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MOUNTAIN VIEWS: A LITTLE PRAYER FOR BENEDICT XVI

By John Hanchette

OLEAN -- Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking. This columnist who pretends to worldly wisdom and Catholic sagacity not only failed to predict the right man as new pope, he can't even pick the right nationality. But while I consume my penitential portion of ecclesiastical crow, let me do some crowing of my own.

While I was wrong in predicting an Italian would be the next pontiff instead of the German who was selected, I did get the adjective right. The new Holy Father is a conservative -- with a capital C. And the widespread clerical tub-thumping before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's quick selection that a liberal cardinal from one of the Roman Catholic nations of the Third World had a realistic chance of elevation proved to be ephemeral, as predicted.

I subscribe to the conventional wisdom that Pope Benedict XVI -- Ratzinger's papal name of choice -- was picked as a caretaker, an interim pope.

I, too -- despite the "official" Vatican insider version that Ratzinger was a nearly unanimous choice from the start -- accept the theory that holds the College of Cardinals, most likely hopelessly deadlocked on initial vote, quickly chose a respected theologian and colleague who was 78 years old to keep the 1.1 billion-member religion on relatively even keel for a few years until a successor could enact true reforms or bring about some modernization of the church.

History tells us this could backfire. The same strategy was employed in 1958 when Cardinal Angelo Roncalli was selected Pope John XXIII as someone who could maintain a low profile and mind the Vatican for a year or two until his widely predicted imminent death because he was 77 years old and very fat. He confounded such cynical thinkers and lasted five-plus years, during which time he convened the Second Vatican Council that enacted surprising reforms and pushed the religion into the 20th century.

There's also the remote chance the conservative Ratzinger might parallel another famous late-in-life switch of mind and morph into a moderate or liberal leader of his flock -- similar to the oft-cited philosophical flip of the late Earl Warren, a conservative California governor picked by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. For 16 years, Warren surprised the country by leading the Supreme Court on a persistent and radically liberal interpretation of the Constitution that shaped the modern United States, infuriates right-wingers until this day, and sprouted "Impeach Earl Warren" bumper-stickers on about a third of the cars in America.

Will that happen with Pope Benedict XVI? Let me think about it for a minute. Naaaahhh.

Every indication is that Joseph Ratzinger's vision of the Roman Catholic religion, God, and the road to salvation is chiseled in granite. Unlike most popes, Benedict XVI's thoughts and views are set down in print and widely known. He has written 22 books -- most of them theological in subject and intellectually intricate in tone. Already, six of them are on Amazon.com's Top 25 list of best sellers. It seems easy to predict he will become one of the most newsworthy of popes, given the tumultuous times, his religion's volatility and his noteworthy past.

Ratzinger is the second pontiff in a row whose convictions and take on life were shaped by the agonies and injustices of World War II -- a lesson for today's average student whose belief seems to be that important history actually began only when he or she reached the age of reason.

The British papers have been particularly cruel in hammering away in both headlines and text at the notation Ratzinger -- as a child in Bavaria -- was in the Hitler Youth and later served in the German army during the collapse of the Fuhrer's empire. A German columnist named Franz Josef Wagner, according to Sarah Lyall in The New York Times, wrote that "anyone reading your British popular newspapers must have thought Hitler had been made pope."

Balanced stories, seemingly few and far between on the Sceptered Isle, pointed out that membership in Hitler Youth was not quite as voluntary as joining the Boy Scouts, and that Ratzinger -- risking being hung from a lamp post or shot on sight by the prowling SS "traitor hunters" -- deserted his anti-aircraft brigade at the age of 18 and hiked home, where he hid until advancing American troops put him in an allied POW camp for repatriation during the closing days of the war.

The European press in general routinely refers to Ratzinger's decades of fervent and almost militant protection against erosion of the traditional Catholic values and cultural provisions by calling him "God's Rottweiler" and the "Panzer cardinal." The new pontiff does not seem to mind these designations.

A woman who owns a Bavarian restaurant near the Vatican which Ratzinger frequented told The New York Times he would make jokes about the nicknames. When someone posted a lost-dog query in the eatery asking, "Has anyone seen this German Shepherd?" Ratzinger joked, "No, no, it's not me. I'm here."

What else do we know about his private proclivities?

Well, he likes cats, lemonade, Piedmont wine and the occasional German beer.

He plays a grand piano with such talent he could do so professionally -- especially the works of Bach and Mozart.

He is fluent in English, German, French, Italian and Latin -- even more so than John Paul II, who was conversant in all of those. Ratzinger can dictate in these languages long, complex paragraphs when "writing" a book on intricate and complicated theological subjects -- sometimes two dozen pages at a time -- without necessitating a single change in grammar, rhetoric, syntax or thought.

He likes to wave at and bless the papal crowds -- but he will not wade into the throngs of the faithful like John Paul II felt comfortable doing.

Ratzinger surprised some by picking the name Benedict. He reportedly has told intimates he is an admirer of the last pontiff with that name, Pope Benedict XV, because he tried to stop World War I -- which pitted several Catholic countries against each other. Benedict XV actually seemed close to arranging a Christmastide cease-fire in his third year as pope, and the Germans agreed, but the English and other allies backed out of the deal. Benedict XV ended up angering both sides in the war, but some of his ideas were lifted by President Woodrow Wilson in his outline for the end of the war, and even the Muslims respected Benedict XV, putting up a statue of him in Turkey as "the benefactor of all people, regardless of nation or creed."

The first Benedict important in church history was Saint Benedict, a 6th-century abbott who founded the Benedictine Order of monks after living in a cave for three years. (An early stint at running a group of monastics was less than successful -- the disgruntled monks tried to poison him.) Saint Benedict was the son of a Roman nobleman (he had a twin sister) and came along just as the Roman Empire was breaking up. He stressed labor in God's name, giving initiates a crooked stick and telling them to clear briars to expand the monastery garden as the first order of business.

Devout Catholics will hope that in one respect Ratzinger's choice of the name Benedict does not lead to a repetition of dire history that afflicted several of his namesakes.

Many of them came to violent ends, either at the hands of Holy Roman Empire troops and rival emperors, or as happened to Benedict VI, imprisoned and throttled to death by the order of a rival pretender, Boniface VII. Personality traits aside, the new pope will have to reverse some aspects of his reputation to truly unite the Roman Catholic faith.

It is a fact that the flourishing modern "growth sectors" of various religious groups (whether Southern Baptist or Muslim or Jewish) seem to be the ones that -- like Ratzinger -- tend to preserve doctrine and moral tradition. But there are tens of millions of potential faithful who ignore these traditional teachings, especially in the Catholic faith, in hopes of more progressive guidelines. These hopeful believers are aware that Benedict XVI's record is unremittingly one of attacking liberal theologians, forcing recantation, and declaring that it is sinful even to remain neutral and silent on such tripwire issues as same-sex unions or contraception.

No one, maybe not even Benedict XVI himself, knows where His Holiness will take Catholics in matters of faith in the coming months and years. We can only wait and observe, and maybe pray a little.


John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, is a former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent. He was a founding editor of USA Today and was recently named by Gannett as one of the Top 10 reporters of the past 25 years. He can be contacted via e-mail at Hanchette6@aol.com.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com April 26 2005