With the forthcoming abdication of Pope Benedict XVI on February 28 2013, will much actually change after the election of a new pontiff? To examine why not, here is a brief backgrounder on Catholicism's struggle against modernity. Over the last two centuries, the Papacy and western world have had an ambivalent relationship. As a reaction to Napoleonic imperialism and the unification of Italy, the Papacy retreated backward into anti-democratic illiberalism for most of the nineteenth century. In Mirai Vos (1832), Pope Gregory XVI stated as much within an encyclical, an official statement of Catholic doctrine. Pius IX was no different, and sacrificed any opportunity for initial papal influence after Italy's final consolidation as a nation-state in 1871. In 1864, Pius IX issued Quanta Curia, an encyclical which condemned rationalism, liberal Catholicism, general liberalism, materialism, socialism and agnosticism. In 1870, Pius IX also declared himself 'infallible,' meaning that papal decisions could not be challenged during his tenure as pope, and imposed Saint Thomas Aquinas' "scholastic" "natural law" prescientific dogma as "official" church philosophy. Gradually though, the Papacy became reconciled with the Italian state, although this didn't mean wholesale acceptance of the modern world. However, there were some progressive developments during his successor, Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903). In Rerum Novarum (1891), he endorsed the comprehensive welfare state as compatible with Catholic doctrine and supported central government provision of health, education and social welfare services. This prudent development enhanced Catholic working-class and progressive adherence to the church throughout Britain, Western Europe, North America and Australasia. Unfortunately given that promising development, Catholicism became severely compromised during the eras of Italian fascism, Nazi Germany and the consequent Second World War. During the twenties and thirties, Pius XI (1922-1939) and Pius XII (1939-1958) signed concordats with Italy (1929) and Nazi Germany (1933), although Pius XI was a forthright critic of Nazi "disability cleansing" policies within the Tiergarten IV programme in his encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (1937). However, against this, an earlier encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno (1931) encouraged Italian lay Catholic participation within Mussolini's fascist Italy. Shamefully, Pius XII offered minimal criticism of Nazi Germany's Holocaust and the consequent genocide of six million Jews, one million Sinti and Romani (Gypsies) and countless others, including fifty thousand gay men. Fortunately, Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) convened Vatican II, which finally accepted some limited liberal reform and partial democratisation. However, such reform was limited and the backlash against such concessions began during the next pontificate. Pope Paul VI (1963-1977) reimposed church dogma opposed to acceptance of artificial contraception and abortion in Humanae Vitae (1967), which estranged many consequent generations of Catholic women and men from the church. Under Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, elected Pope John Paul II (1978-2005), the Vatican went on the warpath against Catholic feminism, lesbian/gay and reproductive rights and Latin American liberation theology. During his papacy, John Paul II released Veritatis Splendor (1993) and Evangelium Vitae (1995), which reiterated conservative doctrinal positions on the above. As in many other western societies, New Zealand Catholics became divided along ideological lines. On the one hand, Christchurch's Catholic Worker commune stood up for peace and against hardcore New Right economic policies during the eighties and nineties. On the dark side, Catholic Right anti-abortionist Bernard Moran frequently attacked the orthodoxy of Catholic Filipino and Latin American international solidarity groups. As a consequence, as anti-abortion groups began to age and die off, liberal Catholics retaliated by boycotting membership and withholding donations to such organisations.Consequently, SPUC (now Voice for Life) shrivelled during the nineties and early decades of the twenty-first century. The Catholic hierarchy might still oppose civil unions, marriage equality and same-sex parenting, but liberal lay Catholics diverge substantially from the hierarchy when it comes to practise, using contraception, sometimes upholding abortion rights and LGBT equality and feminism. Unfortunately, Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2013) has proven no better. The erstwhile pope was a strident doctrinal social conservative authoritarian, with a negative history of actions and statements against lesbians and gay men. Until his election as pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith during John Paul II's papacy. The CDF was formerly known as the Inquisition and while it no longer incinerates individuals for dissent, it can censor and try to silence them during the present day. Liberal Catholics despised Ratzinger for the increasing institutional repression and loss of internal lay accountability that occurred within their denomination during his tenure as CDF Prefect. Ratzinger silenced and disciplined many advocates of Latin American liberation theology and East Asian Buddhist/Christian dialogue, as well as pastoral ministry to lesbians and gay men during the emergence of the HIV/AIDS crisis and Catholic feminist and gay dissent against repressive conservative orthdoxy when it came to safe sex, contraception and abortion, as well as declaring opposition to women's ordination as a 'papal infallibility' issue. In other ways, Ratzinger was more conservative than John Paul II as well. At least John Paul II didn't declare women's ordination an 'infallibility' issue, and he had some sympathy with Latin American liberation theology as a criticism of hardline US New Right free market policies, as well as speaking out against US military adventurism and the nuclear arms race and capital punishment. As a youth, Ratzinger grew up in Nazi Germany, in conservative Bavaria. This may be the root of his profound doctrinalconservatism, although it is difficult to see why, given that German Lutheranism and Catholicism alike fed the hideous anti-Semitic pogroms of the Middle Ages and Pius XII's tenure was one of shameful silence and compromise with the obscenity of the Nazi Holocaust. Born in 1928, Ratzinger even served in the Hitler Youth during the closing stages of the war. Benedict XVI believes that the Vatican is the sole guarantor of 'absolute truth', defined in premodern, prescientific "natural law" and "scholastic" terms against the New Left of the sixties and seventies and centre-left from the eighties onward. As CDF Prefect and Pope, he demanded obedience and submission from lay Catholics and theologians to the centralised authority of the Papacy and Curia, the institutional edifice that supports papal supremacy within the Vatican, even on issues where "infallibility" hasn't been invoked. Apart from continuing progressive Catholic initiatives related to peace activism and opposition to capital punishment and some New Right economic policies, the Catholic Church has become torn between an evermore repressive and authoritarian hierarchy and educated laypeople and theologians. Benedict XVI was a pessimist on matters of social justice, and his authoritarianism alienated numerous theologians and laypeople over absence of dialogue, lay accountability and transparency. In June 2005, the US Advocate LGBT magazine noted that most of Ratzinger's initiatives against LGBT equality and human dignity had occurred during his time as CDF Prefect. In May 1984, he suppressed Sexual Morality, a book which argued for greater pluralism and nuanced comprehension of lesbian and gay sexual orientation within the church. In September 1986, Ratzinger took disciplinary action against Catholic Seattle Archbishop Ray Hunthausen, after the latter heard Mass for Dignity, the leading US Catholic lesbian/gay group back in 1983. In 1987, Ratzinger ordered Jesuit Father John McNeill, author of The Church and The Homosexual (1977) to relinquish his ordained ministry and leave the order if he continued to embrace inclusive views. As a consquence, McNeill left the Jesuits rather than accept censorship. In 1988, Father Matthew Fox embraced Anglicanism after leaving the Catholic Church when his Green, feminist and inclusive "creation spirituality" approach was subject to hierarchy censure and persecution. In 1992, The Sexual Creator was also censured, after a Canadian theologian endorsed dissident Catholic views about contraception, homosexuality and sexual morality. During the emergence of HIV/AIDS crisis, he deliberately sabotaged pastoral care. As CDF Prefect, he issued a report misleadingly entitled "On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons" in October 1986, which described lesbian and gay sexual orientation as an "intrinsic moral evil". In 1992, the New Catechism of the Catholic Church reiterated this rejectionist approach. He also acted in solidarity with US antigay fundamentalist activities against the introduction and maintenance of LGBT-inclusive antidiscrimination laws within the United States. In 1998, he encouraged similar activity amongst the Australian Catholic Bishops. In July 1998, Ratzinger mangled a statement from the Committee on Marriage and the Family of the US Catholic Bishops Conference after the latter reissued its letter to the parents of lesbians and gay men, misleadingly entitled "Always Our Children." Predictably, it referred to lesbian and gay sexual orientation as a "deepseated" and not a "fundamentalist" aspect of personality and denied that lesbian and gay adolescent sex might suggest the emergence of a durable and permanent lesbian or gay sexual orientation in later life. "Always Our Children" reinforced conservative church dogma through adding a footnote describing homosexuality as "objectively" "disordered" and removed a passage that used terms like "lesbian and gay" from the pulpit in order to "give people permission" to discuss homosexuality. As Pope, Benedict XVI referred to a 'dictatorship of relativism" shortly after his inception as pontiff, and has been criticised by Jewish commentators for embracing the "Society of St. Pius X", a right-wing Catholic group noted for its antisemitic tendencies and allowing it to hold Latin masses. Although he also condemned New Right excesses and greed, as well as fostering religious dialogue with Tibetan Buddhism, Judaism and Sunni Islam while in office, he also took the opportunity to attack LGBT rights in the name of "natural law" and "sexual difference" in an address to the Curia in 2008. If the church adopted that stance against lesbian and gay sexual orientation, it can be guessed that it didn't endorse transsexuality either. In 2000, the Vatican suddenly decided that reassignment surgery and transitioning were ideologically "wrong", although it did not make that official church policy until 2003. As with its opposition to feminism and LGBT rights, the Vatican ignorantly insists that "biological sex" and sexual identity are founded in "natural" "sexual difference" and therefore, homosexuality, transsexuality and most meaningful feminist political activityare "forbidden" to "faithful" conservative Catholics. More recently, it has endorsed Canadian Christian Right activities against Bill C-279, a transgender equality and anti-discrimination bill in that country. However, during Benedict XVI's tenure as Pope, the church has been experiencing an increasing quagmire of scandals from paedophile infiltration and damage within the church in North America, Western Europe and Australasia, which only resulted in concealment, denial and enablement of further abuse within the church from its hierarchy. At the same time, a witchhunt was underway against Catholic feminists, dissident nuns, priests and theologians, lesbians and gay men and advocates of liberation theology and Catholic/Buddhist dialogue. In North America, the laity is more radicalised, forming organisations to fight within the church for justice, accountability, transparency and reparations. Notably, though, Benedict XVI took prompt action against the Legion of Christ, especially a Mexican paedophile priest, Father Maciel Degollado its founder, forcing his resignation from leadership and active ministry. He has also apologised to Irish Catholics over instances of clergy pedophilia there. That said, the toll of toleration of Catholic clergy pedophilia has been sobering,with its suicides, mental illness and blighted educational progress and employment opportunities for its victims due to consequent alcohol and drug abuse. It has also led to justifiable backlash against the Vatican's "moral" authority for allowing this state of affairs to continue for so long. Benedict XVI might well have been sincere in his apologies for what happened, but the hierarchy itself continues to threaten, intimidate and bluster against victims of its past denial, concealment and absence of accountability and transparency. Now aged 82, Benedict XVI is at the same age that John Paul II was at the time of his death in 2005. Like his predecessor, he has been in ill-health, with repeated reports of strokes and cardiovascular problems. Unfortunately, like his longer-tenured predecessor, Benedict XVI has also been able to stack the College of Cardinals with "organisation men" dedicated to the continuation of conservative and repressive orthodoxy. Any possibility of meaningful reform during the next pope's term of office is exceedingly remote. Recommended: Pauline Manning: Take Back the Church: Resisting Papal and Religious Conservatism: New York: Free Books:2003. Karl von Aretin: The Papacy in the Modern World: London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson: 1970. David Frame: Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal: New York: Broadway Books: 2004. Muriel Porter: Sex, Power and the Clergy: South Yarra: Hardie Grant: 2001. John Allen: "The Vatican's Enforcer" National Catholic Reporter: 16.04.99: http://www.natcath.com/NCR_online/archives/041699a.htm "New Pope on Homosexuality: An "Intrinsic Moral Evil": http://www.advocate.com/news_detail.asp?id=15726 Vatican: "Considerations Regarding Homosexual Couples" http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance: http://www.religioustolerance.org/transsexu15.htm Craig Young - 15th February 2013