THE GERMAN POPE
England Fumes over Selection of "Papa Ratzi"
By Matthias Matussek
With stunning meanness and unabashed mockery, the British press are lambasting the choice of a German as pope. The catch phrases of the day are "Hitler" "Tank Cardinal" and "God's Rottweiler." In short, the English papers are doing less reporting than seething with rage.
(snip)
But, on this particular day, British souls are seething. Not only is the church being taken seriously as an instrument of world power, but it is now to be headed by a German.
Ratzinger vs. Swastika Harry
The papacy, the Daily Telegraph reminds its readers in central England, has great power. "Geopolitically it changed the face of the world, not least by bringing the soviet empire tumbling down." The paper's front page, however, takes a brutal swipe at the Vatican's latest choice. "God's Rottweiler is Pope," the headline glares.
Not to be outdone, the tabloid The Sun too, hits hard, offering up the headline "From Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi." The paper thus kills two birds with one stone: it recalls another powerful German -- the one man who even today captivates the diabolical fantasies of Brits like no other -- and it makes the pope look ridiculous. Above the pope story, the publishers place a photo of the young bad-boy Prince "Swastika" Harry, a perfect manifestation of the sort of modern Catholic Ratzinger so often rails against. The Daily Mirror clearly takes great delight in the optical mishmash of "Panzerkardinal," "Hitler Youth," and "Nazi Sympathizer" -- all on one full spread. It reports from the "Weimar-Inferno" of Germany that the "TV stations swept their news agendas free of domestic woes about joblessness and crime" to report on the election. Naturally, the ugly German also trots through these pages as a Rottweiler, and the victoriously-raised arms of the pope leave plenty of room open for other meanings and historical associations. With the exception of the Independent, hardly any British paper even mentions Ratzinger's theology. And even then, the paper leads with a Hilter Youth photo and spends five full pages bashing Ratzinger and delivering an unrelenting list of his sins. It characterizes Ratzinger's enthronement as an adroitly engineered Machiavellian coup in the style of the successors of the Kremlin. Ratzinger "set the agenda of the conclave," he "restricted" contact with the press, and gave the deciding sermon -- a coldly calculated power-play by "the German."
Poorly-reasoned arguments against Ratzinger
(nip)
The paper writes that "Ratzinger moved to stamp out liberation theology, a trend in Catholic thought mainly in Latin America which mixed Catholic theology with Marxist analysis of capitalism. Where John Paul II, with his Polish background, had some sympathy with the movement and its critique of the cruelties of capitalism, the German theologian had none. He decided to stamp it out." Where did that come from? John Paul II never sympathized with Marxism. In fact, he sought to distance the Catholic Church from it. Did the paper conclude he had sympathy for Marxism merely because he so distrusted capitalism? Only someone who had been forced yesterday to read up on the issue could have misinterpreted it as badly as that.
Ratzinger, it alleges, "stamped out" liberation theology. But this tremolo of tears for a liberation theology destroyed by Rome is the last cry of a contemporary theory market. It is, of course, purely tactical and nothing other than a critical maneuver against the church. Barely 20 years after the last intellectuals agreed that Marxism was a bloody and totalitarian detour away from the Enlightenment, liberal commentators like those at the Independent have discovered a new sympathy for it. Largely this is because it has been condemned by Ratzinger and the Vatican.
(snip)
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,352550,00.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
