To Mr. Michaels, I was also under the impression from your article that Fr. Ratzinger/Pope Benedict was one of those "under suspicion".  I know you have to keep your article to a certain length, but a little more clarification–or, a little less "name-dropping"–would seem to be in order.

As for those who take "encouragement" from this–whether in truth or in  implication–they will continue to twist anything they can to their own ends, no matter how carefully we word it.

There’s no question that this suspicion was not nearly as serious as some of the others that I list.  Still, it’s worth noting as an interesting illustration of the times. And my intention is certainly not to give dissenters the encouragement to “stay their course,” if that means ignoring the Church and her teachings and plowing ahead without concern.  Several of those of Ratzinger’s generation who were forbidden to teach at the time provided an extraordinary example of faithful obedience.  Yves Congar and Henri DeLubac are obvious examples.   But the number of people who have, at various points in history, been looked upon with suspicion or condemned by Vatican authorities and later “rehabilitated” in the eyes of the Church, has indeed been taken as a source of such encouragement by some. 

It happens.  The most recent example of this will come on November 18, 2007, when Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, will beatify Fr. Antonio Rosmini, an Italian philosopher whose books were at one point on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Index of Forbidden Books.   

Personally, I take it as a reminder of the human element in the Church and the carrying out of its mission.  That human, fallible, sometimes sinful element will be there, right along with the divinely protected teaching and activity, until we’re all gathered together in the New Jerusalem.

Barry Michaels

If that’s the case, then it’s the Church’s fault no? It would have to be. They are wise enough to know the differences and not blame them on some protestant bogeyman.

"In the first half of the twentieth century, anti-modernism became within the Church what anti-Communism was in the United States in the 1950's. “

The myth of "McCarthyism" is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Sen. Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't hiding under the bed during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis. As Whittaker Chambers said: "Innocence seldom utters outraged shrieks. Guilt does."

At the time, half the country realized liberals were lying. After a half century of liberal myth-making,  the disgorging of Soviet and American archives half a century later overcame their lies. In 1995, the U.S. government released its cache of Soviet cables that had been decoded during the Cold War in a top-secret undertaking known as the Venona Project. The cables proved the overwhelming truth of McCarthy's charges. Naturally, therefore, the release of decrypted Soviet cables was barely mentioned by the New York Times. It might have detracted from stories of proud and unbowed victims of "McCarthyism." They were not so innocent after all, it turns out.

Perhaps some priests remember the "harsh" ways with which theologians were scrutinized.  It was a different age certainly.  However, the Holy Spirit kept Holy Mother Church on task regarding rooting out modernism at the tap root.  Ergo, Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.