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Assessing the Pope’s Record
- Garry Wills [ex-seminarian]: “What we really need are no priests.”
- James Carroll [ex-priest]: The pope “has seen only a solemn obligation to defend the church.” [Italic added.]
- Richard Sipe [ex-priest]: “Certainly, he did a lot, but it was all reactionary.” [Italic added.]
- Daniel Maguire [ex-priest]: The “scandal of the papacy [is] one of the last absolute monarchies in a democratizing world.”
- Ronald Lauder, president, World Jewish Congress: “The papacy of Benedict elevated Catholic-Jewish relations to an unprecedented level.”
- Abraham Foxman, national director, ADL: “He [the pope] was good for the Jews.”
- Rabbi Yona Metzger, Israel’s chief Ashkenazic rabbi: Benedict’s papacy exhibited “the best relations ever between the church and the chief rabbinate.”
- Imam Hassan Qazwini, Islamic Center of America: “I have so much admiration for the pope, for being honest and humble.”
- Nihad Awad, national director, Council on American-Islamic Relations: “We offer the American Muslim community’s best wishes to Pope Benedict XVI.”
- Geoff Tunnicliffe, secretary general, World Evangelical Alliance: “I appreciate his [the pope’s] courage of ideas…and his boldness in warning us of the dangers of moral relativism….”
- Rev. R. Albert Mohler, president, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: “Pope Benedict has offered a brave and intelligent defense of truth against a relativist tide.”
Bill Donohue, who put this together, opines: “I could offer many other examples, but the point is obvious: embittered ex-seminarians and ex-priests suffer not only from profound anger—ultimately directed at themselves—but their perception of Catholicism makes them look twisted in comparison to the sentiments of Jews, Muslims, Protestants, and others.”
