2007: In the preface to the book John Allen wrote on the Popes ascendance,
“The Rise of Benedict XVI: The Inside Story of How the Pope was Elected and Where He Will Take the Catholic Church” by John L. Allen.
“Because the new pope [Benedict XVI] has been a highly public figure generating diverse reactions, the early response to his election was perhaps a bit overheated in some quarters. In progressive or liberal Catholic circles, the emotional reaction sometimes verged on despair. One well-known liberal commentator called the result a “disaster,” and others had even worse things to say, well before the new pope had even opened his mouth.
One leading leftist paper in Italy captured this sense of where the Pope would go, publishing a front-page editorial cartoon that was a parody of a famous moment from the pontificate of Pope John XXIII. “Good Pope John” once stood at his Vatican window on a moonlit night and, speaking to a crowd in St. Peter’s Square, said, “Go home and kiss your children, and tell them that this kiss comes from the Pope.” The cartoon showed Pope Benedict at the window saying, instead, “Go home and spank your children, and tell them that this spanking comes from the Pope.”
Another Italian paper dubbed the new pope il pastore Tedesco, “the German shepherd,” a play on his nationality as well as his reputation for being a ferocious guard dog of doctrinal orthodoxy. On the Catholic right, there were still uglier voices to be heard. Within hours of Benedict’s election, for example, I received e-mails predicting that the newspaper for which I work, the National Catholic Reporter , would be eviscerated under his pontificate.
Others began circulating enemies’ lists, with the names of well-known Catholic liberals who would be purged on Benedict’s watch. As we will see later in chapter five, one such prominent liberal did indeed fall shortly thereafter, though as a result of a process that had been under way long before Ratzinger became pope.
Of course, it is entirely legitimate to discuss the positions one can take and still meaningfully refer to oneself as “Catholic,” and it seems this pontificate will occasion such conversations. But to make your first reaction to the joyful news that the Church has a pope one of vengeance can suggest a worrying lack of Christian spirit.
In this regard, I am cheered by responses such as that of Stephen Hand, who edits a small on-line service called “Traditional Catholic Reflections and Reports.” Hand would conventionally be described as a Catholic conservative, and a few years ago he wrote a blistering review [for Inside the Vatican], not entirely undeserved, of my 1999 biography entitled Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith. In the aftermath of Benedict’s election, Hand wrote to invite me to write an essay for his site, expressing his desire to make a new start: “Let’s begin anew,” he volunteered. “All any of us want is fair reporting, even if tensions in perspective exist. God knows we need to strive for true communion. The future can be very different.”
Unfortunately, the need to finish the manuscript of this book prevented me from writing the piece Hand requested. Yet I want to take this opportunity to applaud the spirit in which he extended the invitation, which it seems to me synthesizes the best of the Catholic instinct— alive to the possibility of conversion, redemption, and new beginnings. One hopes that the spirit spreads as this new pontificate begins to take shape”.
Alas.
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Catholic Critique 