Is Benedict XVI really Innocent III?

Published by The National Herald, May 6, 2005

The College of Cardinals voted. When the white smoke cleared, the Church of Rome had a new Pope, Benedict XVI. The first German elected Pope since 1523 and the intellectual heir to the theological rigidity of John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger took the name of a saint Catholics regard as the Patron Saint of Europe.

As Orthodox Christians we should have a very deep interest in knowing the new Bishop of Rome. We must understand what he means for the future of the relationship between the two principal branches of the Christian faith.

Greek Orthodoxy and Latin Catholicism have been engaged in a struggle, sometimes violent and sometimes diplomatic, for almost 12 centuries. Pope Leo III cemented a political alliance with the Frankish King Charlemagne by crowning him in 800 AD. This action gave the Bishops of Rome the military, not spiritual, power to assert their claim to supreme authority over all Christians.

The theological differences between Rome and the Patriarchates of the East have been minimal; they are only pretexts to power. Since that fateful coronation, wars were fought; mutual excommunications exchanged; a great city destroyed; and hatreds grew so deep that all attempts at reunification failed.

In fact, Greeks fought religious wars against Catholic Europe, but mostly nationalist wars against Muslims. The sad truth is that Muslim conquerors oppressed the Orthodox much less brutally than did Catholic Europe. The fault lines between Orthodoxy and the Church of Rome have been the fault lines of Europe until the present day.

The Western Church views John Paul II as a great leader destined for sainthood. Eastern Christians should remember him as the man who attempted to make the infamous Cardinal Stepinac of Croatia, the architect of religious extermination in the Balkans during World War II, into a saint. The Orthodox leadership could not reject the Pope’s offer to return a few relics by appearing ungrateful, but we were never able to convince John Paul II that Rome’s efforts to convert Orthodox Christians remains the principal obstacle to Church unity.

We should examine what is known about the new Pope, Benedict XVI, to give us an indication of his attitude towards the Orthodox.

Benedict told cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel for his first Mass as Pope: "This successor of Peter knows he has been entrusted with the task of working to reconstitute the full and visible unity of all the followers of Christ." The assembled Catholic leadership understood that this meant unity under the authority of Rome.

Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, has written that Catholicism is the only true religion. He has absolutely every right to express his opinion, but he did this while his ecclesiastical superior, Pope John Paul II, was trying to reach out to other faiths. In 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger, in his capacity as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (previously known as the Holy Roman Inquisition), wrote a letter allowing American Catholic bishops to deny Holy Communion to politicians who favor abortion rights, thus permitting the imposition of Roman Catholic doctrine on U.S. law to become an obligation for Catholic Americans.

A few years ago, when the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted in the United States, he said a media conspiracy was to blame. "I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign," he told reporters in Murcia, Spain in 2002.

The then Cardinal’s Vatican office, which was in charge of reviewing cases of priests charged with sex abuse, treated the accusations as an anti-Catholic conspiracy. Recently, attorneys in Texas filed a lawsuit accusing the new Pope of conspiring to cover up the alleged sexual abuse by priests in the United States.

In fairness, the new Pope’s drives to crack down on religious pluralism and challenges to traditional teachings on issues such as homosexuality, and calls to ordain women as priests are not alien to Orthodox tradition. "Being an adult means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today’s fashions or the latest novelties," he said.

Like all Roman theologians, however, his insistence that the teachings of the Church are constant and unchanging does not stand the test of history or of consistency.

Pope Benedict XVI remains adamantly opposed to a married priesthood, for example. Let us ignore the fact that, until the Ninth Century, Latin priests in Western Europe could marry without objection from Rome. Today, as a way to bring Orthodox Christians under the sway of Rome, the Vatican hypocritically permits so-called Uniate priests to marry because this facilitates the conversion of Orthodox Christians.

The current Catholic doctrines banning all birth control (except the "rhythm method") and defining life as beginning at conception, as well as the doctrines of Papal Infallibility and the Immaculate Conception, are all 19th Century modifications of the faith imposed largely to assert the authority of the Pope.

But the new Pope also may have been giving a signal to Orthodox Christians when he selected his new name as Benedict. Vatican history points to St. Benedict as the inspiration for establishing the Order of Cistercian (now Benedictine) Monks in medieval Europe.

The Cistercians were the great break with the monastic traditions of the original Church still preserved in Orthodoxy. They provided the spiritual leadership for the Crusades and supported or condoned the massacres of Orthodox Christians, as well as Muslims and Jews, in Jerusalem during the First Crusade, and the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Knights of the Hospital and the Knights Templar, who led campaigns against both Muslims and Orthodox in a happily non-discriminatory fashion, were all Benedictine monastic orders.

In 1204, another Pope, Innocent III, a powerful advocate of the authority of the Papacy, assented to the sacking of the City of Constantinople by the lords and knights of the Fourth Crusade. Mesmerized by the offer of "submission" of the Greek Orthodox Church - at the point of a Frankish spear - Innocent III pardoned the Crusaders for attacking Christian cities rather than trying to liberate Jerusalem from the Saracens - disturbing historical parallels abound between 1204 and today. The Eastern Roman Empire was in disarray. A corrupt ruling family, the Comnenoi, had mismanaged the Empire’s defenses. The Emperor had even outsourced the Greek fleet (Rumsfeld take heed) to the Italians. He lost the confidence of his army, and of his people, and the Imperial City fell easily to the Crusaders. The subsequent destruction so weakened Greece that, within 250 years, it lacked the strength to defend itself against the Turks.

The Orthodox Church is wracked with internal discontent. Arab Orthodox have turned against Greek. Our faithful continue to display a lack of confidence in their hierarchy. Catholicism no longer wages armed war against Orthodoxy, but it still threatens our Church in scores of fields.

Will Benedict XVI be the next Innocent III and lead a new assault on Orthodoxy? Time will tell.

The Hon. Ambassador Theros served in the U.S. Foreign Service for 36 years, mostly in the Middle East, and was American Ambassador to Qatar from 1995 to 1998. He also directed the State Department’s counter-terrorism office and holds numerous U.S. Government decorations.



Volume 7 Number 19 - Tuesday, May 10th, 2005	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY