Pope Journeyed From Reformer to Enforcer
MUNICH, Germany — As student unrest bristled across the campus of Tuebingen University in the 1960s, Marxist rabble rousers would burst into the classroom of Father Joseph Ratzinger, a diminutive intellectual who preferred Mozart and the writings of St. Augustine to the chaotic and changing times around him.
Some of the students heckled the priest, whistling and interrupting his theological lectures. Ratzinger had been a voice for reform in the Roman Catholic Church, but the disrespect of the students and their relentless demands unnerved him and redirected the course of his religious thinking, according to friends, priests and theologians.
"Ratzinger is a letter writer, not a man of confrontation, and he was deeply disturbed by these Marxist commandos," said Hans Kung, a fellow professor at the university four decades ago. "He was wounded internally. He felt betrayed. It was a decisive moment for him. He's timid and suspicious and he developed a complex against reforms."
Rigid morals and devotion to tradition were the central tenets that last week elevated Ratzinger from powerful cardinal to Pope Benedict XVI. Born in the mountains of Bavaria and schooled in a seminary eventually taken over by the Nazis, Benedict was swept into World War II and later forced to confront a world he viewed as spinning away from God and toward the demeaning realms of secularism and liberal politics.
Critics say Benedict's theology is barbed with troubling prejudices. Much of his conservative thinking was inspired by a determination to buttress the church against tyrannies such as fascism and Marxism. The man who once said Mozart's music "contains the whole tragedy of human existence" also equated homosexuality with an "intrinsic moral evil." He can eloquently quote St. Matthew on the suffering of the poor, yet is opposed to the use of condoms to prevent AIDS from spreading in Africa.
The new pope, however, is a man not of contradiction, but complexity, theologians say. His thinking is more nuanced than his public persona as the church's "enforcer of the faith" suggests.
The theologies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI are the same, but their personalities are different. John Paul was energetic and possessed a rustic, mystical charm. Benedict was a quiet, shy boy who grew into a timid man, but one who even critics agree is witty and pleasant, a multilingual musician who occasionally seeks out criticism.
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