HONEY, I SHRUNK THE CHURCH. It seems as if Pope Benedict XVI is really out to prove his philosophy that he's willing to accept a smaller, but more loyal flock for the Roman Catholic Church. Among the loyalty tests -- aside from the traditionally misogynist stands against women in the priesthood and reproductive rights for women -- one rarely discussed appears to have roiled to the surface: acceptance of Western civilization and culture as superior to all others.

Yesterday, as his Brazilian sojourn drew to a close... reports Raymond Colitt of Reuters, [Benedict said]:

[Brazil's indigenous people] had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity, he said.

... Particularly telling is reaction of Brazilian Indians who are Catholic, as well as the priests who minister to them. "The Pope doesn't understand the reality of the Indians here, his statement was wrong and indefensible," Father Paulo Suess, who runs the Brazilian church's advocacy group for the indigenous, told Colitt. "I too was upset."

The Utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbus religions, separating them from Christ and from the universal Church, would not be a step forward: indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past." (quoted in comments to Stan's post)

Pope Benedict And The Buddhism/Masturbation Controversy
(Originally posted at http://chinamatters.blogspot.com on September 26, 2006)

Pope Benedict's recent scuffle with Islam, including his non-apology-characterized by Middle East observer Abu Aardvark as "that time-honored classic 'I'm sorry that you got angry when I called you fat'" dodge - has highlighted his confrontational stance toward other faiths.

A column by Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian makes a case for his hostility toward Judaism and Buddhism as well.

In the process, Bunting retails the notorious statement made by Benedict while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, purportedly equating Buddhism with masturbation.

Buddhist Channel reported that the full quote, delivered in an interview with L'Expresse in 1997, went like this:

"If Buddhism is attractive, it's only because it suggests that by belonging to it you can touch the infinite, and you can have joy without concrete religious obligations,'' Ratzinger said. "It's spiritually self-indulgent eroticism.''

Other outlets cut Cardinal Ratzinger some slack, opining that "auto-erotisme", the term used in the original article, could more accurately translated at "self-love" or "narcissism".

Actually, auto-eroticism is an English-language term coined by the sexologist Havelock Ellis to describe mental or physical sexual activity not directed toward a sexual partner. It was later picked up by Freud. Cardinal Ratzinger knows his Freud. He considers Freud an originator of the secular spirit he detests, and entitled one of his major pronouncements on the decadence of Europe "Europe and its Discontents"- a play on Freud's Civilization and its Discontents.

In this case, I assume Cardinal Ratzinger employed auto-eroticism as a term of art, using a modern term for the sinful, non-reproductive sexuality abhorred by the church to condemn a kind of shallow spiritual gratification that he considers futile, degenerate, and dangerous to the soul.

So, although the Pope was not referring to Buddhists as masturbators, they can find little consolation in the awareness that what he really meant is that he was dismissing their spiritual exercises as pathetic and contemptible.

In any event, Benedict's hostility toward non-Catholic faiths is a matter of public record. Religions that have felt the lash of his disapproval include Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Anglicanism.

In 2000, the National Catholic Reporter published a list of Cardinal Ratzinger's greatest hits, including a money quote from the same L'Expresse interview:

"In the 1950s someone said that the undoing of the Catholic church in the 20th century wouldn't come from Marxism but from Buddhism. They were right."

Reportedly, at the time Cardinal Ratzinger was incensed that there were allegedly more Frenchmen studying to be Buddhist monks than Benedictine monks.

As the Catholic Church's top doctrine cop - running the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a.k.a. the Inquisition - he also ordered a German Benedictine monk, Willigis Jager, a.k.a Zen master Ko-un Roshi, to cease and desist from all public statements and activities promoting dialogue between Catholics and Buddhists.

Beyond strict demands for doctrinal conformity and acknowledgement of the Catholic Church's unique role as interlocutor between humanity and the one true God, Pope Benedict's worldview is apparently militantly Euro-centric. Europe, in the Pope's view, is a creation of Catholicism and the implication is that Catholicism without Europe cannot survive.

There was speculation that Cardinal Ratzinger chose his papal title not to commemorate Pope Benedict XV, but to honor St. Benedict, who founded the Benedictine order and is credited with saving Catholicism from extinction in the European Dark Ages.

The Pope considers Europe to be Catholicism's home turf, under assault from alien faiths and lazy tendencies toward syncretism (literally "Cretan towns forming an alliance" according to my Webster's, but figuratively speaking a meaningless mishmash).

Islam at the gates of Europe is Pope Benedict's particular bugbear.

The Pope's perspective - in which Catholicism is inextricably bound to its European matrix - has a creepy clash-of-civilization vibe and his recent statements criticizing Islam were undoubtedly a conscious "stay outta my yard" challenge to the demographic, social, and political encroachment of Islam into Europe.

In the lament on decadent, faithless Europe that he coauthored - Without Roots - Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

Hmmm…"a growing decline in its ethnicity". I don't think he's referring to a shortage of good Vietnamese restaurants in Rome.

Pared to the bone, the Pope's attitudes look a lot like racism cloaked in theology.

Reuters reported on an interview Cardinal Ratzinger gave to Le Figaro in 2004:

If Pope Benedict is going to be busy re-fighting the crusades in Europe and the Middle East and reliving the glories of the Inquisition, he's not going to have a lot of interest and energy in dealing with Buddhism except as a competitor for the hearts, minds, and souls of the parfit knights of his Caucasian Round Table.

Indeed, since he is wrapped up in his theory that European civilization is uniquely Catholic, he seems ready to write off the rest of the world - at least those parts with "great cultural protagonists", as he termed them, such as East Asia and South Asia - as spheres that are innately Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu.

It will be interesting to see how the Roman Catholic Church fares in China under Benedict's reign.

Comments:

Some commenters on Peking Duck made the point that it's understandable that the Pope should have the right to speak his mind. And if he believes that Buddhists are (doctrinal) jerk-offs, well, free speech doesn't stop at the Inquisitor's door.

A few thoughts.

The Pope believes his is the one true faith, qualitatively different from all others.

That's his right, even his duty. It's the cornerstone of his faith.

He can also trash other religions, not only as inferior in doctrine and rigor but also false paths to salvation.

No problem.

But he's also the head of a religion that claims not only to profess the true Word of God, but also to serve as God's instrument on earth, and provide the means of human salvation that is not only unique but universal ("Catholic).

It's a test of his leadership - and God-given duties as Pope - to put points on the board for the Catholic Church worldwide, and not just in the European homeland.

Pope John Paul II, who shared many of Cardinal Ratzinger's views including, presumably, revulsion at Buddhism, understood that his job was to condone inter-faith dialogue so that the Catholic Church could claim to encompass the good points of other religions and, at the same time, assert its superiority in the critical matters of revealed truth and salvation.

Benedict XVI, on the other hand, appears to have made the dubious decision that other religions have to be discredited en toto so that Catholicism is the last faith standing.

It's an understandable position for an Inquisitor to take.

It's the necessary stand for the leader of an embattled sect, which is how Pope Benedict sometimes appears to regard himself.

But it is not a viable position for the leader of a global church that considers itself not only unique in truth but infinite in its understanding and universal in its scope.

Tearing every other religion (and for good measure, secular humanism) to their foundations so that the deluded turn to the true faith would be a tough job even if the Savior appeared in person to do the job. For fallible men and a fragile church to attempt it by themselves is simply beyond their capacity.

So instead of engaging in a multi-millennial argument with Islam, Buddhism, and every other religion that won't be decided until the true God shows up to settle accounts, I think the interests of the Catholic Church and the world would be better served if Pope Benedict decided his faith could be most effectively protected and propagated by looking for good in the hearts of Buddhists, Muslims - instead of making remarks easily construed as deriding them and their religions.