“Known as an incisive thinker and intensely holy man living a devout life, it is held against him that he is a Jesuit, although he has suffered the slings and arrows of Jesuits of a more ‘progressive’ bent.”

-Richard John Neuhaus, Catholic Matters, 2007

Catholic leaders like New York’s Cardinal Dolan are wrongly pinning their hopes on vouchers, says education expert Sean Kennedy:

Let me stop and praise what’s going on in Philadelphia. . . . Chaput came in after huge cuts – 20 percent of all Philadelphia Catholic schools closed in one single year, which is just unprecedented. When the next round of closings came out with four high schools on the chopping block for the 2012-2013 school year, Chaput said no. And in February of last year, 2012, he said, “I’m going to find an alternative.”

(more…)

Ryan T. Anderson describes the impressive number of briefs that have been filed urging the Supreme Court to uphold Prop 8 and DOMA and elsewhere writes, with William Beach, that repealing the death tax is a better way to fix inheritance law than redefining marriage.

Luis Palau, an Argentine-born evangelist who has in many ways taken up the mantle of Billy Graham, speaks of his friendship with Pope Francis:

One day I said to him, ‘You seem to love the Bible a lot,’ and he said, ‘You know, my financial manager [for the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires] … is an evangelical Christian.’ I said, ‘Why would that be?’ And he said, ‘Well, I can trust him, and we spend hours reading the Bible and praying and drinking maté [an Argentine green tea].’ People do that with their friends, share and pass the mate, and every day when he was in town, which was often, after lunch he and his financial manager would sit together, read the Bible, pray, and drink maté. To me, he was making a point [about his relationship with evangelicals] by telling me that: trust and friendship.

Palau predicts that Pope Francis’ facility with Evangelical-style spontaneous prayer will shape his papacy:

You know he knew God the father personally. The way he prayed, the way he talked to the Lord, was of a man who knows Jesus Christ and was very spiritually intimate with the Lord. It’s not an effort [for him] to pray. He didn’t do reading prayers; he just prayed to the Lord spontaneously. It is a sign that good things will happen worldwide in the years of his papal work.

Francis’ spontaneity—already on display in the first days of his papacy—resonates with Evangelical Protestants but is in its way deeply Catholic. As R.R. Reno observed on Francis’ election, Jesuits “break the rules,” which helps explain why Francis “took the name of the most severe critic of the papacy before Martin Luther [and] bowed to receive the crowd’s blessing.” Protestants see one of their own in the new pope, which might prompt a Catholic to say that much of what we see as Protestant can be found more fully realized and rightly oriented in the heart of the Church.

George Weigel writes in National Review:

Cardinal Bergoglio was used in 2005; he knows precisely who used him and why; and while he is a man of the Gospel who is not looking to settle scores, he is also a man of prudence who knows who his friends, and who his enemies, are. Here’s the story:

In April 2005, the progressive party (which was a real party then) came to Rome after the death of John Paul II thinking it had the wind at its back and clear sailing ahead — only to find that the Ratzinger-for-pope party was well-organized; that Ratzinger had made a very positive impression by the way he had run the General Congregations of cardinals after John Paul II’s death; that he had deep support from throughout the Third World because of the courtesy with which he had treated visiting Third World bishops on their quinquennial visits to Rome over the past 20 years; and that, after his brilliant homily at John Paul’s funeral Mass, he was indisputably the frontrunner for the papacy.

Confronted with this reality, the progressives panicked. Their first blocking move against Ratzinger was to try and run the aged Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, S.J., emeritus archbishop of Milan, who was already ill with Parkinson’s disease and had retired to the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem. The idea was not to elect Martini pope; it was to stop the Ratzinger surge. Then, when Ratzinger blew past Martini with almost 50 percent of the vote on what was assumed to be the “courtesy” first ballot (where some votes are cast as gestures of friendship, esteem, etc.), and subsequently went over 50 percent the following morning, the panic intensified. Martini was summarily abandoned (or may have told his supporters to forget it).

The progressives then tried to advance Cardinal Bergoglio — who was very much part of the pro-Ratzinger coalition; who embodied “dynamic orthodoxy,” just like John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger; who had been persecuted by his more theologically and politically left-leaning Jesuit brethren after his term as Jesuit provincial in Argentina (they exiled him to northern Argentina where he taught high-school chemistry until rescued by John Paul II and eventually made archbishop of Buenos Aires); and who was doubtless appalled by the whole exercise on his putative behalf.

It was a last-ditch blocking move, perhaps constructed around the idea that a Third World candidate like Bergoglio would peel off Ratzinger votes. In any event, it was a complete misreading of the 2005 conclave’s dynamics and a cynical use of Bergoglio, who would almost certainly have been abandoned had the stratagem worked — and it failed miserably.

Thus it may be safely assumed that the coalition that quickly solidified and swiftly elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope in 2013 had little or nothing to do with the eminent cabal that tried to use him in 2005. Pope Francis was elected for who he is, not for taking the silver medal eight years ago.

“To those who are now promising to fix all your problems, I say, ‘Go and fix yourself.’ . . . Have a change of heart. Get to confession, before you need it even more! The current crisis will not be improved by magicians from outside the country and nor will [improvement] come from the golden mouth of our politicians, so accustomed to making incredible promises.”

-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Buenos Aires, 2002

About an hour after the world saw white smoke, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis, stepped out to offer the crowd his blessing. But before that, he asked for its prayers. This is a humble man, a prince of the church born into a working-class family who’s noted for riding public transportation and cooking his own meals.

George Weigel on NBC News says that Pope Francis is “very much a man of the new evangelization.” But the new pope is also a veteran of old battles. When many of his brother Jesuits sought to move away from parishes and embrace liberation theology, he insisted on traditional forms of work, and his order’s beloved Ignatian spirituality.

The choice of a familiar face like Bergoglio (he was the runner-up in the last conclave) may signal the college’s desire for a transitional, placeholding pope. But transitional popes have been known to effect transitions for the whole church.

More soon . . .

Watch this page for white smoke.

Jennifer Rubin applauds Rand Paul’s remarks on gay marriage and tells social conservatives to pay attention:

As much as I disagree with Rand Paul on his larger vision on foreign policy, he is worth heeding on marriage. Americans have not bought into the “traditional marriage” advocates (presumably high divorce rates in heterosexual marriages are none of their business?), most especially the claim that same-sex marriage “harms” other marriages. (I confess to never having understood that argument.) Paul is dead right: It is time for conservatives to move on and start focusing on issues that are properly the concern of elected leaders and on which the public actually wants government to act.

This in response to an interview with National Review in which Paul called for civil unions that would give same-sex partners benefits without redefining marriage:

I’m not going to change who I am or what I believe in. I am an old-fashioned traditionalist. I believe in the historical definition of marriage. That being said, I think contracts between adults — I’m not for limiting contracts between adults. In fact, if there are ways to make the tax code more neutral where it doesn’t mention the word marriage, then we don’t have to redefine what marriage is. We just don’t have marriage in the tax code. If health benefits are a problem, why don’t we not define them by marriage? Why don’t we say, you have another adult who lives in the house, and a kid who lives in the house can be part of family coverage? Then you don’t have to redefine, and have people like myself, and people who live in the Southeastern part of the country, we don’t have to change our definition of what we think marriage is, but we allow contracts to occur so there is more ability to [make] the law neutral.

If Paul’s remarks seem novel to Rubin, it’s only because she hasn’t been paying attention. As early as 2009, Robert P. George, Ryan T. Anderson, and Sherif Girgis—hardly squishes in the gay marriage debate—had all expressed openness to a form of civil union that could fit with what Paul describes.

These unions would be “available to any two adults who commit to sharing domestic responsibilities, whether or not their relationship is sexual. Available only to people otherwise ineligible to marry each other (say, because of consanguinity), these unions would neither introduce a rival ‘marriage-lite’ option nor treat same-sex unions as marriages. Their purpose would be to protect adult domestic partners who have pledged themselves to a mutually binding relationship of care. What (if anything) goes on in the bedroom would have nothing to do with these unions’ goals or, thus, eligibility requirements.”

Rubin wants social conservatives to listen to Rand Paul; she first should try listening to social conservatives. It certainly seems that Rand Paul has been.

The mystery is over:

On Tuesday, the Vatican press office revealed the composition of the colored smoke used during the conclave to signal the results of the voting. Earlier, a Vatican spokesman had said only that the smoke was made “from several different elements.”

Both recipes are fairly standard pyrotechnical formulas. The white smoke, used to announce the election of a new pope, combines potassium chlorate, milk sugar (which serves as an easily ignitable fuel) and pine rosin, Vatican officials said in a statement. The black smoke, which was used Tuesday evening to signal that no one in the first round of balloting received the necessary two-thirds vote of the 115 cardinals, uses potassium perchlorate and anthracene (a component of coal tar), with sulfur as the fuel. Potassium chlorate and perchlorate are related compounds, but perchlorate is preferred in some formulations because it is more stable and safer.

Milk sugar and pine versus coal and sulfur: There’s a simple beauty to the Vatican’s chemistry.

That is the question asked by Austin Ruse in a column at the Catholic Thing. Ruse calls Burke a “true pastor and a man who has all the gifts – ecclesial, spiritual, and temporal – to be Bishop of Rome.”

Ruse is hardly the only one to tout Burke’s name. A Catholic editor friend of mine last night spun the unlikely theory that Dolan and O’Malley are being touted as stalking horses for a Burke candidacy. Once the cardinals reconcile themselves to the idea of an American pope, he said, they’ll be more likely to see the particular virtues of one American.

Burke possesses two virtues many view as necessary for the next pope. First, Burke shares Benedict’s desire to deepen the reform of the reform of the liturgy. He frequently celebrates the Latin Mass that Benedict commended to the Church, as well as a reverent version of the often chaotically celebrated Novus Ordo. Nothing could be a more fitting tribute to the pope emeritus than to extend this project so close to his heart.

Burke also shows a willingness to discipline dissent, realizing that the shepherd bears his rod for a reason, and that sparing it can be a failure in charity. As canonist Ed Peters has noted, perhaps no one wields that rod more sensitively than Burke:

I would like to say that Abp. Raymond Burke’s excommunication of three women who recently participated in a pseudo-ordination in Saint Louis is a “text-book illustration” of how (non-judicial) excommunication is supposed to be applied in the Church today, but I can’t say that: Why not? Because Abp. Burke’s attention to juridic details and his provisions for the pastoral care of the people entrusted to his care so exceed what the textbooks teach, that it is the textbooks that must copy from him, not him from the textbooks.

Michael Potemra at National Review, who first floated Burke’s name in 2011, reacts to the speculation: “Is a Burke election likely? No. But is it impossible? No.”

That sounds about right.

Update: Peter Lawler prints a note sent him by “a leading Catholic intellectual”

Since you brought it up, my papal endorsement goes to Burke. I would consider myself a fellow traveler with the “narrow and intense” fan base, but there are also practical reasons why I think of all the Americans he has a real shot. One — languages. He’s got ‘em. Dolan doesn’t. Two — life inside the Vatican. He’s done it. Dolan hasn’t. Seems to me that if the Italians or the Rome-based cardinalate are going to violate the unofficial “no American” rule, it would be psychologically easiest to start with a guy who has been one among them. In addition to which, I’m sure they’re all aware that this is a man that Benedict singled out for promotion.

Citing a shortage of swordsmen, Saudi Arabia is considering performing executions using firing squads instead of public beheadings:

A joint Saudi committee composed of representatives of the ministries of interior, justice and health is mulling the replacement of beheading with firing squads for capital sentences due to shortages in government swordsmen, Saudi daily Al-Youm reported on Sunday.

The committee argued that such a step, if adopted, would not violate Islamic law, allowing heads – or emirs – of the country’s 13 local administrative regions to begin using the new method when needed.

“This solution seems practical, especially in light of shortages in official swordsmen or their belated arrival to execution yards in some incidents; the aim is to avoid interruption of the regularly-taken security arrangements,” the committee said in a statement.

The ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom beheaded 76 people in 2012, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Human Rights Watch (HRW) put the number at 69.

In rare cases the beheading is followed by the crucifixion of the headless corpse.

Whatever the supply of swordsmen, the Saudis are likely considering this change with an eye to international pressure to end the practice.

Younger American Catholics express slightly more real agreement with Church teaching and slightly less respect for its shepherds in a new poll by the New York Times/CBS News. Women’s ordination was favored by 72 percent of Catholics between 45 and 64 and 68 percent of Catholics between 18 and 44. Support for birth control remains constant at 82 percent but opposition firms up, increasing from 11 to 15 percent at the expense of those who are unsure.

The above changes are relatively small and perhaps best explained by the rise of the “nones.” People who would have identified as Catholic a generation ago no longer are. More dramatic is the difference on the issue of allowing priests to marry. Lifting the celibacy requirement is favored by 76 percent of older Catholics but only 61 percent of younger Catholics—a 15 point dropoff.

Perhaps most interesting is that even as we saw slight (and in the case of priestly celibacy, more dramatic) increases in expressed agreement with church teaching among young Catholics, those same Catholics showed less respect for clerical authority. When asked, “On difficult moral questions, which are you more likely to follow—the teachings of the pope, or your conscience?” 13 percent of older Catholics went with the pope but only 9 percent of younger Catholics. Younger Catholics were also more likely to say that one could “disagree with the pope” on matters like abortion and gay marriage and still be a good Catholic.

Young Catholics are, somewhat ironically, more likely to express agreement with Church teaching and less likely to express deference to the pope. The sexual abuse crisis along with the general decline of public piety have strained Catholics’ inherited attachments to mother Church. Ties that once led many to identify as Catholic even as they rejected Church teaching are fraying.

Those who remain are increasingly there not because they identify with the Church’s leaders and institutions (the pope, the ethnic parish, the Catholic school) but because they assent to its teachings. Here comes Evangelical Catholicism.

Responses for Catholics age 45 – 64

Responses for Catholics age 18 – 44

As the New York Times has reported, the Obama administration’s drone policy assumes that women, children, and the elderly are civilians but “in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” This standard is what allowed John O. Brennan to claim in June 2011 that for almost a year “there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop.”

Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal and a supporter of drone warfare, found these claims wholly unsupportable:

The Taliban don’t go to a military base to build bombs or do training. . . There are families and neighbors around. I believe the people conducting the strikes work hard to reduce civilian casualties. They could be 20 percent. They could be 5 percent. But I think the C.I.A.’s claim of zero civilian casualties in a year is absurd.

Absurd, and very problematic for the legitimacy of the U.S. drone strikes. Within the past year, some Jewish and Christian writers have argued on remarkably similar lines that while drones strikes are not intrinsically immoral, their side effects may rule out their use. Rabbi Aryeh Klapper offers the most recent statement of this argument in a new article in the Tablet:

The availability of drones makes certain forms of problematic policy choices more likely and that, in the absence of proactive regulation, drone warfare will have more pernicious consequences as the technology becomes more widely available. . . .

Judaism can contribute to the conversation by insisting that the conversation include long-term and indirect as well as short-term and direct effects. As Rabbi Shimon says in Pirkei Avot 2:9: “Which is the straight path to which human beings should cleave? The one that considers consequences.”

Klapper’s conclusion—based on halakha and drawing on Talmudic sources—that drone warfare is not intrinsically immoral is seconded by Catholic thinker Robert P. George. Last year, George wrote in this space that “The use of drones is not, in my opinion, inherently immoral in otherwise justifiable military operations.”

Yet George, like Klapper, goes on to warn that “Sometimes considerations of justice to noncombatants forbid their use . . . The wholesale and indiscriminate use of drones cannot be justified, and should be criticized.”

Of course, there will always be collateral damage, citizens killed: that is the horror of war. Yet the Obama administration denies this reality, presenting drone warfare as sanitary and surgical while systematically undercounting civilian casualties. Perhaps the administration’s policy is justified (the question of how many civilian deaths can be tolerated is a difficult one). What is certain is that it cannot be justified by the present bogus accounting.

Humor magazine McSweeney’s posts a satirical cover letter for the world’s most discussed job opening:

Dear sir or madam,

I am writing to apply for the position of Pope. I recently received my Bachelor of Arts, or “artium baccalaureus,” from Dartmouth College, with a major concentration in Theatre Studies and a minor concentration in Computer Science. While I have been focusing on the technology and financial sectors, I have recently decided to widen my job search to include top non-profits, such as your organization. I became aware of the availability of the position of Pope through the Dartmouth listserv; I am greatly impressed by the achievements of The Catholic Church and share many of its goals. I believe my qualifications and outlook make me a unique and interesting candidate for Pope and I would be enthusiastic to grow with The Catholic Church. . . .

As your website notes, the role of Pope includes “Guiding the College of Cardinals, and the masses.” Through my participation in the Freshman Buddy Program, I have helped many younger students through difficult situations, including homesickness and mono. I feel like it is important to give back, a value I believe any organization would appreciate in their Pope.

As an excellent student with advanced people skills and an exciting resume, with a desire to be part of a challenging, energetic, and reputable organization, I will be a valuable addition to The Catholic Church as your new Pope.

While I am focusing my employment search in the San Francisco Bay area, I am open to a discussion of relocation.

I thank you in advance for your consideration,
John Ortved

Standing before all of Hollywood at last night’s Academy Awards, confronted by an inquisitorial teddy bear, Mark Wahlberg refused to deny his Lord and savior:

Ted: “You’ve got a ‘berg’ on the end of your name. Are you Jewish?”

Mark Wahlberg: “No, I’m Catholic.”

Ted: “Wrong answer. Try again.”

Give that man a Laetare Medal! (Though the Times of Israel, which deemed the segment vaguely anti-semitic, might object.)

The Boogie Nights star also has drawn criticism in the past due to reports (which he contests) that he turned down a role in Brokeback Mountain on advice of his priest.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church elects Metropolitan Neophyte—like most of the church’s leaders, a former Communist agent—as its patriarch:

His reputation as one of the most deserving candidates for the patriarchal throne risked being marred last year after revelations that he was among 11 of the 15 top bishops of Bulgaria’s Holy Synod — the Orthodox Church’s highest authority — who were former secret intelligence agents under the Communist dictatorship.

Neophyte’s thin file however was later proven to contain mostly reports against him.

“I never wanted to defame anyone or benefit from the privileges of the Darzhavna Sigurnost secret police,” he then commented.

Neophyte had asked to be relieved from his duties as agent immediately after the regime fell on November 10, 1989. . . .

He will now be entrusted with the key task of bringing disillusioned Bulgarians back to the church, which has been slow to play any significant role in society after being severely crippled during the 45-year communist rule.

So say philosophy professors Pierre Dulau and Martin Steffens in a dismayed article for La Croix, the semi-official paper of French Catholicism:

Whatever may be the justifications we may give to this decision, the fact is there: this resignation by the pope is a catastrophe. It is an event that is rarely found in History, a fact that, in its symbolic violence, is a portrait of our time.

The Papacy is, in the West, the very last function of which it is commonly accepted by all that it engages the one who entered it “up until death”. This “till death” means at least two things. First, that human life is not its own goal: our life has no meaning if not linked to a greater Life to which we may, in justice, sacrifice everything—exactly as the love of the spouses, “till death” as well, takes its meaning from beyond itself, in a promise that does not cease existing.

(more…)

Benedict XVI’s efforts to support the Church in China were “wasted by others close to him,” says emeritus bishop of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen:

This Pope has done things that for China that he has not done for any other country: to no other particular Church has he written a specific letter, no country has a special Commission dedicated to it of about 30 members, from the two most important dicasteries in the Holy See. We should be profoundly grateful to him for this.

But unfortunately I have to add that often he was a lonely voice in the wilderness. I have said and I repeat: his work was wasted by others close to him, who did not follow his line. I’m not here to judge consciences: it is likely that these his advisers thought that maybe he did not know enough about the situation, who he was unable to pursue the right strategy. In any case, these people have not implemented what Benedict XVI has established as the guidelines for the Church in China.

Saying “others” I mean people in the Vatican, but also those outside who, without the help of the Holy See, would not have done so much damage.

It is a very unpleasant situation, although it shows another aspect of the personality of Benedict XVI: he is absolutely firm in dealing with the truth, but is very respectful of the people around him, very—perhaps too—polite: gentle man, who never uses force.

This is not a weakness, it is the other side of one of his great merits, kindness, respect, mercy, the exact opposite of how he has often been depicted (the “conservative”, the “panzer”, “the ‘inquisitor”, etc.)

I too at times was impatient and I felt that he was overly condescending. In recent years I have continued to emphasize this point because in China the people are very simple and easily identify the Holy See with the Pope. Instead it must be said that much of what has been done in China, is not always attributable to the Holy Father. . . .

The Pope himself, faced with events in China, always referred to the “courage.” Instead, those around him, spoke of “compassion”, “understanding”, “patience”, exaggerating and ceding ground well beyond any acceptable limits, against the majority consensus of the Commission.

Should the next pope be a nun? a group of nuns? a non-Catholic? David Mills picks apart the refrains that have typified much of the press coverage of Benedict in a column for the Pittsburgh Catholic:

Some of these supposed experts just get things wrong, like the television reporter who solemnly told his viewers that Catholics wouldn’t know who to pray to this Easter and the Protestant magazine that explained Catholics believe in “the divinity of the pope.”

For some reason journalists can make almost any mistake about the church or religion in general and no one says “boo.” No editor would hire a guy who said the Steelers were going to draft a point guard to help improve their relief pitching, but religion? There it’s “OK, whatever, just say something.”

Too true, though David holds out hope that some good will come from the coverage:

As G.K. Chesterton said in his great little book “The Catholic Church and Conversion,” the first stage of conversion is often feeling that someone’s being unfair to the church. Many people, reading this kind of thing, will feel some sympathy for Pope Benedict and his church, and from there they may find their way in. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, as Tertullian said in the second century, and the bruises of the popes may be, too.

More here.

From Charles Dickens’ essay “Philadelphia, and Its Solitary Prison,” quoted today in the Washington Post by George Will:

In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the Eastern Penitentiary: conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of Pennsylvania. The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong.

In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing. (more…)

The National Council of Churches is moving from its offices in New York’s “God Box” to a Capitol Hill office:

The National Council of Churches confirmed today that the ecumenical council will shut down its historic office on New York’s Riverside Drive, transitioning to a single office in Washington, D.C. A decision to consolidate into a single office has been expected since a report last year by an NCC Governing Board Task Force on Revisioning and Restructuring.

The NCC, once numbering hundreds of staffers, occupied three floors at the Interchurch Center in New York. Completed in 1960, the imposing granite-clad structure was nicknamed the “God Box” and dubbed the “Protestant Vatican on the Hudson” when President Dwight D. Eisenhower laid the cornerstone in 1958. John D. Rockefeller funded the project, along with the neighboring gothic Riverside Church.

The head of the NCC cites the group’s desire to focus on political advocacy:

“The critical NCC policy work can be coordinated from any location but to be the prophetic ‘voice of the faithful’ on the ground in the places of power, it is best served by establishing our operations in Washington.”

Remarkable. What was once the nation’s most prominent ecumenical body (the God Box was built primarily for the use of the NCC) is now reduced to jostling among Capitol Hill’s throngs of lobbyists. So goes a liberal Christianity more sure of its liberalism than its Christianity.

Catholic News Service reports:

The Jesuit-run Woodstock Theological Center, on the campus of Georgetown University in Washington — another Jesuit-run institution — will close at the end of June, a victim of the shrinking number of Jesuits available to staff it.

Yes, Fr. Reese was available for comment.

From an interview with Bishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, the Vatican’s highly respected former prosecutor of child sex abuse cases:

In 2004, Maciel celebrated his 60th anniversary of priestly ordination at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. All the Roman Curia went, bishops and cardinals included. The only one to stay home was Ratzinger, then the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In fact, he knew well who he was dealing with, so much so that a month later, he officially moved forward a Vatican investigation of him. It caused him enormous suffering because he was well aware of how much esteem Maciel enjoyed in the Roman Curia. However, he went against the tide for love of the truth. . . .

The policy of Ratzinger was to purify the church from its filth, but also to use mercy. He was always aware, like St. Paul, that the people of God hold a treasure in vessels of clay. The strongest image he tried to refer to was a vision of St. Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century German mystic and naturalist. She saw a beautiful woman whose clothing was ripped and torn on account of priests and their sins. That woman is the Catholic church, muddied by the sins of priests but still beautiful despite it all, desirable, and a place whoever errs can always start over, in other words a place of mercy.