I have to admit that my heart sank a little when Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was announced as the new Pope. It was a knee-jerk reaction, one formed more by the popular characterization of Ratzinger as the Vatican's doctrinal Rottweiler than anything else. That Ratzinger has toed the orthodox line isn't news to anyone, and I've never had a problem with that. The notion of practicing religion from anything but the orthodox perspective makes no more sense to me than does the idea of trying to use a racing video game to drive to the supermarket.
My negative reaction upon hearing Cardinal Ratzinger's name announced to the world was based on things I'd read and heard here and there, but I'd researched very little of it.
Problem one was regarding comments which I'd been told Ratzinger made regarding capital punishment, specifically that many Catholics have misinterpreted the documents of the Second Vatican Council to arrive at the erroneous conclusion that the Church is strongly opposed to capital punishment in all but the most extreme circumstances. Having gone fishing on Google for information, I've come up empty-handed in regards to this quote. All I've been able to find is that Ratzinger seemed to agree with Pope John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which argues that unless "the defense of society would not otherwise be possible," capital punishment is unacceptable in the eyes of the Church. I've not been able to find any statements made by Cardinal Ratzinger that contradict Evangelium Vitae. If any readers have evidence to the contrary, please e-mail me.
Secondly, I was very much disturbed by Ratzinger's comments on Buddhism. Buddhism, Ratzinger was widely reported as saying, is "an auto-erotic spirituality" that "seeks transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations". If this were indeed Ratzinger's summation of Buddhism, it would be remarkably ignorant. However, as Professor Donald Mitchell points out, "In fact, Ratzinger was not speaking about Buddhism as such, but about how Buddhism 'appears' to those Europeans who are using it to obtain some type of self-satisfying spiritual experience." Put into context, Ratzinger's comments no longer seem ridiculous - in fact, they speak to the heart of the problem of so many Westerners' forays into Buddhism.
I can't help but think that much of the criticism of Cardinal Ratzinger has been due to his unflinching defense of Catholicism. People who state their convictions unambiguously are often disliked less for what they say than for what their opponents imagine they actually mean.
However, there is one thing about the new Pope that bothers me a bit. In his book "The Spirit Of The Liturgy," Cardinal Ratzinger takes on rock music:
Modern so-called "classical " music has maneuvered itself, with some exceptions, into an elitist ghetto, which only specialists may enter -- and even they do so with what may sometimes be mixed feelings. The music of the masses has broken loose from this and treads a very different path. On the one hand, there is pop music, which is certainly no longer supported by the people in the ancient sense (populus). It is aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal. "Rock", on the other hand, is the expression of the elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a sometimes cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of the crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe. The music of the Holy Spirit's sober inebriation seems to have little chance when self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments.
The suggestion that the Holy Spirit can't or won't work through rock music seems dubious, to say the least. But then again, Pope Benedict XVI is a 78-year-old man. Do we really want a Pope who digs Green Day?