Rome, Mar. 24 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger takes a very somber view of the Church in the meditations that he has prepared for the Way of the Cross on Good Friday. The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith compares the Catholic Church to "a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side." Cardinal Ratzinger was chosen this year to prepare the meditations that will be used for the annual Way of the Cross ceremony at the Roman Coliseum. The Vatican still has not indicated who will lead the ceremony-- prompting speculation that Pope John Paul II will make a televised appearance. For the theme of his meditations, Cardinal Ratzinger takes a passage from St. John's Gospel: "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."

As he recalls Christ's suffering on the Way of the Cross, the German cardinal notes that Jesus also "suffers in his Church." And in a moving meditation on Christ's third fall, at the foot of the Cross, Cardinal Ratzinger sketches the condition of the Church today:

What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us? We have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism. Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church? How often is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts! How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there! How often is his Word twisted and misused! What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words!

How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him! How much pride, how much self-complacency! What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall!
 

Earlier in his meditations, the Dean of the College of Cardinals condemns the "arrogance" of modern man, "that makes us think that we ourselves can create human beings has turned man into a kind of merchandise, to be bought and sold, or stored to provide parts for experimentation."

He also laments "how a Christianity which has grown weary of faith has abandoned the Lord," allowing the growth of false ideologies and the emergence of "the banal existence of those who, no longer believing in anything, simply drift through life, have built a new and worse paganism, which in its attempt to do away with God once and for all, have ended up doing away with man." Contemplating Christ's death on the Cross, Cardinal Ratzinger writes: "At this present hour of history we are living in God's darkness." He prays that Jesus will give the Church the light to overcome that darkness, and urges the Christian world to look directly into the face of the suffering Jesus to learn the truth.