Correcting John Allen

Much of the junk out there about Benedict XVI comes from John Allen's bad book, Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith. If you're looking for a polite but firm corrective, we recommend this piece by David Scott. Excerpts:

As Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, self-styled voice of “progressive” Catholicism, Allen's reporting is usually competent and fair-minded. But this book is neither. Allen comes not to understand and explain Ratzinger but to indict him.

Most of the book reads like yesterday's left-wing Catholic news, as Allen spends long chapters rehashing Ratzinger's pivotal role in debates dating back to the 1970s over liberation theology, women's ordination, homosexuality and religious pluralism.

Allen wants us to believe that the German-born Ratzinger came to his current job carrying psycho-biographical baggage from his childhood under the Nazi regime. “Having seen fascism in action, Ratzinger today believes the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesiastical totalitarianism,” Allen writes.