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The Roman Catholic church is hemorrhaging badly. Church attendance in Europe is sparse, especially among young people. Nonetheless when it comes time to select a new pope a lot of people fire up the popcorn and gather in front of their TV’s. They wait patiently as sequestered clerics choose straws or flip coins, until they eventually come up with the next Vicar of Christ. The world watches in anticipation for puffs of smoke to indicate an aye or a nay. On Pope-choosing-day even atheists check out the action over in Roma.

Exactly what Jesus of Nazareth has to do with the Byzantine circus that is the Church of Rome is far from clear. Jesus was born in a manger and is reputed to have said “the foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” He also referred to himself as “despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”. His gospel is not exactly a call to sashay around places like the Sistine Palace admiring the Quattrocento, before strolling onto the balcony to wave at a sea of gawkers.

It’s a difficult connection to make. Of course Jesus has now been conveniently nailed to a cross where he hangs for eternity; a mute symbol incapable of protest. In the absence of the man himself, they can do pretty much whatever they want with his gospel; a gospel that in the hands of Roman theologians over the centuries has been the subject of enough doctrinal spin to fill a whole other testament.

Roman Catholic theology is out-of-touch with civil society today. Its moral codes are so out-of-touch they often come off as quaint. So it wasn’t in the least surprising that they elected someone as out-of-touch as Josef Ratzinger.

Ratzinger is not a people-person. The only exposure he has had to actual grass roots worshipers is top-down communication, and that happened for a brief period when he was archbishop of Munich and Freising. The rest of the time he has been cloistered in dimly lit rooms where he became famous for issuing Papal decrees and proclamations attacking the work-of-the-devil, now known by the less inquisitorial term – “moral relativism”.

This Pope is a catholic elitist who has referred to other Christian denominations as “gravely deficient”. He considers himself to be the chief keeper of the immutable “answer” to life’s complex issues, even though he has never actually partaken of experiences that the rest of us consider to be what life is all or mainly about. He has probably never even laid eyes on a condom, let alone used one, and yet he doesn’t hesitate to lay down the law to married couples and people afflicted with AIDS. On the use of condoms to help combat AIDS he is on record as saying that such a move would “result in at least the facilitation of evil”. How is using a piece latex in order to save lives and prevent the transmission of disease facilitating evil? Surely what you bring to sex in terms of personal intent, determines the moral quality of the act, not things you stick on your dick. His explanations of course deal in theological postulates that make little sense to anybody who hasn’t spent at least a few years in the Pontifical Academy.

Recently Benedict XVl has cautiously requested a report to decide if it might be alright for catholics to use the evil rubber if one spouse has HIV. The man is in danger of becoming a runaway progressive.

The problem with his attack on so-called moral relativism, is that morality is in fact relative. It varies from person to person, from nation to nation, from civilization to civilization. That’s in the real world of course, not in a theological archive. Morality like language and custom, changes through exposure to life’s changing circumstances and each of us finds our moral compass in the context of engaging with life’s issues. Ratzinger on the other hand, doesn’t wade into the deep end. He never even gets wet. But from the theological bleachers, he nonetheless feels he is in a position to criticize the rest of us. Which reminds me of another little comment by Jesus – “judge not lest ye be judged”. I’m pretty sure that also applies to Popes.

Gay sexuality is also judged to be morally deficient since it creates a “strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil”. Statements like that are meaningless in the context of personal needs and functions. Bringing the devil into a person’s orientation has little to do with the love of Christ. A lot of people wouldn’t even get it, beyond thinking that “Intrinsic Evil” might be a cool name for a heavy metal band.

It’s pointless to labor these points because Ratzinger’s opinions reflect a world view that is odd, even bizarre, by the standards of contemporary understanding. And we do know a few things these days. There are very few people around any longer who feel the need to head into the confessional and do a few stations-of-the-cross in order to handle life’s moral challenges. Most of us certainly don’t need to be lectured by an elderly recluse in funny clothes.

Interestingly enough, as Ratzinger worked his way up the ecclesiastical ladder in the Vatican, he served as prefect for Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; a role perfectly suited to someone with rigid doctrinaire views. It should come as no surprise that the lineage of said Congregation dates back to the infamous Inquisition. In his role as prefect Ratzinger kept up the venerable tradition by, for example, targeting Liberation Theologians. Thanks to the progress the rest of us have made in the world of civil society, enforcers of Roman doctrine can no longer torture and kill people who don’t agree with orthodox teachings, so as prefect, Ratzinger was restricted to issuing bans and excommunications.

The recent furor relating to Ratzinger’s indiscretions during a well publicized speech in Germany, illustrate how profoundly out-of-touch he really is. In an ill advised and poorly- thought-out effort to take a shot at Islam, he chose to quote the words of Manuel the second, a Byzantine emperor, who most people have never even heard of. The comment is lifted from a chat Manuel reputedly had with some vague individual of alleged Persian origins. Manuel characterizes the prophet Mohammed in less than flattering terms as a bringer of “things only evil and inhuman”.

This criticism is coming from the head of a Church that has been a virtual institutional incubator for pedophiles; a church moreover that aided and abetted all sorts of wars in the past, while also finding time to run an Inquisition, torture suspected witches and destroy native cultures by forcing Christianity and western education on indigenous peoples. All a bit rich. No wonder Muslims choked on their hookahs.

Ratzinger chose the name Benedict because he apparently has some affection for Giacomo della Chiesa, aka Pope Benedict XV, who lived back in the world war 1 era. Hardly surprising, when you read some of Benedict XV’s speeches. We find a precursor to moral relativism in dire warnings about the “monstrous errors of modernism”. Ratzinger it seems is a chip off the old block.

The Roman Catholic church is badly out of step with contemporary society. If this Pope continues to stake out doctrinaire theological positions, without offering realistic responses to a population that increasingly takes its cue from the norms of civil society , the church will become even more moribund, if that is indeed possible.

When the cardinals next meet to elect a Pope, it may not be such a big deal after all.

About the Author

Aidan Maconachy is a freelance writer and artist based in Ontario. His political blog can be visited at http://aidanmaconachyblog.blogspot.com/