The Battle for Enlightened Thought: A Cry Against Authoritarianism

1. Unfortunately when we review history we realize that the battle for enlightened thought is a constant battle against those who would control the lives of others. We fail to realize most of the time that we have been living in a small microcosm of history that has more downs than ups, more devastation and war then peace and more exploitation than elevation of mankind. Our current run at moving up the evolutionary scale has stopped and we are headed down for a while, if not forever.

2. The selection of Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI disheartened me greatly. Any sign that the church was going to come down on the side of humanity rather than authority has vanished. One of the last chances for a moral voice to salvage mankind from his own hand will not be there. Indeed, we may see the end of the Age of Enlightenment in my time. Am I not overreacting, you say? I think not.

3. This is a man who we know was raised in Hitler�s Germany. Even though he denies any affiliation with it he expresses through his history of dogma driven authoritarianism. It is said that he was turned from a moderate liberal (whatever the that is) to a conservative by student demands for equality and the right to question authority while a faculty member of University of T�bingen. His reaction appears to be a fear based view that saw the disorder of change in the sixties as comparable to the conditions of economic and cultural chaos feared by the establishment with the rise of Bolshevism. Much of the justification for the barbarism of the Nazis was the threat that the Bolshevik driven trade unionism posed to the established order of wealth.

4. While denying any affiliation with Nazism, he reflects that same reactionary dictatorial style to the concept of the masses having a voice in their own fate. In 1981 Ratzinger was appointed by John Paul VI as the head of the Doctrine of Faith. As his pro George Bush Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club (yes there is such a thing www.ratzingerfanclub.com ) gleefully states: �As 'Grand Inquisitor' for Mother Rome, Ratzinger kept himself busy in service to the Truth: correcting theological error, silencing dissenting theologians and stomping down heresy wherever it may rear its ugly head -- and, consequently, had received somewhat of a notorious reputation among the liberal media and 'enlightened' intelligentsia (ironically sic) of pseudo-Catholic universities.� The truth seems is only available to theologians and American Presidents.

5. Ratzinger's criticism of modernity, atheism, other forms of Christianity (�deficient�) and other world religions demonstrates a fear and prejudice of things outside of his experience as inferior. This prejudice is made of fear of the unknown, the uncontrollable, like the human spirit. Benedict�s view is to pluck out the offending eye, to make the church smaller, more orthodox, exclusionary and to fight the heretical ideas of free thought and action. If he was an isolated anachronism in the world that would be one thing, but he represents another converging river of power concentrated on authoritarianism in the world.