Focus of Controversy : Ratzinger: Point Man for Vatican

Twenty years ago, Father Joseph A. Ratzinger was an architect of progressive reform in the Second Vatican Council.

The young German theologian helped draft a searing attack on the 450-year-old Holy Office, the body responsible for defending Roman Catholic faith from heresy. The speech said the “methods and behavior” of the Holy Office--which descended from the medieval Inquisition--were “outdated (and) . . . a source of scandal to the world.”

Largely because of that speech, Pope Paul VI on the last day of the council thoroughly modernized the operations of the Holy Office and renamed it the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Now Heads Congregation

Today, as prefect of the congregation, Cardinal Ratzinger heads the organization he once criticized.

But now, he is accused of trying to reverse the progressive trends of Vatican II he previously championed--by stifling diversity and reining in theological inquiry.

In the five years since Pope John Paul II handpicked him to be the church’s official “defender of the faith” and ultimate judge of Catholic scholars, Ratzinger has shaped the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith into a powerful weapon against dissent.

Bitter Attacks

And in the wake of the recent disciplining of American scholar Father Charles Curran and Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, no one--the Pope included--has come under such bitter attack as the 59-year-old Ratzinger and his “watchdog” congregation.

The congregation’s actions against Curran, who lost his authority to teach as an official church theologian, and Hunthausen, who was relieved of pastoral responsibility in five key areas, have triggered an outpouring of protest by U.S. theological societies, priests, lay persons and even bishops.

Critics of the congregation contend that regional church councils and bishops could adequately defend the faith and that the Vatican body is too rigid. Because of its broad powers to ferret out and punish dissent, opponents say, the congregation creates a chilling effect on innovative theological work and a climate of suspicion that reaches even to local priests and their parishioners.

“There do seem to be some signals in the direction of a crackdown,” said Father Frank Sullivan, a Jesuit professor of theology at Gregorian University, a Pontifical school in Rome. “There seems to be a chill blowing, you know.”

But Ratzinger’s supporters say that his moves against dissent are in full harmony with the Pope’s own theological views and are necessary to save the church from being undermined from within.

While the church and society once saw eye to eye on questions of sexual mores, Ratzinger said in a brief meeting with The Times, society has pulled away from that consensus, and the church must reassert its teachings.

Thus Ratzinger, as the Pope’s chief doctrinal enforcer, has emerged as the second most powerful figure in the Vatican. “There isn’t a single issue of church and theology the Pope and Ratzinger would disagree on,” said Father Joseph Fessio, 45, a Jesuit who studied under Ratzinger in West Germany.

‘Lightning Rod’

At the same time, Ratzinger is the acknowledged “lightning rod” for the Pope, deflecting criticism that would otherwise be heaped on the Pontiff directly.

“Ratzinger’s job is a thankless one,” declared a high Vatican official, who, like most other church officials interviewed, spoke on the condition that he not be identified. “It’s inevitable that he would be seen as the ‘fall guy.’ And general civility within the church would avoid an overly blunt, personal attack on the Pope.”

However, a top church official, an American in Rome, said the impetus for the moves against Curran and Hunthausen originated not with Ratzinger or the Pope, but with church conservatives in the United States. These conservatives are “hiding behind the cardinal skirts of Ratzinger” and making him “the ax man, the bad guy,” the official said.

“The pattern emerges clearly with the Curran case,” the church official continued. “Powerful people at home on the extreme right wing--those who have money, and the ear of people here, (at the Vatican) . . . who hate everything Charles Curran stands for--scream in the face of what they see as abuse.

‘Creating a Backlash’

“The ultraconservative right in the U.S. church . . . is creating a backlash against a freewheeling, progressive approach to religion and also to politics.”

These conservative U.S. organizations, the Rome source said, include the independent Catholic weekly, the Wanderer; the lay group, Catholics United for the Faith, and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, an association of more than 700 conservative theologians headed by Msgr. George A. Kelly of St. John’s University in New York.

Catholics United for the Faith, based in New Rochelle, N.Y., has a membership of about 15,000 and its publication, Lay Witness, presents traditionalist support for the official teaching authority of the church.

The Wanderer, published in St. Paul, Minn., and edited by its sole owner, Al J. Matt Jr., has a circulation of about 40,000. Italian news sources credited the newspaper with generating 10,000 postcards during a recent campaign in support of Vatican action against Curran.

Matt also claims at least some of the credit for the Vatican’s investigation of Hunthausen, the liberal Seattle prelate. “If it hadn’t been for the voice and clamor of Catholic lay people, nothing would have happened,” Matt said.

Recision Demanded

But now, Ratzinger’s critics are the ones clamoring, demanding that the Curran and Hunthausen censures be rescinded.

One of Ratzinger’s harshest detractors has been Hans Kung, the dissident Swiss theologian penalized in 1979 by Yugoslav Cardinal Franjo Seper, Ratzinger’s predecessor at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Kung accuses Ratzinger of flip-flopping from a spirit of openness in the 1960s to a stance of fear in the 1980s.

“Joseph Ratzinger is afraid,” Kung wrote last year in a commentary. “And just like Dostoevski’s Grand Inquisitor, he fears nothing more than freedom . . . something one would not have thought possible in light of the remarkable theological work which this man produced in the 1960s.”

In 1964, Ratzinger helped form the liberal Concilium, an international board of Catholic scholars with 500 contributors. But he later resigned. According to his detractors, it was because he grew more conservative and rejected the progressive views he had held as a young theologian.

Ratzinger said that they--not he--changed.

At a Turning Point

A turning point was reached about 1973, he said in the book, “The Ratzinger Report,” when Concilium members “began to assert that the texts of Vatican II were no longer the point of reference of Catholic theology.”

Prof. Hansjurgen Verweyen, a former Ratzinger student who taught at the University of Notre Dame for eight years, believes that the cardinal’s theology has shifted over the years. The post-Vatican II years were the “beginning of deepening division between the conservative and progressive wings” of the church, said Verweyen, now a theologian in West Germany.

Ratzinger, an eminent theologian in five German universities for more than 25 years, was widely known and respected throughout Catholic Europe long before he drew wider attention in his present position.

Ratzinger reportedly first met the present Pope, Karol Wojtyla of Poland, in 1977. Ratzinger was named Archbishop of Munich by Pope Paul VI in March, 1977, and elevated to cardinal three months later; Wojtyla was to become Pope John Paul II the following year.

But associates said that Ratzinger and Wojtyla at least knew of each other a full decade earlier because both had attended Vatican II (1962-65). And they “moved in the same circle of scholars, philosophers and intellectuals,” Fessio said.

Creative Alliance

So it was not surprising that the Pope chose Ratzinger to be the doctrinal congregation’s prefect on Nov. 25, 1981, and that a creative alliance was soon forged. The “strong suit linking the two . . . (was) doctrine and theological studies,” one Vatican official said.

Four of the most notable CDF cases Ratzinger has dealt with--they have loomed large in molding a critics’ image of him as an ironclad curmudgeon--were already in the dock when he arrived at the Vatican.

Father Edward Schillebeeckx, a Dutch Dominican professor, was under investigation for his teachings on such points as the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the divinity of Jesus, as well as his suggestion that under certain circumstances someone not ordained as a priest could consecrate the host and celebrate Mass.

In a September, 1983, document, Ratzinger took issue with Schillebeeckx’s views, and again last September publicly rebuked the Belgian-born priest. In a congregation statement meant to warn the faithful, Ratzinger averred that ordination is essential and must come from above, from a bishop, and not from below, from the church community.

In September, 1984, and April, 1986, Ratzinger, through the congregation, issued major documents wrestling with liberation theology, a theory that has gained adherents among priests in Latin America and elsewhere in the Third World.

Sharply Critical

The lengthy Ratzinger papers--large portions of which were written by his staff--were sharply critical of the more extreme versions of liberation theology.

While deploring social injustice in Latin America, the document denounced the application of Marxist analysis as a tool for redressing injustice, calling it an abuse of theology because it mixes Christianity with social ethics.

Those who confuse “the history of salvation” with “profane history” and “the kingdom of God” with “the human liberation movement” oppose the faith of the church, the 1984 paper said.

At the same time, one of liberation theology’s chief exponents, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, was summoned before Ratzinger for interrogation. Media from around the world covered the meeting.

Subsequently, in a 1985 decision arranged between Ratzinger and the head of Boff’s religious order, Boff was silenced as a theologian for a year.

The penalty invoked cries of “repression.” Ratzinger critics roundly denounced him for arbitrarily “turning back the clock” of church progress.

On Center Stage

But it was last July’s revocation of Curran’s status as a Catholic theologian, and the decision to remove much of Hunthausen’s authority as an archbishop that catapulted Ratzinger onto center stage of the debate about the Catholic Church, dissent and change.

Curran’s case--Dossier 48/66-- was the 48th to be opened by the CDF in 1966, the year before Curran was fired from the Catholic University of America in Washington for his liberal views. Five days later, after a student protest and campuswide faculty strike, Curran was reinstated.

But in 1968, Curran organized opposition to Humane Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s controversial encyclical reaffirming the church’s ban on contraception. In addition to endorsing artificial birth control, Curran has maintained that, under limited circumstances, abortion, homosexual acts, masturbation, premarital sex, divorce, euthanasia and sterilization are justified. All are officially banned or condemned by the Catholic Church.

In 1979, the congregation sent Curran a 16-page list of the “principal errors and ambiguities” in his writings. Curran refused to back down, claiming that his views were shared by a majority of Catholic theologians, and that responsible dissent is permissible to teachings not taught as “infallible” church dogma.

A ‘Final Warning’

Last year, the congregation gave Curran “the final warning” to recant or face punishment. On March 8, 1986, he met at the Vatican for two hours with Ratzinger and several consultors.

Finally, on July 25, based on the unanimous vote of the congregation’s cardinals, Ratzinger wrote Curran that “one who dissents from the magisterium (teaching authority of the church hierarchy) as you do is not suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology.”

In an unusual action revealed in September, Archbishop Hunthausen of Seattle, who had been accused of tolerating liberal practices in liturgy, marriage annulments and homosexual groups, was instructed by the CDF to turn over sensitive pastoral responsibilities to a Vatican-appointed auxiliary bishop.

Late last month, the Vatican released a four-page chronology replying to critics who had accused the CDF of heavy-handed tactics. The chronology, mailed to all U.S. bishops, revealed previously undisclosed charges against Hunthausen and suggested that the archbishop had reneged on a promise to let the auxiliary take control of the disputed areas.

An item of Vatican criticism involved Hunthausen’s permitting a homosexual group to celebrate Mass in the Catholic Cathedral in Seattle. The church’s stand on homosexuality has long been a sensitive and controversial subject.

Lays Down Rules

A CDF “position paper,” issued last week, laid down strict rules for the way priests around the world should deal with homosexuals and their supporters. It reaffirmed church teaching that homosexual acts are sinful and must be confessed before receiving the sacrament of Communion.

The paper, signed by Ratzinger, also criticized groups that wrongly imply that the church considers homosexual life style as a “morally acceptable option.”

The 12-page congregation document stated that it is “deplorable” that homosexuals are “the object of violent malice in speech or in action” and encourages legitimate pastoral care for homosexual Catholics. But Ratzinger warned bishops not to allow homosexual groups to meet in Catholic church or university facilities.

The successive moves against Curran and Hunthausen have spurred some Catholics to complain of a “crackdown” against liberal elements in the U.S. church.

But Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony denies that the United States has been the special target of Vatican investigations.

Few Interventions

“When you look at the fact that the United States has 286 dioceses and over 300 bishops . . . the number of instances in which there have been some kind of intervention are just very, very minuscule,” Mahony said during a recent discussion with Curran at USC, adding:

“I don’t see this great black cloud descending upon the United States. I don’t see that tension myself when I visit Rome. I see a great appreciation for . . . the life of the church in the United States. Every occasion I’ve had to visit with Pope John Paul, he is the one who points out, over and over again . . . the unique strengths and dynamism of the church in the United States. . . . (He) does not talk in the context of great evils. . . . So I think it’s been highly exaggerated.”

Ratzinger told The Times that while he appreciates the “spirit of spontaneity” visible in the church in America, he cautioned U.S. Catholics to heed their “responsibility to the teachings of the church.”

Yet, not a few American lay Catholics as well as clergy have expressed fear that the Vatican’s actions to enforce doctrinal orthodoxy will backfire.

A leading American archbishop, Rembert G. Weakland, recently criticized the CDF actions against Curran, Hunthausen and others in columns he wrote in the Catholic Herald of Milwaukee.

Doctrinal Purity

Under the title, “The Price of Orthodoxy,” Weakland said that the desire to preserve doctrinal purity in the church must “avoid the fanaticism and small-mindedness that has characterized so many periods of the church in history--tendencies that lead to much cruelty, suppression of theological creativity and lack of growth.”

Referring to efforts to roll back the liberalizing trends of the Second Vatican Council, Curran said in an interview: “In the end, I just don’t see how it can be successful. You just can’t put the paste back in the tube.”

Surveys show that large numbers of U.S. Catholics hold views that differ sharply from official church teaching on such subjects as women’s ordination, celibacy for priests, divorce, abortion and artificial birth control. A CBS News poll last year found that 80% of respondents said they felt that they could disagree with official church pronouncements on such issues as contraception and still be loyal Catholics.

Weakland warned that American Catholics may either leave the church in a widespread exodus, or simply ignore much of its moral teaching as impractical or irrelevant to contemporary life. This happened on a large scale among Catholics in the Netherlands during the 1970s, the Milwaukee archbishop pointed out.

A high Vatican official, asked about that danger, admitted that “estrangement and lack of coherence” had already occurred in the American church.

‘Many Are Confused’

“The continued estrangement of some is probable,” he added. “But many of the faithful have been estranged by the introduction of alien elements into the church--like the dissent over abortion. Many are confused and persuaded that the church no longer is a reliable source of moral knowledge.”

To supporters of Ratzinger and the Pope, the church is a divine mystery, not a humanly constructed institution that can be freely changed according to the requirements of the moment.

“There is a profound conflict of values (regarding) a church which believes in revealed truth which needs to be preserved and transmitted,” said Russell Shaw, the chief press spokesman for the U.S. Catholic bishops. “That conflicts with the conventional wisdom of a highly secularized society that neither recognizes nor cares about the possession of revealed truth.”

Ratzinger himself has made the point perfectly clear: “You know neither the church nor the world if you think they could meet without conflict or that they could even coincide.”