On the morning of February 11, 2013 I was pulling into the parkade where I worked at the time. I had just received a text message from my mother telling me of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Before I got out of my car to go to work, I immediately looked up the age of Cardinal Walter Kasper on my iPhone. His 80th birthday was three weeks away and he’d be 80 before the conclave started. I felt a huge sigh of relief come over me. Did the Pope wait this long intentionally so that Kasper could not have been eligible? In his last book he talks about how he had decided to resign in the summer. Did he wait until February to announce this so that Kasper would not become Pope? We can only speculate.
Recently American Catholic author George Weigel was on Catholic Answers Focus which is a podcast show put on by Catholic Answers. I’ve read a few of Weigel’s books in the past and I’m anything but impressed. Weigel tries to take his personal beliefs and smear them all over Catholic doctrine. He is a huge fan Pope John Paul II and his successor Benedict XVI. Pope Francis? Well, that’s a bit of a story. Weigel’s ideal Catholicism is that of Pope John Paul II, whereas mine is that of Pope Pius IX. Those are two very different visions of the Church.
Back to the radio show, Weigel was talking about his new book The Fragility of Order. I haven’t read this book but I think I’m going to since Weigel seemed to talk a lot of sense in that interview. He points the finger at the German bishops and says that they haven’t been preaching the Gospel in the last 50 years. Weigel couldn’t be more correct. Germany is a disease in the Catholic world and their bishops have way too much influence. Cardinal Kasper is probably the most prominent of these bishops and Cardinal Marx is right behind him.
Now, some of the German bishops tend to fall in line with what Weigel wants the Church to be. These would include Cardinal Mueller and Cardinal Koch. Cardinal Mueller was one of the only bishops to condemn the “reformation” during the 500th year anniversary when he said that it wasn’t of the Holy Spirit. Cardinal Koch opposed much of the nonsense that Kasper is promoting.
Regardless, the Church in Germany is in trouble. This makes sense as well. Germany has never been an ally of the Catholic faith. This is the land of Hitler, Bismarck, Karl Marx, Luther, and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. In addition to this, Germany has often terrorized Catholic countries like Poland and France.
As you can probably tell by my last name Ruhl, I come from a German background. My ancestors left Germany in the 1750’s and moved to the Volga region of Russia. However, my identity is in Christ, not in some ethnic heritage. My Catholicism is maternal since my Mom’s family is from Poland and Western Ukraine.
The bishops in Germany essentially want the Catholic Church go completely succumb to modernity. They want it to be no different than the Church of England, the Lutheran Churches of Germany or Scandinavia or some other European Protestant Church that’s on life support. To his credit, Weigel strongly opposes this and I stand by him in his condemnation of these people. Where we disagree is in the answer. He says Pope John Paul II and I say Pope Pius IX. I do hope and pray that before he passes from this life, he realizes how wrong he was in this regard, no matter how smart he may be in other areas.
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