The counsel of Trent

Damian Thompson says that the new Pope wants to promote the Latin Mass — and radical purification

Benedict XVI is the first pope in history to have gone about his daily life as a Catholic priest wearing a collar and tie. In this country, the practice is almost unknown; in Europe, it is the mark of a liberal theologian. But the other day the Catholic Herald printed a photograph of Fr Ratzinger dressed like a businessman that dated from 1977, long after his supposed conversion to hard-line conservatism. Apparently Ratzinger, as a professor at Regensburg, was merely following university convention. Even so, it’s a revealing detail, suggesting that, despite shared roots in folk Catholicism, Benedict’s intellectual history has little in common with that of John Paul II. The latter spent most of his academic career in a Catholic ghetto; Ratzinger numbered many Lutheran and Reformed colleagues among his friends, and admits that they shaped his own theology.

John Paul was a conservative who employed radical methods — foreign travel and the cult of personality — to enhance the authority of his office; he also produced many fat teaching documents that his clergy invariably described as ‘wonderful’ and always intended to get round to reading some day. Benedict is a conservative radical who has the potential to shake up the Catholic Church with the vigour that Margaret Thatcher shook up her party (though the analogy should not be pushed too far: he is on record as saying that ‘democratic socialism’ is closer to the Gospel than free-market capitalism).

This could be one of the most successful pontificates in the history of the Church. Then again, it could be a disaster. Everything depends on how long Benedict lives and on whether he has the nerve and skill to push through a programme of ‘purification’ — his own word, and one that sends an anticipatory shiver down the spines of liberal Catholics.