Sunday, March 19, 2006 (SF Chronicle)

A Church in Search of Itself:

Benedict XVI and the Battle for the Future

By Robert Blair Kaiser

Reviewed by Gustavo Arellano

I finally gave up last spring. I had spent most of the Sundays of my life at Mass, in the comfort of St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church in Anaheim. I sat in the pews even as I investigated a sex-abuse scandal in Orange County that would eventually lead to a $100 million settlement between the Diocese of Orange and 90 victims of molestation. I kept the faith. But I finally left the church in spring. The reason: the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger by the College of Cardinals to assume the papacy after the death of Pope John Paul II. To millions of Catholics like me, the new Benedict XVI represents a step back into the darkness, away from the light of ecumenism, of giving the faithful a greater voice in running the church. Away from a church of love.

These Catholics have floundered in desperation since Benedict's election, but we finally have our gospel: "A Church in Search of Itself: Benedict XVI and the Battle for the Future," by Robert Blair Kaiser.

Kaiser, a Jesuit turned journalist, embarks on a two-pronged project and expertly interweaves both angles. One is a thorough retelling of two millennia of Roman Catholic history: the major schisms, popes, reforms and problems right up to discussions among the cardinals sequestered inside the Sistine Chapel, discussions no one else is supposed to hear.

The various maneuverings, murders and malaise Kaiser describes are enough to make any Catholic turn Episcopalian, but Kaiser remarkably and bravely maintains that the solution to the church's problems is within the church. He profiles six cardinals he believes can lead Roman Catholicism back toward the light.

Roger Mahony of Los Angeles gets praise for his emphasis on tending to the poor (along with some rightful condemnation for Mahony's atrocious handling of the archdiocese's priestly sex-abuse scandal), while Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor is applauded for his efforts to bring together the long-feuding Anglican and Catholic churches in England. Francis Arinze earns acclaim for allowing Nigerian tribes to synthesize their traditions with the Westernized Mass, while a Honduran cardinal entrusts lay people with extraordinary church responsibilities in a time when the numbers of priests are dropping fast.

Kaiser uses technical terms but explains everything in a thorough, easy-to-read style that will suit atheist and priest alike (although Kaiser is too fond of the word "autochthonous" for his own good). "When the people of God wake up to the fact that they can exercise the art of politics and remain good Catholics," Kaiser writes at one point, "changes will start to occur in a Church where they can claim ownership, and, just as important, citizenship."

But a Great Deceiver lurks within the 250 pages of "A Church in Search of Itself," and his name was Joseph Ratzinger but is now Benedict XVI (always the shape-shifter). Kaiser makes no effort to hide his disgust for the new pope: At one hyperbolic point, he writes that the then-cardinal has "wolverine rings under his eyes." When Ratzinger finally emerges as Benedict XVI to address the throngs that had gathered at St. Peter, Kaiser writes: "They had hoped for someone as wide as all outdoors. Someone like John XXIII. Instead, they got a man they only knew as narrow."

If you believe Kaiser, Pope John Paul II was little more than Ratzinger's puppet, someone whose only use was to wave to the television-watching masses; Ratzinger, meanwhile, nefariously expanded his power over the Catholic Church even as he publicly expressed no interest in becoming the Vicar of Christ. It's a bold thesis, but Kaiser nails it by merely retelling the past. As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the technical name for the office that carried out the Inquisition), for instance, Ratzinger put a clamp on the liberation theology movement in Latin America during the 1980s, a gesture that ensured that Latin American churches would once again embrace the rich and ignore the poor. And even as John Paul II made nice with other religions, Ratzinger undermined his boss in 2000 by publishing Dominus Iesus, a 2000 document that stated that "there is no salvation outside the Church."

The case against Benedict XVI is strong, but the book reads best when itinspires, not angers. Thankfully, Kaiser returns to his clarion horn to close: "We can only hope that [the battle] is stirring now in the hearts of the people. ... What will they win? A Church they can own -- a simpler Church, the kind of Church Jesus the carpenter might like to drop in on." 

Gustavo Arellano is a staff writer with OC Weekly, where he covers the Catholic Diocese of Orange.