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Acta Theologica
versión On-line ISSN 2309-9089
versión impresa ISSN 1015-8758
Acta theol. vol.32 no.2 supl. Bloemfontein dic. 2012
Reflection on the theology of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
James Corkery
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Milltown Park, Dublin. E-mail: email@example.com
This essay looks at ways in which the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, shows affinities with Reformation theological thought. Following a brief look at the background to my own interest in Ratzinger, I present some important features of his theology, shedding light on it particularly through drawing attention to those theological figures in the Christian tradition, Augustine and Bonaventure, who have influenced him the most. A brief treatment is then offered of how these theological forefathers are reflected in his work and, following this, Reformation "flavours" shown to have been present in his writings are traced, briefly, through examining three areas of his thought: ethics, his theology of political life, and ecumenism. The purpose of the article is to indicate, in an incipient way for an audience largely of the Reformed tradition, that Ratzinger is not as distant from their theological concerns as might easily be imagined.
Keywords: Joseph Ratzinger; Reformation/Reformed; Faith and works; Catholicism/Catholic; Theology
Trefwoorde: Joseph Ratzinger; Reformasie/Gereformeerd; Geloof en werke Katolisiteit/Katoliek; Teologie
An address that I was fortunate to have the opportunity to give to the Professors and students of the Faculty of Theology at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, in July 2011, forms the background to this article on the theology of Joseph Ratzinger and its affinities with Reformation thought. Occasioning these reflections also is the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962, which has led to a sprouting of conferences and commemorative lectures throughout the world - in Roman Catholic circles in particular. Joseph Ratzinger has been vocal, indeed controversial,among the Council's main interpreters and much interest has developed in his theological views and in the main factors influencing them. Among these are his German origins, his upbringing and education in the land where the Reformation began, and his professorial work in Catholic theological faculties in several German universities side by side with colleagues in parallel Protestant faculties. Even a superficial glance at his writings leaves no doubt that this German-born theologian, whose "theology has always been in intense conversation with the Reformation traditions" (Neuhaus 1998), exhibits an interesting affinity with themes and concerns that are important to the Churches of the Reformation. My purpose here is to try to highlight some of these themes and concerns and thus indicate how this theologian, who is currently head of the Roman Catholic Church, is closer than one might expect to the heritage of the Reformation. A rhetorical question that is sometimes posed in English to indicate a lack of surprise is: "is the Pope Catholic?" But here I am asking: in what sense might the Pope be Reformed?!
A biographical snippet might be helpful at the beginning. Over twenty-five years ago, in 1984, while trying to find a thesis topic for my licentiate degree in theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., I discovered an article by Erich Schrofner on grace and experience in Rahner and Boff. It stated that, while traditional theological treatments of grace - and even the theology of grace of Karl Rahner (1904-1984) - had had the individual as their main point of interest, the Brazilian Leonardo Boff's theology of grace was marked, in a way that was, up to then, unknown in Catholicism, by the broader themes of history and society (Schrofner 1980: 272-278; Corkery 2005:49). Attracted by Boff's emphasis (due to my own perception that many situations of sin and grace had obvious corporate dimensions), I wrote a licentiate thesis on the social-structural dimensions of grace and "dis-grace" in his theology and published the results of this study in a subsequent article (Corkery 1995).
While I was writing, Boff fell foul of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which issued, in 1985, a Notification on his book, Church, Charism and Power (1981), signed by Joseph Ratzinger, its Prefect. Boff's book was about ecclesiology, not theological anthropology (my main interest), yet the Notification did lead me to examine the Congregation's writings on liberation theology, above all its 1984 and 1986 Instructions. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote an article presenting (and defending) the "anthropological vision" of the latter, and I read that too (Ratzinger 1988). It was a short step, after that, to looking at his own anthropological vision; and this - with a consideration of his approach to salvation added - became the topic of my doctoral dissertation. The added soteriological focus was important
because Ratzinger had expressed concern that, in liberation theology, a rather materialist anthropology and a too-immanent notion of salvation went hand-in-hand (Corkery 2005:50)
and I wanted to see if this view could be upheld - or called into question! So my entry into his theological world was not born of some eirenic desire to bring together two conflicting streams in Roman Catholic theology but rather to get a handle on a very important "conversation" about salvation and humanity that was occurring in the church and in theology at the time.
Through my reading of Ratzinger, I quickly noticed how his dissertations in the 1950s on Augustine (354-430) and on Bonaventure (1221-1274) cast a good deal of light on his opposition to theological approaches that conferred primacy - or at least "equiprimacy" - on praxis (Ratzinger 1986(b):47-49, 72 and Corkery 2005:50, 2009(b):195-196). Ratzinger has always been uneasy about an emphasis on praxis, above all by liberation theology, with the Marxist background in its understanding of this term, and he cautioned, ever since he was a very young theologian, against the mentality that the future is "makeable" that he considers to be characteristic of the second phase of modernity, the so-called phase of technical rationality, with its arrogant attitude that we have it within our human power to build the future (Ratzinger 1969:34-39).
Ratzinger's doctoral studies in the ecclesiology of Augustine and his Habilitationsschrift on the theology of history of the "medieval Augustinian", Bonaventure, lent a flavour to his theology, from the outset, that made it sceptical of any human contribution to human well-being and aware of our utter dependence on God for all things. This awareness, echoing the story of Augustine's own journey as he described it in his Confessions, a book that Ratzinger cherished since his earliest days as a student (Ratzinger 1998: 49), meant that he was always uncomfortable with an emphasis, typical of the "age of progress" (the 1960s) in which he lived as a young theologian, on the idea that we - sinners in need of God's mercy at every moment - could do anything without the help of God. If we were to make any progress at all, such progress would be a gift, not a product of the "making" capacities of the over-confident, arrogant "man of the future" (Ratzinger 1969:36-37, 1970:81-83). A polemic against such a mentality of "making" ("makeability") runs right through Ratzinger's theology, conscious as it has been from the beginning that being a receiver is the hallmark of Christian existence (Ratzinger 1964:1157, also Schindler 1987:270). All of these emphases indicate, surely, an affinity in his thought for many of the central concerns of the Reformers, and of Martin Luther in particular. This affinity, disputed by few, is noted by several. Some years ago, Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor in New York who became a Roman Catholic in 1990,1 heard the melody of the Reformation text simul iustus et peccator sounding in the writings of Ratzinger and saw also the influence of the Reformers' sola gratia. He detected a degree of convergence between his thought (also Pope John Paul Il's) and "the cardinal points of the Reformation" that he suspected might even surprise the two of them (Neuhaus 1987:32-35). As we delve more deeply into Ratzinger's theology, we shall see that, certainly in his case, Neuhaus was not so wide of the mark!
Joseph Ratzinger, born in 1927, had completed his doctoral and Habilitation dissertations by the age of thirty and found himself an expert advisor (peritus) to Cardinal Frings of Cologne at the Second Vatican Council while still only in his mid-thirties.2 Like most Roman Catholic theologians at that time, Ratzinger looked with high expectations to the Council's aftermath, but these expectations had their own distinctive flavour. This is evident from his writings that emerged very soon after the Council. Writing in the Irish pastoral journal, The Furrow, in 1967 - this was a talk that he had given the previous year at the Katholikentag in Bamberg - he let it be clearly seen that the aftermath of the Council was not delivering what he had been hoping for from that great event and his dissatisfaction with developments since its completion was based on theological sentiments that would not be alien to Christians of Churches of the Reformation, as we shall see.
Recalling, at Bamberg, how the Council had sought to give a more positive formulation to the relationship between the world and the Church (in its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes) than had hitherto been the case in the Roman Catholic Church, Ratzinger noted that there was much at stake in this intention and he indicated that, on the theological level, it had led to a development that occurred in two phases: what he called "the incarnatory phase", in a first move, and "the eschatological phase", in a subsequent unfolding (Ratzinger 1967:15-16). Of the first he became quite critical, for while it may have given rise "to a humane, vital, outgoing Christianity, an Incarnation-oriented Christianity" that enabled a joyful embracing of all that was good in the world, it overlooked - as was soon noted by theological reflection (Ratzinger does not specify whose!) - that
the idea of the Incarnation by no means enjoyed that absolute pride of place in the Scriptures which it was now coming to assume in Catholic spirituality (Ratzinger 1967:16).
Ratzinger pointed out that it was with profession of faith in the Resurrection that Christian faith began and theological reflection had then extended back
firstly to emphasis on the word of the historical Jesus (the Synoptics) and finally to emphasis on the idea of the Incarnation (John) (Ratzinger 1967:16).
Thus incarnation had come last, not first, in New Testament thinking and seeing it "as antecedent to the idea of the Resurrection, which in turn is inseparable from the idea of the Cross" (Ratzinger 1967: 16) was a late New Testament development. Recognition of this, Ratzinger said, restrained "that joyous outgoing approach to the world which came from thinking purely in terms of the Incarnation" (Ratzinger 1967:16) and it is clear from his talk that he welcomed such restraining and anything that further supported it. It is surely congenial to Christians of the Reformed traditions that much of his nervousness about an Incarnation-centred Christianity came from his view that, in the emphasis it was being given, it lacked Scriptural backing and that Ratzinger favoured an emphasis on the paschal mystery - on the Resurrection, and on the Cross that is inseparable from it - not least because it was his view that this enjoyed a better foundation in the Scriptures. Thirty years later, according primacy to the Scriptures was still prominent in his mind: "If we are theologians and believers, we listen first to what the Bible says" (Ratzinger 1997:187).
There were other reasons also, close too to the Reformation's heart, for Ratzinger's particular viewpoint. One could have seen these by examining his earlier writings on the relationship between the divine and the human (envisaged in terms such as: grace and nature, Church and world, or the sacred and the secular). In 1961, writing on nature and grace, he had already taken a line in relation to the human - to our created reality - that took account of the Reformed critique of the over-optimistic approach to nature characteristic of Catholic theology (drawing on its Thomistic heritage). This line he had inherited from his Munich professor and mentor, Gottlieb Söhngen. As I pointed out in my 2009 book on Ratzinger:
Söhngen's writings on the analogy of being and the analogy of faith sought to do justice to Karl Barth's critique of a superficially-held optimism about nature that liked to base itself on Thomas Aquinas's positive concept of nature. Söhngen had attempted to hold fast to the biblically-based seriousness of the Reformed critique, while at the same time not giving up the claim of creation-faith, which Catholic theology expresses in a yes to the ontological dimension. Ratzinger said that he would follow the same basic direction (Corkery 2009:45; see also Ratzinger 1973:161).
He did. It is not surprising, then, that as the Council and its aftermath struggled with finding the correct balance between a theology of the incarnation and a theology of the Cross, Ratzinger placed his theological support decidedly in the latter space. This was not only in evidence in his 1966 talk at Bamberg; it lay at the heart of his celebrated book, Introduction to Christianity, delivered as lectures in 1967 and published shortly afterwards, making him famous due to its enormous international success (Ratzinger 1969). His fellow German theologian and colleague, Walter Kasper, praised in particular the two christological chapters of this book, pointing out that, in them, Ratzinger had succeeded in delivering a variety of valid new christological interpretations, among which (Kasper mentioned) was his drawing out of the dynamic of the theology of the cross in contradistinction to a one-sided and static theology of the incarnation. Nor was Kasper the only one to refer to the Cross-orientation of Ratzinger's theological work. Another reviewer, Hubertus Mynarek, writing in the same place, made the same point (Kasper 1969:184, also Mynarek 1969:182).3
Thus, as Ratzinger's thinking unfolded, it became clearer that his theological leanings were very close to what he had referred to as "the eschatological phase" in his Bamberg talk. His emphases on closeness to the Scriptures and attentiveness to the Reformed critique of human nature were joined to other Reformation-congenial emphases also, which more or less naturally followed on from the two already mentioned. Foremost among these was the centrality of conversion in Christian life (Ratzinger 1987 and 1973(b):70). Knowing that as creatures we owed everything to God and - above all, as sinners - that we stood as "beggars" (Augustine) before him, Ratzinger was always deeply conscious that we could do nothing to help ourselves (Ratzinger 1973(c):123 and Corkery 2009:38-39). Without "help from outside" (Ratzinger 1985: 81), we were doomed because the "compass" of nature, so smudged by the history of sin, could no longer be steered by with confidence in our search for the right way to live (Corkery 2009:41-42). Thus, for Ratzinger, the grace of God had to be, first and foremost, healing because our concrete humanity was, first and foremost, sinful. This has always been his emphasis. Hence, for him, grace does not so much build on nature created "good" (pace Aquinas and an optimistic tradition of "elevating grace") as reverse it (following a more sin-aware tradition rooted in Augustine). The discontinuities between nature and grace and the fact that the latter is much more a healing than an elevating divine gift are obvious, given our condition (Corkery 2009:44). And, again taking guidance from his mentor, Gottlieb Söhngen, whose approach to the relations between grace and nature stays close not to the Thomistic side of the medieval Scholastic tradition but rather to the Bonaventurian (and Augustinian), Ratzinger's theological anthropology follows broadly in the same line (Fiorenza 2005:61). It seems evident to me that this emphasis places him (and Söhngen before him) markedly closer to the Reformation than to Thomas (and certainly to the various "Thomisms" that succeeded him).
These emphases in Ratzinger's theology of grace cause him to be decidedly christocentric. The "help from outside," the help that we cannot give ourselves but that we need if we are to be restored to what God intended us to be - relational, for others, following the pattern of Jesus' own life - can only come from Jesus Christ. He is "all relationship, all 'exodus', all self-outpouring love" (Corkery 2009:42). Only he, "as the being-of-relation par excellence, the 'exemplary' human, can lead us back to love" (Corkery 2009:42).4 He alone points the way back to God, re-placing us on the road to our true humanity. Ratzinger's focus here is entirely christocentric (echoing Bonaventure in particular, as I have said). The route to be taken is the paschal one. The way of grace does not bypass sin and forget the Cross. In earlier writing, I put it like this:
With Jesus Christ, the second (or 'last') Adam, the head of a new humanity, a new incarnation begins (Ratzinger 1969:211, 1966:60). He is not some special case of the human being but rather the exemplary human being in whom God's intention for humanity fully comes to light (Ratzinger 1969:175-176). He is the restored image of God (Ratzinger 1979:47), 'the revelation and the beginning of the definitive mode of human existence' (Ratzinger 1987[b]:187), the complete answer to the question 'what is the human being?'
(Ratzinger 1995:48). In him, the second, the definitive Adam (1 Cor. 15: 44-48; Col. 1: 15), we are shown what it really is to be human; and we see that, with creation - the first Adam - a preliminary sketch, a rough draft, was given, which means that we are beings en route, not yet ourselves, but transitioning to what we are to become, as this is revealed in the second Adam (Ratzinger 1995:48-49).
Here suddenly 'the Easter mystery, the mystery of the grain of wheat that has died' (Ratzinger 1995:49) appears in our midst, Ratzinger says, because it is only by entering upon Christ's wheat-grain existence, upon his path of dying and rising, that we will reach the goal revealed in him. The paschal mystery, the life-pattern of the last Adam, must be our life-pattern too; for it is the authentic mode of existence of every human being (Ratzinger 1995:49 in Corkery 2009:43).5
The path of the Christian will be the same as that of Christ: walking the paschal way, bearing the Cross, dying to self. Conversion and being forgiven reveal themselves as central; this is the Christian way. Ratzinger's emphasis on these - on the Cross of Christ and on grace understood fundamentally as healing - is extremely significant; and it is not the typical emphasis of many Roman Catholic theologians. It is closer, rather, to Reformed theology. This should not surprise because Joseph Ratzinger, as a university professor in Germany, has, for many years, plied his theological trade side-by-side with colleagues from neighbouring theology faculties on the Evangelical-Protestant side; I think of Bonn, Munster and Tubingen especially, covering the ten-year period from 1959 to 1969 (Corkery 2009:64). He is very knowledgeable about, and quite sympathetic towards, Martin Luther (Ratzinger 1997:159).6 It has been said that, without his profound involvement, the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification would never have been achieved.7 So, by now I hope I am beginning to show you some of the ways in which Ratzinger may be deemed a Reformation-friendly theologian - and why. I shall make this a little more visible in the remaining parts of this paper by, first, looking just a little more at his theological roots and their effects. Then, drawing on his Reformation-echoing polemic against works, I shall explore the influence of this on: (1) his approach to ethics and to living the Christian life; (2) his manner of handling the relationship between politics and theology, as this revealed itself in his disputes with liberation theologians in the 1980s; and (3) the way in which he deals with the matter of the unity of the Christian Churches (and "ecclesial communities", as he would surely add in his all-too-careful manner!).
In an article after Ratzinger's election as Pope, a former student of his, the North American, Francis Fiorenza, referred to an early essay by him on nature and grace in which he had taken the line (thus Fiorenza)
that the focus upon grace perfecting nature should not overlook the cross of Christ and should not neglect that grace also challenges and stands in critique of nature (Fiorenza 2005:61).
Towards the end of the essay, Ratzinger had attempted a brief synthesis. In it he pointed out that that which is genuinely human in us, while it was
completely extinguished in no one, was also unadulteratedly present in nobody, but rather had become 'pasted over by the dirty covering that Pascal once aptly called the seconde nature of the human being' (Corkery 2009:45 drawing on Ratzinger 1973:178).
Here he was pointing to our twilight character: still bearing the image of God from our creation, on the one hand, yet this image had become utterly marred and obscured, on the other hand. As such it needed reversal, transformation. But even if it did not, Ratzinger, following Bonaventure, might still have remained cautious about ascribing too much to it. This is because Bonaventure, lacking the creaturely optimism of his colleague, Thomas Aquinas - although in his writings he did attempt to accord a certain excellence to human nature (Ratzinger 1963) - found himself nervous of over-ascribing to nature what might properly be due to God and tended, in the end, towards a certain collapsing of nature into grace for fear that he might otherwise be guilty of eclipsing the divine at the expense of the human (Ratzinger 1963:495, 1973:173).
Thus Bonaventure pulls back from ascribing excellence to the human and prefers to emphasise instead human dependence, indebtedness and nothingness.9 The interesting thing is - these same emphases are found also in Ratzinger (as they were in Augustine): we are beggars, receivers, capable of very little. Avery Dulles pointed to Ratzinger's Augustinianism when writing about the Extraordinary Synod of 1985, which Pope John Paul II had convened to assess the achievement of the Second Vatican Council on the twentieth anniversary of its ending. Of two schools of thought present at the Synod, Dulles said, the first, "supernaturalistic" in viewpoint, tended "to depict the church as an island of grace in a world given over to sin;" he called this outlook "neo-Augustinian" (Dulles 1988:191). Dulles spoke of those who had this supernaturalistic outlook as considering that the world had fallen under the power of the Evil One, that collaboration with it was less to be recommended than taking a stance against it and that the Church had become contaminated by the world in the years following the Council (Dulles 1988:191). It is not difficult to recognize these sentiments in Ratzinger, who responded as follows to a question about "restoration" that was put to him in the year that the Extraordinary Synod took place:
If by 'restoration' is meant a turning back, no restoration of such kind is possible...But if by restoration we understand the search for a new balance after all the exaggerations of an indiscriminate opening to the world, after the overly positive interpretations of an agnostic and atheistic world, well, then a restoration understood in this sense....is altogether desirable and, for that matter, is already in operation in the Church (Ratzinger 1985:37-38).
This is a typical Ratzinger response. The world contaminates. Purification, about-turn, de-contamination are needed. Today he says that Europe needs this because what Europe is experiencing is ultimately a crisis of faith. With Augustine, Ratzinger sees sin, ultimately, as loss of faith in God (Corkery 2009:39, 147). Faith is its antidote, fides purgans, faith that purifies, converts, turns us towards God and away from what is ungodly. It is a gift, un-manufacturable by us, bestowed through encounter with Jesus Christ. It is through encounter with him, not through any efforts of our own, that we are purified, forgiven, freed. This is Joseph Ratzinger at his best. But does it not also echo Luther's (and Calvin's) repudiation of the doctrine of salvation by works and does it not echo, furthermore, the recent summing up by Professor Ruth Whelan of Jean Calvin's pastoral theology as "the unconditional mercy of God" (Whelan 2010: 40)?
4.1 Ethics and living the Christian life
The saving encounter with Jesus Christ, emphasized by Ratzinger perhaps not in classical evangelical language but in his stress on the fact that Christian life begins with conversion, reveals other aspects of his theology that show its closeness, also, to Reformation concerns. It has been observed that Ratzinger eschews "moralism", an approach to ethics that
generally refers to the Kantian rationalist tendency to reduce Christianity to the dimensions of an ethical framework, or to equate faith with obeying a law (Rowland 2008:66).
In such an approach, Christianity becomes Pelagian; and we are thought to be saved by the good that we do and by the obedience that we practice (Rowland 2008:66, drawing on a text of Lorenzo Albacete). Ratzinger, ever nervous of any flavour of works-righteousness, takes a completely different line, suggesting that being a Christian arises through an encounter - an encounter and an on-going relationship with Jesus Christ - and that it does not result from taking up a lofty idea or making an ethical choice. In the opening paragraph of Deus Caritas Est, Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's first encyclical letter (drawn attention to in Rowland 2008), he states:
Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction (2005).
This is vintage Ratzinger/Benedict - his most mature thought. But I remember reading, in one of his earliest works, words similar to the above. He spoke simply of the Christian as having love (Ratzinger 1965:95), a love that we do not give ourselves but that is bestowed through encounter with the one who is all love. He made it clear that he was not talking here about an adequate love - in us it will always be lacking - but, he quickly added, this is where faith comes in because it
means, fundamentally, nothing other than that this deficit of our love, which we all have, has been made up by the abundance of the love of Jesus Christ that stands in for it (Ratzinger 1965:98).
Ratzinger's basic point was - back in the mid-1960s also, forty years before the first encyclical letter of Benedict XVI on love appeared - that we must be careful to recognize on whom it is that we depend and avoid all suggestion of adequacy on our own parts. His talk of love may have many different nuances to that of Luther (or Calvin), of course, but it hardly amounts to works-righteousness.
I am aware that one can be simplistic about the Reformation and that care must be taken not to reduce it to its more memorable dicta. I certainly do not wish to do that, not least when I recall its elimination of any role for "works" in the matter of salvation. Nevertheless it is fair to say that, for the great Reformation figures - Luther, Calvin - insistence on a salvation that depended utterly on God's mercy and not at all on human efforts was paramount. Indeed, from what we know of their contexts, such insistence was vital. And to attribute it to Ratzinger today also is equally vital because it echoes throughout his theology, fashioned, as this was, in the context and presence of his neighbouring, Reformed theologians. Sometimes they - and he - are accused of an approach to humanity and the human world that is very rejecting, very pessimistic, and this pessimism is attributed, perhaps too easily, to the Augustinian heritage on which they draw. Ruth Whelan allows "that Calvin opens the Institutes of the Christian Religion with a damning indictment of our humanity" but says that when he speaks of our "turpitude" (often translated into English as "corruption" or "depravity") "it is important to replace Calvin's damning indictment of our 'turpitude' in the context of his time" (Whelan 2010: 40). And that context was one of fear, and of an enormous sense of inadequacy, on the part of people. Calvin wanted to take these things seriously, to speak to people where they were, but his pastoral purpose in so doing was to move them to rely on the unconditional mercy of God and to free them from the tyranny of thinking that there was anything that they could do to save themselves (Whelan 2010: 40-41). Joseph Ratzinger would not disagree.
4.2 The theology of politics
So much for so-called "Augustinian pessimism", often said to be Calvinist (and, more often lately, Ratzingerian!). Leaving that aside, what is clear, however, is that, according to Joseph Ratzinger's anthropological perspective, we human beings, left on our own, would not amount to much. Thus there can be no over-confident talk about our making our own future, bringing about a just society, producing the "new man" and the future made by our own hands (Ratzinger 1970:81-83; also Corkery 2009:40-41, 53 and 55-56). Yet political (and liberation) theologies are built on such ideas, Ratzinger is convinced (Ratzinger 1986(b):48-49); hence his robust opposition to them. One good example - and one on which Ratzinger has spilled a lot of ink - is found in his writing about the theology of the liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez. In an essay on his 1971 book , A Theology of Liberation, which Ratzinger describes as a "paving the way" work that made the expression "theology of liberation" popular and gave it its contours (Ratzinger 1986:7), he reproaches the Peruvian with a mixing together - the German word is Verschmelzung - of theology and politics that, in its failure to distinguish the two domains properly, conceives Christian salvation in terms of a praxis of social engagement/ revolution that will result in a "utopia", a state of inner-historical well-being(Ratzinger 1986; Corkery 2009:76ff.). While Gutierrez makes, initially, the necessary distinction between the theological and the political levels, this is lost with his interpretation of Jesus in the following words:
For Jesus the liberation of the Jewish people is nothing other than an aspect of a universal and permanent revolution (Ratzinger 1986:14).10
Ratzinger comments:
Now at this point the theological line in the thought of Gutierrez meets definitively with his political objectives: history is anthropophany; the situation of the man of today is determined according to the model of the man of tomorrow - with the certainty that man will overcome the present and will enter into a new era, into a world that he himself has created. In this creating of the new world man shapes and creates himself (Ratzinger 1986:14).11
This is an expression of "makeability", indeed of "salvation by works", from which everything in Ratzinger must shrink. Christian Scháfer explains:
Here the idea of the redemption of man through a historical act surfaces: redemption is no longer a Christian, nor even a religious, concept; redemption is the success-stage (Gelingensstadium) of historically self-organized human life reached through liberation (Scháfer 2005:419).
There is a Pelagianism here with which Ratzinger could never be happy. Luther's polemic against 'works' and, indeed, Calvin's reminders that salvation is a matter of the sovereign mercy of God alone, can hardly be far from his mind, even if he would not be in agreement with either of them on all points in this regard (Ratzinger 1988(c):111; Corkery 2009:64, 68).
As I have written elsewhere, I am not in agreement with all that Ratzinger has said - and done - in relation to liberation theology (Corkery 2009:6568, 74-80 and 2009(b):198-202) but what I have wished to allude to in the above is how, influenced by the Reformation polemic against any linking of salvation to "works", Ratzinger was tilted against liberation theology from the outset. Added to this was, from his studies of Bonaventure's theology of history, an awareness of the danger of looking forward to any form of inner-worldly salvific state - in other words, any form of utopia (Ratzinger 1971; Corkery 2009(b) and Kissler 2005:155ff.). Towards working for the future, Ratzinger believes, we must "do what we can", conscious that it is God, not we, who brings it about. We are just of penultimate significance.
4.3 Ecumenism
I mentioned the influence, from Bonaventure, that makes Ratzinger wary of any talk about immanent salvation, about inner-worldly states of well-being. In his day, Bonaventure, against the background of Joachim of Fiore's "utopian" vision and the influence of this on many of Bonaventure's own confreres, had to negotiate a path between what could be legitimately held about the future and any immanent notions of that future envisaged by the Calabrian abbot and his followers. For Ratzinger, the student of Bonaventure's theology of history seven hundred years later, the emphasis settled decidedly on a wariness about all inner-worldly salvific states (Corkery 2009(b):196-197). Ratzinger was conscious that these fragile arrangements would depend on human agreement, always, to maintain and support them, and that such could be "interrupted" by the decisions of persons at any time to do just the opposite. Hence his insistence that any human contribution is always no more than a "doing what we can" and that a mentality of "making" is misleading in relation to future plans and projects. He applies this insight relentlessly whenever the matter of the creation of any just social order comes up. It surprised me - when I discovered it - to see that he applies it to the matter of ecumenism as well.
In 1986, having been invited by Professor Max Seckler, editor (at that time) of the journal, Tübinger Theologische Quartalschrift, to outline his ideas about the progress of ecumenism, Ratzinger said that Christian unity could never come about simply through agreed or negotiated statements that, however valuable, proceeded always "on the level of human (scholarly) insight" that fell short of the level of the act of faith itself, even if they did "provide essential conditions" for it. He said that it was important here
to recognize the limits of what one might term the 'ecumenism of negotiation' and not to expect of it any more than it can provide: rapprochements in important human fields, but not unity itself. (Ratzinger 1988(b):138).
In the background here was Ratzinger's concern that ecumenical successes in the heady period immediately after the Second Vatican Council might have led people to expect too much from deft negotiations on the parts of Church authorities or from learned persons such as the theologians, Karl Rahner and Heinrich Fries, whose 1983 proposals regarding the unity of the Churches he once spoke about as "[A]a forced march towards unity" (Ratzinger 1988(c):108 and 1988(b):138). The fear of unity by human effort - unity by means of "works" - was lurking too, as the following remark confirms:
In any case it should be clear that we do not create unity, no more than we bring about righteousness by means of our works, but that on the other hand we should not sit around twiddling our thumbs (Ratzinger 1988(b):140).
In the end it is clear: while Ratzinger does not advise inactivity, he is ever mindful that activity does not produce the kingdom of God in any area. "Salvation" is never the product of human 'works': not in our attempts at a personal following of Jesus in lives of Christian discipleship; not in our political involvement to contribute to a more just social order; and not (as has just been seen) in our efforts to achieve that unity of Christians for which the Lord himself prayed so earnestly (John 17:21). These things are God's alone to give. What human beings can achieve is, at best, something of just penultimate significance.
BONAVENTURE, St 1963. The Breviloquium. In: The Works of Bonaventure: Cardinal, Seraphic Doctor and Saint, Vol. II Paterson, NJ: St Anthony Guild Press. [ Links ]
CORKERY, J. 1995. The social dimensions of grace and 'dis-grace' in the theology of Leonardo Boff. Bobolanum 6:92-119. [ Links ]
CORKERY, J. 2005. An accidental theologian. In: G.E. Thiessen & D. Marmion (eds.) Theology in the Making: Biography, Contexts, Methods. (Dublin: Veritas Publications), pp. 45-55. [ Links ]
CORKERY, J. 2009(a). Joseph Ratzinger's theological ideas: wise cautions and legitimate hopes. Dublin: Dominican Publications and New York/Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press. [ Links ]
CORKERY, J. 2009(b). Joseph Ratzinger on liberation theology: What did he say? Why did he say it? What can be said about it? In: Patrick Claffey and Joe Egan (eds.) Movement or moment? Assessing liberation theology forty years after Medeilín (Bern: Peter Lang), pp. 183-202. [ Links ]
DULLES, A. 1988. The Extraordinary Synod of 1985. In: A. Dulles, The reshaping of Catholicism: current challenges in the theology of church (San Francisco: Harper & Row), pp. 184-206. [ Links ]
FAHEY, M.A. 1977. Joseph Ratzinger as Ecclesiologist and Pastor. Concilium 141:76-83. [ Links ]
FIORENZA, F-S. 2005. From theologian to pope: a personal view back, past the public portrayals. Harvard Divinity Bulletin (autumn):56-62. [ Links ]
GUTIERREZ, G. 1973. A theology of liberation: history, politics and salvation. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. [ Links ]
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LUTHERAN WORLD FEDERATION AND ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 1999. Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. [Online.] Retrieved from: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc [2012, 15 January] [ Links ].
MYNAREK, H. 1969. A. Das Wesen des Christlichen. Theologische Revue 65:3, 177-182. [ Links ]
NEUHAUS, R.J. 1987. The Catholic moment: the paradox of the church in the postmodern World. San Francisco: Harper & Row. [ Links ]
NEUHAUS, R.J. 1998. Books: Inside the Vatican. Review of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the earth: the church at the end of the millennium. In: Christianity Today 42:6. Retrieved from: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1998/may18/8t6056.html [2012, 29 January] [ Links ].
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1954. Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche. Munich: Karl Zink Verlag. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1963. Der Wortgebrauch von natura und die beginnende Verselbststándigung der Metaphysik bei Bonaventura. In: P. Wilpert (ed.) Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter, vol. 2 (Berlin), pp. 483-498. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1964. Sühne: V. Systematisch. In: Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche IX (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder Verlag), pp. 1156-1158. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1965. Vom Sinn des Christseins. Munich: Kösel Verlag. New edition 2005. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1966. The open circle: the meaning of Christian brotherhood. New York: Sheed & Ward. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1967. Catholicism after the Council. The Furrow:3-23. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1969. Introduction to Christianity. New York: The Seabury Press. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1970. Faith and the Future. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1971. The Theology of History in Saint Bonaventure. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1973. Gratia praesupponit naturam. Erwágungen über Sinn und Grenze eines scholastischen Axioms. In: J. Ratzinger (ed.), Dogma und Verkündigung (Munich: Wewel Verlag), pp. 161-181. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1973(b). Why I am still in the church. In: H.U. von Balthasar & J. Ratzinger (eds.), Two say why (London and Chicago: Search Press Ltd. and Franciscan Herald Press), pp. 66-90. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1973(c). Beten in unserer Zeit. In: J. Ratzinger (ed.), Dogma und Verkündigung (Munich: Wewel Verlag), pp. 119-132. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1979. The God of Jesus Christ. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1985. The Ratzinger report: an exclusive interview on the state of the church. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1986(a). Politik und Erlösung. Zum Verhältnis von Glaube, Rationalität und Irrationalem in der sogenannten Theologie der Befreiung. Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vorträge G 279. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag GmbH. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1986(b). The church's teaching authority - faith - morals. In: H. Schürmann, J. Ratzinger & H.U. von Balthasar (eds.), Principles of Christian morality (San Francisco: Ignatius Press), pp. 45-73. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1987. Faith as conversion - metanoia. In: J. Ratzinger (ed.), Principles of Catholic theology: building stones for a fundamental theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press), pp. 55-67. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1987(b). Salvation history, metaphysics and eschatology. In: J. Ratzinger (ed.), Principles of Catholic theology, pp. 171-190. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1988. Freedom and liberation: the anthropological vision of the 1986 Instruction Libertatis conscientia. In: J. Ratzinger (ed.), Church, ecumenism and politics: new essays in ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad), pp. 255-275. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1988(b). The progress of ecumenism. In: J. Ratzinger (ed.), Church, ecumenism and politics: new essays in ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad), pp. 135-142. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1988(c). Luther and the unity of the Churches. In: J. Ratzinger (ed.), Church, ecumenism and politics: new essays in ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad), pp. 99-134. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1990. Retrieving the tradition: concerning the notion of person in theology. Communio 17:439-454. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1995. 'In the beginning...': a Catholic understanding of the story of creation and the fall. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1996. Called to communion: understanding the church today. SanFrancisco: Ignatius Press. [ Links ]
RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 1997. Salt of the earth: the church at the end of the millennium. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. [ Links ]
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RATZINGER, J. (in order of publication in the language referred to below) 2005. Deus caritas est. [Online.] Retrieved from: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.htm [2012, 29 January] [ Links ].
ROWLAND, T. 2008. Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI. UK: Oxford University Press. [ Links ]
SCHÄFER, C. 2005. Politik und Erlösung im Spiegel der zwei civitates. Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift (Sonderheft 5:2005): 415-434. [ Links ]
SCHINDLER, DAVID L. 1987. Is America bourgeois? Communio 14:262-290. [ Links ]
SCHROFNER, E. 1980. Gnade und Erfahrung bei Karl Rahner und Leonardo Boff: zwei Wege gegenwärtiger Gnadentheologie. Geist und Leben 53:4, 266-280. [ Links ]
WHELAN, R. 2010. Biodegradable Calvin. Doctrine and Life 60:1, 37-42. [ Links ]
1 Neuhaus, Lutheran pastor and son of a Lutheran pastor, saw much in the theology of Ratzinger (and John Paul II) that was congenial to the Lutheranism in which he had been raised. The ecclesiology he adopted on becoming a Roman Catholic clearly marked him as different from the Christian he had formerly been, but, as one writer quoted of him when reviewing his book, Catholic Matters, in the New York Times (April 16, 2006): as the son of a Lutheran pastor, he (this is N. on himself) "came to know the utterly gratuitous love of God by which we live astonished."
2 For the first session of the Council (autumn 1962), Ratzinger was the personal advisor of Frings; for the remaining three sessions (1963-1965), he was an official theological (expert) advisor. He enjoyed this role with his colleague, Hans Küng (who would invite him to a professorship at Tubingen after the Council). Michael Schmaus, Munich's best known dogmatic theologian at the time, referred derisively (jealously?) to the two as "teenage theologians".
3 Mynarek speaks of Ratzinger's work (in relation to that of Teilhard de Chardin) as a "theology more oriented to the Cross of Christ."
4 Here Corkery is drawing on Ratzinger 1969:133-137, 155-156 and 175-182; also on Ratzinger 1990:445-450.
5 In the original text the bracketed references within the quotation were endnotes.
6 Here - in addition to "negative aspects" - he speaks of the "many positive things" that "Luther brought into German history."
7 See The Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church 1999.
8 The treatment in these two pages will be very short; for a more satisfactory account, see Corkery 2009:44-49.
9 See, for example, St Bonaventure 1963: Part V, chapter 2, paragraph 3; also Part III, chapter 1, paragraph 3.
10 Ratzinger is citing p. 223 of the German edition of Gutierrez's book; the translation is mine.
11 Here Ratzinger is referring to pp. 197 and 147 of Gutierrez's Theologie der Befreiung.


text:
On the other side it's not very hard to guess. I'm there where most of the Oracle blogging and Oracle APEX community currently is. I'm at Oracle Open World in San Francisco.
I'm not sure how often I will blog, because I have a tight time schedule. But if you want to get hold of me, I will try to visit most of the Oracle APEX sessions.
On Tuesday, between 14:30 and 15:30 I'm doing my own presentation titled The Power of the Oracle APEX Repository (Session Id: 300210). It's currently booked out, but you might get a chance to still get in.
Enough for now, I have to listen to Tom Kyte's "Efficient Schema Design" now.

subset: commoncrawl


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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - If the harbour commission proposed for Yellowknife Bay moves beyond the talking phase and takes control of the city's waterfront, Paul Servos has some words of advice almost certain to raise the hackles of those who take free moorage for granted.
"Market value," says Servos, chief executive officer of the Greater Victoria Port Authority, in Victoria, B.C. "That would be my one piece of advice - market value. Make that the guiding principle. If we didn't get market value we wouldn't be able to sustain the assets we were given."
Established in 2002, the Victoria port authority started life with a cruise ship terminal, a float home community, 14,000 linear feet of rental moorage, a busy floatplane terminal, and waterside spaces that it leases to restaurants, buskers and artisans.
Rents and fees earn the port authority $6 million a year - half of it collected from visiting cruise ships, making it Victoria's eighth largest taxpayer, said Servos. "We're a private corporation registered as a not for profit society; we receive no grants."
Since 1998, when Canada Marine Act revisions turned harbour management over to local authorities or private agencies, "there has been no free moorage on the west coast," he said.
Moorage for boats is $10 a linear foot per month. Transient vessels, about 3,800 a year, pay $1.40 per foot per day. Houseboat rents are $1 per sq foot per month, plus a licence fee of $150 a month, plus utilities, and the local improvement portion of the municipal property tax. If that sounds high, Servos cites an independent third-party review that found the opposite.
Houseboat rents were 40 to 50 cents a square foot when the port authority took over management of the marinas. "We raised the rent to market value. You're talking about waterfront property, downtown, in British Columbia's capital city," he said.
The authority is run by a board of directors appointed by the City of Victoria, the Capital Regional District, Esquimalt Municipality, Chamber of Commerce, Tourism Victoria, and the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations - disparate groups that do not always agree on issues.Read more at http://nnsl.com/northern-news-services/stories/papers/jul21_10wf.html
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text:
In 2007, the US State Department asked me to go to South Africa to meet with leading newspaper editors. With the 2010 World Cup looming, they wanted to hear the experience of an editor who had managed coverage of a major sports event, as I had in Salt Lake City with the 2002 Winter Olympics.
It helped that I had some knowledge of South Africa. I began my journalistic career in that country. Years later, The Christian Science Monitor based me there for six years as its Africa correspondent.
Remarkable improvements
When I visited in 2007, I found a country drastically changed from the one I had known in the days of racial segregation and apartheid, when a white minority basically suppressed the black majority.
White-only government had been supplanted by the black-majority government of the African National Congress. There was upward mobility for black Africans in government, commerce, and journalism.
And then-President Thabo Mbeki was continuing to preach goodwill and partnership between the races, following the model set by his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, who emerged unembittered after 27 years in prison.
But it was also a country with dangerous levels of crime, and unfulfilled expectations of millions of blacks still living in shanty towns.
Black and white newspaper editors and TV directors expressed concern that the infrastructure needed to handle hundreds of thousands of World Cup visitors could not be ready by 2010. Airports needed to be remodeled, hotels built, rail lines laid, ambitious stadiums constructed in different cities.
There were questions as to whether huge, crowded multiracial gatherings of blacks and whites could take place without violence. (There was concern, too, that the government would exert subtle pressure on media outlets to produce only "happy journalism" and downplay the problems.)
As we learned in 2010, the fears proved groundless.
With more than $5 billion spent on preparations, the facilities were more than adequate. Transportation and lodging were abundant. Crime at the various venues was controlled. International TV showed cheering multiracial crowds in fabulous stadiums, against backgrounds of stunning South African scenery. It was a splendid coming-out for the new South Africa.
A model for the continent?
With the festivities over, the question now is whether the government can make a serious dent in urban crime, tackle corruption, lessen poverty, and shape South Africa as a model for a continent wracked by economic and political problems.
As David Fanning, a white South African and retired editor and columnist for one of the country's major newspapers, puts it: "We need to capture some of the wonderful patriotic spirit and bottle it for future use…. It is time to ask why sport seems able to bring the nation together. Why are there such huge national differences when it comes to issues like race, politics, and economics?"
South Africa's challenges are compounded by the presence of several million, often-illegal, refugees from elsewhere in Africa, especially Zimbabwe. Though South Africa has its own poor, its economy is the largest in Africa and thus attracts the dispossessed from elsewhere on the continent.
Although South Africa expressed a certain pan-African loyalty during the World Cup, cheering on Ghana when the South African team was eliminated, that does not preclude tension and sometimes violence between individual black South Africans and arrivals from other African countries competing for jobs.
Fresh concern about terrorism
Another potentially worrisome development for South Africa is the intrusion of Al Qaeda-style terrorism, until now confined to the continent's Muslim north, into black southern Africa, specifically Uganda.
On July 11, the militant Islamic group Al Shabab killed 74 soccer fans watching the World Cup final on television in Uganda's capital, Kampala. This could presage the further movement of Islamic terrorism south of the Sahara, which some intelligence officials have long predicted. That is a development of which South Africa must be wary.
John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, writes a biweekly column.


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Tag Archives: bp vacation rental settlement
BP Settlement Rental Claims
BP Settlement Rental Claims and You:
Mind you this is conjecture, it is educated conjecture until the BP Settlement is formally announced
If you have filed before, you can still file BP Settlement Rental Claims. This report will inform you about who will qualify, calculations and recommend your next step.
First of all, this is such a broad category, we should assume that the BP Settlement rental claims apply to vacation rentals, residential rentals AND commercial rentals. You should also take notice that there will be varying degrees of evidence needed to prove each type of BP Settlement rental claims. Consider the order listed as progression in difficulty to prove those BP Settlement rental claims.
First of all, the Settlement Agreement places BP Settlement rental claims into categories based on geographic location in the Gulf Region. The zoning is as follows, including the multipliers applied to each zone:
BP Settlement Rental Claims
Zone A: These BP Settlement rental claims will be within 0.5 miles from the beaches. Their damages caused by the BP Spill will be presumed. BP Settlement rental claims that are commercial rentals that rented to a seafood restaurant, or other industry reliant upon seafood or tourism, will also be presumed to have damages caused by the Spill. However, commercial rentals who did not have this type of reliance will need to show that their losses were caused by the Spill. Speak with your diligent consulting agency about your BP Settlement rental claim to find out how. Your multiplier will be 3.5 and your total claim value will look something like: (2010 Damages) + (2010 Damages X 3.5) = the value of your BP Settlement rental claims.
Zone B: These BP Settlement rental claims are over 0.5 miles from the beach but are within 1.0 miles from the beach. Your multiplier will be dropped to 3.0 for these types of BP Settlement rental claims. Follow the calculation above and you will get an estimate of your total claim value.
Zone C: These BP Settlement rental claims are over 1.0 miles, but less than 2.0 miles. It appears that the multiplier will drop to 2.5 for these BP Settlement rental claims.
Zone D: These BP Settlement rental claims are over 2.0 miles from the beaches and will be the most difficult to prove. You must have had an eviction, abandonment or rental contract terminations shortly after the Spill in order to prove Causation.
BP Settlement Rental Claims
Bare in mind that these calculations for BP Settlement rental claims are a part of the negotiation process and will be subject to change if BP succeeds in changing the terms, or the court approves different terms regarding these BP Settlement rental claims.
Furthermore, assume the BP Settlement rental claims for Commercial Rentals will need to show an actual loss of income, with a possible rise in income in 2011. Commercial Rentals will also need to show Causation, linking their loss of damages to the Spill.
We will help you with your BP Settlement Rental Claims.


text: WINTER PARK, Fla. (AP) - The SUV driver accused of causing a crash at a Florida day care that killed a 4-year-old girl has been arrested. Twenty-eight-year old Robert Alex Corchado turned himself in to police, who charged him with leaving the scene of a deadly accident. The Orange County Corrections Department says he's being held on $100,000 bond. Police say Corchado crashed into another motorist, who in turn smashed into the day care center Wednesday, killing the girl and injuring 14 others. Ten people remain hospitalized. Corchado has a lengthy criminal history. His attorney confirmed he turned himself in but declined to comment further. Police had been searching for Corchado for almost a full day.


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ANALYSIS – In 2007, when the Android OS was still vaporware, Google made a gutsy $4.6 billion bet on mobile net neutrality. While they never had to pay out the money, that all-in move forced the FCC to license wireless spectrum with binding rules that finally force the wireless carrier that wins a spectrum auction to let Americans use whatever handsets, services and apps they wanted to connect to it.
Verizon, which eventually outbid Google, howled with outrage and filed a lawsuit against those rules, which Google rightly derided as an "attempt to prevent consumers from having any choice of innovative services."
Fast-forward to 2010.
Google and Verizon announced Monday, as part of their bilateral net neutrality trade agreement they want Congress to ratify, that open wireless rules were unnecessary.
"We both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wire-line world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly," the joint statement said. "In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless-broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the [Net Neutrality] wire-line principles to wireless, except for the transparency requirement."
That's fancy language for: Verizon and the nation's telecoms have yet again won, Google officially became a net neutrality surrender monkey, and you – as an American – have lost.
Update: Google defends its reversal, saying through a spokeswoman: "We have taken a backseat to no one in our support for an open internet. We offered this proposal in the spirit of compromise. Others might have done it differently, but we think locking in key enforceable protections for consumers is progress and preferable to no protection."
Compare Monday's statement to this one, from a post on Google's official blog in 2007: "The nation's spectrum airwaves are not the birthright of any one company. They are a unique and valuable public resource that belong to all Americans. The FCC's auction rules are designed to allow U.S. consumers – for the first time – to use their handsets with any network they desire, and and use the lawful software applications of their choice."
Back then, Google figured it would need those rules to catch up to Apple's iPhone dominance in the mobile world, and its interests and the American people's were aligned. It created the "Open Handset Alliance" with handset makers – not carriers.
The idea behind the alliance was that Google and the hardware companies could make phones that were open, elegant, powerful and not subject to the legendary whimsies of wireless carriers, who are prone to crippling devices, failing to innovate on new features, charging extra for whatever built-in features they do include, and controlling what can and can't be done with the devices.
A few Android smartphones hit the market in 2009, but each device was still exclusive to a single carrier, which meant they were all controlled and hamstrung. (In an early sign of what was to come Monday, Google even removed, at T-Mobile's insistence, apps from the market that let Android users use their phones as modems for laptops.)
Then in January, in what looked like a clear sign that Google was taking on the carriers for real, it unveiled the Nexus One – the fabled Google phone. Google promised that users would be able to buy the phone online and have a choice of carriers, who would fight to offer the best deal and service for phone users.
Suddenly, the possibility existed that wireless carriers in the United States, like their landline equivalents, would be advertising exclusively about how good calls sound on their network, how wide their coverage is and how economical their plans are.
Suddenly, it became possible to imagine a wireless world where the devices and the transport of their data were separated into layers, just like the wired world.
We'd be free from the days of artificial scarcity, when carriers competed by advertising the exclusive, cool phones available on their networks – which you can get only by signing a two-year contract, no matter how crappy the coverage and service might turn out to be.
That revolution was a tough sell, even though the Nexus One is, by all accounts, a fantastic mobile device.
It wasn't cool enough. In the States, only the desperate fourth-place carrier T-Mobile ever offered a plan for the Nexus One. Sprint and Verizon announced upcoming support, then pulled out.
Both instead were working furiously to get an Android powerhouse phone of their own in a few months (Sprint with the EVO 4G and Verizon with the Droid X HTC Incredible). Those were phones they could cripple – unlike the Nexus One – locking them down and adding lots of unremovable carrier bloatware.
Google could have fought. It had plenty of tools at its disposal. It could have made phones that worked on all of those networks, and then sued those companies if they didn't allow users to get fair plans.
That sort of blatant denial of carriers' wishes would have been perfect fodder for the FCC to push through new wireless rules. The FTC would have had a reason to pry into unfair business practices. Google could have eschewed online-only selling and partnered with the many independently owned mobile phone shops around the country, so that potential customers could play with the device before plunking down $500.
They could have figured out a way to spread some of the cost of the phone over monthly payments, so that buying a device didn't seem so expensive or budget-busting. They could have made phones designed to work on pay-as-you-go networks like Metro PCS and Cricket. A Google equivalent of Apple's Genius bars, for its Nexus Ones, could have taught people why the device was cool and how to make it even better.
But Google didn't do any of that. It didn't fight, at all.
More importantly, it could have stopped the network-exclusive EVO and Droid X phones, or at least forced them to be open.
Carriers love Android because it's free – in fact, it's probably better than free, since Google is, in all likelihood, paying the mobile carriers for every Android phone that relies on Google Search as its default search engine.
Android may be "open source," but the Google services including navigation, integrated Gmail, and other things are not. This was made quite clear last year, when Google slapped the leading Android phone modder, Cyanogen, with a cease-and-desist notice for including Google's proprietary software in his custom builds, which savvy Android users use to circumvent carriers' crippling of their phones.
In short, a generic Android phone that isn't also a "Google-enhanced" Android phone isn't worth selling. And you can't make a Google-enhanced Android phone without Google's permission.
And that is precisely where Google had, and still has, the power to force openness. Instead, it has decided to play nicely with the wireless carriers in hopes of winning market share and mining advertising gold from miniature computers.
Google's real problem is that it hasn't found sufficient ways to diversify its revenue stream beyond its still stunningly profitable search ads. Now, those just aren't growing the way they have been, and Google is struggling to find another gold vein to mine.
Enter Android. They see that gold in mobile devices, which offer yet another way to get people searching and clicking on Google ads. In addition, the popularity of mobile apps created another good way for Google to advertise, which is why it spent $750 million in 2010 to acquire in-app advertiser AdMob.
Even as the Nexus One finally came to market in January, Google knew Android was on a trajectory to become the number one smartphone OS, even if all of the available models were carrier-crippled versions.
It no longer made financial sense for Google to fight the carriers with its own open phone hardware, even though that meant abandoning its open wireless principles. In retrospect, they may have never actually been principles – just an aborted marketing strategy that proved unnecessary.
Google clearly knew during the spring of 2010, as it was planning to kill off the Nexus One, that Sprint's EVO, Verizon's Droid X, AT&T's Captivate and T-Mobile's Vibrant models were on the way.
And all of those smartphones are crippled by their carriers. They didn't have to be.
Google easily could have attached conditions to all Google-powered Android phones, banning carrier software that can't be removed just as easily as any other app. (Try getting rid of Sprint's Nascar app on the EVO – if you don't have root, it can't be done.). These conditions also could have banned the blocking of Android 2.2's built-in ability to be a Wi-Fi hot spot, which both Sprint and Verizon have crippled. And finally, they could require that any user be able to choose to ditch the carrier's customizations in favor of a stock Android build that can be updated, over the air, to the latest official, non-carrier build, as soon as it's released.
Google did none of those things.
It rolled over for the carriers on their phones, and on Monday, even gave up the fight for net neutrality rules on wireless devices.
Its capitulation allows the carriers it works with to do the same thing AT&T and Apple have done to protect their businesses: ban cool apps for no real reason (Google Voice on the iPhone for one), cripple apps to protect business models (Skype on the iPhone) and outright ban data-heavy apps from third parties (Slingbox for the iPhone), all the while promoting their own app (MLB's iPhone app).
As for unlocked phones, the Nexus One was it. There will never be a Nexus Two. If you want the Nexus One – which gets updates as soon as they are released, as opposed to whenever your carrier decides its phone is ready – pretend to be a developer, in which case Google will sell you one for $529. (It wouldn't want to sell the overstock at a discount, like any normal company would, because it's afraid of pissing off its new telecom buddies).
Or if you happen to know a Google employee, just ask for one – word on the street is that the company is giving them away for free, by the handful, to Googlers.
The thing about surrendering is that it only keeps going.
But Google doesn't care. By surrendering – and by surrendering, I mean, giving up the fight it claimed to be waging on your behalf for open wireless networks – it wins billions of dollars in online, mobile ad revenues.
As a result, openness in the mobile market is no longer in Google's best interest.
Google likes to take jabs at Apple's closed iPhone system, as Google exec Vic Gundotra did at Google's I/O developer conference this spring. But that's just a rhetorical sideshow.
Mobile openness is the tool of the outsider, not the incumbent. Google is now registering some 200,000 Android handsets every day. Phone-to-phone, Android is now outselling the iPhone. Google doesn't need openness anymore.
Now, the outsiders need openness. HP, now in possession of Palm's very cool webOS, could – if it required openness – make handsets that weren't carrier-crippled and sell them cheaply, owning the low end of the smartphone market.
Then there's Microsoft, which after writing itself out of the game with a mobile OS that had all the faults of its desktop OS, started over from scratch, produced a shiny new OS that has even the crankiest gadget bloggers saying it's the only mobile OS that has successfully learned Apple's lessons, and feels new.
Microsoft knows something about taking on closed operating systems, having installed its OS on the cheap through dozens of manufacturers in order to secure dominance on the desktop. It has corporate loyalty out the wazoo, and knows how to satisfy lucrative corporate IT groups. If Google fought for wireless neutrality, it would give Microsoft another shot to break into the mobile market.
And why would Google want that?
The answer should be: its principles, its years of rhetoric about openness, its $4.6 billion bet on open wireless spectrum and its famous mantra, "Don't Be Evil."
But principles are easy to discard, it seems, when one's in search of the next gold mine. "Don't Be Evil" can become "Just Don't Be Stupid" when you're in first place.
Epicenter's Eliot Van Buskirk laid out clearly the meaning of the Google-Verizon deal when it comes to traditional broadband. But let me add that Google gives away little by getting Verizon to agree not to filter any normal internet packets in exchange for the right to build Hulu competitors that can only be watched by subscribers to that ISP.
YouTube's not in the business of licensing big content, like first-run television shows – it's in the business of viral videos and, to a great degree, music videos whose uploaders want the largest viewing audience possible. Allowing Verizon and Comcast to take on Hulu and Netflix – the two largest streaming sources of major content – doesn't hurt Google in the slightest.
None of this is a good sign for Hulu, Netflix, or any other competing video service, given what the telecoms did to VoIP companies like Vonage, and DVR companies like TiVo, which promised to revolutionize phone calls and television respectively, only to see the major telecoms and cable companies mimic their inventions and price them out of the market with anti-competitive bundle deals.
Hulu and Netflix await the same fate. Google is just fine with that, the same way that it's fine with screwing the American public out of an open wireless net. Google got theirs, and as far as it's concerned, that's all that matters.
In the words of Richard Burton, in Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolff, "And that is how you play 'Get the Guests'."
Photo: Davide Ondertoller
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See Also:
- Here's The Real Google/Verizon Story: A Tale of Two Internets
- Google Calls 700-MHz Auction A Major Victory For Consumers
- Google, Openness Triumph as Verizon Adds Android Phones ...
- It's Silicon Valley vs. Telcos in Battle for Wireless Spectrum
- Verizon Dumps on Open Access, Sues FCC
- FAQ: Inside the FCC's High-Stakes 700-MHz Spectrum Auction