[Lasnetmail] The Pope's Bad Example

[lucho]

The Pope's Bad Example
                     Leonardo Boff
                      Theologian
            Earthcharter Commission


ALAI AMLATINA, 9/22/2006, Rio de Janeiro.- The attitude of Pope Benedict XVI is causing justified rage in the Islamic communities, as a result of his unfortunate quotation from a XIV century Byzantine emperor, who said: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."  It also brought embarrassment and shame to Christians. The quote was totally ill-timed. The Pope is well aware of the present confrontation between Islam and the West, which is making war on Afganisthan and Iraq, and which openly supports the Israeli cause against the Palestinians, the great majority of whom are Moslems. In that context, that quote aligns the Pope with the strategic wars by the West. How can one not be upset by that approach?

To us Christians, the Pope's attitude leaves us puzzled because it is in the essence of the Christian faith to forgive, and to pray, as did the poor man from Assisi: "where there is injury, may I bring pardon." Not wanting to forgive, the Pope legitimizes those who do not want to ask for forgiveness in their everyday lives, either from the Blacks, whom we enslaved for centuries; or from the survivors of the indigenous people we decimated. If the Pope fails to make an official public act of apology, he is setting us a bad example. He is not fulfilling the commandment, "to confirm the brothers and sisters in the faith." 

But this is not an isolated act. As Cardinal, he opposed the entry of Turkey to the European Community, simply because Moslems are in the majority of that country. Not long ago, Benedict XVI eliminated from the Vatican the office that promoted Christian-Moslem dialogue. The September 15, 2000 document Dominus Jesus, which he authored, is one of the most fundamentalist texts in recent centuries, affirming that "the only true religion is the Roman Catholic Church" and that "the followers of other religions objectively are, with reference to salvation, in a gravely lacking situation." There is no point in having encounters with other religions because "it is contrary to the Catholic faith to consider the Church as a path to salvation alongside the others." With that background, his speech at Regensburg University is not surprising. Nevertheless, would it not be more dignified for the Pope to clearly ask for forgiveness for the confusion he caused, no matter how involuntarily? Why does he not do so?

To understand that, one must understand the ideology of infallibility that still holds sway in the Vatican and in the Church in general. According to that theory, the Pope can never err, no matter how limited the dogma of infallibility may be. That dogma holds that the Pope is infallible only in very limited situations, enjoying then, personally, the infallibility that belongs to all the Church. But the ideology of infallibility attributes, in an illegitimate form, infallibility to all the words of the Pope. If he asks for forgiveness, he is confessing error, which infallibility does not permit.

The papal despotism formulated by Boniface VIII, in 1302, is at work in the mind of Pope Benedict XVI.  It said: "for each human creature it is absolutely necessary for salvation that one be subjected to the Pope in Rome." That was not abolished even by Vatican Council II, in 1964. An "Explicative Previous Note" was added to the texts, where it was reaffirmed that the Pope can always act "according to his personal judgment" in naming bishops, establishing norms and ecclesiastic policies. In other words: One Pope can autonomously decide everything; one thousand million Catholics together can decide nothing. That absolutism enables us to understand the reasons why the Pope does not ask for forgiveness.

                                                                                                            Leonardo Boff 

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