Waiting for the White Smoke

Posted on April 18, 2005 in Pontiff Watch

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made what amounted to a campaign speech before the cardinals were locked up in the Sistine Chapel to choose a new pope. Ratzinger is generally conceded to be a 3 to 1 probability to be chosen as the next Bishop of Rome.

“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labelled today as a fundamentalism, whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards,” the 78-year-old Ratzinger said during the homily.

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”

I find it interesting that when Ratzinger speaks of what path the Church should follow, he invokes the history of Church itself, not the words of Christ! As I have pointed out before, there is much that is distinctly unChristian about the Church today. (There is much that is distinctly unChristlike about Christianity today, for that matter!) But this is an old horse that I have ridden many times, so let me dismount and walk down a different road.

When Ratzinger speaks of the “dictatorship of relativism” what I think he truly objects to are politicians such as John Kerry who say that religion has no place in secular affairs. Like many propagandists, Ratzinger projects his faults on his adversaries who struggle to ensure fair play. The Austrian head of the Curia was behind the effort to cut back on Vatican II reforms such as more power for local bishops and respect for cultural differences.

Relativism is not and has never been a morality. It is a scientific method pioneered by anthropologist Franz Boas as a means of describing other cultures with different value systems and different customs. The Catholic Church finds it dangerous because it raises the question “Is our society necessarily better than the others?” Its missionary work depends on condemining beliefs other than its own and imposing them on unwilling recipients and colonial thralls.

The irony is that when the Church finds itself backed into a corner on some of these practices, it cries out for “tolerance”. Tolerance is a morality. The Pro-Choice position insists that we must respect those who refuse to have abortions for religious reasons, for example. (Yes, that’s exactly what I mean to say.) Ratzinger’s counter-choice position, on the other hand, insists that the Catholic Way is the only way. He insists on the Holy See’s titanium authority over our minds, our consciences, and our actions. It is he, not those who he castigates, who wants a dictatorship.

Just ask yourself this when evaluating Ratzinger’s remarks. Who picked him to be a cardinal? Who picked the other cardinals? What “vote” other than donations does the average Catholic have when it comes to her/his priest, bishop, archbishop, cardinal, or the Pope? Democracy — which involves the threshing out of issues by everyone — is the antithesis of dictatorship. Show me the democracy in this conclave. Show me this democracy in the Curia and the dioceses spread around the world. This is an Austrian wolf barking in the light of Truth, trying to bring the darkness back.

Reports say that all the cardinals present applauded for Ratzinger’s speech. Will the Curia head’s conservatism continue to shape the Church? Will the kidnapping and brainwashing methods of Opus Dei be the wave of the future? We must wait for the white smoke to find out.