Sir, - The question mark in the heading "Deserving of being called blessed?" on Patsy McGarry's article on the beatification of Pope Pius IX (News Features, September 2nd) is appropriate. The Old Testament paradigm "an eye for an eye" contrasts starkly with the "love your neighbour" and "turn the other cheek" of the New Testament. The actions of Pius IX after 1850 towards Jews in Rome and the dictatorship of the Syllabus of Errors in 1864 only underline the validity of the headline query. As a political ruler, most people would oppose his views and actions. The "very brief outline" of his life distributed at Masses in Dublin whitewashed his reign. By contrast, Pope John XXIII exemplified the New Testament.
Last week, the publication by Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, of the Declaration Dominus Iesus upset other Christian churches by baldly stating that they had defects and were not proper churches. For those of us who were at Catholic schools in the 1960s, this type of statement is quite familiar. The Catholic Church has always insisted that in matters religious, it has a monopoly on the truth. No false modesty there! As Leanda de Lisle points out in the Guardian (September 7th), this monopoly is the singular reason why the Catholic Church proclaims that its teachings alone must be followed.
After 2,000 years of history, the Church's learning curve remains remarkably flat. Over the centuries popes have justified, with great confidence and certainty, torture, burning of heretics, suppression, forced con versions of colonial peoples and the castration of choirboys. At various times the church has forbidden usury, limb amputation, kidney transplants and even smallpox vaccination. These examples and more are listed by Father Joe Dunn in his book No Lions in the Hierarchy (Columba Press 1994.)
The Catholic adoption of the 19th-century trimmings of papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception did nothing for Christian unity and are likely errors. Pope Pius IX may be blessed, but it's not obvious. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Bill Tormey, Glasnevin Avenue, Dublin 11.