Emory University News Release

Release date: 21-Apr-05
Contact: Elaine Justice at 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

Emory's Bianchi Comments on Pope Benedict XVI, Church Future

Photo: Reuters

As the world recognizes the election of Pope Benedict XVI, millions of the faithful also are looking to the future of the church under his papacy. The following Emory faculty are available to discuss current and future issues anticipated for the church and its newest pope.

Gene Bianchi, (pronounced Bee-AHN-key), professor of religion emeritus and a long-time Catholic scholar at Emory University, has this reaction to the election of Pope Benedict XVI:

"On the positive side, it bodes well for us elders that someone is able to take on the job of being pope at 78," says Bianchi, who retired from Emory's faculty in 2001, but continues to teach part-time and serve as head of the university's Emeritus College.

"I think Benedict XVI will continue John Paul II's stance against war and violence; he will probably side with the causes of the poor of the earth, and he will be for human rights," says Bianchi. "But right away we have a problem. His view about the use of condoms will have to change if he doesn't want to condemn millions to death by HIV/AIDS, especially in the Third World."

In general, says Bianchi, Pope Benedict XVI will represent "more of the same" with regard to intra-church reform. "He will likely continue the clericalism that rules the Roman Catholic Church." Bianchi is the co-editor of "A Democratic Catholic Church," a collection of essays by leading theologians and religion scholars on needed restructuring of the church.

"At deeper levels, Pope Benedict XVI's past moves do not augur well," says Bianchi. "The core of the problem is a kind of humble hubris in which cardinals and the pope have the answers and the modern 'secular' world does not. It is a sort of dualism that says: We are the holy ones; you are secularists. Come to us for answers.

"It is almost the opposite stance from one of the great documents of Vatican Council II, on the church and the modern world," says Bianchi. "In that document, the church must learn from and serve the world as well as try to teach."

Bianchi, a former Jesuit, is the co-author of "Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits." He can be reached at 404-712-8835 or releb@emory.edu.