Christianity: April 2005 Archives
When you study religion at a secular college, you learn to maintain a certain scholarly distance. You learn to avoid making normative claims and judgments. You learn to bracket your own biases and allegiances and interests and faiths in favor of "objectivity". One of my goals for this blog is to practice writing in that balanced but critical voice.
It's taken me a couple days to post anything here about the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new pope. This is both because I'm struggling to live up to those lofty academic ideals, but also because I'm struggling to find anything to say that doesn't come from a meanspirited ugly place within me. All that "love your enemies" stuff is effing difficult.
Today, I could try to be witty or scholarly or objective. Instead I'm going to be honest. This is really bad news. This is bad news for anyone who care about the plight of the poor, for anyone who cares about the status and role of women in society, for anyone who thinks LGBT people deserve to be treated with human dignity. I am filled with anger and despair and I am not even Catholic. In long-term human costs, the election of Ratzinger will probably be far worse a disaster than 9/11.
from Michaelangelo Singorile's Queer In America (via Atrios):
.... Chills ran up and down my spine as I watched the protestors and then looked back at Ratzinger. Soon, anger swelled up inside me: This man was the embodiment of all that had oppressed me, all the horrors I had suffered as a child. It was because of his bigotry that my family, my church -- everyone around me -- had alienated me, and it was because of his bigotry that I was called "faggot" in school. Because of his bigotry I was treated like garbage. He was responsible for the hell I'd endured. He and his kind were the people who forced me to live in shame, in the closet. I became livid...Suddenly, I jumped up on one of the marble platforms and, looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted: "He is no man of God!" The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: "He is no man of God -- he is the Devil!" (read the full account)
As you know, I have expressed hope for a new pope from Africa or the Third World. A candidate from these parts would have placed on the agenda some burning issues like poverty in this skewed international order that disadvantages the poor. I would have hoped such a candidate (would be concerned with) issues of disease and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.I hope sitting on the papal throne will take off the edges and have an effect on easing his rigidity. A less rigid candidate would have been more likely to lift the ban the Roman Catholic Church has placed on the use of condoms. Everywhere else it is recognised as an effective way to combat the spread of HIV.
National Coalition of American Nuns:
We pray that he will be open to the full partnership and full participation of women in a church that suffers because of the lack of women's creativity and lived experience. We do believe in miracles.
Jurandir Arauj, of the National Conference of Bishops Afro-Brazilian Section:
It seems that he is too conservative. Hopefully the Holy Spirit can help him change!
