the Chief Inquisitor

John L. Allen, Jr's Pope Benedict XVI (N. York: Continuum, 2005) is a remarkable book. It was first published in 2000 under the title Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith. The book is thus a biography of Joseph Ratzinger before he became Pope, a critical, though balanced biography. The author is a Catholic, American journalist with liberal leanings. As the title of the original edition of the book suggests, Joseph Ratzinger is portrayed as the Chief Inquisitor of the Catholic Church. Indeed, before becoming Pope Ratzinger was for more than twenty years the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican curia formerly known as The Inquisition.

I have the feeling that the book was written with the intention of disqualifying Ratzinger as a candidate for the papacy. Reading the book in this perspective, it seems to me that Ratzinger was actually a very good choice. It is clear that the author views the Church as a this-world institution which should adapt herself to the demands and fashions of time and culture, such as recognizing gays' rights, allowing abortion, and ordaining women priests. On the contrary, the Pope sees the Church as the guardian of a set of universal and eternal beliefs, values and principles which the Church should uphold even at the cost of being unpopular.

Between these two contrasting views, I tend to fall on the Pope's side, not the least because I admire the Pope's courage to be unpopular. This is in my view the most important feature of a true intellectual, which is what Ratzinger is. Contrary to most previous Popes who did their careers mainly as priests, Ratzinger was a priest only for a short period of his life. He did his career mainly as an academic theologian. This is the Pope that the Church needs - a doctrinaire. I believe he will be remembered as one of the most important Churchman of the last several centuries as he is trying to put the Church where the Church really belongs, as an other-world institution.