authority based in Catholic teachings was the sole reliable bulwark against human barbarism, according to friends, associates, and his biographer, John L. Allen Jr.
But while his deep reading and thinking in theology, philosophy, and history were fundamental to development as a theologian, it was the protests of student radicals at Tübingen University - in which he saw an echo of the Nazi totalitarianism he loathed - that seem to have pushed him definitively toward deep conservatism and insistence on unquestioned obedience to the authority of Rome.
Before he arrived at the university, he had spent most of his time writing books and teaching in the Catholic theology departments of several German universities. His growing reputation was enhanced by the prominent role he was said to have played at the Second Vatican Council called by Pope John XXIII in 1962 to formulate doctrines for the church in the modern world. (It was concluded three years later, under Pope Paul VI.)
When he arrived at Tübingen in southern Germany in 1966, he was widely viewed as a church reformer, a man who wanted to open the church up to dialogue with others in the world.
But in his autobiography, he shows that the Vatican Council also alerted him to what he deemed dangerous liberalizing tendencies from inside the church and to the danger that reform, if not tightly controlled by a guiding authority, can quickly go awry.
"Very clearly, resentment was growing against Rome and against the Curia, which appeared to be the real enemy of everything that was new and progressive," he writes. Academic "specialists," he complains, were encouraging the bishops to accept dubious assumptions. One of these assumptions was "the idea of an ecclesial sovereignty of the people in which the people itself determined what it wants to understand by church." The idea of the "church from below," which led to liberation theology, was being born and, as he puts it, "I became deeply troubled."
**So he was already deeply suspicious of the left wing inside the church, when, in 1966, he joined the Catholic Theological Faculty of Tübingen University. **
He had been recruited by none other than the liberal Swiss theologian Hans Küng, the very man who became, and remains, one of his chief political and theological rivals. The experience of the student revolt seemed to confirm every suspicion that Father Ratzinger already nurtured about liberalizing tendencies and the hidden germ of totalitarianism lurking within revolutionary movements.
"Marxist revolution kindled the whole university with its fervor, shaking it to its very foundations," he wrote of the atmosphere at the university, which, like many others in Germany at the time, was rocked by a student rebellion against authority.
His fellow faculty members describe a complicated picture of the time, and a very complex Joseph Ratzinger, who was just shy of 40 years old.
There are various versions of how tumultuous these years were in Tübingen, a quaint, gingerbready town, some of whose university buildings date from the 15th century.** Some remember that the students behaved barbarically; others that they behaved like young idealistic people, carried away by naïve fervor but in no way dangerous to the established order. One thing they seem to agree on is that Father Ratzinger had a bad reaction to their protests, which one former colleague, Dietmar Mieth, said he saw as the terrorism of the street. He was troubled most particularly by the demands from within the theology departments for democratization of the church, notably from Professor Küng's students. **
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/international/worldspecial2/24ratzinger.html?th&emc=th[/url]
2005-04-24 15:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Gabrielle]Some remember that the students behaved barbarically; others that they behaved like young idealistic people, carried away by naïve fervor but in no way dangerous to the established order. One thing they seem to agree on is that Father Ratzinger had a bad reaction to their protests, which one former colleague, Dietmar Mieth, said he saw as the terrorism of the street. He was troubled most particularly by the demands from within the theology departments for democratization of the church...
[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/international/worldspecial2/24ratzinger.html?th&emc=th"]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/international/worldspecial2/24ratzinger.html?th&emc=th[/url][/QUOTE]Note how the media portray this story.
The problem wasn't the student radicals, their revolutionary demands, or their terrorism, [u]but Father Ratzinger's reaction to them[/u]. He had a "bad reaction." That's where the problem lies.
A typical slanted, hateful piece by the Jew York Times.
2005-04-24 16:32 | User Profile
Hans Kung is really coming out as Benedict XVI's nemisis, no?
The kosher press always gave Kung far more cover than he deserved since the Humanae Vitae flap back in the 1960s, and that investment is paying off now big time.
I looks like Kung will be the darling of the mainstream media for the foreseeable future.
2005-04-24 19:43 | User Profile
There's a curious piece at The Remnant (available online) about a Michael Davies connection to Pope Benedict. There's speculation that Davies was privy to info a few years ago indicating that Ratzinger was slated to be the next Pope, and that he's far more conservative than he lets on. As I said, it's only speculation. But still...
2005-04-25 05:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Hans Kung is really coming out as Benedict XVI's nemisis, no?
The kosher press always gave Kung far more cover than he deserved since the Humanae Vitae flap back in the 1960s, and that investment is paying off now big time.
I looks like Kung will be the darling of the mainstream media for the foreseeable future.[/QUOTE] Did you read that latest piece on Hans Kung in Chronicles? Comparing him to the anti-Christ in some turn of the century Russian author's book? It was funny.
2005-04-25 06:47 | User Profile
:holiday:
Rabbi Silvergoldwitzfeldbloomsteinrosen says:
"It's just a silly rumor that the student protest movements of the 1960s were led by Jews, whether in America or Europe. To think otherwise is to be an eeeeeevil anti-Semite who wants to return to the eeeeeevil days of Nazi Germany!"
2005-04-25 07:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Okiereddust]Did you read that latest piece on Hans Kung in Chronicles? Comparing him to the anti-Christ in some turn of the century Russian author's book? It was funny.[/QUOTE] I thought it was the [url=http://www.crystalinks.com/papalprophecies.html]next Pope[/url] who was supposed to be the Anti-Christ. :P