{"id":289,"date":"2009-02-24T11:32:45","date_gmt":"2009-02-24T11:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html"},"modified":"2009-02-24T11:32:45","modified_gmt":"2009-02-24T11:32:45","slug":"pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html","title":{"rendered":"Pope Benedict criticizes the criticizers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pontiff is taking unnamed critics to task, as per this CNS story, “Pope cautions against destructive polemics in the church.”<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The pope, speaking in German at his noon blessing Feb. 22, asked for prayers to St. Peter so that “disturbances and storms do not shake the church” and that Catholics remain united in faith and love.<\/p>\n

Two days earlier, addressing students at Rome’s diocesan seminary, the pope recalled St. Paul’s admonition to Galatian Christians not to “go on biting and devouring one another” but instead to be guided by the Spirit.<\/p>\n

“St. Paul refers here to the polemics that emerge where faith degenerates into intellectualism and humility is replaced by the arrogance of being better than the other,” the pope said.<\/p>\n

“We see clearly that today, too, there are similar situations where, instead of joining in communion with Christ, in the body of Christ which is the church, each one wants to be superior to the other and with intellectual arrogance maintains that he is better,” he said.<\/p>\n

“And in this way arise polemics that are destructive, and there arises a caricature of the church, which should have a single soul and a single heart,” he said.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One can understand Benedict’s lament, given the past few weeks of missteps and misfeasance in Rome, highlighted by the SSPX debacle and the latest Maciel revelations and the furor over the Katrina-loving, would-be bishop from Austria. <\/p>\n

But in light of the failings at the top in this regard–see, for example, this Times of London piece <\/a>on Benedict’s isolation and indifference to advice–it seems that the doctor might want to take some of his own medicine. And while he didn’t name names in his critique of the critiquers–heck, there have been so many lately–he may want to tone down his own amen corner first. (e.g., Father Z’s apoplectic attack on The Tablet of London<\/a> and its Rome correspondent, Robert Mickens.) The vitriol of the right is poisonous.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it is secrecy and a lack of accountability (born of humility) when things go south that breeds viral criticism–when people have no recourse to the powers-that-be, no influence or authority or say, they’ll shout ever louder. And as we’ve seen, that can work to the good–Maciel, Williamson, the Linz bishop–but with much more turbulence than it has to.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pontiff is taking unnamed critics to task, as per this CNS story, “Pope cautions against destructive polemics in the church.” The pope, speaking in German at his noon blessing Feb. 22, asked for prayers to St. Peter so that “disturbances and storms do not shake the church” and that Catholics remain united in faith…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nPope Benedict criticizes the criticizers - 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\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pope Benedict criticizes the criticizers - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The pontiff is taking unnamed critics to task, as per this CNS story, “Pope cautions against destructive polemics in the church.” The pope, speaking in German at his noon blessing Feb. 22, asked for prayers to St. Peter so that “disturbances and storms do not shake the church” and that Catholics remain united in faith…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-24T11:32:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Pope Benedict criticizes the criticizers - Pontifications","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Pope Benedict criticizes the criticizers - Pontifications","og_description":"The pontiff is taking unnamed critics to task, as per this CNS story, “Pope cautions against destructive polemics in the church.” The pope, speaking in German at his noon blessing Feb. 22, asked for prayers to St. Peter so that “disturbances and storms do not shake the church” and that Catholics remain united in faith…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html","og_site_name":"Pontifications","article_published_time":"2009-02-24T11:32:45+00:00","author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html","name":"Pope Benedict criticizes the criticizers - Pontifications","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-24T11:32:45+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-24T11:32:45+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/pope-benedict-criticizes-the-c.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Pope Benedict criticizes the criticizers"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/","name":"Pontifications","description":"Catholic Faith and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71","name":"David Gibson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","caption":"David Gibson"},"description":"DAVID GIBSON is an award-winning religion journalist, author, filmmaker, and a convert to Catholicism. 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\/289","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=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}