Just when we thought we were done with the influence of Cardinal Ratzinger, alias Benedict XVI, which has been so divisive and disastrous in the Church and the secular world over the past forty years, a book has been launched containing his last gloomy thoughts about the world and Christianity, supposedly the religion of joy and love: "What is Christianity. Almost a spiritual testament" (Mondadori), already on sale in Rome bookshops less than a month after his death. Among many other catastrophes for which he was responsible, most notable were his savage attacks against the LGBTQ community when he was the Grand Inquisitor of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, inflaming homophobic hatred not only among right-wing Catholics and Christians but also in ultra conservative nations with which the Vatican forged alliances during his reign and that of his predecessor John Paul II, for whom he was the Enforcer Supreme. Journalists clutching at straws for something positive to say in news stories and obituaries, have focussed on his skills as a theologian, but this sounds very much like damning with faint praise in the light of one of Saint Paul's most famous passages, ‘If I speak in the tongues…of angels but do not have love, I have become a sounding bronze or a cymbal clashing.' Catholics don't expect theology from a Pope, they expect him to be a Christian. Just to select one of the many disasters of his Reign of Terror, to which I will return, here is a piece I wrote for The Times in 2005 about his support for the cult-like so-called 'new catholic movements'. These have proved yet another major problem left for Pope Francis to deal with (another was sexual abuse and abuse of power in the Church which flourished under Ratzinger's watch), resulting in direct rebukes from the Pope himself to Focolare, Communion and Liberation and the Neocatechumenal Way, and in some cases necessitating the takeover of government of these groups directly by the Vatican or even their abolition. The most useful takes on Ratzinger's long reign of terror both as Grand Inquisitor and in the guise of Pope Benedict XVI are not cobbled-together and unmerited eulogies, but serious studies of the disasters for which he was responsible and which have affeceted millions both inside and outside the Church in order to remedy them as far as possible (although in most cases, such as the sexual abuse of minors and the abuses of the cult-like movements, we are way beyond that point) and to ensure that they never happen again.
All aboard the lean, clean, missionary machine
Pope Benedict is a close friend of the new fundamentalist groups in the Catholic Church
By Gordon Urquhart
Saturday May 07 2005, 1.00am, The Times
AS CARDINAL Ratzinger, Benedict XVI frequently spoke of a Catholic Church — at least in Europe and North America — much reduced in numbers, a leaner, purer, more orthodox “remnant”.
It would be a mistake, however, to think he is talking of a return to the catacombs. Pope Benedict is one of the staunchest supporters of the so-called “new movements”, the fundamentalist, traditionalist groups which began in southern Europe and grew exponentially in the second half of the 20th century, particularly during the reign of John Paul II — Opus Dei, Focolare, Communion and Liberation (CL), the Neocatechumenate (NC), Charismatic Renewal and others.
If it was [Pope] John Paul who gave these groups authority through his enthusiastic backing, Cardinal Ratzinger was the architect of their permanent place in the Church, both by justifying them theologically and by ensuring that they received Vatican approval.
“Even if we are in a minority,” he has said, “our priority has to be proclaiming the message. In the early years of Christianity, Christians were few, but they made themselves heard. The movements have the missionary enthusiasm of those early years; even though few in number, they can encourage the life of the Gospel in the world.”
Ratzinger considered his first encounter with the new movements in the 1960s “a marvellous event”. For him they were comparable to earlier movements of the stature of Cluny, St Francis, St Dominic and St Ignatius.
Accounts of Benedict XVI’s life date his conversion from progressive to neoconservative from the student revolts of 1968*, so it is significant that he places the new movements in this context: “After 1968 there was an explosion of secularisation which radicalised a process that had been going on for 200 years: the Christian foundations were undermined. Therefore a clear identity of faith is necessary, inspired by a joyous experience of God’s truth. This leads us to the movements which offer this joyous experience.”
But the experience of many bishops around the world was very different. With their rigid views, strong-arm recruitment tactics and absolute conviction of acting under direct divine inspiration, the movements sparked conflict and division. The most common objections were that they were secretive, that they practised mind control and demanded blind obedience from members. A further accusation was that of anti-intellectualism — a charge often launched at pre-conciliar Catholicism. For many local bishops these elitist institutions were “churches within the Church”.
In 1995 complaints to Bishop Mervyn Alexander, then head of the Diocese of Clifton, about the Neocatechumenate movement, which had been operating in several local parishes for some years, reached such a pitch that he set up a public enquiry; as a result, the NC was forbidden to operate in the diocese.
The late Cardinal Basil Hume was also wary of the new movements, which he branded “fundamentalist”. Opus Dei was ordered not to recruit among younger teenagers. Hume sent NC candidates for the priesthood for ordination in Rome rather than have to accept them in his own parishes.
Cardinal Ratzinger had strong words for these actions against the movements by local bishops: “It is necessary to say loudly and clearly to the local churches and to the bishops that they are not allowed to indulge in any claim to absolute uniformity in pastoral organisation and plans. They cannot hold up their pastoral projects as models of how the Holy Spirit is allowed to work. Better to have less organisation and more Holy Spirit.”
If the movements caused division, Ratzinger seemed to be saying, so be it: “There can be no concept of communion whose supreme pastoral value consists in avoiding conflict.”
Under John Paul II, it was Ratzinger who came up with theological arguments for the movements, empasising the “co-essentiality” of the Church’s institutional and charismatic dimensions — the latter represented by the movements, which “cannot be derived from the episcopal principle (but) find their theological and practical support in the primacy of the Pope”.
The movements dovetailed with Ratzinger’s centralising view of the Church: all had their headquarters in Rome (or, in the case of Communion and Liberation, Milan) and, as members owed absolute obedience to their charismatic leaders, they could be mobilised from the Vatican at the drop of a biretta. According to Ratzinger, it was in these “various spiritual movements (that) the insertion of the laity in the Church is concretely realised”.
Ratzinger’s orthodox “remnant” can be considered to start with these groups. And the numbers? According to official Vatican figures in 1998, 200 million worldwide — small beer in comparison with the total number of Catholics but still significant, especially considering that they have reached this figure in a little over 50 years.
The movements are characterised by their high-profile events and their ability to mobilise huge numbers. When John Paul held a gathering for them in St Peter’s Square at Pentecost 1998, 800,000 members of the organisations attended. Records were broken again in 2002 at the canonisation of St Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, which drew more than a million followers.
This, then, is a force to be reckoned with, and not just on a spiritual plane. The members of these groups share a theocratic view of civil society and have demonstrated great skill in achieving power in the secular sphere. Opus Dei’s presence in the worlds of politics, the media and high finance is legendary. But the other groups are rapidly catching up.
Rocco Buttiglione, rejected as a commissioner by the European Parliament last year, for his conservative views on women and gays — is a founder member of Communion and Liberation and a leader of the CdU, an Italian right-wing Catholic party. He is also Minister of Culture in Silvio Berlusconi’s governing coalition.
In November 2001 the Movement for Unity, the political wing of Focolare, held a conference for the mayors of Europe — 700 of them — boldly titled “1,000 Cities for Europe”. The event was chaired by the President of Austria, the late Thomas Klestil, Focolare’s founder, Chiara Lubich, and President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, a staunch ally of Focolare.
In the political sphere the aim of all the movements is the same: to promote conservative legislation on matters concerning sexuality and procreation. Over the past few years, Focolare and Opus Dei between them managed to push a highly restrictive IVF Bill, known as Law 40, through the Italian parliament. In 1999 the movements claimed by their combined efforts to have swung a Portuguese referendum on abortion in the Church’s favour.
Closer to home, meanwhile, the attitude towards the new movements in the Diocese of Westminster has changed. According to Austen Ivereigh, spokesman for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Cardinal “welcomes the movements as a vigorous part of the modern Church”.
A Green Paper is being drawn up to study the future of the diocese in the light of falling numbers of priests. As part of this process, a meeting was held between the Cardinal, the Vicar General and representatives of the new movements. This was an historic moment: the first top-level contact in the diocese with all of these organisations, the aim being a greater contribution to diocesan plans.
The many NC [Neocathecumenal] seminarians studying at Westminster’s seminary, Allen Hall, will now be ordained in the diocese rather than being sent to Rome, as in Cardinal Hume’s day. In January Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said that he was entrusting a smart North London parish to Opus Dei — something that would have been unthinkable under his predecessor.
The message that Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, spent years drumming home seems finally to have been absorbed: the local churches simply cannot afford to ignore the new movements — for these are indeed the “remnant”, the most effective body of committed Catholics in the Church today.
*His colleague at Tubingen and the Second Vatican Council, the great theologian Hans Kung, has recounted how at a lecture that Razinger was giving at Tubingen in 1968, demonstrators entered the lecture theatre and grabbed Ratzinger's microphone. He was horrified and from that moment his switch to neoconservatism began. Ther is an interesting comparison with another pope, Pius XII - who experienced something similar with communist demonstrators in Munich in 1919. Even as late as the fifties when he had already been pope for over ten years, he was still having nightmares about this experience and still seeing a psychiatrist in an attempt to deal with it - and his hatred of communists characterised his papacy.
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