Pope Benedict XVI, a.k.a. Joseph
Ratzinger, died over the Christmas holidays.
Many Catholics will recall the legacy of his
papacy with mixed feelings.
First and foremost remembered of
Benedict’s papacy will be his mishandling of
the Catholic Church sex scandal cover-up. As
the archbishop in Munich, Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger (1977-2005) sent out a letter on
May 18, 2001, ordering all his bishops,
under the threat of ecclesiastical
punishment, to observe “papal secrecy” to
keep sex abuse allegations concealed from
both the public and the police. Benedict
moved pedophilic priests from parish to
parish like pieces on a chess board. The
Vatican defended Benedict’s actions, stating
critics are looking for “easy scapegoats and
summary judgments.”
The archbishop of Boston, Sean
O’Malley, released a statement depicting
Benedict as a man who “was very concerned
with relativism and the truth being
compromised.” As a church Traditionalist,
Benedict’s truth ruled with an iron fist who
used his authoritarian and “Rottweiler”
persona to maintain the ecclesiastical
structures of the ancient Catholic church
Sadly,
Benedicts’s
anti-modernity views on AIDS and women’s
roles within the Catholic Church hierarchy
were both retro, wreckless, and spiritually
abusive. For example, he stuck by his no
condoms even in an age of AIDS.
Benedict publicly bashed a group of
U.S. “dissident” nuns for “focusing its work
too much on poverty and economic injustice,
while keeping ‘silent’ on abortion and
same-sex marriage.” Benedict accused these
sisters of promoting “certain radical
feminist themes incompatible with the
Catholic faith.”
However, his venomous public
condemnation of LGBTQs was unrelenting. “It
is impossible to overstate the damage Pope
Benedict’s repeated dehumanizing of LGBTQIA+
people has caused,” Marianne Duddy-Burke
wrote in an open statement to DignityUSA.
“Individuals, families, and whole
communities across the globe suffered tragic
consequences, many of which are still felt
today.” Duddy-Burke is the Executive
Director of DignityUSA. DignityUSA is the
world’s oldest organization of Catholics
working for justice, equality, and full
inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people in the church
and society.
For example, Benedict injected his
voice in the presidential election of 2004.
Benedict instructed American bishops to read
his declaration that any “catholic
politician” (i.e., John Kerry, Joe Biden,
Nancy Pelosi, etc.) who did not denounce
gays and abortion could not receive
communion.
Benedict’s infamous Christmas
sermon denounced same-sex marriage,
advocating it would destroy the “essence of
the human creature.” In previous sermonic
anti-LGBTQ diatribes during his tenure,
Benedict stated that marriage equality is a
“manipulation of nature” and a threat to
world peace.
“Although
the
particular inclination of the homosexual
person is not a sin, it is more or less a
strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic
moral evil,” Benedict stated in a 1986
“Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic
Church on Pastoral Care of Homosexual
Persons.”
On the Vatican’s Congregation for
the Doctrine of Faith website, directed by
then Benedict, he wrote: “Those who would
move from tolerance to the legitimization of
specific rights for cohabiting homosexual
persons need to be reminded that the
approval or legalization of evil is
something far different from the toleration
of evil.”
The
problem
with Benedict’s calling us evil not only
diminishes the human life of LGBTQ+ people,
it also denies the suffering it causes.
Benedict suppressed the growth of
Liberation Theologies in Third World
countries, the emerging face of the Catholic
Church, for their supposedly Marxist
leanings that exposed classism. However,
Liberation Theologies combines Christian
theology with political activism on human
rights and social justice issues. Liberation
Theologies emphasize the biblical themes
that God’s actions on behalf of the
enslaved, the poor, the outcasts like women,
people of color, and LGBTQ people, to name a
few, are a central paradigm for a faith that
embraces the world - as it is today - from
an engaged and committed stance that does
justice.
“The
passing
of former Pope Benedict XVI marks what is,
hopefully, the end of a long, painful era
for LGBTQIA+ Catholics, our families, and
the entire church,” Duddy-Burke stated.
Benedict has asked for forgiveness and
apologized for his complicity in the church
sex scandal. Benedict dedicated his final
years to prayer. Perhaps that was his act of
penance.
