As Ratzinger’s power grew, so did his arrogance. Not everyone saw it. His closest deputies insisted he was always civil and open to debate. For churchmen who worked outside the congregation, however, the cardinal was increasingly high-handed. For years, he had used harsh rhetoric in defending church doctrine, and now it was matched by insensitivity and plain nastiness with people, especially in his written communications. (He almost always wrote to the congregation’s targets instead of dealing with them face-to-face, even those who worked a few blocks away in Rome.) A respected American journalist, John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter, the author of three authoritative biographies of Ratzinger, attested to the cardinal’s increasingly obvious “mean streak.” He proved himself “capable of being petty when his full emotional energies were engaged in a fight.”
Ratzinger’s critics thought there was an early display of that in 1983, when he abruptly rescinded a policy—approved a decade earlier by Paul VI, at the urging of American bishops—that allowed priests who were recovering alcoholics to use unfermented grape juice instead of wine during Holy Communion. Ratzinger was adamant that Paul’s policy could not stand, since the Gospels state explicitly that the apostles drank wine at the Last Supper. American bishops protested, warning it might condemn many priests to return to their addiction. After more than a year, Ratzinger revised his order, but only in part. He agreed to allow alcoholic priests to use grape juice but required them to apply to the congregation for permission. It was a bureaucratic process that many priests resisted since it meant creating a detailed paper record in Rome of their alcoholism.
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