UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Catholics are revolting and reforming on their own in Chile, Ireland and many other places, while threatened power hungry Vatican bureaucrats fiddle like Nero as Rome burned. The Vatican’s two resident popes appear to be in an “infallibility” tug-of-war — Pope Francis with his “champion”, Cardinal Kasper, versus emeritus Pope Benedict XVI with his champion, Cardinal Müller. Now Müller is apparently publicly and patronizingly trashing Francis’ theological competence as compared to the purported superior ability of the ex-pope and himself, naturally.
So according to Müller’s recent statement, his office (presumably with hidden help from the ex-pope) must “theologically structure” Pope Francis’ theologically deficient pontificate like he disastrously tried to restructure American nuns presumably. Müller spoke on the occasion of the release of the first volume of the complete works of Joseph Ratzinger, the ex-pope. Müller is helping to edit these voluminous works, instead of spending more time cleaning up the priest sex abuse scandal that his office continues to mismanage. Ironically, this first volume appears to contain the remnants of the ex-pope’s dissertation on Augustine that had been rejected in longer form by the leading Munich theologian for whom it was prepared! So much for theological superiority!
The ex-pope appears to be in a race with his half century long nemesis, Hans Kung, who is also publishing his superior and better selling complete works at the same publishing house, Herder. Francis is apparently getting input from Hans Kung, reportedly in their informal communications as well as presumably via Kasper, who had earlier been Kung’s assistant.
Whatever Müller’s game is, his arrogance mostly serves to undercut the absurdity of the 1870 invention of an “infallible pope”, or ex-pope for that matter. This further underscores the reason why Francis must convene a truly infallible and broadly representative general council, which has been the Catholic Church’s final and exclusive authority on doctrinal matters for almost 2,000 years. Multiple and serially infallible popes since 1870 have failed and will always fail — subsequent popes can too easily reverse their predecessors as the last two popes often did.
Francis’ limitations extend far beyond theology, it appears. The strong ex-bouncer Latino Pope Francis seems to have underestimated brave Celtic priest abuse survivor, Marie Collins, and her colleague, Peter Saunders. A charter member of the pope’s almost illusory abuse commission, she at times complained to AP about the commission’s inexcusable long delays, she boldly, in effect, threaten to quit if bishops were not held at last accountable for protecting priest predators, and she recently challenged the pope publicly on his selection of the tainted Bishop Barros in Chile. Welcome to Ireland, Pope Francis!
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