Bergoglio’s Gig, Part 3: Opposing Ratzinger

In one of his first major public addresses as pope, at St. Peter’s Square, Sunday, March 17, 2013, “Pope Francis” specifically cited Cardinal Walter Kasper’s book “On Mercy”: In the past few days I have been reading a book by a Cardinal — Cardinal Kasper, a clever theologian, a good theologian — on mercy. And …

Who “Ruined” the Roman Catholic Church?

Peggy Noonan, the syrupy WSJ writer (and former Reagan speech writer) who famously coined the phrase “John Paul the Great” (whom Neuhaus predicted would usher in “the Catholic Moment”), now throws that hopeful papacy and the Ratzinger one under the bus and signs onto the “Church-in-ruins” model that Francis of Assisi was asked to fix: …

The Papacy: Neither Biblical Nor Historical

This month and next, we’ll all be treated in the media to the spectacle of another conclave to select another pope. The media will fail to understand the genuine historical roots of the papacy lie neither in the Bible, nor in the history of the earliest church, but rather were an exercise if self-admiration of …

Called to confusion

In his work, “Called to Communion,” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger enthusiastically quoted Joachim Jeremias, the German Lutheran theologian and professor of New Testament studies, from his work “New Testament Theology”: “We must reduce the whole question quite sharply to a single point: the sole meaning of the entire activity of Jesus is the gathering of the …

Not Called to Communion: “Jesus and the Church”

I’m continuing to discuss Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s work, “Called to Communion,” originally a series of messages that Ratzinger delivered in 1990, including a “theology course” for 120 bishop and some additional addresses to synods of bishops. Ratzinger described this work as “a primer of Catholic ecclesiology.” The header of this blog cites Calvin discussing “those …

Not Called to Communion: Outline of Chapter 1

I’ve been looking at Joseph Ratzinger’s 1990 work “Called to Communion,” a work whose title, at least, has become a kind of rallying cry for a self-annointed group of supposedly (and formerly) “Reformed” believers who became Catholic. In this work, Ratzinger, a Cardinal and head of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” at …

Not Called to Communion: Dishonest about “Exegesis”

The Roman Catholic Church makes some astounding claims for its own authority. And if anyone could, in our day, be said to put forth the best argument for that authority, it would be hard to find a better person than Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the …

Looking at Ratzinger’s “Called to Communion”

I’ve accused Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) of being dishonest in his use of language and sources, and this is another example. I plan to do a more complete examination of Ratzinger’s defense of the papacy in his 1996 work “Called to Communion,” but I wanted to point out a particularly egregious example of …