to discuss modern-day Catholicism without reference to Vatican II.


Vatican II: Source of Hope — and Confusion It’s almost impossible


changes in the world over the preceding century.


Pope John XXIII surprised the Catholic world in 1960 when he called the Second Vatican Council, a gathering of leaders of the Church to discuss its future. It began in 1962 and extended into the papacy of John’s successor, Paul VI, ending in 1965. Pope John XXIII believed in collegiality with other Catholic leaders, the “princes of the church,” i.e., bishops, archbishops, and cardinals. He also felt a strong need to scrutinize Catholic teaching in light of the remarkable


John XXIII thought the time had come for renewal, for aggiornamento. So he gathered together the best minds in the Church to talk things over. The trouble is, not only did nearly every aspect of Catholic dogma appear to come under scrutiny, but the various opinions expressed — some of them wildly at odds with Church teaching — came to be viewed by many Catholics as the new acceptable practices of the Church. Whatever else may have come from Vatican II — and it’s generally accepted that much


reforms such as the right of Catholics to hear the Mass said in their own languages rather than in Latin. He would later rue the direction these reforms took. “I was not able to foresee,” he wrote in his memoir Milestones: Memoirs 1927- 1997, “that the negative sides of the liturgi- cal movement would later re-emerge with redoubled strength, almost to the point of pushing the liturgy toward its own self- destruction.”


In the early 1970s, he founded Communio, arguably the world’s most important Catholic periodical, along with other leading Catholic theologians includ- ing Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac. Thanks to his teaching and writ- ing, Ratzinger had become in his late 40s one of a handful of priests whose careers were watched closely in Rome. Nothing illustrates his meteoric rise through the Vatican more than the fact that Pope Paul VI made him an archbish- op in March of 1977 and then a cardinal just three months later.


But the really big job came in 1981 when John Paul named Cardinal Ratzinger to the top spot at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican agency that oversees Catholic teaching and belief — and an agency that its critics enjoy pointing out was once known as the “inquisition.”


It was during his time at CDF that he got a series of nicknames, such as “God’s Rottweiler,” “Bad Cop” (to John Paul II’s Good Cop), “Panzerkardinal,” and “Cardinal No” — due to, as author


good did come out of the Council — one sure legacy was a sense of confusion among the faithful. “Once upon a time,” Father Richard John Neuhaus has written, “before the Second Vatican Council, there were ‘good Catholics’ and ‘bad Catholics,’ but everybody knew what it meant to be a Catholic. Now it seems that everything is up for grabs.” Today, both Catholic innovators and traditionalists look at Vatican II and see failure — the former because the 1960s reforms seem to be slipping away, the latter because the reforms seem to have transformed the Church beyond recognition.


That Vatican II is perceived to have wrought such change in Church doctrine is ironic, according to Notre Dame professor and author Ralph McInerny. He says John XXIII believed 1960s-era doctrine was fi ne just the way it was.


“The emphasis of the Council should thus not be doctrinal,” McInerny says of John’s view, “but pastoral. It should consider how best to convey the truth of Christ to the modern world.” That is not what happened in the minds of many Catholics, however. This is the misunderstanding that Benedict hopes to change. — B.M.


Russell Shorto puts it, “his stern disciplin- ing [of] Latin American practitioners of liberation theology; restating the ancient dogma that ‘there is no salvation out- side the church’; adamantly resisting any effort to change policies regarding birth control, priestly celibacy, or the ordination of women; and having no qualms about stepping into the political arena, as when he instructed American bishops during the 2004 presidential campaign that it was wrong to grant Holy Communion to a Catholic — like John Kerry — who sup- ports abortion rights.”


It is debatable, however, that the oft-stated instruction to clergy to deny Communion to dissident Catholic politi- cians constitutes “stepping into the politi- cal arena.”


His election as history’s 265th Pope came on April 19, 2005 — at which point he was given a new nickname, Papa Ratzi. His selection stunned many Catholics and non-Catholics alike, although certainly not Joseph Ratzinger’s best American friend and former student, the Jesuit priest Joseph Fessio.


Fessio is the founder of the Catholic publishing house Ignatius Press, and a faculty member at Ave Maria University in Florida. Asked to comment on what it is like when a friend of 33 years suddenly becomes head of the Catholic Church, Fessio chuckled. “Well, I can defi nite- ly answer that. Actually, I was pretty certain he would become


As a youth, the future


Pope’s faith and education prepared him for the harsh


realities of the Nazi regime.


NICKNAMES Benedict has been given numerous labels by a watchful and sometimes critical press corps.


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