The Religious Consultation
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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 4, 2005 Ratzinger photo
serves as memento of visit to Rome, not hero
worship
People often display images of their heroes. That's not what's happening here. Standing next to Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal, is Maguire's son, Tom. He's wearing a Milwaukee Brewers shirt and holding chocolate he happened to be eating at the moment of the encounter in St. Peter's Square in 1986. You may already know that Daniel Maguire is a former Catholic priest and a longtime professor of moral theology at Marquette University. He's made news with his pro-choice views on abortion
and assisted suicide, support for same-sex
marriage and ordination of women, encouragement
of free thinking, and disdain for the religious
right. Thanks to tenure, he has survived attempts over the years to oust him from Marquette. So you can imagine this 74-year-old unabashed liberal is not thrilled with last week's selection of Ratzinger to be Pope Benedict XVI, any more than he was a fan of John Paul II. It's hard to pick one point of contention because there are so many. It bothers Maguire that Cardinal Ratzinger has written about other world religions being inferior. So when he says now that he will reach out to them as pope, it comes off more as imperialism than ecumenism. He's trying to look on the bright side, though. In a letter published in The New York Times last week, Maguire wrote: "The elevation of the ultraconservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papal chair should signal Catholics that it is time to stop looking for a savior shepherd and instead start thinking for themselves." Maguire loves telling the story about meeting Ratzinger. He and Tom - who is now 29 and a Muslim who is raising a family and studying in Cairo - had just seen the pope in the square. Suddenly there was Ratzinger. Maguire asked if he could snap a photo of him with Tom. "But of course," Ratzinger replied in English. Then he asked Maguire if he was enjoying his pilgrimage to Rome. "Oh, yes," Maguire responded, "especially because I'm a Catholic theologian." The smile ran from Ratzinger's face. Considering this layperson in front of him, he asked, "A theologian?" "Yes, my name is Daniel Maguire." "What?!" Ratzinger sputtered. "You are Daniel Maguire?" He glared at Maguire, possibly recalling the name from the high-profile effort Maguire led with another priest to get Catholics to ignore the 1968 encyclical from Pope Paul VI condemning the use of birth control. "This is my son, Tom, who is named for Thomas Aquinas," Maguire said. Ratzinger said, "Maybe someday he will be as great a theologian as Thomas Aquinas." "Could be," Maguire shot back. "He's already beginning to ask some great questions." Maguire later sent a copy of the photo to Cardinal Ratzinger, which he figures has been in "his file" in Rome for years now. He enclosed a note thanking Ratzinger for helping to hammer out the reforms of the Second Vatican Council before taking such a sharp right turn in his views. And he offered to get together some time to kick around some ideas on theology. No reply ever came. We sat in Maguire's living room as he told this story. I noticed a wilted Easter lily but not a single religious image or crucifix. Maguire said he doesn't believe Jesus died for our sins and called it heresy that makes God look like a sadistic monster. Jesus died for standing up to the unjust and exploitative Roman Empire, he said. "That's drama enough for me," he said. You get the idea how far apart his theology is from the new guy running his church. That's OK, he said. Faith is not about rigidity or forcing everyone at every point in history into the same set of beliefs. If it were, we'd still be skipping meat every Friday and getting behind the church's historic support of slavery. Rock-solid truth as professed by religious conservatives is overrated, he believes. It's grounded in fear, especially the fear that liberalism will lead to society's disintegration. "The truth is always something we're working toward. Our grasp on it can be improved," Maguire said. Try telling that to the holy man in the photo. From the April 24, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel |
The
new pope looks down on Daniel Maguire from
a photo on the wall at his east side home.