British journalist and author John Cornwell — whose book Hitler’s Pope could be said to be the felix culpa that launched such fine defenses of Pope Pius XII as Hitler, the War, and the Pope by Ronald J. Rychlak and The Myth of Hitler’s Pope by Rabbi David G. Dalin, and who blasted John Paul II in his last days with the book The Pontiff in Winter — has now turned his spotlights on Pope Benedict XVI.
Although he cannot resist a mean swipe by speculating unfairly on the possible hidden portents of a child frightened at the prospect of meeting the Holy Father, Cornwell seems astonished that Pope Benedict is not the metal-ball-rolling, hard-eyed Grim Rottweiler that Everyone Who Knew Anything about Pre-16 predicted him to be.
"First indications were ominous. Within a week of the papal election, Tom Reece [sic, Reese], editor of America, the leading US national Catholic journal, was sacked (for alleged unorthodoxy); Sister Lavinia Byrne, a former Catholic nun known for her espousal of women priests, was disinvited from a Catholic speaking engagement in Australia; and a senior Jesuit professor withdrew a theological work from his publisher fearing it was too critical for the new regime.
"As it happened, these were precipitate acts of self-policing rather than sweeps of a hard new papal broom. Seven months on there is still no sign of the purge. In the view of William Rees-Mogg, writing in The Times last week, Benedict is even happy to endorse the validity of Darwinian evolution (provided, of course, God is seen as its ultimate architect), thus distancing himself from the rabid creationist Christian right. As Pope, Benedict XVI is indeed looking complex if not exactly progressive."
