Roman Catholic Church Traveling Backwards In Time

So, did you see the things emanating from the new Pope this week?

Wednesday he officially declared that there is no such thing as a Protestant “church”, and that at best Protestants can be “ecclesial communities”. Apparently this is based on his analysis that “because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood”, Protestant organizations had not “preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery”.

I love the circular logic here. He might as well say “well, they aren’t like us, so they aren’t churches.” Oh, wait, he nearly did:

“It is nevertheless difficult to see how the title of ‘Church’ could possibly be attributed to [Protestant communities], given that they do not accept the theological notion of the Church in the Catholic sense and that they lack elements considered essential to the Catholic Church.”

Now, I think anyone who has truck with pretty much any dogmatic religion is at best foolish and at worst a charlatan and hypocrite, and I apply this analysis even-handedly to dogmatic Catholics and dogmatic Protestants (as well as many other religious groups), but I still watch this kind of thing with a sort of alarm given the Catholic Church’s tendency to act as a force against the progress of civilization over the last millennium or so. After the Second Vatican Council, the Church was showing several signs of loosening up its dogmas and moving slowly in the direction of increased civilization. This kind of thing is clearly a step backwards from that.

Of course, it shouldn’t be a shock, since it’s just a logical extension of the documents Ratzinger authored in his earlier role. The Dominus Iesus document that he authored for the Church seven years ago, for instance, pretty clearly shot down the Vatican II idea that “the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator”, an idea which seemed to open the door to the Church acknowledging the possibility of salvation for believers in other monotheistic faiths. In the document Ratzinger lays out his rejection of that pretty cleanly stating that non-Christians are “in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation”.

Of course, it also shouldn’t be a surprise after the announcement earlier in the week that the Latin Mass is back in.

This one in particular cracks me up–the Vatican II boys essentially said “we have to do the Mass in the language of the congregants, or else they won’t understand what’s happening in their faith, and it will turn into an empty show”. Now the current bunch says “yes, that’s true, but what used to be sacred is still sacred, and apparently we don’t have any problem with the Mass becoming a hollow ritual without intellectual meaning for the congregants”.

I especially love the idea that Ratzinger objected to the modern masses as faddish “showpieces” and “frabrications”See this opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune., which apparently pandered to the masses but lacked appropriate solemnity. And his solution is to replace that with a solemn ritual that the masses literally can not understand. You have to laugh.

Oh, and one other thing: my understanding is that the Tridentine Mass still has that text about praying for the souls of the “perfidious Jews”. That’s going to heal wounds for sure.

From the Guardian:

On Saturday, the Pope freed Catholics to ask for masses to be celebrated according to the Latin rite abolished by the Second Vatican Council. This meant the reinstatement of a Good Friday prayer describing Jews as blind to the Christian truth.

The president of the Italian rabbinical assembly, Giuseppe Laras, yesterday called it “a heavy blow”. He told the daily Corriere della Sera: “We are going back. A long way back.”

Ratzinger is so into going backwards that he even brought back the ermine-trimmed robes for the Pope. That sort of conspicuous consumption being clearly in line with the teachings of Jesus.

Reading all of these things, I’m tempted to make a joke about how he will shortly be bringing back indulgences and the Inquisition.

Except…

Well, indulgences are not only back, but they never went away. (Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the link and read the HOW TO GAIN AN INDULGENCE section–note that this is official dogma under the Imprimatur of the Church, bearing the NIHIL OBSTAT seal of the censor and the Imprimi potest of the relevant Bishop.)

And the Inquisition… well, that never went away either. It had a name change to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but it has been around continuously since founding of the Inquisition in 1542.

And guess who the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was until two years ago? Yes, that’s right, the current Pope.

The saddest part of all this reactionary behaviour, though, is that it’s working.

Or at least the money flowing into the Church has gone up dramatically under Ratzinger, and the devout (as measured by number of pilgrims, etc) have increased in size. They’re calling this the Ratzinger Effect apparently.

With donations to the Church from around the world almost doubling and pilgrims pouring into Rome in ever-greater numbers, Vatican watchers are beginning to reassess the two-year-old pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI and noting a positive “Ratzinger effect”.

and

Presenting the Holy See’s annual budget yesterday, Cardinal Sebastiani noted that not only had it closed last year with a surplus of €2.4 million, partly thanks to diocesan donations, there had also been a “huge jump” in “Peter’s Pence”, the annual church collections given directly to the Pope to use for charity, from $60 million (£30 million) in 2005 to $102 million. “The days when people talked of papal bankruptcy are past,” said Marco Tosatti, Vatican correspondent of La Stampa.

The “more dogmatic”==”more devout” thing has reinforced all my prejudices about organized religions and the people who take part in them. I wish we could outgrow this kind of thing, I really do.