Turbulence on Campus in 60's Hardened Views of Future Pope

TÜBINGEN, Germany, April 23 - For all Pope Benedict XVI's decades as a Vatican insider, it may have been the crucible of a university town swept by student radicalism in the late 1960's that definitively shaped the man who now leads the Roman Catholic Church.

During his Bavarian childhood under the Nazis, Joseph Ratzinger became convinced that the moral authority based in Catholic teachings was the sole reliable bulwark against human barbarism, according to friends, associates, and his biographer, John L. Allen Jr.

But while his deep reading and thinking in theology, philosophy, and history were fundamental to development as a theologian, it was the protests of student radicals at Tübingen University - in which he saw an echo of the Nazi totalitarianism he loathed - that seem to have pushed him definitively toward deep conservatism and insistence on unquestioned obedience to the authority of Rome.

Before he arrived at the university, he had spent most of his time writing books and teaching in the Catholic theology departments of several German universities. His growing reputation was enhanced by the prominent role he was said to have played at the Second Vatican Council called by Pope John XXIII in 1962 to formulate doctrines for the church in the modern world. (It was concluded three years later, under Pope Paul VI.)

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.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/international/worldspecial2/24ratzinger.html?ei=5088&en=a9a55501e27a3b4a&ex=1271995200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&position=

"... totalitarianism he loathed ..." but "... unquestioned obedience to ... authority ..."???

He's the Robert Bork of the Vatican. :puke: :puke:

180* opposite of his.

arbitrary power!

in the Church.

Oh wait. No he didn't. :eyes:

The fundies want a mulligan for the 60s.

And what did he think about when he masturbated if he indeed did masturbate? Did he think/know it was a "sin" before and afterward? If we asked him these questions, do you think he would tell us the truth?

Should people that claim to have never had sex at all dictate anyone else's sexuality or sexual behavior? (Not for me, no way, no how.)

Will I be condemned to hell for simply asking these questions?

The Pope apparently essentially wrote that people don't have the "right" to masturbate.

It's no wonder the world is so messed up.

Twisted, unnatural authoritarian doctrines result in widespread sexual repression, guilt, and subsequent perversions such as pedophilia and other abnormal psycho-sexual fetishistic illnesses.

The second paragraph below from the posted article is, IMO, like someone that was trying to add up some numbers but got the wrong sum because he was not aware of a few numbers that were supposed to be added into the equation:

In a book-length interview published in 1985 titled "The Ratzinger Report," he used a rigorously argued line of reasoning to support a doctrinal position that reverberates outside the church. He condemned abortion, contraception, homosexual relations, sex without marriage, "radical feminism" and transsexuality. The wrongness of those ideas all arise from the separation of sexuality from motherhood and marriage, he said. That leads to procreation without sexuality and "biological manipulation" of births that "uncouples man from nature," he said. People then become just another product in the world.

"It logically follows from the consequences of a sexuality which is no longer linked to motherhood and to procreation," he said, "that every form of sexuality is equivalent and therefore of equal worth." It is only logical, then, that self-gratification becomes the point of sex. And it follows that all forms of sex - including homosexual - become equal and considered "rights."
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Dude may reason rigorously but he does not reason well. This is straight from Fat Tony Scalia's Guidelines for Freeper Logic and Constitutional Interpretation through Bible Study. First of all, it is unnatural to NOT have sex, like catholic priests and popes (allegedly) don't have "sex", for most warm-blooded creatures on earth, including most humans. Masturbation is sex. Isn't the Pope really saying that he, and we, do not have the "right" to masturbate, because it is a form of sex not linked to motherhood and procreation?

I'd reckon that 99.999% of the people in the world that can masturbate, do masturbate. If self-gratification is not usually the point of masturbation, can someone tell me what is?

The generally accepted orthodox catholic view of sex appears to me to be some kind of twisted and unnatural wackiness.

Believe whatever you want, but if you believe lies, and if you lie to yourself, and if you must lie to yourself, please don't let your self-deception affect my freedom or my sex life.

I'm not gay, but to be honest, I really like sex, and I no longer wish to procreate. And I am going to continue to have sex without the possibility of procreating. And I am pretty darn sure that there is nothing wrong in this.

This argument against gay marriage, and against sex in general, is really nuts, it is full-on crazy. Unfortunately, the proponents of this craziness are having a profound effect on many people's lives by not only depriving them of the equality and liberty guaranteed to them by our Constitution, but also by deceiving others into a handicapping prison of guilt about something that they have no reason in heaven or earth to feel guilty about.