`Ein papst aus Deutschland’

I kept switching to Deutsche Welle (DW), the German channel on cable TV, right after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope last week. What was it like for the Germans, the predominantly Catholic Bavarians especially, to have one of them become Papst Benedikt XVI? The crawler on the TV screen said ``Ein papst aus Deutschland’’ (the pope from Germany).

DW had first crack at the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, so to speak, in Ratzinger’s home town in Bavaria, Germany. Now, cookies and bread are being named after him.

DW was game enough to show tabloids with screaming headlines saying ``Papa Ratzi’’, ``German Shepherd’’, ``God’s Rottweiler’’ and something about the Hitlerjungen to which Ratzinger was conscripted in his youth.

I’ve been to Germany a couple of times. Both were journalism-related trips and the second one took us through the so-called ``Romantic Route’’ and the ``Fairy Tale Route’’ that featured castles, places in the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales and even a torture museum. A must-see was the castle of the tragic Bavarian king Ludwig after which the Disneyland logo was modeled.

Bavarians are supposed to be warmer in disposition compared with Germans from the north. Several of my mentors in college were German Benedictine nuns who hailed mostly from Bavaria. I can still name some of them. Sr. Odiliana Rohrwasser (Trigo, Algebra, Physical Science, Theology II),who is now in Baguio; Sr. Ehrentrudis Eichinger (Psychology, Theology III); Sr. Ma. Bruno Allmang (Logic, Cosmology and Ontology, Art Appreciation) who is back at their Motherhouse near Lake Stanberg in Bavaria. The librarian was Sr. Ma. Clemens Schwarzmaier. It was boot camp with a smile.



They always spoke in English so we never learned German. The famous ``Ich bin ein Berliner’’ I learned from JFK.

Shock, joy, acceptance. These were some reactions I solicited in the aftermath of Ratzinger’s election.

``When I heard his named mentioned, my heart sank,’’ said American Maryknoll sister and theology professor Helen Graham the morning after the announcement was made. She’s had little sleep since the news broke the night before, she confided.

But, perhaps to console herself and those who felt the same say, Graham reminded: ``Ratzinger’s role in the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith differed from this new role as pope which is to focus on unity.’’

Ratzinger was the late Pope John Paul II’s enforcer of orthodoxy, the one who cracked the whip in doctrinal matters. He authored the ``Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World’’ which was hugely criticized by women’s rights advocates. Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel’s maiden speech in congress last year was a stinging criticism of Ratzinger’s letter.

Graham was not entirely distraught. ``I have some hope that this new role would take him in new directions. Now he has a different agenda, a different job, which is to be a symbol of unity.’’
Interviewed by the Inquirer just before the conclave, Graham had said she ``was saddened by the opposition to even discussing the issue of women’s ordination, the stifling of imaginative theological thinking and the inability to make any change whatsoever in reproductive issues that profoundly affect the lives of women.’’

Graham is a proponent of the use of inclusive language in the liturgy.

I noticed that John Paul II’s funeral and Benedict XVI’s installation liturgies were grandly, hugely, almost entirely all-male. Even the choir was all-boys.

``I was very happy’’ Bishop Rolando Tria-Tirona of the recently devastated Prelature of Infanta told the Inquirer. ``I hope to see him put back moral, spiritual and pastoral sense in Western Europe where the church is dwindling. There has been too much relativism, a kind of wishy-washiness there.’’

In his homily before the conclave, Ratzinger had warned about relativism. Tirona added the new pope might leave his old public persona behind. ``When you are in another position you will shed your old role. You have greater perspective.’’

Tirona, head of the Episcopal Commission on the Youth, will soon meet Pope Benedict XVI at the World Youth Day gathering in Cologne, Germany. They had met briefly in the past and Tirona was impressed by Ratzinger’s aura of humility.

And what does Sister Mary John Mananzan, Germany-educated prioress of the Missionary Benedictine Sisters in the Philippines, known feminist and women’s rights advocate here and abroad, founder of the Women’s Institute of St. Scholastica’s College and one of the driving spirits behind the Ecumenical Association of Third World Women Theologians? ``The only thing I want to say is: I believe in the Holy Spirit more than I believe in my human judgment. That is why I am accepting (Pope Benedict XVI) in faith. Wala na akong idadagdag pa (I have nothing more to add).’’

Interviewed some years ago on Bavarian TV, Ratzinger was asked if he really believed the Holy Spirit plays a role in the election of the pope. His answer: ``I would not say so in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope, because there are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked. I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.’’

I agree. Only I refer to the Holy Spirit as a she.