Keeper of the Straight and Narrow

The world's most powerful Cardinal lives a stone's throw from St. Peter's Square, above the terminus of the No. 64 bus, a line infamous for pickpockets. Each morning he sets off on foot at a brisk pace, crossing over cobblestones to arrive at 9 a.m. at the palazzo that once bore the title of the Roman and Universal Inquisition. Soft-spoken and courteous, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 66, looks too benign to be an inquisitor. But his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the Roman Inquisition's latest incarnation, and as the Catholic Church's chief enforcer of dogma, the Cardinal stands in direct succession to the persecutors of Galileo and the compilers of the index of banned books. The weight of history is borne in the attention Ratzinger receives. His staff, which includes some of the church's brightest men, is sensitive to every small sign of pleasure or displeasure -- a subtle glance, a pause, a bland word that has accrued special meaning over years. When he gets to his office, important documents are spread out on the desk, ready for his review. Says an associate: "He hates to be unprepared."

And he is prepared for everything, from opinions on candidates for bishoprics worldwide to subtle points of theology. Moreover, he seems prepared always to say no -- at least to Catholic liberals: no to women becoming ! priests, no to radical feminism, no to each instance of abortion, no to every incidence of premarital or extramarital sex. He has exerted his influence on a document, published last week, laying out the church's stand on interpretations of the Bible. Ratzinger sees his work as showing Catholics the proper way -- and the forbidden way. "I think there is an obligation to protect people, to help them to see this is not our faith."

The Cardinal wields immense clout in the hierarchy -- beginning at the top. The Pope and Ratzinger are, says one mid-ranking Vatican official, "two pieces of a puzzle. Without one, the other is not complete." Others point out an obvious primacy. Asked whether the Cardinal in practice was the undisputed No. 2 under the Pontiff, one insider in the Holy See responds, "Intellectually and theologically, he's No. 1."

"I wouldn't be surprised if someday he's looked upon as one of the great saints of our time," says Joseph Fessio, an American Jesuit and a former student. However, as the Pope's conservative eminence grise, the Cardinal is also one of the most despised men in Catholicism. Critics decry his hard-line ways and his apostasy from the seeming liberalism of his youth. They call the German-born prelate "Panzer Kardinal" and conjure up images of Huns and German despots. "He is very sweet -- and very dangerous," the Swiss theologian Hans Kung says. Ratzinger helped force Kung out of a professorship at the University of Tubingen for, among other things, arguing that the church -- speaking through the Pope and its bishops -- is not infallible.

The Cardinal likes to spend 15 minutes each afternoon at the piano. He is particularly fond of Mozart and Beethoven. "Brahms," he says, "is too difficult for me." Other difficulties include modern technology -- computers, stereos, gizmos and cars. He has never earned a driver's license. His talents lie in another realm. He can, say his associates, refine doctrine from a chaos of arguments. Says an aide: "He has the ability to synthesize a lot of collected, sometimes contradictory, information and put it into words that are compelling, straightforward and above all true to what he believes." And what he believes is often what the faithful are expected to accept.

Ratzinger's behind-the-scenes interrogations and investigations exert a subtle chill on Catholic intellectual life. His actions imposed an 11-month "penitential silence" on Leonardo Boff, Brazil's exponent of liberation theology (who has since quit the priesthood); they also led to the removal of Charles Curran, a proponent of birth control, from teaching theology at the Catholic University of America. (He is now at Southern Methodist University.) In fact, Ratzinger sometimes seems to be turning his back -- literally -- on modern notions. The pre-Vatican II church, he said last April, was theologically correct in having priests "oriented toward the Lord," facing away from the congregation at Mass. He agreed, however, that a reversal would be impractical.

In the early 1960s, no one would have thought Joseph Ratzinger would become the enforcer of conservatism. At the Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, Ratzinger and Kung were young theological stars advising the West German contingent. In those heady days, Ratzinger and Kung applauded from the sidelines as Joseph Cardinal Frings, the Archbishop of Cologne, electrified the council by calling the prosecutorial tactics of the very office Ratzinger now leads "a cause of scandal to the world." Ratzinger is said to have ghostwritten most of that speech.

The progressive views he expressed during the council evolved out of wartime experience. Though drafted into a paramilitary corps, the teenage Joseph saw no combat because of a badly infected finger. He never learned to fire a gun, and his weapons were never loaded -- even when he performed guard duty in a BMW plant. But there he saw laborers conscripted from a branch of the Dachau concentration camp. He also remembers seeing Hungarian Jews being shipped to their death. "The abyss of Hitlerism could not be overlooked," he said. The depredations of the officially atheistic regime led to his conviction that religion was crucial to civilization. "Only the Christian faith had the possibility to heal these people and give a new beginning," he says. He was ordained a priest in 1951, and moved on to a brilliant career as a theologian that reached its first peak at the Second Vatican Council.

And then came 1968 -- annus mirabilis for the world and for Joseph Ratzinger. "Something happened," says Kung. "He was deeply shocked by the student revolts." At the time, Ratzinger was theology dean of the University of Tubingen, where Kung was a professor. "He had big clashes with his most intimate students and assistants," says Kung. The rebellion, says a Ratzinger student, Wolfgang Beinert, "had an extraordinarily strong impact" on the future Cardinal, who saw something sinister at work. He resigned from Tubingen and sought intellectual refuge in the peaceful quarters of the University of Regensburg. Ratzinger, says Beinert, who remains close to his former mentor, had been "very open, fundamentally ready to let in new things. But suddenly he saw these new ideas were connected to violence and a destruction of the order of what came before. He was simply no longer able to bear it." Says the Cardinal of that time: "I had the feeling that to be faithful to my faith, I must also be in opposition to interpretations of the faith that are not ((true)) interpretations but oppositions."

After Pope Paul VI named him Archbishop of Munich in 1977, Ratzinger found an ally in a fellow Cardinal who shared his view of the church as the bulwark against barbaric atheism and dehumanizing secularism: Karol Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Cracow and the future John Paul II. Both were members of the worldwide Synod of Bishops -- an advisory council to the Pope. In 1980, two years after his accession, John Paul asked Ratzinger to join him in Rome. The Pontiff was turned down -- twice. Finally Ratzinger laid out his conditions. He would come only if he could continue to speak his mind on matters he felt strongly about. If John Paul was ever worried that he and Ratzinger would clash over ideas, that concern has dissipated. "In fact," says Ratzinger, "we do agree completely on all essentials of church doctrine and order. We arrive at the same conclusions, and our differences of approach, where they do exist, stimulate discussion."

Since 1981, Ratzinger has infuriated liberals as the church's Doctor No. He and his staff have issued a strong public denunciation of homosexuality; privately they have warned bishops to guard against gay-rights laws. The congregation has also released a statement against genetic engineering. And Ratzinger was behind a critique that seems to have doomed prospects for a reunification of the Catholic and Anglican churches in the near future.

Ratzinger's views resonate through the Pope's recent encyclical The Splendor of Truth, which sharply defined right and wrong. It also sought to instill a militant obedience in Catholics. Treating religion as a matter of mere emotion, says Ratzinger, has created a crisis in moral values for all societies. "It is essential to have common ground that can be attested to in moral and religious matters." The church's teachings, therefore, have to be unbending, Ratzinger believes. "Everyone, thank God, is free to decide whether or not he is able and willing to subscribe to the Catholic faith with responsibility before God and his conscience. If I come to the conclusion that I can no longer support this set of beliefs, then it is a matter of honesty to declare this and draw the consequences." If a theologian needs prodding to come to that realization, Ratzinger is happy to prod. And if this means many church members must drop out, so be it. Does this not betray his past? "I see no break in my views as a theologian," he says. "It is absolute nonsense to say Vatican II left it up to the individual to decide which religious ideas he would adopt and which he would not." As a participant in the council, "I would be making a liar of myself" to say such a thing.

Today the Cardinal, who is into his third five-year term at the Congregation, is the longest-serving major official in John Paul's Vatican. Might he be elected Pope one day? Vatican watchers say no: he is too controversial, and his brief record in pastoral work -- as Archbishop of Munich -- is at best spotty. Meanwhile, his health, while good today, has been precarious in the past. In September 1991 he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that affected his left field of vision. Then in August 1992 he fell against a radiator and was knocked unconscious, bleeding profusely. "Thank God, there are hardly any traces of it now," he says.

The Cardinal likes to explain his faith through the story of one of his theology professors, a man who questioned the thinking behind the church's 1950 declaration that the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven was an infallible tenet. "He said, 'No, this is not possible -- we don't have a foundation in Scripture. It is impossible to give this as a dogma.' " This led the professor's Protestant friends to hope they had a potential convert. But the professor immediately reaffirmed his abiding Catholicism. "No, at this moment I will be convinced that the church is wiser than I." Ratzinger asserts: "It was always my idea to be a Catholic, to follow the Catholic faith and not my own opinions." Theologians may wrangle all they want, he says, but faith in the end is something ineffable, springing from the heart. And once it is felt there, he says, "then the mind will accept it too."