Benedict’s Painful Legacy

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/6829/benedict_s_painful_legacy/


February 11, 2013
Catholics on the margins reflect on the past eight years
By ELIZABETH DRESCHER


Protesters in London in 2010 demand the pope's resignation

Elizabeth Drescher is the author, with Keith Anderson, of Click 2 Save: The Digital Ministry Bible (Morehouse, 2012). She teaches religion and pastoral ministries at Santa Clara University. She is currently at work on Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of Religious Nones, a project funded in part through a grant from the Social Science Research Council’s “New Directions in the Study of Prayer” project through the Templeton Foundation. Her website is www.elizabethdrescher.com


In the wake of Benedict’s sudden announcement of his early retirement, Catholic luminaries from Cardinal Timothy Dolan to James Martin, SJ have already begun, as is the custom when a papal career ends, to lionize the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.

But on the margins of the Catholic Church, the legacy Benedict began shaping in 1980 as Cardinal Ratzinger, when he was named as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faithful (the office formerly known as the Inquisition), and which he solidified during a mere eight years as Bishop of Rome is seen as something far more complex and troubling.

UC Riverside professor Jennifer Scheper Hughes, who has studied Benedict’s reaction to liberation theology in Latin America both before and during his papacy, suggests that he leaves a painful legacy for Roman Catholics in the region. Says Hughes,

“Both as Cardinal Ratzinger and as Pope, Benedict devoted himself to a process of undermining, silencing, and marginalizing the theologians, priests, and religious who committed themselves to the liberation of the poor. His legacy in Latin America is precisely this: the systematic dismantling of the infrastructure of liberation theology. Some in Latin America may hope that this period of antagonism has now come to a close. Others are, by now, far more cynical.”

more at link

[dimbear]

1. "Others by now are far more cynical." An unfortunate turn of phrase, cynical meaning

churlish or unaccepting of human goodness. Better "realistic, aware of history."