Is it just me or does it seem to anyone else that Fr. Andrew Greeley — priest, novelist, sociologist, Catholic progressive — is mellowing in his old age? A few months ago, he was in the press defending Francis Cardinal George of Chicago against unfounded allegations of apathy on the priest abuse issue; now he’s come out swinging for Pope Benedict XVI:
"These have been rough days for the pope. It was inevitable his visit to Auschwitz would stir up complaints from Jewish spokespersons and commentators. No matter what he did or said, they had to criticize. The critics were a minority. Moreover, one can hardly blame Jews for sticking it to Christians for the long history of anti-Semitism and to Catholics for the long history of anti-Semitic popes. If I were Jewish I might be reluctant to believe the stand of the Second Vatican Council even after 40 years, especially if I had read some of the debates that preceded the endorsement of the document on anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, one would hope that they would give Pope Benedict a break.
"In a major article in the New Yorker, ironically titled "Forgiveness," the case was made that the pope has been complicit in the Holocaust because he prayed at cemeteries in which SS troops were buried and did not indict the whole German people for the Nazis’ crimes. The complaints against his failure to condemn the whole German people during his visit to Poland follow the same theme, accompanied by a picture of the pope as a frightened-looking teenage conscript in his Wehrmacht uniform.
"The Catholic Church, one must insist, is committed to forgiveness by the very words of the Lord’s Prayer. It cannot accept the notion of unforgivable collective guilt because it believes that final judgments on guilt belong to God. (Moreover, if everyone is guilty, then no one is guilty.) We pray for all the dead in hope that God’s mercy and love embraced them before it was too late — even if they were members of the SS.
"If we are good Christians, we pray for Islamic terrorists who have blown themselves up in the act of murdering innocent women and children. We should pray even for the World Trade Center assassins. We do not put any limits on God’s mercy. Do not expect this pope or any pope to condemn the Christian theory of forgiveness or embrace the notion of collective guilt."
(Nod to Mark Shea for the link.)
I might bracket out and quibble with bits and pieces of Fr. Greeley’s analysis. For example, he really ought to read Rabbi David G. Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope before making unqualified statements about "the long history of anti-Semitic popes." But for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised and cheered by Fr. Greeley’s defense of B16.
I’ve also found it interesting that, in the months since Pope Benedict’s election, more often than not Catholic progressives have been defending the Pope while those commonly thought to be orthodox (click here and here for examples) have been raking him over the coals. Is it perhaps because the orthodox were indeed expecting SuperPope?
