Evangelicals evaluate new pope

The election of the hard-line German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope of the Roman Catholic Church is expected to continue the conservative doctrinal and moral arc of predecessor John Paul II, but some fear it may hurt chances for closer ties with non-Catholic Christians.
   
Ratzinger, 78, a close advisor of John Paul II and head of the Vatican office that enforces church doctrine, was dubbed “the great inquisitor” by his critics. But his conservative credentials brought endorsements from many American evangelicals and conservative Christians, who expect to find the new pope an ally on moral issues like homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia. 
   
“This is a reaffirmation of … Pope John Paul II’s policies in all those areas,” said Richard Land, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission president.
   
Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, came to know Ratzinger through his work with the Evangelicals and Catholics Together group. “Despite his age, I think [he] will prove to be a strong and imaginative leader for the church.
   
“John Paul II coined the phrase ‘the culture of life,’ and the new pope will surely maintain the Catholic church’s strong commitment to the sanctity of human life including opposition to abortion,” George said. “Likewise, those who are hoping that the Catholic church will admit women to the priesthood will have to wait for another pope.”
   
But the April 19 election of Ratzinger may prove to be “good news and bad news for evangelicals,” said Baptist ethicist and Vatican observer David Gushee. In a 2000 doctrinal declaration, Ratzinger defended “the truthfulness of the Catholic faith … in a way that is fairly stark,” Gushee said. 
   
The document, “Declaration Dominus Iesus,” issued by the Ratzinger-led Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, said Protestant and evangelical traditions are “gravely deficient” and “not churches in the proper sense.” Catholics alone have the “fullness of the means of salvation,” the document said.
   
“So the prospect for evangelical dialogue looks a bit different if he retains that line,” said Gushee, professor of moral philosophy at Union University, in Jackson, Tenn. “On the other hand, dialogue does not require the sacrifice of one’s tradition.”
   
In a mass at the Vatican the day before he was named pope, Ratzinger denounced postmodernism, adding, “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” He praised Catholics who are labeled fundamentalists for “having a clear faith based on the creed of the church.”
   
“What he’s going to come down strong on is absolute truth,” predicted Frank Ruff, a Catholic priest in Kentucky who has served two stints as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ official liaison to the Southern Baptist Convention. “He is going to follow the principle of John Paul II on that.”
   
George said Ratzinger will “strongly uphold the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ and biblical truth in many disputed areas. There are, of course, many important areas of difference that still remain and will likely do so for the foreseeable future, perhaps until Jesus returns.”
   
However, “I believe Pope Benedict XVI will reach out to Christians of all denominations because he takes seriously, as John Paul II did, the prayer of Jesus in John 17, ‘May they all be one, O Father, as You and I are one, so that the world may believe.’” (ABP, TAB)