Apparently Joe Ratzinger’s mom never told him that if you have nothing constructive to say it’s better to hold your tongue. Just this week Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, criticized the “arrogance” of President Obama’s decision to end the ban on funding to international organizations which provide abortion information. Also this week, the Pope — a member of the Hitler youth as a child in Germany — reinstated to good standing in the Church a formerly excommunicated bishop, who denies the Holocaust. Say it ain’t so, Joe.
Benedict is the Vatican ’s own George W. Bush — a divisive ideologue who pretends to foster goodwill — as long as you agree with him. Since his election to the papacy in 2005, Ratzinger has affirmed his opposition to a woman’s right to govern her own body and to any form of birth control except abstinence. No condoms, period. From a church leader of millions, such sentiments — ignoring overpopulation and the spread of HIV — are irresponsible at best.
Benedict’s brand of Christian brotherhood was on full display in 2006 when he quoted a 14th century text to say” “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new and there you will only find what is evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” If that was his way of “reaching out” to Muslims, it failed, as it failed to address the equally, if not surpassingly, barbaric behavior on the part of the Roman Catholic Church during the Crusades and the Inquisition. Benedict should be apologizing, not accusing.
Besides insulting Muslims and Jews, Benedict refused to meet with the Dalai Lama, a prominent Buddhist leader, in 2007. Also that year, in Brazil , the Pope proclaimed that the native populations of South America had been “silently longing” for the Christian faith colonizers brought to that continent. Incredibly, he said that “the proclamation of Jesus and his Bible did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture.”
Several South American political leaders found Benedict’s historical revisionism wildly disingenuous; pointing out that the Catholic Church had in fact enabled “one of the most horrific genocides of all humanity” in the Americas. Like Bush and Cheney. does Benedict really believe infallibility is an elective office? His views are as medieval as the institution he serves.
Pope Benedict has found various ways and occasions to condemn homosexual behavior. Before he was pope, Ratzinger opined that homosexuality is a “more or less strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil….” He also said it “was not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account.” Last December the Pope decried homosexuality as “a violation of the human order.” Whatever happened to the Biblical injunction: Judge not, lest ye be judged? He reads the Good Book as selectively as any other self-styled theocrat, e.g., Bush ignoring Thou shalt not kill.
Of course the pontiff is entitled to his bigoted views. But he is polluting our moral and political atmosphere by foisting his backward, mean-spirited opinions on the rest of us. He is preventing his church from entering the twenty-first century as a full partner in the world community, with respect for those who hold divergent views or values. If he cannot help promote peace, harmony and constructive dialogue on this diverse, troubled planet of ours, he needs to shut his sanctimonious trap.