Benedict wants to blame the 1960s for the sex abuse problem. He doesn’t address how this explains the sex abuse which began decades earlier and was enabled by the widespread corruption and perversion already entrenched in the episcopate before the 60s. The man who abandoned his post now praises the work of Francis and wants the faithful to look the other way.
One friend on Facebook tried to explain Benedict’s actions as a criticism of Francis, although Benedict closes the essay with this gem:
At the end of my reflections I would like to thank Pope Francis for everything he does to show us, again and again, the light of God, which has not disappeared, even today. Thank you, Holy Father
Another friend observed that Benedict was subtly contradicting the Francis approach to things.
However, I’m of the mind that Ratzinger was a big part of the problem. He was a periti at the council, he was a major influence on the new theology, he was the right hand man to JP2 for all those years, who presided over the greatest collapse in the Church since the Arian crisis, and when it was his own time to make the tough decisions as Pope, he quit. (All this having been said, I don’t deny the good he did with SP and the lifting of the unjust excommunications).
If he’s having a crisis of conscience, it doesn’t indicate that he truly understands the nature of the problem (which is not pedophilia). If he truly understands the problem, why not use these last days of your life to come clean about it all?
I think the truth is that he’s a man of the council, and it’s easy for him to praise other men of the council (like JP2 and Francis) because he more or less does agree with them, except perhaps in style or prudential methods, and that he’s been living in denial for the last 50 years (as have most clerics), and that doing an about face and recognizing the rot that existed in the hierarchy before the council (which Leo and Pius foresaw and warned of), would involve such a total abandonment of everything he’s believed for his entire adult life that he simply cannot do it.
Which is sad.
Here’s the essay:
