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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.”


This article courtesy of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.