Ratzinger in context

With absolutely precision timing, a coalition of religious groups at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government planned a panel on "The Pope and Politics" for today. Even if they put this together after John Paul II's death, which seems unlikely given the caliber of the speakers, no one knew when the new Pope would be elected. They managed to accidentally nail the first day after the news had broken, giving the speakers just enough time to research Benedict XVI. Unbelievable. Let me highlight for you who the panelists were and some of the main points I took away from them.

Mary Jo Bane, a Kennedy school professor, Clinton administration official and practicing Catholic, opened with her concerns on Cardinal Ratzinger's dubious record with regard to ecumenism and social justice. She was uncomfortable with the Cardinal's authorship of Dominus Jesus, which described Jesus and Catholicism as unique paths to salvation (better you read it than trust my paraphrase of her summary; or wait for my analysis here in a few days.) Creating a metaphor that all panelists later referenced, Dr. Bane noted that a Google search of "Ratzinger" with "social justice" made for a short morning's research.*

Richard Parker, an economist who cofounded Mother Jones, sees Benedict XVI as a participant in the church's self-appointed role, for most of history, as fighter against modernism. Dr. Parker said that Vatican Ii, which placed the church in solidarity with the poor and oppressed, might represent a turn of the tide in the Church-world relationship, or it may have been one high point of an ebb-and-flow pattern. (I didn't quite follow his connections there, but I think he saw the Vatican II ethic of prioritizing the poor as borrowed from Marx, a major influence on modern thought. I don't know if that's actually true, but let us hope, for many reasons, that Vatican II was a turning point and not merely a peak.)

Jim Wallis is an evangelical Christian leader who works for peace and economic social justice. His recent book God's Politics envisions religious people's involvement in a new national agenda to find solutions to poverty. He urges the influence of individual moral concerns on political involvement, but noted tonight "Religion must be tempered by democracy."

In response to Mary Jo Bane's concern about Cardinal Ratzinger's record with respect to social justice, Wallis pointed out that Benedict [I wonder if I'm using these names correctly] enters into a potent social justice tradition in which he must exist as Pope. Wallis predicted the the "church of the South", or of the Third World, will be the church of the future for both Catholics and evangelicals. I thought this was interesting given that the Times keeps describing the two Christian branches as particularly at odds in Latin America, depicting evangelical groups as "poaching" Latin American Catholics and constantly noting that the cardinals mean evangelical groups when they refer to "sects". I've beefed with the Times' stance on this before, and continue to expect that a rising religious tide will lift all sectarian boats. I believe the increase in public religiosity here in the US after 9/11 was partially a natural desire for comfort and community and partially a factor of increased interest in Islam inspiring people to learn more about their own faiths of origin.

A Kennedy School student asked [disingenuously] whether religious people with different economic beliefs have a collaborative future. Mr. Wallis called his attention to the discontent many religious voters feel with American political party options, where bioethical issues and attention to the needy often seem to war. He said "True religion shouldn't be ideologically predictable or theologically partisan," and called upon the faithful to challenge recieved wisdom in both politics and faith.

Bryan Hehir, a Kennedy School professor and the president of Catholic Charities, tempered Dr. Bane's pessimism about the new pope, noting that while his intellectual positions are familiar, the pope's pastoral style and public, political role have yet to be developed and revealed. Father Hehir made several concrete predictions, including that Benedict will likely issue a social-justice encyclical within the year, realizing that he hasn't addressed those issues much in his career and that the role of the Pope demands it. The new pope is concerned about purity of thought, Father Hehir noted, and can be expected to choose bishops - and praise or punish theologians - according to their intellectual activity. Contrary to some predictions categorizing his appointment as a placeholder, Father Hehir expects Benedict XVI to be an activist pope - ominous gong sound here - but added that an ideological shift could conceivably occur in the next conclave. (Dr. Bane snorted her dissent here and predicted that geographical, but not ideological, diversity might be expected next time.)

When the conversation turned political, Father Hehir noted that the number of Catholics, otherwise ideologically Democratic, who may be sent to the Republican party by bioethical issues may be sizeable enough to sway close elections like the last two Presidential ones. To concerns about the future of ecumenism under Benedict XVI, Father Hehir pointed out something I had never realized: that Catholic ethics are intended to be based on reason rather than on faith. This makes consensus and dialogue between faiths much more natural. While Father Hehir didn't mention that the Curia's idea of "reason" occasionally runs to medieval-era science, this was great food for thought, and dovetailed nicely with the evangelical Mr. Wallis' repeated admiration for Catholic social teaching.

*Existential question of the day: When they Google your name, what do you want to come up?