We will have to wait until November before the English version of a biography of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is available, but the book by Peter Seewald is already generating controversy. Benedict says his writings have been misrepresented beyond recognition, so much so that it has devolved into a “malignant distortion of reality.” Worse, attempts to silence him have been ongoing.
Sexuality and the life issues are what angers his most vociferous critics. That’s because they touch on the most sacred ground coveted by secularists. “One hundred years ago,” Benedict says, “everybody would have considered it to be absurd to speak of a homosexual marriage.” The same goes for “abortion and to the creation of human beings in the laboratory.”
What is most distressing are the attempts to silence Benedict. His critics want him to stay in a retirement home and watch TV. But he won’t cooperate. Those who do not accept gay marriage, he notes, must be prepared to suffer the consequences. “Today one is being excommunicated by society if one opposes it.”
“Modern society is in the middle of formulating an anti-Christian creed,” Benedict says, “and if one opposes it, one is being punished by society with excommunication.” This should be quite a book.
