I love your picture Boom Boom. Here is an article that sets out the career of Cardinal Rottweiler as I remember it.
Much for which to atone
The child abuse scandals, of course, get all the headlines. But what kind of "balance" will history provide for Benedict/Ratzinger's record on the issues that matter to him most?
There can be no denying that, over the years, his scorched-earth assault on modernity and the world of ideas has left an endless trail of shattered lives and bitterness in its wake.
Let's not forget that Ratzinger did most of his damage while serving Pope John Paul II as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, from 1981 until 2005, the year he succeeded John Paul. What will history say about his antediluvian teachings about human sexuality, bioethics, and Original Sin, which have denied millions of women the right to make their own decisions about the bodies they inhabit?
What will history say about the countless gay and lesbian teenagers who continue to commit suicide because Ratzinger/Benedict has ruled that they suffer from an "objective moral [and] intrinsic disorder"?
Or the liberation theologians of Latin America, who in the 1980s and '90s lost their careers and livelihoods -- in some cases, their lives -- because Ratzinger decided that their "communist" ideas were a threat to Church authority and the Vatican's control of its flock?
Or the millions of people of other world religions, whom Ratzinger antagonized with his triumphalist declarations of Roman Catholic supremacy -- in one infamous case prompting charges of a holy war against Muslims that led to violent protests and the death of a Somalian nun?
In the spirit of fairness and balance, I am inclined to give Benedict a pass on the Vatican Bank scandal. (Well, except for the shoddy treatment of his butler, and the crocodile tears of his subsequent pardoning of the man.) But even in this case, any dispensation for the pontiff's attempts to fix a problem that has plagued the Vatican for decades must be tempered by our knowledge that a higher transparency rating tends to be good for public relations, as well as business. And Benedict, for all his bungling of the child abuse file, has always placed a high priority on good PR.
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2013/02/12/Pope-Benedict-Resignation/