A Lutheran(!) take on the recent anti-Catholic hysteria

...Ratzinger belongs to the centrist mass of Roman Catholics who accept Vatican II, but decline to see the Council (as do Küng & Co.) as a brutal rupture with the foregoing tradition. To understand his papal programme (inasmuch as we may talk of such a thing), we must realise that he is endeavouring to steer his massive ecclesial ship back into a centrist channel after a good forty years of disastrous leftward lurch—just consider the pitiful liturgical shambles that emerged from Paul VI’s Novus Ordo of 1969, causing Hermann Sasse to remark in his last years how Rome had suddenly “canonised St. Zwingli.” A few years ago, in his new capacity as Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger coined the phrase “hermeneutic of continuity” to describe an approach to Vatican II that seeks to interpret its documents in harmony with what went before. A major task awaits orthodox Lutheran theology in the shape of updating Chemnitz’s Examen Concilii Tridentini by performing the same service for the documents of Vatican II. Applying the hermeneutic of continuity to these texts, a Chemnitz of our time would discern areas of interconfessional agreement and rapprochement, on the one hand, and of ongoing dissent and debate, on the other.

As, in company with his predecessor on the papal throne, Ratzinger has occupied Rome’s middle ground, significant differences of interpretation and emphasis have certainly existed between the close colleagues. With his undying commitment to Gaudium et spes, Woytyla was some degrees to the “left” of Ratzinger, who is very much a man of Lumen Gentium, the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. As he approved my copious quotations from Ratzinger in the CLD volume on Eschatology, the sainted Robert Preus commented to me that Raztinger (whom he respected) was “more Catholic in the best sense” than the Pope under whom he served.

By the way, the world still hates, loathes, & detests Christ and His Church!

In addition to the unremitting hostility directed at him from the Modernist wing of his own Communion, even prior to his election as Pope, Ratzinger was a favourite target of the unbelieving world’s impassioned hatred for Christ Jesus our Lord and the members of His mystical body. Some years ago, the British Daily Telegraph (which at one time had the reputation of being a “quality” newspaper) reported that the then cardinal had committed a terrible “gaffe” by publicly expressing hope for the conversion of the Jews. Fancy that, a Christian wishing salvation for a sizeable group of his neighbours, a faux pas indeed! A Google search has confirmed my memory that British journalists were likewise incensed by the then cardinal’s comparison of Buddhism with spiritual autoeroticism. How scandalous that a Christian spokesman should speak candidly of religions that offer a spurious salvation!

The Canadian mainstream media were frenziedly sharpening their knives against Joseph Ratzinger in the weeks when he was a strong candidate to succeed John Paul II. His papacy was barely a few hours old when the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) evening news ran a segment on an aged Italian woman (a “good Catholic”, of course) who stood crestfallen amid a jubilant crowd as Benedict XVI appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s, walking dejectedly away as she realized that women’s ordination, contraception, sexual licence, abortion on demand, and all that good stuff would still be denied the papal seal of approval. That bloody hatchet job had been carefully prepared way ahead of a cardinal’s booming “Habemus papam—reverendissimum dominum Josephum Cardinalem Ratzinger” from the balcony!

Read the rest of a very good essay here.
Hat tip Fr. Z.

Although I am not Roman Catholic it seems fairly obvious that the MSM and all of the current Pope's rather long list of detractors (that list could also serve to identify many of those responsible for the disasters of the last 40+ years) are taking the opportunity presented by the recurrent scandals to strike out at Benedict XVI. Rarely have I seen anyone so unjustly maligned in what appears to be a highly coordinated attack of slander and calumny. Clearly the long knives are coming out.

It would be a brave man indeed (and rather foolish) who would try to defend the Catholic Church's handling of the sexual abuse of children. Indisputably the church as an institution failed miserably. And one could further make a fairly strong argument that more than a few bishops enabled this horror by repeatedly shuffling these sexual deviants around and covering up for them. I will even go so far as to say that there are some who, were it not for their pointy hat, would likely have been jailed for aiding and abetting in serious crimes.

But there is simply no way to fairly lay this at Ratzinger's feet. And the efforts by the press to do so have only heightened awareness of their dreadful anti-Catholic prejudice. He is probably the closest thing Rome can point to as something of a hero in this sorry mess. For years he vainly tried to sound the alarm in Rome. And when the crisis finally broke it was he who was put in charge of trying to clean house, a thankless job if ever there was one

How this translates into responsibility for covering up the scandals is something that only the warped imagination of the mainstream media and their allies among the 1960's hippie Catholics could contrive.