NEWS STORY: New Pope Electrifies Conservative U.S. Catholics

c. 2005 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ If conservative American Catholics had any reservations about who the next pope might be, those fears were largely put to rest when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday (April 19). Ratzinger, who policed Catholic doctrine for a quarter-century, is as orthodox as they come, […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ If conservative American Catholics had any reservations about who the next pope might be, those fears were largely put to rest when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday (April 19).

Ratzinger, who policed Catholic doctrine for a quarter-century, is as orthodox as they come, and many conservatives are thrilled to have a kindred spirit sitting in the chair of St. Peter.


After last year’s tumultuous presidential election in which the left and right battled over what it means to be a “faithful” Catholic, conservatives expect his papacy to answer those questions in stark black and white.

“I think it electrifies the faithful Catholics, the churched Catholics, those who would believe in tradition and objective truth,” said the Rev. Terence Henry, president of Franciscan University of Steubenville, an outpost of traditionalism in Ohio.

Benedict is, in other words, a fellow soldier in the fight against the “culture of death” who will take up Pope John Paul II’s call to rebuild a “culture of life.”

“In their view, he’s leading the way with a clear-cut Catholic identity,” said Jim Fisher, co-director of the Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University. “They can claim a mainstream identity now. They’re claiming the center, the heart of the church.”

At the same time, others caution against using the new pope as a template to draw the lines of what it means to be Catholic, or setting expectations too high.

The tendency to see the Vatican as preoccupied with the United States, after all, is a phenomenon that is not restricted to liberals who push for church acceptance of married priests, gay rights and embryonic stem cell research.

But clearly, conservatives take heart in a new pope who has condemned the “dictatorship of relativism,” homosexuality, religious pluralism and a secular drift in the Western world.


Inside the Catholic Information Center, a chapel in downtown Washington run by the conservative group Opus Dei, a small plaque reads “Pray for our Pope, Benedict XVI,” under a stained-glass window of Opus Dei founder St. Jose Maria Escriva.

“People who find church teachings hard want them changed,” said Louis Luccheti, 36, a practicing Roman Catholic who often attends services at the chapel. “Those who are looking for it to be easier, (for the pope) to be a radical individual, for those people he’s not their man, but it doesn’t matter.”

The chapel’s director, the Rev. William Stetson, said people who expect Benedict to offer easy answers to hard questions will be disappointed.

“The people who want a church whose constitution is democratic, that we should choose our priests, archbishops, cardinals … that church already exists,” Stetson said. “It’s called the … Episcopal Church.”

In Benedict, conservatives see not only an ally, but also one of their own, a believer in the same Catholic orthodoxy that is often dismissed as narrow-minded, old-fashioned or puritan.

“He’s just not afraid to be strong and we need someone to be strong,” Jacqueline Halbig, a Roman Catholic in her 30s, said after the Opus Dei Mass. “He’s absolutely committed to the truth. He’s loving … but he’s not going to water it down to make it sound palatable.”


Brian Saint-Paul, editor of Crisis magazine, a Washington-based conservative monthly, said conservatives also see someone who has endured the same popular caricatures that have been placed on them.

“They know he isn’t the jackbooted theological stormtrooper that he’s being described as in the media,” Saint-Paul said.

The tug of war for the soul of American Catholicism reached a fever pitch in last year’s presidential election, when Democratic Sen. John Kerry, a Catholic, came under blistering criticism for his support of abortion rights.

Sensing an opportunity, Republicans aggressively courted Catholic voters. Conservatives, with the help of several outspoken bishops, mounted an anti-Kerry backlash, listing abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, stem cell research and cloning as “non-negotiables” for “faithful” Catholics.

Ratzinger, as head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, provided reinforcement from Rome, telling American bishops that politicians who support abortion rights may be denied Communion.

While Benedict clearly shares conservatives’ concerns, Saint-Paul cautioned against putting them at the top of his agenda, or mingling those issues too closely with politics.


“It’s a big mistake to take someone like Benedict XVI and assume he is going to agree with the Republican Party 100 percent of the time,” he said.

It may also be too much to take the conservatives’ agenda _ whether Benedict shares it or not _ and make it the center of Catholic faith, said Leslie Tentler, director of the Center for American Catholic Studies at Catholic University in Washington.

“If the Catholic right has suddenly become the magisterium, they have a very strange notion of what’s most important in Catholic tradition,” she said.

“These things don’t tend to figure into the Nicene Creed _ nothing about stem cells in there.”

MO/PH END ECKSTROM

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