LITMIR.BIZ

      In his luxurious quarters at the papal apartments, Pope Benedict XVI consults with the second most powerful man in the Catholic Church hierarchy, his successor and trusted Inquisitor, the hard-nosed Cardinal William Joseph Levada. The in-camera tête-à-tête focuses on two matters. The first concerns a projected trip by the pontiff to the Middle East, where he will try to mend fences with Jews and Muslims. The second explores new strategies aimed at hardening the Church’s stance on Freemasonry, more specifically the official branding of Catholics who join Masonic lodges as heretics guilty of a mortal sin.

      As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctirne of the Faith, then pope-in-training, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger earned a reputation as a hard-line enforcer of Catholic doctrinal absolutism. After heaping syrupy praise on René Descartes, the 17^th century French rationalist philosopher, Ratzinger abruptly suspended his homage by condemning Descartes and forbidding Catholics to read his books “on pain of sin.” He condemned Liberation Theology, the oxygen-rich ministry that redefines and, for the poor and voiceless, enlivens an otherwise stolid Roman Catholicism, and he punished its disciples with public humiliations, swift and irrevocable defrocking, and summary excommunications. He also excoriated and suppressed neo-liberal theologians and delivered hostile orations against abortion, homo-sexuality and the ordination of women to the priesthood.

      When Benedict ascended to the Papacy his election was halfheartedly welcomed by some Jewish groups (one of them the right-wing and very accommodating Anti-Defamation League, which is more interested in ingratiating itself with the Vatican than in rehashing history). He received a more tepid welcome from world Jewry which hoped that Benedict would “continue along the path of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II in supporting the State of Israel and committing to an uncompromising fight against anti-Semitism.”

      Critics accuse Benedict's papacy of being insensitive towards Judaism. They cite the expanding use of the Tridentine Mass, which calls for the conversion of Jews to Christianity, and denounce the reinstatement of four excommunicated bishops, all members of the Society of St. Pius X, a traditionalist and virulently anti-Semitic Catholic organization. One of these bishops is American Richard Williamson, an outspoken Holocaust denier who struggled to issue a skewed apology but did not recant his position on the well documented event.

      Pope Benedict's dealings with Islam -- 1.2 billion-strong and growing at about three percent per year -- remain, at best, strained. On September 12, 2006 the pontiff delivered a lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany, where he had served as professor of theology. Entitled “Faith, Reason and the University -- Memories and Reflections,” the lecture received critical attention from political and religious authorities. Muslim politicians and religious leaders recoiled at his pompous insensitivity and protested against what they perceived to be inflammatory rhetoric and an odious mischaracterization of Islam. They were especially offended by the following statement:

      “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.”