Keeper of the Straight and Narrow

(3 of 4)
And then came 1968 -- annus mirabilis for the world and for Joseph Ratzinger. "Something happened," says Kung. "He was deeply shocked by the student revolts." At the time, Ratzinger was theology dean of the University of Tubingen, where Kung was a professor. "He had big clashes with his most intimate students and assistants," says Kung. The rebellion, says a Ratzinger student, Wolfgang Beinert, "had an extraordinarily strong impact" on the future Cardinal, who saw something sinister at work. He resigned from Tubingen and sought intellectual refuge in the peaceful quarters of the University of Regensburg. Ratzinger, says Beinert, who remains close to his former mentor, had been "very open, fundamentally ready to let in new things. But suddenly he saw these new ideas were connected to violence and a destruction of the order of what came before. He was simply no longer able to bear it." Says the Cardinal of that time: "I had the feeling that to be faithful to my faith, I must also be in opposition to interpretations of the faith that are not ((true)) interpretations but oppositions."

After Pope Paul VI named him Archbishop of Munich in 1977, Ratzinger found an ally in a fellow Cardinal who shared his view of the church as the bulwark against barbaric atheism and dehumanizing secularism: Karol Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Cracow and the future John Paul II. Both were members of the worldwide Synod of Bishops -- an advisory council to the Pope. In 1980, two years after his accession, John Paul asked Ratzinger to join him in Rome. The Pontiff was turned down -- twice. Finally Ratzinger laid out his conditions. He would come only if he could continue to speak his mind on matters he felt strongly about. If John Paul was ever worried that he and Ratzinger would clash over ideas, that concern has dissipated. "In fact," says Ratzinger, "we do agree completely on all essentials of church doctrine and order. We arrive at the same conclusions, and our differences of approach, where they do exist, stimulate discussion."

Since 1981, Ratzinger has infuriated liberals as the church's Doctor No. He and his staff have issued a strong public denunciation of homosexuality; privately they have warned bishops to guard against gay-rights laws. The congregation has also released a statement against genetic engineering. And Ratzinger was behind a critique that seems to have doomed prospects for a reunification of the Catholic and Anglican churches in the near future.