UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches
BY PATRICIA MILLER JANUARY 21, 2016
In the wake of the startling revelation that well over 200 boys were abused over a 40-year period in a Bavarian choir conducted for 30 of those years by the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, the brother of former Pope Benedict, many questions remain unanswered about exactly what the Ratzinger brothers knew and when.
The lawyer who disclosed the abuse after an investigation commissioned by the Diocese of Regensburg said he assumes that Georg Ratzinger was aware of what one survivor called “a system of sadistic punishments connected to sexual pleasure” meted out by Johann Meier, the head of the school that housed the choir. Less clear is what Joseph Ratzinger knew, either during his time as the Archbishop of Munich or after 1981, when he became Pope John Paul II’s right hand man as the head of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
What is clear is that Ratzinger’s tenure at the CDC, including the period which coincided with the last decade of the abuse (Meier died in 1992), was marked by an energetic punishing of his own—of liberal Catholics who challenged John Paul’s conservative orthodoxy on sexuality. Numerous theologians, priests and nuns who supported liberal interpretations of church teaching were disciplined by “God’s Rottweiler” for their transgressions.
For instance, in 1986, Ratzinger stripped renowned progressive theologian Father Charles Curran of his right to teach at Catholic universities because he held it was possible to dissent from non-infallible church teachings, especially those on abortion, contraception and homosexuality.
That same year, Ratzinger stripped Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of much of his authority after he allowed gay Catholics to celebrate mass at St. James Cathedral and allowed Catholic hospitals in his diocese to perform contraceptive sterilizations. Shortly thereafter, Ratzinger declared homosexuality an “intrinsic moral evil.”
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