Benedict XVI 'the Silenced Pope' taste his own medicine

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.


The result of the fall -- Humpty Dumpty all dressed in white...the sobbing Benedict XVI in papal GAY pajamas..




So now Benedict XVI is having a taste of his own delicious "medicine of SILENCE" which he and the Opus Dei imposed on Fr. Jon Sobrino of El Salvador and other good Jesuits, and most of all on SNAP, Fr. Thomas Doyle and victims of priest-pedophilia. For more than a quarter of a century and as head of the CDF Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger ordered the utmost silence on priest pedophilia with the threat of excommunication to those who'd disclose or speak about it. So what is he going to do to the protesting Sapienza students and professors - excommunicate them ALL? They already made it clear to him: "Knowledge needs neither fathers nor priests". (Sapienza University, Mille Gazie for PROVING my humble WEBLOGS RIGHT!)

Film GAY producer Zeffirelli is now the image consultant of the Pope and this rally at the Vatican in support of the "Silenced Pope", rejected by Sapienza University, could be his first movie production following the footsteps of Opus Dei produced blockbuster The Passion of Christ approved by John Paul II.

Benedict XVI and the Opus Dei are rallying their troops -- (remember the Opus Dei have many members in the political arena) -- to rebuttal the Sapienza University students and professors who successfully ward off the Pope from addressing their school opening day last Thursday. I'd say this was one nice arrow that hit Benedict XVI's Achilles Heel!

The problem with Benedict XVI is that his actions always speak louder than his words and his ostentatious costumes betray his book Jesus of Nazareth. Even with a magnificent make-over by Zeffirelli and Opus Dei supporting cast of 87,000 members worldwide, Benedict XVI will always be the Papal Prince and Christ the Pauper.

At the Vatican rally last Sunday, January 19, 2008, 4 days after his cancelled visit to Sapienza University, he said:
Recalling his "long years" as a theology professor, Benedict told the crowd: "I encourage all of you dear university students to always respect the opinions of others and to seek, with a liberal and responsible spirit, truth and righteousness."

"With a liberal and responsible spirit" is definitely not the autocratic spirit of Benedict XV. His papal spirit is more that of God's Rottweiler who mauls anyone that says the slight criticism or contradiction to what he says. He just dismantled the (Jesuit-run) Vatican Observatory to make room for his Opus Dei eunuchs and OD wealth -- because he just couldn't and never would "always respect the opinions of others". His words as pope is "infallible", so the Opus Dei would like us to follow and blindly obey. But thank God, right in his own front and backyard in Rome, the entire physics faculty, and many other professors said: "Hey Inquisitor of Galileo, the buck stops here!" Hooray!

So Sapienza University students and professors, stick to your guts and do not let this Pope fool you by his Opus Dei theatrical words and Zeffirelli movie strategies.

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Video of La Sapienza University anti-Benedict XVI protest: 'UNACCEPTABLE INTOLERANCE'

From: ROMEreports TV News Agency
Benedict XVI chose not to speak at Rome’s La Sapienza University to avoid risking a pretext for unpleasant confrontations between extremist groups.
Channels: ROMEreports TV
News Agency

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Italians throng Vatican to support silenced Pope

Sunday Jan 20, 2008 5:41pm IST
By Stephen Brown

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of students, politicians and ordinary Romans thronged the Vatican on Sunday in a major show of sympathy for Pope Benedict after protests led him to cancel a speech at Rome's top university this week.

"Thank you all for this show of solidarity," a smiling Pope told the cheering, clapping crowds who filled St. Peter's Square in much bigger numbers than usual. Some waved banners denouncing the "censorship" imposed by members of La Sapienza university.

The Pope called off a speech at the university scheduled for Thursday after a small group staged protests and sit-ins against what they called his antiquated views on science. The university was founded by a pope more than 700 years ago.

The episode provoked accusations of censorship in the Roman Catholic country. Even critics of the Church, like leftist Nobel laureate Dario Fo, defended the Pope's right to free speech.

Recalling his "long years" as a theology professor, Benedict told the crowd: "I encourage all of you dear university students to always respect the opinions of others and to seek, with a liberal and responsible spirit, truth and righteousness."

Since his election in 2005, the conservative Pontiff has fought what he sees as efforts to restrict the voice of the Church in the public sphere, particularly in Europe. But his stand on issues like abortion, gay marriage and euthanasia has led critics in Italy to accuse him of meddling in politics.

The protesters at La Sapienza criticised his views on science, saying a speech in 1990 showed he would have favoured the Church's 17th century heresy trial against Galileo. The Vatican said the protesters misunderstood that speech, made some 17 years ago when the Pope was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

The vicar of Rome, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, had urged Romans to come out on Sunday in support of the Pope, but senior clerics said it should not be seen as a political event.

"We only wish to unite in prayers with the Pope. This is not a political demonstration and must not be used for political ends," said Mons. Mauro Parmeggiani of the Rome diocese.

Fabrizio Cicchitto, a senior member of conservative opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, called the rally a "testimony against the barbarians" who silenced the Pope.

But leftist member of parliament Franco Grillini, a gay rights activist, said "politicians kissing the shoes of the Pontiff" showed "a painful lack of political autonomy".

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The Boston Globe

Vatican condemns writings of Jesuit priest in El Salvador
Cites teaching discrepancies

By Tracy Wilkinson, March 15, 2007

ROME -- When a Salvadoran Army death squad dragged six Jesuit priests from their beds in the middle of a November night in 1989, then dumped their bloodied bodies on the lawn, the Rev. Jon Sobrino was 11,000 miles away delivering a lecture.

If not for that assignment, Sobrino would have become another of the "martyrs," the long line of priests, nuns, and other religious workers killed in years of civil strife in El Salvador.

His work with the country's campesinos and his strong advocacy of liberation theology, a doctrine sometimes tinged with Marxist thinking, made him a preferred target of El Salvador's reactionary forces.

Sobrino's views also invited critical scrutiny from the Vatican, especially from former cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the enforcer of church dogma and longtime foe of liberation theology and other nontraditional currents, who two years ago became Pope Benedict XVI.

Yesterday, after years of review, the Vatican formally condemned elements of Sobrino's most important writings as "erroneous or dangerous," adding that they "contain notable discrepancies with the faith of the Church."

Sobrino, who is still based in San Salvador, failed to give proper emphasis to the divinity of Jesus, a core belief in Christianity, in two of his most widely disseminated books, the Vatican said in a dense 14-page "notification" released yesterday and translated into four languages.

The decision dismayed many of Sobrino's supporters, who rejected any suggestion he harbored heretical ideas.

The ruling by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stopped short of imposing sanctions, such as barring Sobrino from publishing or teaching at a Catholic institution. However, church officials said the conservative archbishop of San Salvador, Fernando Saenz Lacalle, had the prerogative to impose punishment.

"As for eventual sanctions, the situation is open," the Rev. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said in an e-mail.

At San Salvador's University of Central America, where Sobrino taught for decades until illness recently sidelined him, the censured priest declined requests for an interview. He said through associates that he preferred to remain "prudent."

Sobrino previously has said he considered the work of the committee inspecting his writings to be unfair and to have misrepresented his theological thinking, which he defends as firmly grounded in Roman Catholicism.

Accepting its censure, Sobrino said, would lend credence to what he described as a persecution of liberation theology that dates to the 1970s.

Those comments were contained in a letter Sobrino wrote in December to the head of the Jesuit order in Rome, the Rev. Peter Hans Kolvenbach. Portions were published yesterday by the National Catholic Reporter.

The decision to act against one of the last major champions of liberation theology may be connected with Pope Benedict's upcoming trip to Brazil in May, when he will preside over an extraordinary meeting of Latin America's leading clergy.

It was the first public censure of a theologian's work under Benedict.

At least as far back as the early 1980s, the current pope disapproved of Sobrino and his embrace of liberation theology, a religious approach that emphasizes political activism in the fight for justice for the poor.

Reports that the censure of Sobrino was imminent had been circulating for about a week, provoking angst among the Basque Jesuit's defenders and admirers.

"He's a theological giant," said the Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit writer and author of the new book "My Life With the Saints."

"Father Sobrino is one of my heroes, and he's a hero for any Jesuit who has sought to find Christ among the poor."

Martin, like several other Jesuits contacted, said he found Sobrino's writings to be fundamental to his ministry, especially among refugees and the disenfranchised.

"Any time a Jesuit is critiqued by the Vatican for his work is a time of sadness for any other Jesuit," Martin said.

The Rev. Jose de Vera, spokesman for the Jesuit headquarters in Rome, said he believed Sobrino was prepared for the committee's finding, having endured criticism for many years.

De Vera said Sobrino was confident that his theology was sound, if untraditional. He cited five theologians who signed off on the two books in question, judging them free of doctrinal error.

The "notification" was signed by Cardinal William Levada, the former archbishop of San Francisco who took over as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when Benedict became pope.

In it, the faithful are alerted to "grave deficiencies" in two of Sobrino's works: "Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth" and "Christ the Liberator: A View From the Victims."

Among other elements, the critique appreciates Sobrino's concern for the poor but faults him for placing too much emphasis on the human rather than the divine nature of Jesus, and for minimizing his death as the way to salvation.

"A number of Father Sobrino's affirmations tend to diminish the breadth of the New Testament, passages of which affirm that Jesus is God," the report said.



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Signs of the times

Frontline, India's National Magazine from the publishers of The Hindhu
Volume 22 - Issue 12, Jun 04 - 17, 2005

Nandagospal R. Menon


The resignation of the editor of a New York-based Jesuit journal, under pressure from the Vatican, raises questions about the future of free debate within the Catholic Church.



Fr. Thomas J. Reese.

THE Society of Jesus knew that the debate, if it might be called one, was "unwinnable". Pitted against it was the all-powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Vatican's guardian of orthodoxy, and its head Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, currently Pope Benedict XVI. The CDF wanted the Society of Jesus, a men-only religious order of the Roman Catholic Church popularly known as Jesuits, to sack Fr. Thomas J. Reese as the editor-in-chief of America, the respected and influential New York-based newsweekly published by the United States' Jesuits since 1909. The Jesuits withstood the pressure for five years. But in early May, about a month after Ratzinger was elected Pope, Reese resigned, seven years after he took office.

The CDF objected to America's decision, under Reese as editor, to publish stories critical of the Church's stance on several issues. They included some hot potatoes of contemporary Catholic discourse: homosexuality; the role of condoms in combating acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS); Dominus Iesus, the CDF's 2000 declaration that reaffirmed Jesus Christ as the only saviour; the denial of Communion to Catholic politicians who strayed from Church teachings, primarily the one on abortion; clerical celibacy; and stem-cell research.

But it was never a one-sided attack on the Church's doctrinal positions. America stuck to one of the well-established principles of modern journalism: give both sides of the story. It paired articles supporting official Church perspectives with those that disagreed with them. An essay by U.S. Senator David Obey assailed plans to deny communion to Catholic politicians who supported women's right to legal abortion. Another issue of America carried an article, by Prof. Stephen J. Pope of the Jesuit-run Boston College, questioning the Church's condemnation of same-sex marriage. Both replied to other writers who espoused the Church's teaching on the subjects.

America gave space to writings of important figures in the Church hierarchy, including Ratzinger and the conservative U.S. Jesuit Avery Cardinal Dulles. Ratzinger's article responded to one by fellow German Walter Cardinal Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, on the "relationship between the universal Church and the local churches". And America's editorials, by and large, faithfully adhered to the magisterium.

The CDF first took up the issue, apparently instigated by a few U.S. bishops, with the Jesuit superior-general Dutch Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach five years ago. It asked him to rein in the editorial board of the magazine. Ratzinger is said to have personally conveyed his displeasure to Kolvenbach. Fr. Jose M. de Vera, the spokesperson of the Jesuits in Rome, said the CDF wanted America to carry articles "defending whatever position the Church has manifested, even if it is not infallible". Things came to a head in early 2004 when the CDF threatened to impose a board of censors on the magazine. The Jesuits managed to ward off the threat by setting up an internal panel to review articles before publication. But in March 2005, when the late Pope John Paul II was alive, the CDF reportedly wrote to Kolvenbach asking him to sack Reese.

The final blow came with the election of Benedict XVI. De Vera said: "With Cardinal Ratzinger elected Pope, I think [Reese] thought it would be very difficult to continue his line of openness, without creating more problems. ... He knew the situation. He didn't want to embarrass the Society [of Jesus] and he didn't want to fight the Pope, so he resigned."

Sixty-year-old Reese is a political scientist by training and holds a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of two excellent studies on the Church in the U.S., Archbishop, Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church and A Flock of Shepherds: The National Conference of Catholic Bishops. His third and most important work, Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organisation of the Catholic Church, is one of the best primers on the subject and has been translated into four languages. The latter book and its popularity among the laity too played a role in alienating the CDF. It took exception to the book's non-traditional socio-political study of the Church as an organisation, something other than the dogmatic understanding of the Church as the "mystical body" and "spouse" of Christ. Reese is a much-sought-after commentator on Church affairs and frequently appears on prominent U.S. television channels. He was a regular face on television explaining ancient Church practices and rituals after the death of John Paul II and in the run-up to and after the conclave that elected Ratzinger.

In a May 6 statement issued by America, Reese said: "I am proud of what my colleagues and I did with the magazine, and I am grateful to them, our readers and our benefactors for the support they gave me. I look forward to taking a sabbatical while my provincial and I determine the next phase of my Jesuit ministry." Jesuit Fr. Drew Christiansen, associate editor of the magazine who holds a doctorate from Yale University, replaced Reese.

As expected, the reactions to Reese's ouster pointed to the purported conservative-liberal divide among U.S. Catholics. Tom Roberts, editor of the National Catholic Reporter which broke the story of Reese's exit, told Frontline: "This discipline can only mean that Rome will tolerate nothing more in the way of Catholic intellectual discussion than a rote recitation of themes as they come from the Vatican. This action is a serious blow to Catholic intellectual life in the U.S." Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the New York-based conservative journal on religion First Things, said: "Just as you don't expect Planned Parenthood to give a platform to the pro-life position, there's no reason why a Catholic journal should provide a platform for positions that are clearly contrary to those of the Church... "

It would be unwise to jump to a conclusion about the future course of Benedict XVI's papacy on the basis of this one incident. But l'affaire Reese has generated a sense of foreboding. In the second week of May, the U.S. Jesuit Conference sacked one of its officials for an article he wrote in its monthly newsletter National Jesuit News. Erik Meder's article, "Strangers No Longer: Who is the Other among us?", appeared in the April/May edition of the newsletter.

Calling for an open dialogue between the Church and homosexuals about homosexuality, Meder said: "The same approximate percentage of the U.S. population is homosexual as is foreign-born: 10 to 15 per cent. The majority of American Catholics are neither. ... When the Other is a migrant, Catholics are urged by the Church to employ a hermeneutic of self-understanding in their encounters with the Other. When the Other is a homosexual, the notion of hermeneutic encounter drops from the scene." Meder's superiors asked him to resign from his post because his article had caused "irreparable harm to the Society of Jesus in the U.S.". Clearly, the Jesuits did not want more uncalled-for attention from Rome.

THE Jesuits are no strangers to controversy and their almost 500-year-old history bears ample testimony to this. Since its foundation, the order has defended its members and has stood up for what it believed in, often at the risk of earning powerful enemies within the Church and in the European courts. Also irking its adversaries was the Society's increasing dominance of European education - it ran a wide network of excellent schools and colleges - and Catholic missionary efforts in Asia and Latin America. Over two centuries of hostilities culminated in the expulsion of the Society from Portugal, France and Spain in the mid-18th century, and its formal worldwide suppression by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. It was restored only 41 years later, in 1814, by Pius VII.

The past quarter of a century has been a relatively bad phase in the history of the Jesuits, founded by the Basque nobleman St. Ignatius of Loyola and some of his friends in 1534 in France. Several of its members, including former superior-general the saintly Basque Fr. Pedro Arrupe, were shabbily treated by the Vatican under the late John Paul II. The Pope rejected Arrupe's resignation from the post, following a debilitating stroke, and the Society's constitution was suspended for more than two years in the early 1980s. A papal representative conducted the order's affairs during this period.

The pressure to crack down on the Jesuits was building up since the early 1970s when the order stressed, in the words of Arrupe, the "inseparability of promotion of justice and propagation of the faith". Inspired by this vision, Jesuits such as the late Fr. Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay and Fr. Jon Sobrino of El Salvador played a leading role in the development of Latin American liberation theology. Its influence was evident in every field of work of the Society - from education to social service. But the same commitment was blamed for much confusion in the ranks of the order about the role of a priest. It was alleged that the Jesuit priest was more into social activism than spiritual matters and had little regard for papal authority. Popes Paul VI and John Paul I, predecessors of John Paul II, had expressed their "concern" at the Society's alleged "loss of identity" as a "priestly" order.

The Ratzinger-led CDF "silenced" or criticised several distinguished Jesuit theologians, including American Fr. Roger Haight, Belgian Fr. Jacques Dupuis and Indian Fr. Anthony de Mello. A popular writer who tried to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western spiritualities, de Mello was censured 10 years after his death in 1987, for "relativising" faith and thus leading to "religious indifferentism". John Paul II forced American Fr. Robert F. Drinan to step down as a Democrat member of the U.S. Congress in 1980, a post he held for more than a decade. The hero of many a battle for human rights and nuclear disarmament, he represented Massachusetts.

So RATzinger, how does your own medicine taste now, huh? You can put all the Octopus Dei sugar on your "Silence" medicine, but it ain't sweet at all, is it?