The historian: “Some might think that he wants to take a weight off his conscience”
VATICAN CITY. “TOI admire his humility and his courage, but I don’t think Ratzinger did well, for him and for the Church, to express this attempt at a radical cleansing of his own conscience. As a man who was Pope he should not have gone so far in manifesting his intimate and personal sense of guilt: it risks remaining an ephemeral gesture “. In any case, it now remains to be understood “whether in the Church everything will remain the same as before with regard to the scourge of pedophilia, or will we know how to grasp the turning point that this request for forgiveness can give”. It is the reflection of Franco Cardini, historian and essayist specialized in the Middle Ages and Christianity, on Benedict XVI’s mea culpa for sexual abuse in the Sacred StanzAnd.
Professor, why are you so hard on the Pontiff emeritus?
«I am of the opinion that certain very heavy personal problems should be resolved within oneself, in confession for a believer. And this also applies to the Holy Father“.
Because?
«I have no doubts about Ratzinger’s good faith, but I am convinced that this constant pouring into public opinion even the contents of intimate, more delicate things, is then translated into a feeling of due sentiments and words. Even a pontiff can run into excessively rigorous introspection. There will be those who will think that Benedict “plays” with the request for forgiveness to remove a weight from his conscience. Stop”.
So do you think it would have been better to keep quiet?
“Beyond the admirable effort to point out one’s own mistakes, even if they are serious, I think one should also be more cautious towards oneself. This is a time that leads a little too much to the easy publicity of the private sector and I do not know how positive this is, even in the Church. Ratzinger is well aware that the Munich report has left a shadow, and I don’t know to what extent his externalization will be able to erase these obscurities. But I understand that over the years the weight of past sins can weigh. And the media pressure that exploded after the Munich dossier can weigh.
Don’t you think that, having held positions of responsibility up to the throne of Peter, it was only right to apologize?
«It is difficult to answer with a noyes or no. We all agree that pedophilia is a big scourge of our society and of the Church, and that for too long in the Sacred Palaces few prelates can say they are completely innocent: connivance, indifferent, cover-ups, cover-ups. On the other hand, I am doubtful about the usefulness of certain forms of attempted radical cleansing of one’s conscience. I would not like it to run into an exaggeration to appease the media emphasis“.
But does it save anything of Ratzinger’s letter?
“Certain. The frankness, the sinceritya, repentance not only for what has been done, but also for what has not been done. Also because the sin of omission is often underestimated. And here Ratzinger gave an extraordinary lesson in humanity and humility. And I admire his willingness to lead by example. But I remain of the idea that his mea culpa has a different specific weight from those of his predecessor “.
What do you mean?
“It was St. John Paul II, who cannot be accused of weaknesses even on a character and personal level, who started the cleansing of memory, apologizing on behalf of the Church for the misdeeds that members of the same Catholic Church have committed in previous centuries against the human race, against natural law, against human coexistence. Someone approved these apologies, others accused him of not having been precise enough, there were those who argued that he should have insisted more on the Shoah, on the Crusades, on the crimes of the Holy Inquisition. But that Pontiff was anything but naive ».
What do you mean?
“Lhe knew well that launching the initiative to cleanse the memory and ask for forgiveness was a double-edged sword: on the one hand it represented maximum openness, maximum loyalty; on the other, it could only seem like a ploy for cclose with the uncomfortable past. Instead, for Wojtyla he had to imply that it was not enough, that there had to be a positive follow-up. What do we do now? Do you follow me? Or everything remains as it was before? Few in the hierarchies, faced with the charism of Pope Wojtyla, dared not to commit themselves to change things for the better in quegyou aspire to them “.
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