Benedict XVI’s newly-published letter, which links the abuse crisis to the social upheavals of the 1960s and the Church’s retreat from its moral teaching, has already provoked a significant amount of comment.
For Fr John Zuhlsdorf, the letter was a “cri de coeur”. Benedict issued "a deserved scolding" of some theological schools. Against "today’s prominent papalotrous antinomian and theological vandals", Benedict defended John Paul's encyclical Veritatis Splendor - which reaffirms Church teaching that some acts are always, intrinsically, evil. That encyclical, Fr Zuhlsdorf remarked, has been "undermined during this pontificate". But it was a "necessary response to a challenge from Germany that would have had disastrous results. Yes, the former Pope affirms, just as popes of yore have always been willing to affirm, there are some things that are intrinsically evil. We jettison that truth at our existential peril, as a society and as a Church."
