On May 25, Holy Cross Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh or Fr. Ted as he prefers to be called, will be 93 years of age. Apart from macular degeneration, which requires that everything be read to him, he is as mentally sharp as ever.
And on June 24, he will observe the 67th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood in the Congregation of Holy Cross.
In an article written last spring, Marco Politi, Vatican correspondent for the Rome newspaper La Repubblica, suggested that Benedict XVI's pontificate can now be broken into two halves: before and after the storm created early last year by the pope's lifting of the excommunications from the four schismatic bishops, one of whom is a Holocaust-denier.
I have recently been described in a couple of media outlets as a "frequent critic" of Pope Benedict XVI. Many readers of such comments might assume that I have a longstanding bias against the pope. But there is a substantial paper trail to the contrary, especially in this weekly column.
The situation in the Catholic church is similar to the situation we find today in U.S. politics. In both realms, there is a significant group that is disaffected.
The story I am about to tell provides yet one more indication of why so many good Catholics are demoralized these days -- apart, that is, from the ongoing sexual abuse crisis that has reached recently even to the papacy itself.
In mid-March John Allen, the National Catholic Reporter's senior correspondent and long-time expert on Vatican affairs, published an article that pitted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, formerly Archbishop of Munich and Freising (1977-82) and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1982-2005), against his current persona, Pope Benedict XVI.
The gist of Allen's insightful article is that there has been a great transformation of Joseph Ratzinger's attitude toward the sexual-abuse crisis from his years in Munich and most of his years in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and his last few years in the congregation and his years in the papacy.
Because of the dramatic outbreak of sexual-abuse cases involving priests in Germany as well as in Ireland, Austria, and Switzerland, the scandal and ensuing crisis have suddenly become a European problem as well as an American problem, with concerns now being expressed even about the administrative record of Pope Benedict XVI when he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1981.
Having all of my columns readily available on my Web site (www.richardmcbrien.com) -- back to the first column published for the week of July 8, 1966 -- has been a boon to my own personal research, especially today when I am preparing to write yet another column to mark the church's central feast of Easter.
I am indebted to Nathan Mitchell, a colleague at the University of Notre Dame and a liturgical scholar of the first rank, for most of the historical details in this column.
Holy Week, as everyone knows, is observed during the final week of Lent, with its liturgical climax at the Easter Vigil and then on Easter morning itself.
Sandra Schneiders, a Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, California, has recently published an extensive study of Religious Life as a prophetic life form in National Catholic Reporter's online edition Jan. 4-8.
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