{"id":249,"date":"2009-02-03T10:05:59","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T10:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/catholic-criticisms-of-the-pop.html"},"modified":"2009-02-03T10:05:59","modified_gmt":"2009-02-03T10:05:59","slug":"catholic-criticisms-of-the-pop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/catholic-criticisms-of-the-pop.html","title":{"rendered":"The Pope and the Jews: A failure to communicate?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Catholic “silence”<\/a><\/strong> over Benedict XVI’s self-made SSPX fiasco was raised earlier, with a focus on the relative absence of strong American voices. But overseas, at least, and from the Pope’s native Germany in particular, objections are being raised as the furor grows among both Catholic and Jewish communities.
\n\"\"<\/span>The latest comes from the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, Cardinal Walter Kasper, a German like Ratzinger, but considered a much more pastoral figure. According to this Reuters write-up,<\/a><\/strong> Kasper told Vatican Radio’s German-language program that he was not consulted on the pontiff’s decision to rehabilitate the schismatic Traditionalist bishops–one an overt Holocaust denier, the rest associated with dodgy statements on Jews.
\n<\/p>\n

“There wasn’t enough talking with each other in the Vatican and there are no longer checks to see where problems could arise,” said Cardinal Walter Kasper in a blunt interview with Vatican Radio’s German program, broadcast on Monday night…
\n…Vatican sources and officials had said privately the decision was taken without wide consultation. Kasper, who was left in the dark, appeared to be venting his frustration.
\n“Of course, explaining something after the fact is always much more difficult than if one did it right away. I would have also liked to see more communication in advance,” said the cardinal, who like Pope Benedict is German.
\n“I’m watching this debate with great concern. Nobody can be pleased that misunderstandings have turned up. Mistakes in the management of the curia (Vatican administration) have certainly also been made. I want to say that very clearly,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/strong>
\nThis “mistakes have been made” line is a recurring theme even as others speak out about the pope’s move. At “Whispers,” Rocco has a good roundup<\/a><\/strong>, including the archbishop of Hamburg saying Benedict should have lifted the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson only if he had recanted his “unspeakable” claim that the Nazis did not use gas chambers. Archbishop Werner Thissen also criticized the Vatican for “sloppy” management. Also, Bishop Gebhard Fuerst of Rottenburg-Stuttgart “branded the rehabilitation ‘a betrayal of trust, especially among Jewish sisters and brothers in their relationship to the church’ and and last week, Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the bishop in Pope Benedict’s home city of Regensburg, said Williamson would not be welcome in its churches.”
\nRocco also noted that Cardinal Christoph Sch\u00f6nborn of Vienna, a close friend and former student of Professor Ratzinger, said in an interview with Austria’s state broadcaster<\/a><\/strong> that “he who denies the Holocaust cannot be rehabilitated within the church.” (Such statements in themselves could be cause for debate.)
\nBut Schonborn also distinguished “between the nature of Benedict’s ‘intent’ for an ‘outstretched hand’ and a ‘mistake’ on the part of his advisers that failed to ‘examine the matter carefully’,” Rocco writes.
\nThe pope’s commincation apparatus also came under fire by another Jesuit, Fr. Thomas Reese, a leading political scientist of the church, who told Reuters<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“This and other controversies point to a fatal systemic flaw in the Benedict papacy that is destroying his effectiveness as pope: He does not consult experts who might challenge his views and inclinations,” said Father Tom Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Centre at Georgetown University.
\n“He is surrounded by people who are not as smart as he is and who would never think of questioning him. A smart man surrounded by less than smart people will always get in more trouble than an average man who consults smart people who are experts in their fields,” said Reese, a leading U.S. Jesuit.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There may be something to be said for blaming a bad communications strategy, but I think this can also be a way of deflecting responsibility for that strategy from Benedict–after all, similar uproars have resulted from his statements many times before, as pope and as cardinal, and they often came after advisers strongly urged him to take another course or to do more prepratory work. Moreover, the man and the message must also be looked at for what they are, and for what no manner of p.r. could finesse.
\nAs Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said<\/a>: <\/strong>“We’ve heard the pope’s speech about Muslims in Regensburg, another statement about judging the Protestant church, then about evangelising Jews, the old Latin Mass, and now the rehabilitiation of a Holocaust denier. I don’t think this is a coincidence. The pope is a highly educated man. He says what’s being thought in the Church.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Catholic “silence” over Benedict XVI’s self-made SSPX fiasco was raised earlier, with a focus on the relative absence of strong American voices. But overseas, at least, and from the Pope’s native Germany in particular, objections are being raised as the furor grows among both Catholic and Jewish communities. The latest comes from the Vatican’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pope and the Jews: A failure to communicate? - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/catholic-criticisms-of-the-pop.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Pope and the Jews: A failure to communicate? - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Catholic “silence” over Benedict XVI’s self-made SSPX fiasco was raised earlier, with a focus on the relative absence of strong American voices. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}