The Blunt Hard-Liner at Pope John Paul's Side

In a 1995 interview, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Catholic Church's doctrinal czar, was asked to describe what Pope John Paul II meant when he said the third millennium would be a "springtime of the human spirit." Ratzinger sketched the pope's hopeful vision that, after two millenniums of division, the third millennium would be one of unity among peoples and religions, in which the entire human family would come together to build God's kingdom.

Then Ratzinger added dryly: "At the moment, I do not yet see it approaching."

That in a nutshell captures the difference between John Paul II and the Bavarian theologian who has been his intellectual guru since 1981 and who is back in the headlines this week with a new critique of feminism. The pope and Ratzinger -- head of what is known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is, effectively, the successor to the Inquisition -- share a basically conservative stance on most issues that constitute the culture wars in the West.

Yet John Paul II plays the part of Ronald Reagan to Ratzinger's Pat Buchanan; the pope is optimistic, cheerful, brimming with confidence, and Ratzinger is less sanguine about the movements of history. Whereas John Paul sees a church on the brink of expansion, Ratzinger believes Christianity must become smaller in order to be faithful.

This frank realism may explain why Ratzinger, who ironically started out as a liberal reformer at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, has been dubbed the "Panzer-Kardinal" by the German press. He is not one to apply a polite gloss, as the world saw anew on July 31 with his "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women."

The letter pulls no punches. "Radical feminism" has promoted a climate of hostility between men and women, it argues, and has led women to deny or play down their distinctive maternal and nurturing instincts. It has also spread confusion about gender that promotes tolerance of homosexuality. The alternative vision, according to the letter, is "the collaboration of men and women," meaning differences between the sexes should be seen as complementary rather than competitive.

Feminism is merely Ratzinger's latest target. Since John Paul II tapped him as the church's top theologian in 1981, he has been the driving force in several other battles: