People in glass houses should not throw stones. Or, the
person who is without sin casts the first stone. Lastly, a house divided cannot
stand, at least in the long run. Yet houses are so rarely as fundamentally
divided as the one in which I grew up. Regarding religious institutions,
theological differences can be allowed to blow up into major, life-threatening
disputes, or papered over by sins of omission pertaining to just how deep a
fissure goes. Conflicts, in other words, can be exacerbated or mollified,
depending on the temperaments.
On February 7, 2018, Joe Ratzinger, a former pope of the
Roman Catholic Church, wrote a letter pertaining to a multi-volume book on the
then-current pope’s theology. Reading from the letter at the book’s
presentation the next month, Dario Vigano, the prefect of the Vatican’s
communications office, said that Benedict, the
former pope, confirmed that Francis, the current pope, had a solid
theological and philosophical training and that the book showed the “interior
continuity” between the two papacies.[1]
This “left the impression that the 91-year-old retired pope had read the [book]
and l endorsed it, when in fact he hadn’t.” The retired pope had not read the
book!
The full essay is at "Two Living Popes White-Washed."
1. Nicole Winfield, “Vatican Bows to Pressure, Releases Retired Pope’s Letter,” Religion News Service, March 18, 2018.
