Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the United States on April 15 for a six-day visit—the first Papal visit to the United States since 1995 and the first such visit to Washington, D.C., since 1979. During his Washington, D.C., and New York stops, Benedict spoke to Catholic educators, abuse victims and tens of thousands of followers at two large baseball-stadium Masses. Predictably the media followed his every move, while crowds flocked to see him in the streets.
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Yet, Benedict did not raise a single word against the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan while addressing the United Nations in New York City. In the past, the Pope had lamented that Washington pursued the Iraq war without the approval of the imperialist-dominated U.N. Security Council—not an objection to imperialist aggression, but rather an expression of conditional support.
Benedict spoke on the issue of sexual abuse of children by priests, but instead of announcing a policy to deal seriously with the widespread crime against children, he feigned concern while meeting with only a handful of victims.
Yet, the protection of abusive priests continues. One of the highest-ranking church clergy, Cardinal Bernard Law of the Boston archdiocese, who consistently protected pedophile priests by reassigning them to avoid their prosecution, is now archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome, as of May 2004.
Benedict’s apology can be best understood in the context of the church’s economic crisis created by the massive lawsuit victories and settlements for abuse victims. There was a $650 million settlement in Los Angeles last year alone. The loss of members and billions of dollars of the church’s wealth are perhaps the biggest motivation for Benedict’s half measure.
Who is Pope Benedict XVI? What role has he played both within and outside the church? A delving into Benedict’s past will shed some light on his papacy and the role of the Roman Catholic Church in contemporary society.
Benedict was born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in 1927 in Bavaria, Germany. At the age of 14, Ratzinger became a member of the Hitler Youth fascist paramilitary organization. Benedict claims he was an unenthusiastic member, and supposedly had a mentally disabled relative killed in a concentration camp.
The Roman Catholic Church did not encourage its members—a huge part of German society—to resist the Nazis at all, standing in contrast to various communist and socialist parties, and the heroic Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. The clergy said little in the liturgy and quietly facilitated Nazi financial transactions; in short, they played a stabilizing role in Hitler’s Germany.
The church’s relationship to Nazi Germany exemplifies its role as one of the pillars of modern Western civilization, setting out to strengthen rather than undermine the bourgeois state—be it fascist or democratic. Benedict now finds himself at the top of this institution of reaction.
Rising through the ranks of the church and academia fairly quickly, by the late 1970s Benedict was a cardinal and theologian in the Church and in broader academic circles.
The class character of the Roman Catholic Church
Cardinal Ratzinger was Pope John Paul II’s most trusted lieutenant in the Church’s crackdown on Liberation Theology.
Liberation Theology was an interpretation of the scriptures that emphasized the struggle against oppression. It quickly became an ideology to be reckoned with in the predominantly Catholic countries of Latin America. A number of organizations, both armed and unarmed, found in Liberation Theology an ideological weapon to rally the faithful poor in the struggle against military dictatorship and brutal economic exploitation of people that ravaged Latin America.
It embraced elements of Marxist theory. Mass movements rooted in its ideology recognized that exploitation was inevitable under capitalism. True freedom required the creation of a society oriented around the needs of the poor people, not those of wealthy landowners, generals and merchants.
The Roman Catholic Church’s struggle against Liberation Theology was not a religious struggle but a class struggle. The impoverished masses attracted to Liberation Theology were as committed to the Christian faith as one can be. But, whereas the Church used the cross throughout history to justify feudalism, colonialism and genocide, Liberation Theology turned it into a weapon of struggle for the masses. The Christian faith of the oppressed thus became incompatible with the Christian faith of their oppressors.
The Roman Catholic Church defended the existing capitalist social order against what they deemed to be its greatest enemy—Communism. It deemed Liberation Theology a communist evil that had to be eradicated.
During his years as a cardinal, Ratzinger convened two councils in order to officially denounce Liberation Theology, spearheading the suspension and excommunication of a number of liberation theologists within the Chuch’s ranks. By stripping these priests of the Church’s protection, Ratzinger left the door wide open for right-wing governments and paramilitaries to commit the most heinous violence against them, including extrajudicial executions.
It is no surprise then that Pope Benedict has held fast to the positions long held by the Roman Catholic Church. While AIDS ravages the world, Benedict still opposes any type of contraceptive use, helping the disease along and trampling women’s rights. Benedict and his Church continue to deny women ascension to the priesthood. In his eyes, homosexuality is still a sin to be punished. Despite a few tepid statements on the Iraq war, the Pope works for a solution not of the Iraqi people, but negotiated by Western leaders and their Arab puppets.
The Roman Catholic Church possesses hundreds of billions of dollars and stands as one of the world’s—and this country’s—largest landowners. Once the unifying institution of European feudalism, the Church now maintains a privileged status as a cornerstone of Western capitalism, always ready to wield the Holy Book to defend it against its enemies—faithful Christians included.
