In 1981, Josef Ratzinger was called to Rome by John Paul II to become the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (the “CDF”), making him the Church’s number 1 doctrinal watch-dog.
It became his duty to deal with theologians on the Church’s payroll who were thought to be teaching ideas inconsistent with core teachings of the Catholic faith and to issue statements about matters of faith and morals thought to be contentious. Those who disagreed with his rulings described him as “God’s Rottweiler”, the “Gendarme of the Faith” or “Der Panzer Kardinal”.
As Prefect, he issued documents critical of Marxist liberation theology and upheld the Church’s teaching against the use of contraception, stating that couples who find the teaching difficult to follow are deserving of love and respect, but nonetheless contraception is always an ‘intrinsically disordered act’, that is to say, contrary to God’s plan for creation.
He similarly upheld the teaching against the ordination of women and stated that it belonged to the deposit of the faith, meaning that it was beyond the jurisdiction of any Pope to change it.
He also issued a document in which it was said that it is not unjust to take sexual orientation into account in certain situations such as adoption, service in the military and the employment of teachers. Children, he claimed, are best served by growing up with a mother and a father.
Ecumenical and interfaith dialogue issues were addressed in the document Dominus Iesus. It declared that the mission of the Church is universal, that is, intended to embrace all times and peoples, and that the Catholic faithful are required to profess that the Church founded by Christ ‘subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with Him’.
The words ‘subsists in’ echoed Vatican II and were interpreted to mean that the Church founded by Christ continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church, but that outside of her structure, many elements can be found of sanctification and truth in those other ecclesial communities which are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.
This position clashes with the ideas of ‘pluralist theologians’ presented in the fable of the blind men and the elephant.
When the men are asked to describe an elephant some grab hold of its trunk (let’s call them the Muslims), others lock onto his ears (the Catholics), others fix on his tail (the Hindus), while the hindquarters might be held by the Jews and the forequarters by the Buddhists and so on. The point of the fable is that no one religious tradition offers a vision of the whole elephant.
One can find an extensive critique of this fable in Ratzinger’s address to the Sorbonne in 1999 and in his book Truth and Tolerance. Ratzinger believes that Christianity is the only completely true faith.
Other faith traditions may contain elements of truth but these are only fragments of a greater truth revealed to humanity when the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.
For these reasons, Ratzinger rejected the idea of reducing the Church’s missionary efforts to the provision of humanitarian aid without any reference to the Gospels.
Also rejected was the notion that somehow a pure enlightened reason might be able to stand outside all religious traditions and judge them from a neutral standpoint.
Consistent with his belief that the Scriptures need to be read from within the horizon of faith itself, Ratzinger argued that in order to understand religion, including Christianity, it is necessary to experience it from within, to have a personal encounter with Christ.
His most significant ecumenical achievement as CDF Prefect was the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification signed with the Lutheran World Federation in 1999.
Bishop George Anderson, head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, publicly acknowledged that it was ‘Ratzinger who untied the knots’ when it looked as though the document would be shipwrecked by officials from the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.
Ratzinger got the agreement back on track by organising a meeting with the Lutheran leaders at his brother’s house in Regensburg.
Included in this agreement was the notion that the goal of the ecumenical process is unity in diversity, not structural reintegration.
One might conclude that it was those who read the documents of Vatican II through the lens of a hermeneutic of rupture who opposed Ratzinger’s judgements as CDF Prefect and who gave him the pejorative names.
Others established a fan club with a website and merchandise. For every reference to Ratzinger the Rottweiler, there is a coffee mug bearing the words “I love my German Shepherd” beneath Ratzinger’s image.
Those who support the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ (the idea of an organic development of Church tradition as passed down from the apostles), tend to revere Benedict XVI as someone who has had the courage to stand against the tide of militant secularism and taken the flack for being politically incorrect.
Those who support the ‘hermeneutic of rupture’ tend to regard him as a major obstacle to the realisation of their theological projects.
For many who support the hermeneutic of rupture, the Church should be in favour of such things as contraception and homosexuality and the ordination of women.
At the root of all of these issues are questions about the meaning and purpose of human sexuality and gender difference, and this leads off into the territory of Trinitarian theology where the hottest contemporary theological battles are taking place.
To understand the official Catholic Church teaching on these issues, the best sources are John Paul II’s ‘theology of the body’ lectures, and the publications of Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Patriarch of Venice.
Dr Tracey Rowland is Dean and Permanent Fellow of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family (Melbourne); Honorary Fellow, Campion College, Sydney; Member, Centre for Theology and Philosophy, University of Nottingham, UK and author of Ratzinger’s Faith: the theology of Pope Benedict XVI and Benedict XVI: a guide for the perplexed.