A conservative lobby has formed around the pope over the years, with considerable influence and abilities to manipulate policy. It includes the members of groups like Opus Dei, the Legion of Christ, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and the SSPX. When it comes to rapprochement with other religions, they not only delay and debate ad nauseam pending decisions, but they also allow their views to leak to the outside world. One example was the pope's baptism of a Muslim during the Easter vigil mass in St. Peter's Basilica in 2008. The conservative lay movement "Comunione e Liberazione," which is highly influential in Italy, orchestrated the baptism.

The demonstrative conversion of a Muslim to Catholicism became an immediate source of indignation among Muslims around the world. Arab dailies wrote that the water that Pope Benedict had poured onto the head of the convert was "like petrol thrown onto the fire of the clash of cultures." At almost the same time, terrorist leader Osama bin-Laden broadcast on the Internet a message critical of the pope, accusing him of playing a key role in a new crusade against Islam.

Minor acts, fleshed out in the backrooms of the Vatican by orthodox lobbyists, can have a substantial political impact. Apparently Benedict failed to recognize the explosive nature of this baptism. It marked the second time that he was responsible for serious consternation in the Islamic world.

Critical of Islam

The first was his 2006 speech in Regensburg that angered Muslims from Jakarta to Casablanca. In September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI, without so much as consulting with the relevant bodies in the Curia, delivered a lecture on faith and reason, and in doing so he unwittingly set off a global religious controversy. "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman," the pope said, quoting a Byzantine emperor. The speech quickly ignited outrage around the world. Islamic fundamentalists in Indonesia called for the pope's death, and in Somalia a nun who had worked in a children's clinic was shot. A pope had openly insinuated that another world religion showed a tendency toward violence, and a pope had cited a sentence critical of Islam without distancing himself from it clearly enough.

Ratzinger, who holds a doctorate in theology, wrote the speech himself, which shows that the Holy Father apparently has difficulty comprehending the public impact of his actions. Benedict has almost no sensitivity for the public mood, and he is no politician. His actions are based on other maxims, derived from theological tenets, dogmatic insights and the constraints of church law.

Wolfgang Thierse, a Catholic German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), thinks Benedict's gaffes come from his isolation. "The pope's faux pas and blunders show that he makes decisions on his own. In theological terms, he lives in a separate world, the world of the old church fathers who shaped him. This is why he barely notices the historical and political context. He claims to serve the truth, which is not incorrect. But he must combine it with a respect for other truths."

It is a weakness in his biography that Ratzinger has almost never left the confines of a strictly clerical environment. His contact with the world and other people was consistently kept to a minimum. His world is that which exits inside the church, including its old traditions. In that world all that counts is what can be read in books. Now, at his advanced age, he is anxious to prevent this world from fracturing.

"His current life," says a German theologian, "is reminiscent of Louis XVI. He hears snippets of what is happening in the world, signs something here and there, performs his duties, studies documents and has generally made a comfortable life for himself at court. But he is not the master of the machine that surrounds him."

The Bavarian pope's lack of worldliness is at times oddly amusing and at times horrifying. He wants to be a doctor of the church, most of all, ceaselessly presenting the truths of the faith. But he has little interest in how his church is positioned in this world. The theological pope blossoms when he can work his way through the apostles, bit by bit, during his Wednesday audiences, even discussing such unknown church fathers as St. Andrew of Crete.

'Degeneration of the Liturgy'

Perhaps this explains the covert sympathy Benedict has for all the ultra-purists, the brothers of St. Pius and other Don Quixotes of a supposedly pure Catholicism. He resembles them in his deep pessimism about the course of the world, in his almost entomological passion for minute deviations from doctrine, and in his belief that the world is essentially made up of dogmas. In his autobiographical "Milestones," Joseph Ratzinger criticized the Second Vatican Council. The hard break with traditions like the Tridentine mass, the old-style Roman Rite Mass, was a mistake, he writes. "I am convinced that the church crisis we are experiencing today is largely a result of the degeneration of the liturgy."

Every brother of St. Pius will agree with this, and with the programmatic address Ratzinger gave in April 2005, just before the conclave: "Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled 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. We are moving towards 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."

Perhaps the See of Rome is in fact the only job in which such beliefs can still be reconciled with the job profile. If this is the case, however, there are bound to be regular collisions with the real world that exists outside the Leonine Wall surrounding the Vatican. The global, media-dominated society hears everything, sees everything, knows everything and forgets nothing. The Regensburg address made this clear, as does the current Williamson affair. And no amount of prayer can change this.

The Vatican must have known what kinds of thoughts the Lefebvre disciples harbored. Bishop Williamson's followers in Sweden posted a presentation on YouTube in which Williamson enthusiastically praises the so-called Syllabus as a litmus test for true Catholicism. For non-Catholics, the "Syllabus Errorum" is a list of the supposed fundamental errors of the modern age. These include concepts like democracy, the rule of law, freedom of religion, the separate of church and state, human rights, liberalism and rationalism. (Gay marriage is not mentioned explicitly, at least not yet.)

Evidence of a Certain Misbalance

Pope Benedict gets involved with backward-looking pious types, because he sees himself as a servant of unity, as he explained last Wednesday. His step, he said, should be understood as an "act of paternal mercy, because these prelates had repeatedly manifested to me their deep pain at the situation in which they had come." He wanted to overcome a schism within the church, he said.

The SSPX consists of just 500 priests worldwide. In Germany it has chapels and churches in more than 50 locations and about 10,000 members. There are no precise numbers of worldwide membership, although it is estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000, distributed across 30 countries around the world. No more than 0.02 percent of all Catholics are members.

And yet Benedict seems willing to risk the reputation of his church for this small group. A fundamental theologian like Joseph Ratzinger can apparently put up with many things, just not secondary truths. "The pope has placed the welfare of the church above respect for the truth and the memory of the dead," says Vito Mancuso, a professor of Catholic theology in Milan, Italy.

In fact, there is evidence of a certain imbalance. The pope routinely blunders when it comes to the more liberal side of things, but never on the conservative side. This is borne out by many examples. For instance, at the opening ceremony for the Latin American Conference of Bishops in Aparecida, Brazil, in May 2007, the Bavarian pope snubbed all indigenous peoples when he said that their ancestors' conversion to Christianity did not constitute forcing the religion on a foreign culture, but instead was something the indigenous peoples had unconsciously desired.

"To say that the cultural decimation of our people constitutes a purification is offensive and, to be honest, frightening," indigenous representative Sandro Tuxá said at the time.

PART 4: KILLING JEWS — PRAYING FOR JEWS

Benedict even manages to offend Protestants in his native Germany when he discusses the legitimate teachings of his church. In July 2007, Benedict authorized a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which stated that Protestants did not form "churches in the real sense." This was nothing new, from a Catholic perspective. For Rome there is only one church, namely its own, the "Una Sancta Catholica Ecclesia," which goes back to the Apostles. Everything else, in the Vatican's view, is nothing but sects, Christian communities or lay events.

In this respect, the pope is right. But was he well advised to point it out once again? At any rate, he has inflicted damage on the relationship among the denominations. "Some hoped that a pope who comes from Germany, and as such is quite familiar with the Protestant Church, would improve relations. These hopes have not been fulfilled," says Bishop Margot Kässmann from the northern German city of Hannover. In fact, official relations between Protestants and Catholics are relatively frosty at the moment.

Last November, Benedict XVI wrote the foreword for a book by Marcello Pero, a philosopher and former president of the Italian Senate. In it, the pope praises the rejection of a "cosmopolitan" Europe. "You explain with great clarity," Benedict writes, "that an interreligious dialogue, in the narrow sense of the word, is not possible, whereas the intercultural dialogue in which the cultural consequences of the fundamental religious decision are examined becomes all the more urgent." There can be no "true dialogue" about religion, Benedict continues, "without excluding one's own faith."

What some critics of the pope dismiss as naiveté and awkwardness in dealing with the world is far more for others. For them, the series of mishaps eventually turns into a pattern of stubbornness.

Praying for the Jews

The papal gaffes strike a particularly sensitive note in those who have experienced too many supposed exceptions and blunder in their history, and have done so for so long that they were almost wiped out: the Jews.

The extension of the pope's hand in blessing to the most right-wing fringe of Christianity, an act of mercy for someone like Williamson, is "no regrettable isolated incident," says Walter Homolka, rector of the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam outside Berlin. Instead, the rabbi sees it as "a cascade of incidents," which can only lead to the conclusion that "the Jewish-Christian relationship is of no value to the pope."

This statement is evidence of a deep bitterness. Joseph Ratzinger is anything but an anti-Semite. The common origins of Judaism and Christianity are at the core of his theological thought. In his "Introduction to Christianity," he approvingly cites a sentence by the "great Jewish theologian Leo Baeck," according to which all devout people, not just the Israelites, will share "in eternal bliss."

However, one can accuse the pope of assigning greater importance to inner unity of his church than to its relationship with other religions. This became clear, once again, to Jewish religious scholars when Benedict issued a so-called motu proprio document on the liturgy on July 7, 2007.

Since 1570, Catholics had prayed on Good Friday for the conversion of the "faithless Jews," and that "they may be delivered from their darkness." Catholics did this for 400 years, but their prayers never met with much success. The rite was modified after the Second Vatican Council, and the new version of the intercession read, somewhat more politely: " Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the Word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant that they may reach the destination set by God's providence."

Step Backward

To the delight of traditionalists, Benedict's decree reinstated the Tridentine Mass in a special form. That form included all of the passages that were laid down in 1962, in the Roman Missal ("Missale Romanum"). But did it include the intercession for the Jews?

It sounds festive enough in Latin, but only because no one understands it. But the statement becomes more than clear in translation: "Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men. Almighty and everlasting God, you who want all men to be saved and to reach the awareness of the truth, graciously grant that, with the fullness of peoples entering into your church, all Israel may be saved. Through Christ our Lord. Amen."

For historian Michael Wolffsohn, the motu proprio was the "biggest theological step backward in relation to Judaism since 1945." The Jewish representatives in the Jewish and Christian working group within the Central Committee of German Catholics then boycotted the Catholic Assembly.

Benedict XVI's support for the process of beatification of Pope Pius XII is also a serious problem for history-conscious Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora. The Italian pope, for reasons of diplomatic caution or out of sheer fear, remained publicly silent on the Holocaust.

Pogroms Became Commonplace

In September, Pope Benedict expressed his clear support for his "esteemed predecessor." At a conference of the Jewish-Christian Pave the Way Foundation, the pope spoke of Pius's "many interventions, made secretly and silently, precisely because, given the concrete situation of that difficult historical moment, only in this way was it possible to avoid the worst and save the greatest number of Jews." The achievements of the Pacelli pope were not always "examined in the right light."

Although Pius XII secretly saved the lives of many Jews, his name is still mentioned at Israel's Yad Washem Holocaust Memorial as an example of the failure of the church.

Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga is not surprised by the constantly recurring tensions. "We must not forget," he says, "that a strong anti-Jewish feeling is rooted in Catholicism. And two popes — Wojtyla and Ratzinger — are certainly not enough to put an end to this."

Even the Apostle Paul wrote about the Jews "who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, who have persecuted us, and who please neither God nor any group of people." For Christians, the Jews were the supposed "murderers of God" for almost two thousand years. Anti-Judaism permeates the history of the church — and it has often been bloody.

In the late 11th century, after Pope Urban II urged Christians to conquer the Holy Land, thousands of crusaders in France and Germany followed his call. But instead of traveling to Jerusalem, they first descended upon their Jewish neighbors at home. On a single day, Christian mobs, chanting "Let us avenge the blood of the Christ Crucified," murdered the entire Jewish community of about 1,000 people in the western city of Mainz.

Pogroms became commonplace. In 1298, bands of "Jew killers" led by a knight named Rindfleisch aus Röttingen traveled through the Franconia region and murdered about 5,000 Jews. Life was especially dangerous for Jews on Good Friday, when Christians, seized by their pious bloodlust, pursued the "god killers." By the end of the 15th century, Christians, through murder and forced displacement, had managed to wipe out the majority of Jewish populations in Western and Southern Europe.

Even Martin Luther, the reformer, was no friend of the Jews. He recommended: "First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed."

'Smoke of Satan'

During the course of the 19th century, anti-Judaism was replaced and displaced by anti-Semitism, which was rooted in racism. According to theologian Hans Küng, "National Socialism would have been impossible without the centuries-old anti-Semitism of the churches." During Nazi rule, conflicts quickly arose between Catholic doctrine and the all-encompassing claim to power of party members. Although some bishops were headed for a clear course of confrontation with the Nazis, the annihilation of the Jews was by no means the German episcopate's greatest concern.

It was only in 1965 that Pope Paul VI, in the "Nostra aetate" declaration of the Second Vatican Council, rejected anti-Judaism once and for all. The church, the groundbreaking document read, "decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone."

It is precisely this document that Lefebvre's followers have not recognized to this day. The SSPX saw the Council essentially as a "fissure in the church," through which the "smoke of Satan had entered the Church."

PART 5: BENEDICT BEARING THE CROSS

The ultra-conservative group's representative in Germany is Father Franz Schmidberger, the District Superior of the SSPX in Stuttgart. After some hesitation, Schmidberger distanced himself from the statements of his fellow SSPX member Williamson. "The downplaying of the murders of Jews by the Nazi regime, and its atrocities, are unacceptable to us. I wish to apologize for this behavior and distance myself from all statements of this nature."

But shortly before Christmas, Schmidberger and his fellow SSPX members wrote to German bishops to remind them of the supposed Jewish original sin: "With the crucifixion of Christ, the curtain of the temple was torn and the old alliance destroyed. But this does not just mean that the Jews of today are not our older brothers in faith. Rather, they are complicit in deicide, as long as they do not distance themselves from the culpability of their forefathers by acknowledging the divinity of Christ and the baptism."

This age-old atavistic way of thinking, which defines Jews as being spattered with guilt, has been part of the church once again since Benedict's decree. This, in fact, is what happened on Jan. 24, 2009, and it cannot be reversed with any declarations or visits to synagogues.

Dieter Graumann, the vice-president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, calls it a "fiasco, an absolute disaster." A German, of all people, says Graumann, set the Christian-Jewish dialogue back by decades. "That's what makes it so bitter," says Graumann, "so sad, and so incomprehensible."

'Obliteration of 50 Years of Church History'

Oded Wiener, who, as Director General of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, is responsible for interfaith dialogue, says that there have been dramatic telephone conversations between Jerusalem and Rome, as part of an effort to salvage what can be salvaged. But there is a sense of deep disappointment. Elia Enrico Richetti, Venice's chief rabbi, initially terminated cooperation with the Catholic Church, because the pope lacked "the most basic respect" for the Jews. Richetti sees the pope's actions as the "obliteration of 50 years of church history."

Dialogue with the Jews was a central concern for Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II. He had experienced the murdering of Jews as a young man in Poland, and as pope he condemned anti-Semitism as a "sin against God and man." For John Paul, the Jews were "our older brothers."

Before Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, Rabbi Walter Homolka spoke with him about the Christian-Jewish dialogue. "He was in favor of it," Homolka recalls, "but he didn't seem to feel very passionate about it." Homolka, who is in charge of training rabbis in Germany, no longer believes in an easing of tensions between Jews and the Catholic Church, as long as Benedict XVI is its leader. "We are waiting for the next pope," he says.

How the Jews will cope with this serious affront by the Vatican depends not only on the leadership in Rome, but also on the faithful around the world. Central Jewish Council Vice-president Graumann wants to see "Catholics stand up and show that they will not let down the Jews."

What next?

Jerusalem resident David Rosen is the chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations. He was in the audience when Benedict gave a moving speech at the Auschwitz memorial, in which he said: "In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can only be a dread silence — a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this? In silence, then, we bow our heads before the endless line of those who suffered and were put to death here... It is a duty before the truth and the just due of all who suffered here, a duty before God, for me to come here as the successor of Pope John Paul II and as a son of the German people."

No Permanent Damage?

The newly clear, though appallingly after-the-fact condemnation of anti-Semitism by Pope Benedict XVI gives Rosen hope that permanent damage has not been inflicted on the process of reconciliation between Jews and Christians.

Nevertheless, Rabbi Rosen has canceled an annual meeting with representatives of the Vatican scheduled for early March. "The church must now determine," says the influential rabbi, "whether the brothers of St. Pius share the teachings on anti-Semitism," such as John Paul II's characterization of anti-Semitism as "a sin against God and man." Experts on Catholic Church law also believe that the schism will only end completely if the traditionalists clearly recognize the authority of the pope and the resolutions of the Second Vatican Council. If not, says Peter Krämer, an expert on canon law from the western German city of Trier, "the suspension from office would remain in effect." This is the conclusion he draws from Benedict's remarks on Wednesday.

"I hope," the pope said, "my gesture is followed by the hoped-for commitment on their part to take the further steps necessary to realize full communion with the church, thus witnessing true fidelity, and true recognition of the magisterium and the authority of the pope and of the Second Vatican Council."

There is at least one person who has so far shown no intention of recognizing anything at all.

Bishop Williamson is sitting in his Seminary of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix in La Reja, a confident neo-Baroque building 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Journalists are turned away. They are told that this is a vacation period and that the bishop does not wish to see anyone. But on the weekend, he referred to his comments on the Holocaust as "imprudent" and said that he regretted having caused "unnecessary concerns" for Benedict. But there was little remorse in his words.

Working in the Lord's Vineyard

Shortly before officials at the SSPX headquarters in Switzerland ordered Williamson not to speak to the press, he wrote a letter to his loyal supporters. Its tone was triumphant: "In my opinion this latter Decree is a great step forward for the Church without being a betrayal on the part of the SSPX ... And let us thank and pray for Benedict XVI and all his collaborators who helped to push through this Decree, despite, for instance, a media uproar orchestrated and timed to prevent it."

His words are clear. And the traditionalists are right in one respect: They have reason to celebrate. They have successfully completed another step back into the Unam et Sanctam, and have done so without making any concessions whatsoever.

Joseph Ratzinger, the learned theology professor, apparently never wanted this office. The Holy Spirit elevated him to the Holy See, he said after the conclave, referring to himself as "a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard."

But his work in the vineyard has since turned into the way of the cross.

Despite all efforts to engage in dialogue with China, the churches of the East, and Islam, this pope has repeatedly stumbled on the issue of the Holocaust, as if he were condemned to do so. The affair over the rehabilitation of the traditionalists is another station of the cross for Benedict.

Benedict XVI will likely be the last pope to have consciously experienced the nightmare of the Nazi era. Perhaps it is no accident, but an irony of history, that Joseph Ratzinger, a former member of the Hitler Youth from the Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn, must repeatedly shoulder the burden of this history — whether he wants to or not.
 

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