Pope Benedict has drawn praise from enviros for his appeals to preserve the planet. Now, in light of a child abuse stain spreading over the church from the Munich Archdiocese, one begins to wonder if the Papacy was speaking so boldly about the environment to cover up other sins.
In the words of Hans Kung, the premier German philosopher and Catholic thinker today, in a piece for the National Catholic Reporter called Ratzinger's Responsibility:
Why does the pope continue to assert that what he calls "holy" celibacy is a "precious gift", thus ignoring the biblical teaching that explicitly permits and even encourages marriage for all office holders in the Church? Celibacy is not "holy"; it is not even "fortunate"; it is "unfortunate", for it excludes many perfectly good candidates from the priesthood and forces numerous priests out of their office, simply because they want to marry. The rule of celibacy is not a truth of faith, but a church law going back to the 11th Century; it should have been abolished already in the 16th Century, when it was trenchantly criticized by the Reformers.
And that's Kung the philosopher. When he gets down to the details of the allegations, it looks even worse for Pope Benedict.
Which raises another question: Why are German philosophers, who from the time of Kant have been notoriously impenetrable to readers, so much more straightforward to read today than American thinkers?
