Re: [Marxism] New Pope hated 60's campus activism

[Lance Murdoch <lancemurdoch@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 4/24/05, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> NY Times, April 24, 2005
>
> Turbulence on Campus in 60's Hardened Views of Future Pope
>
> When he arrived at Tübingen in southern Germany in 1966, he was widely
> viewed as a church reformer, a man who wanted to open the church up to
> dialogue with others in the world.
> [...]
> The experience of the student revolt seemed to confirm
> every suspicion that Father Ratzinger already nurtured about liberalizing
> tendencies and the hidden germ of totalitarianism lurking within
> revolutionary movements.
> 
> "Marxist revolution kindled the whole university with its fervor, shaking
> it to its very foundations," he wrote of the atmosphere at the university,
> which, like many others in Germany at the time, was rocked by a student
> rebellion against authority.

Ratzinger was a reformer, who was very involved in the Vatican II
reformations and was still a reformer when Vatican II ended, although
he may have had a limit to what he wanted done.  This is probably more
well known to conservative Catholics than the left.  His reaction to
the movements of the 1960's caused him to change course.

I forget who said "1968 was 1848 - with television", but Ratzinger
can't help making me think of Pope Pius IX, who was pope from 1846
until 1878.  Pius IX was elected by the modernist faction of the
cardinals.  He was a modernist pope originally, but then 1848 happened
and turned his world upside down.  After that he had papal
infallibility declared (which didn't exist before him), and called
Vatican Council I to rubber stamp his Syllabus of Errors which
condemned socialism, communism, liberalism and so forth.

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