*Sightings* 2/2/09

-- Martin E. Marty

On January 22, responding to a post-speech questioner at St. Scholastica College in Duluth, which is (roughly) twenty-four percent Catholic and sixteen percent Lutheran, I observed that American Catholic criticisms of Pope Benedict XVI have often been muted, and that Lutherans held their fire and even admired some Benedict-ine actions. For example, he had guided a Lutheran-Catholic entente document through obstructions in 1999. On 'interfaith' in general, recalling the nightmare his quotation about Muhammad had caused in the Islamic world and his reasonable efforts to repair the damage, I speculated that he would be more cautious in ecumenical and interfaith lectures "tomorrow."

The day after that tomorrow, on January 24, he incautiously set out to abort a schism in Roman Catholicism by welcoming back four excommunicated bishops, among them Richard Williamson, who is a very public and recent Holocaust-denier. While we are at it, Vatican officials had to know the bishop's very public corollary views, that the forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is authentic, that the United States "did" the 9/11 attacks, that women should not be allowed to attend universities, and that everything about Vatican II reforms, including support of religious liberty, was heretical. Leadership of his Pius X Society also calls Jews "the artisans for the coming of the Antichrist" and argues that Jews' "grave defects rendered them odious to all nations among which they were established." Wounded and grieving, Jewish leaders planning for a papal visit to the Holy Landthis time expressed resolve to continue Jewish-Catholic relations.

We'll let good Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's point man on Catholic ecumenism and relations to Jews, begin to repair the damage, along with German bishops, who know that what Williamson said publicly in Germanysubjects him to criminal prosecution. Intra-Catholic affairs are less the concern of the non-Catholic press than are offensive public actions which add potential for tumult to a tumult-torn world. Jews less formally involved in hosting and talking with the Vaticanand this pope are less mild. Their rage is not suppressed (see reference, below). Vatican-friendly Edward T. Oakes, S.J., in a helpful editorial in the January 30th *Wall Street Journal*, summarizes: "Needless to say…the pope still has a huge public-relations problem on his hands."

How and why did he get into this situation? Theories abound, as they did when the Vatican-Muslim flap occurred. This time is different, says Father Oakes, since the offenders are not medieval Byzantine rulers (as in the Muslim case) but living, breathing excommunicated schismatics for whom the pope will do anything, including offend the whole Jewish world and millions of bystanders, among them those who *do* remember the Holocaust, in order to reincorporate Bishop Williamson and his three Episcopal leaders in the Pius X society. Put simply, as Father Oakes and numerous Catholic commentators have thus put it: Benedict XVI has such a horror of schism that he and his team can let almost anything else go—including Pius X Society's insults to the Vatican II bishops and their successors, and interpretations of Catholicism which the previous pope and team adjudged to be heretical—in order to stall or demolish schismatic movements.

Is Benedict XVI, such a learned and informed and open-intentioned scholar, too much the German with his historian-fed memories of Martin Luther and other 16th century "schismatics" and an inordinate fear of repetition? We'll wait and see.

*Reference:*

Read Peter Steinfels' *New York** Times *piece, "The Holocaust Furor and the U.S. Bishops", here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/us/31beliefs.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Steinfels&st=cse

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com.

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"By wanting to talk about what normally falls under the category of religion in terms of play it may seem like I want to solve this problem by taking none of this aspect of life seriously. This is just because there is such a close association between play and frivolity in contemporary discourse. But if play is non-instrumental activity framed to evoke ambiguity, then it is not at all necessarily unserious." Approaching play as "a sophisticated form of metacommunication," a "non-instrumental activity framed to evoke ambiguity," Divinity School PhD candidate Jeffrey Israel finds wide-ranging ramifications for society. In "The Capability of Play," January's Religion and Culture Web Forum essay, Israel makes forays into animal behavior, religious identity, and Lenny Bruce, building a case for play as an essential component of human existence which should be recognized as a basic right. http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/index.shtml

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*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty Center<http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/>at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Submissions policy

*Sightings* welcomes submissions of 500 to 750 words in length that seek to illuminate and interpret the forces of faith in a pluralist society. Previous columns <http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/>give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. The editor also encourages new approaches to issues related to religion and public life.

Attribution

Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column, *Sightings*, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.