I was eulogizing a former pope, Pope Benedict XVI a.k.a.a Joseph Ratzinger. And I was genuine in my expressions of grief, because while he was imperfect and failed to clean up a mess of an institution he seemed to be sincere.
We don't call the Christian religion churchianity for a reason.
A friend wrote me that yesterday.
Hah! Some don't call the Catholic religion Christianity. But that is beside the point.
In my YouTube video of earlier today, I said, Rest in Peace, Pope Benedict XVI. Requiescat in pace.
Ratzinger was an imperfect man, an imperfect priest, bishop, consultant to a Church counsel, prolific writer, professor, theologian, and I pray that they do not ruin his legacy by trying to make him a saint. But he was brilliant. Even amid disagreeable positions, wrongheaded battles, and I think, a naivety of ecclesial corruption.
Did he not realize that as he railed against two moms or two dads raising a family, tucking in their children at night, walking them to school, holding hands in public, he was surrounded by men who literally were keeping Roman prostitution in business, were some of the main patrons of undocumented male escorts (trafficked and exploited human beings), and some of the biggest sexual predators on the planet?
So yeah, it is an understatement when I say he was wrong about some things, naïve about others, and he had his blind spots. For sure. This is why I said, he was ignorant of human nature, basic human behavior, and reality in my opinion.
For the second or third most influential Vatican official in some ways--for decades before becoming pope--he was strangely ignorant of the extent of corruption within the church.
The Catholic Church is filled--especially at the very highest levels--with men suffering from severe arrested development. These men have no wives or mothers to keep them on the straight and narrow so their worst inclinations come out, and are indulged in. A bunch of men who are emotionally teenage boys, with unlimited $$$ and power, and no adult supervision.
I think it is institutionalized misogyny. It is always denied but the misogyny is baked into it. "Yeah, but they have the blessed Mother and all these female saints..."
True.
But too bad that the bad boys of the Vatican don't listen to these feminine voices within the Church.
"But Pope Francis..." Wow. Even today already I am seeing puff-ball news stories about Papa Francisco in major papers. Hello!? Anyone paying attention to the Pope's very own Harvey Weinsteinesque predator--Jesuit artist/priest Marko Ivan Rupnik, who I keep calling RupCo.
Francis is busy rearranging the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic as it sinks.
But seriously--despite all of this--I love Benedict XVI. Cardinal Ratzinger. He was Fr. Joseph Ratzinger so briefly, a popular theology professor quickly selected as an expert advisor to Vatican II and quickly made a bishop and then a cardinal thereafter. Such a great writer. His written work will endure the test of time.
People will blame him for the pedophile crisis and sex scandal that continues in the Church. But bottom line: Benedict attempted to deal with it--call him a Johnny Come Lately if you want to, but he tried to take action against some prominent predators, like Uncle Teddy McCarrick that virtually every American prelate had known about for decades, and was--dare we say it? Forced out? Pressured to abdicate? To resign?
Meanwhile Francis says some nice things and keeps up certain appearances but allows the disease to fester. Can you spell RupCo$$$Rupnik?
As Christopher Altieri has been bravely reporting in the Catholic World Report. In the words of one of his victims, a consecrated religious sister: "[Rupnik] Father Marko asked me to have threesomes with another sister of the community, because sexuality had to be, in his opinion, free from possession, in the image of the Trinity where, he said, “the third person would welcome the relationship between the two.” On those occasions, he would ask me to live out my femininity in an aggressive and dominant way, and since I could not do so, he would deeply humiliate me with phrases that I cannot repeat."
So yeah. The Catholic Church is like a scene from the lower levels of Hell in Dante's Inferno.
Not much of a eulogy. Sorrow Benedict.
You deserved better. An imperfect holy man surrounded by some of the biggest hypocritical scumbags on the planet earth. You tried to clean it up but found out he could not. The real story of your resignation has yet to be written but someday it will be.
Go to God, Pope Benedict XVI. You were a true believer and holy man living in the viper's den. Requiescat in pace. May blessed Mary and the angels bring your soul to the bosom of Abraham. Jesus remains your strength.
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