Pope Benedict XVI Blog

3 months into Pope Benedict's reign: intelligentsia hostile; faithful appreciative

The First Three Months of Benedict XVI: New Pope, New Style

The intelligentsia have turned their backs on him, but the common faithful haven't – they have a greater appreciation for him than was foreseen. Initial signs of a different pontificate

chiesa
by Sandro Magister

ROMA, July 15, 2005 – During his first three months as pope, Benedict XVI has not succeeded in winning over the major Italian and international press, which to a great extent remains hostile to him.

Among Catholic intellectuals, too, the cease-fire that the prince of the dissenters, Hans Küng, conceded to him after the election seems to have expired.

From the beaches of California, Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese – who is said to have been dismissed as director of "America" at the behest of Joseph Ratzinger when he was still a cardinal – has blasted the new pope as an irreconcilable enemy of modernity, inspired by the gloomiest form of Augustinianism imaginable. By way of demonstration, Reese recommended an essay in "Commonweal" by Joseph A. Komonchak, who is a priest of the archdiocese of New York, a professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and one of the leading collaborators with the five-volume "History of Vatican Council II" directed by Giuseppe Alberigo. The most widely read history of the council in the world, this series was recently the object of criticism from Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope's vicar.

And in Italy, professor Achille Ardigò, a guru of the Bologna "school" founded by Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti and headed by Alberigo, said during an interview with the newspaper "la Repubblica": " I pray every day to the Holy Spirit, that he may guide the pope and Cardinal Ruini to turn aside from their rationalist theology," a theology which – as the historian Pietro Scoppola has also said in an interview with "Avvenire" – clings to natural law, throws out everything in politics, and "excludes the role of transcendence in human activity."

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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 3:08 PM