Category: Who Is The Church

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Benedict XVI Could Turn into a Shadow Pope

Progressive Catholic theologian Hans Küng, whose authority to teach Catholic theology was rescinded by the Vatican in 1979, spoke to SPIEGEL about the challenges facing the next pope and the need for reform of the Catholic Church.

By Peter Wensierski

SPIEGEL: What will change now that Pope Benedict XVI has resigned?

Hans Küng: There is now a realization that a pope should step down when the time has come. Joseph Ratzinger made it very clear that he could no longer fulfill his duties. His predecessor felt he had to turn his death into a show. Fortunately, Benedict chose another way, in order to demonstrate that when a pope is no longer capable of doing his job, he should give it up. This is exactly how the office should be approached. In John Paul II’s final years, we weren’t led by a pope so much as by a curia, which governed the Church in his place.

SPIEGEL: Who would you like to see lead your Church as pope?

Hans Küng: A pope who is not intellectually stuck in the Middle Ages, one who does not represent mediaeval theology, liturgy and religious order. I would like to see a pope who is open first to suggestions for reform and secondly, to the modern age. We need a pope who not only preaches freedom of the Church around the world but also supports, with his words and deeds, freedom and human rights within the Church — of theologians, women and all Catholics who want to speak the truth about the state of the Church and are calling for change.

SPIEGEL: Who is your ideal candidate for the office of pope?

Hans Küng: If I were to name anyone, he would most certainly not get elected. But background should not play a role. The best man for the job should be elected. There are no more candidates who belonged to the Second Vatican Council. In the running are candidates who are middle of the road and toe the Vatican line. Is there anyone who won’t simply continue on the same path? Is there anyone who understands the depth of the Church’s crisis and can see a way out? If we elect a leader who continues on the same path, the Church’s crisis will become almost intractable.

SPIEGEL: Is there likely to be friction between the former pope and the incumbent pope?

Hans Küng: Benedict XVI could turn into a shadow pope who has stepped down but can still exert indirect influence. He has already assigned himself a place within the Vatican. He is keeping his secretary, who will also remain prefect of the papal household under the new pope. This is a new form of nepotism, and one that isn’t appreciated in the Vatican either. No priest likes to have his predecessor looking over his shoulder. Even the bishop of Rome doesn’t find it pleasant to have his predecessor constantly keeping an eye on him.

SPIEGEL: So the new pope will have a hard time asserting himself?

Hans Küng: If the next pope is clever, he will appoint a cabinet that will allow him to lead effectively. A solitary pope, isolated from the curia the way that Ratzinger was, will not be able to lead a community of 1.2 billion people. The pope urgently needs a cabinet made up of new, competent men (and why not women, too) in order to overcome the crisis. Unless there is an end to the tradition of the Roman royal household and an introduction of a functioning, central church administration as well as a curia reform, no new pope will be able to bring about change and progress.

Complete Article HERE!

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WHAT THE POPE CAN PRAY FOR

BY JANE KRAMER

In the twelve days since Benedict XVI announced his retirement, I’ve been wondering whether the Church of Rome might not have been better served—at least from the point of view of progressive Catholics—by the Pope keeping his job and drawing an eventual last breath, in what he would call God’s time, on Peter’s throne. It would have released those Catholics from the strictures of empathy, admiration, and grueling patience his voluntary leaving seems to have placed upon them. (St. Peter, by the way, was married.) The response has been uncharacteristically kind. And how could it not be, at the shock of such eloquent and simple humility coming from the man who, for the past thirty-two years, enforced and eventually led the doctrinal retreat into the Middle Ages begun by his predecessor. There have been endless comparisons between the style of Benedict’s departure and that of John Paul II, in 2005; they are almost comically stereotypic: Pope John Paul II’s ardent, emotional, and pointedly public ecce-homo calvary through disease, senility, and incapacity to death; and Benedict’s rational, considered decision, clearing the way for a like-minded successor who would presumably restore obedience and fealty to a Church whose authority, like his own, was waning. “For the good of the Church,” is how Benedict described his resignation. It may be that, however weakened, Benedict was crafty.

There have been many theories, though few, to my knowledge, say that Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was pushed into retirement, let alone that those honest, eloquent words about no longer possessing the quality of mind and body that the papacy requires had been scripted for him. And with good reason: knowing Benedict, he probably pushed himself. Today, the average age of the Church’s cardinals, who will convene next week to begin considering candidates for the next pope, is seventy-two, and those who are under eighty—the only ones eligible to actually cast ballots in a papal conclave—were all appointed by John Paul II or, more often than not, by Benedict XVI. So it’s safe to say that the College of Cardinals has been stacked to ensure that their linea gotica continues moving backward. And never mind that the Church has been losing both priests and nuns because of a doctrine of celibacy that began not in the Gospels but in the fourth century (and was largely ignored until much later); because of a doctrine of infallibility that in fact only became canonic in 1870; and because of an institutionalized misogyny that has not only kept women from the priesthood but sends them to Hell if they drop by Planned Parenthood for a morning-after pill, or even if, like those valiant American “nuns on the bus,” they drive off without permission to minister to the poor. The list goes on. A new face, with a new infallibility chakra under his papal hat, may be the Church’s last best hope for what is now called “putting the past behind us”—“the past,” in this case, including decades of rampant, officially closeted pedophilia, involving thousands of priests preying on tens of thousands of children—and continuing its long march backward.

I once met a writer who had been working for years on a book about the Vatican. His idea was that the Catholic Church was the oldest successful corporation in the world, and he predicted that the legacy of John XXIII, whose famous metaphor for the Second Vatican Council was throwing open the windows of the Church of Rome and letting in fresh air, would prove to be, corporately speaking, inconvenient. He was right. Dissident underlings are never convenient, in theology as in business.

When John Paul II was elected in 1978, he was certainly a breath of air, at least in style. He was warm. He wrote poetry. He was “the people’s pope”—a disarming populist and Mary worshipper, which endeared him, if not to Catholic intellectuals, at least to the Catholic masses trying to beat back poverty around the world. He was also a fervent anti-Communist. His support of Solidarity played a huge role in the dismantling of Soviet power that began in deeply Catholic Poland, and people loved him for that. It tended to obscure the fact that, like the Polish Church in which he’d been raised, he was profoundly conservative when it came to dogma. He instructed poor Catholic women (who filled the stadiums of the Third World to hear him) to reproduce, and to keep reproducing, and never mind if the women were struggling against all odds to feed the children they already had. He refused to consider the possibility of married priests or women priests, let alone openly gay priests. What’s more, he arrived at the Holy See with what could be called a professional deformation—understandable in a priest who had spent half his life under Stalinist rule, but delusional all the same. He saw Communists everywhere, and nowhere more than in the communitarian Christian movement called liberation theology, which was the real fresh air of Roman Catholicism and, at the time, doing more to revive Catholic practice in South and Central America than any pope could, or would, short of joining that movement himself.

Enter Joseph Ratzinger, who, three years into John Paul’s papacy, in 1981, took on the role of Bad Cop to Karol Wojtyla’s Good Cop (an arrangement not unheard of in corporations). The official title was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition. It was, you could say, the job Ratzinger was born for. He made an enthusiastic stalker of “heretical” practices and opinions, so much so that the people he held in his doctrinal sniper’s sight took to calling him the Grand Inquisitor. His targets ranged from an old Tübingen University friend and mentor, Hans Küng (whom he reportedly had a hand in barring from teaching Catholic theology just before his appointment as Prefect, in 1979), to priests and teachers in progressive orders like the Jesuits. The list is long. Under his watch, America’s liberal Conference of Catholic Bishops quickly became a conservative force, responsible for, among other things, denying communion to Catholic politicians who accept that contraception and abortion rights could be granted under the Constitution of our (still) secular state. He marginalized a group of Brazilian cardinals and bishops who had risked their lives to bear witness to atrocities in the political prisons of their country’s right-wing military junta—most notably the cardinal Aloísio Lorscheider, an appointment of Paul VI (and a strong contender to succeed him) and a lifelong defender of the liberation-theology movement and its priests.

The theologian Leonardo Boff was not only one of those priests but one of the founders of the liberation movement. I knew him in Brazil, in the mid-eighties, where I was writing a piece on a liberation-theology parish priest. Boff had been sentenced to silence for a year—courtesy of Cardinal Ratzinger—for his deviant views. Happily, Boff (who would leave the priesthood six or seven years later, when Ratzinger tried to silence him again) was ignoring the Vatican’s punishment, at least at home. He was, and remains, a remarkable Christian: “as Marxist as Luke” is how he described himself and his dedication to the poor. Twenty years later, Ratzinger was Pope, and one of the words he brought with him from the C.D.F. was “deviant.” Remember his exhortation on “deviant sects,” his term for other faiths, including Christian ones? Remember, for that matter, his Regensburg speech about the inherent illogic (if not evil) of Islam? His friend Rowan Williams, the former Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, once told me how much he always looked forward to talking to Benedict on his unofficial visits to Rome; they shared an interest in Augustine, and Williams was, as he put it, immensely impressed by the Pope’s quality of mind. That did not prevent Benedict from poaching on Williams’s turf when he opened the Church of Rome to Anglican priests opposed to the ordination of women bishops. It remains unclear whether Benedict counts the Church of England as another “deviant sect” or simply as a lapsed Catholic institution that refused to acknowledge him.

What is “deviant”? Most of us would consider the Holocaust-denying followers of the late Marcel LeFebvre deviant. LeFebvre was a French cardinal so frighteningly racist that he and the four “bishops” he had illegally appointed were excommunicated by John Paul II. But Benedict reversed the excommunication of those bishops—on condition that they kept their views on the Holocaust to themselves. (Their silence was equivocal, given that you could read those views in the books and pamphlets they continued to sell, along with cakes and honey, in their monastery-churches.) It seems that in any reasonable church they would be considered more “deviant,” theologically, than a Leonardo Boff or a Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian liberation theologian who lived with the poor, practicing theology “from below.” And what about those child-molesting priests who, once caught, were not only protected by their bishops and, for years, ignored by the Vatican but were, instead, discreetly transferred to other parishes, where they could begin molesting again. I wish Ratzinger well in his new life of prayer. But I hope that, in the tranquility of his reflections, he reconsiders the meaning of the word “deviant.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Nurse destroys archbishop’s gay marriage stance with a stroke of her pen

A 65-year-old former nurse has told the leader of England’s Catholics to ditch the robes, the Latin and activism against gays and start helping the needy

A 65-year-old former nurse has delivered a withering telling off to the Archbishop of Westminster – England’s most senior Catholic – for his stance on gay marriage.

The woman, who now works with animals and lives in northern England, says she has been married for 30 years but gay marriage doesn’t threaten the status of her relationship whatsoever.

The Most Reverend Vincent Nichols arrives at Westminster Cathedral in central London, ahead of the formal service to install him as the 11th Archbishop of Westminster, on May 21, 2009. AFP PHOTO/Leon Neal (Photo credit should read Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

And she says Archbishop Vincent Nichols and his church have become obsessed with gay sex, ignoring the real problems of society – the economy, schools, hospitals and our children’s future.

She tells him the so-called ‘Princes of the Church’ should ditch the ‘silk, the gold, the Gucci shoes, the ridiculous tall hats’ in favor of a simple pilgrim’s staff and get on with helping real people.

And she says Jesus ‘appears to have happily shared meals with prostitutes, drunkards, lepers, Gentiles and I do not doubt with people of same-sex orientation’.

Nichols has campaigned vigorously against same-sex marriage but she warns him the church’s propaganda calling homosexuality ‘disordered’ and ‘evil’ makes it impossible for the LGBT faithful to feel at home in Catholicism.

She has requested to remain anonymous but asked GSN to share her letter. We understand that she has received a reply from Nichols, but it failed to address the substance of her comments.

You can read her letter here:

Dear Archbishop,

I listened to your letter of Sunday 3 February in which you asked us as a matter of urgency to either send a postcard provided or write to our local MP to request him to vote against the government’s proposed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. I came out of the church with two thoughts and one resolve. Firstly I thought ‘Lord pity and help any gay person sitting listening to that letter’ not a word a charity or understanding did it contain. Secondly I thought or asked ‘Where in that is the love of Christ for all humankind?’ My resolve was not to contact my MP.

That decision was not made because of the tone of your letter however. I do not find it at all easy or even possible to uphold the church’s teaching on homosexuality. Among gay people of my acquaintance are those who have a deep spiritual life, to have one’s sexual orientation, an orientation that one is born with, described as an ‘objective disorder’ and to hear homosexual acts described as ‘intrinsically evil’ surely makes it almost impossible to feel at home or welcome in the church. It is utterly unrealistic to expect homosexual people to live celibate lives (We all know that many priests find this very difficult and sometimes impossible). The revelations of clerical sex abuse have led many of us to look with a very critical eye on the so-called celibate life and to realize that it has all to often lead to warped and destructive behavior.

To return to same-sex marriage, can it be abhorrent that two people of the same sex would wish to experience that emotional and physical closeness that marriage offers? We believe that God is love and so it must follow that in every loving and committed relationship God must be present – or does this, in your understanding, only apply in heterosexual relationships? Is heterosexuality more valued by God and by the church than homosexuality? You are, I suppose, aware that there are more than a few homosexual men in the priesthood and that nowadays heterosexual men are much less willing to embrace the celibate life. Is the good work done by such men less valuable in the eyes of this church? If so is it further evidence of its dysfunctional state?

I am 65 years of age and have been married for almost 30 years. I would so have appreciated an explanation from you or any of the hierarchy exactly how my long and happy marriage will be threatened by the union of gay couples. When I meet people in my day to day existence they talk about the economic climate (bad), lack of employment (bad), uncertain future for their children (bad), state of schools, hospitals (bad) – never ever has anybody expressed concern about a threat to their marriage by the proposed legalizing of same-sex marriage. You, the church, claim that marriage is the bedrock of society and indeed it is but you also seem to consider it so fragile that allowing a few gay people access to it will endanger it forever. Here the implicit homophobia cannot be ignored.

Sadly you still think your pronouncements will be accepted without question by a meek credulous herd. You have spent far too much time telling us just how sinful we are while drawing veils of respectability over your own grievous wrongdoings.

I sometimes despair of this church, this institution. It seems to me in my reading of the Gospels that Jesus had no problem whatsoever with those who were considered outsiders or exceptions. He appears to have happily shared meals with prostitutes, drunkards, lepers, Gentiles and I do not doubt with people of same-sex orientation since such an orientation has existed since time began. The church seems much happier with its version of order over compassion and love towards the so-called exceptions. It has an appalling history of excluding and torturing those who do not think or subscribe to its definition of ‘right’.

The world is facing disaster on all levels and this church, when not obsessing about matters sexual, spends an inordinate amount of time on pointless activities such as changing the liturgy back to a correct translation of the original Latin – a language not spoken by Jesus but spoken by the oppressors of his time and country. Do you imagine that this obsession with precisely translated texts will win you a single new adherent? To me, you (particularly but not exclusively the hierarchy) appear to be a frightened group of men preoccupied with titles, clothing and other religious externals. You seem, with some wonderful and brave exceptions, to pay only lip service to ecumenism and matters of social justice. I would love to see the so-called ‘Princes of the Church’ (Where did all these triumphant, utterly anti-Gospel titles you award yourselves come from?) get rid of the silk, the gold, the Gucci shoes, the ridiculous tall hats, croziers, fancy soutanes etc etc and substitute bare heads and a simple pilgrim’s staff on all liturgical occasions and that might be taken as a small outward sign of your inner acceptance of fundamental Gospel values.

I seem to have digressed somewhat but to return to where I started, same-sex marriage. I will always be unsure of the validity of any principle or opinion that makes one act in an unkind or intolerant way. Toleration, of course, has its limits, I want you to cry out against injustice and cruelty. Explain to me please exactly how marriage will be ‘changed forever’ by the proposed new laws, specifically tell me how my marriage will be threatened.

I admit that I am not very well versed on biblical texts and I know that there are those who can find a text to confirm any prejudice without having to resort to any sort of reasonable debate but surely if we accept one piece of scripture (Lev 18:22) which declares homosexuality to be an abomination, to judge what is right or wrong, we must accept them all. Following this logic we are therefore forbidden to wear garments made of two different kinds of thread (Lev 19:19), men must never have their hair trimmed especially around the temples (Lev 19:27). According to Lev 25:44 I may possess slaves provided they are purchased from neighboring nations, not sure if this applies to non-members of the EU! As for organizing the stoning of transgressors – well, a logistical nightmare!

Archbishop, we have grasped the principles of evolution, stopped burning witches and holding heresy trials, discounted the flat earth theory. Do you now think we could move the debate about equal human rights for people of same-sex orientation and also the status of women in the church on by a few millennia please?

Complete Article HERE!

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Leading dissident priest slams covert pope selection process

A leading dissident Austrian priest whose call to disobey some Roman Catholic teachings drew a rebuke from Pope Benedict last year urged Church leaders to throw off their secrecy and canvas churchgoers on who should lead them next.

Rev. Helmut SchuellerRev. Helmut Schueller, head of a group of priests who openly challenge Church positions on taboo topics such as priestly celibacy and ordaining women, said selecting a successor to Benedict was a chance to embrace public debate.

“If things were going well, the conclave fathers would at least be going out to the Church grassroots and calling meetings to really hear what the faithful expect,” he told Reuters in a phone interview on Wednesday.

“I find inappropriate this whole method that the cardinals withdraw into their own circle and something leaks out now and then about who might be under consideration,” said Schueller, whose group is getting increasing attention abroad. “Most of the faithful know hardly anything about these people.”

Some 117 cardinals will enter a closed-door conclave at the Vatican in mid-March to elect a successor to Benedict, who stunned the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics on Monday by saying that he would step down on Feb 28.

There are no open campaigns or declared candidates for the post and cardinals are forbidden by Church law from revealing who they voted for. Many cardinals choose their favourite after a series of discreet contacts in the days before the election.

CODED LANGUAGE

One front-runner is Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, whose deputy Schueller once was in the Vienna archdiocese. His decision to debate with rather than discipline his dissident priests may count against Schoenborn among hard-line cardinals.

Schueller said such an important decision required all the time and effort needed to form a broad consensus rather than letting a small group of top leaders decide this in secret.

“A billion Catholics are listening to what is (being discussed) in entirely secretive, coded language,” he complained, calling it undignified that the laity hear about the process only from journalists reporting from the Vatican.

“This passive waiting around is repugnant. It’s really time, and commensurate with the dignity of the faithful, that (the cardinals) put their cards on the table,” he said.

Reformist Austrian Catholics have for decades challenged the conservative policies of Benedict and his predecessor Pope John Paul, creating protest movements and advocating changes that the Vatican firmly rejects.

Benedict, who for over two decades before his 2005 election was the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer, singled out the Austrian rebels for criticism last April while restating the church’s ban on women priests.

The German-born pontiff said he would not put up with open revolt from clerics and lay people.

VATICAN RULES UNCHECKED

Schueller said an outsider from Africa or Latin America would have his work cut out for him to take on Vatican insiders.

Two-thirds of today’s Catholics live in Latin America, Africa and Asia and Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana and Cardinal Odilo Scherer of Brazil are among those mentioned as candidates.

“The biggest problem is that the Vatican establishment rules unchecked over the global Church. Any pope who takes this on has to be well positioned…has to act strategically and has to get lots of cooperation from the bishops of the world,” he said.

But even support from a broad basis might not be enough for a new pope to put his stamp on the Church, he said.

“What good are (such) authorisations for the pope if the system quickly takes him prisoner? This is coming out more and more in the analyses and may have been a significant factor of the resignation” of Benedict, he said.

Complete Article HERE!

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It’ll be a miracle if a new pope ushers in real change in a decaying Church

By Colette Browne

THE resignation of Pope Benedict has prompted much debate about his legacy but another question also arises — why do so many people in this country continue to care about an anachronistic institution that doesn’t want them as members?
It’s ironic really. Senior Church figures whine about the increasing marginalisation of religion in society without ever conceding that it is their own intransigent dogma that is to blame for its increasing irrelevance.

While the behaviour of the Catholic Church is hard to comprehend, so too is that of à la carte Catholics determined to remain part of an organisation with core teachings many find offensive or, frankly, ridiculous. Personally, I have some degree of sympathy for the view of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who last year implored lapsed Catholics to have the courage of their non-convictions and stop cloaking themselves in the comfort blanket of a faith they no longer possess.

There should be no confusion. It’s not as if the Church’s strident views on a host of controversial social issues — like homosexuality and contraception — are shrouded in any mystery. In his infamous letter on the pastoral care of homosexual people, written in 1986, the then Cardinal Ratzinger was unequivocal. “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.

“Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not,” he wrote.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that homosexuality is “a disordered sexual inclination” is engaging in “deceitful propaganda” which is “profoundly opposed to the teaching of the Church”.

But wait. All is not entirely lost. Renouncing homosexual acts and living a chaste existence will allow gay people to “dedicate their lives to understanding the nature of God’s personal call to them”.

In short, you can spend your life as a self-hating homosexual, tormented with the knowledge that God instilled in you such disgusting urges as a sort of bizarre penance, or you can simply ignore all of that guff and get on with your life.

The stark choice between abstinence and damnation is something of a recurring theme when it comes to much Church teaching. In his 1968 encyclical, Humane Vitae, Pope Paul VI laid out the unambiguous Catholic position on contraception — it’s against God’s divine plan.

“It is not licit, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil so that good may follow … even when the intention is to safeguard or promote individual, family or social wellbeing.”

Couples wishing to plan their families were told to roll the dice and rely on the rhythm method. Bizarre as it seems now, this view persisted in Ireland up until the early 1980s, even after a young mother was forced to go to the Supreme Court, in 1973, to fight for the right to import contraceptives after her doctor told her another pregnancy could kill her.

While there may still be some devout Catholics who adhere to this teaching, the suspicion must be that most happily ignore it yet the Church’s position hasn’t changed a jot in the intervening 40 years.

“One cannot accept the hypothesis that a slight moral disorder, on the lines of venial sin, is at stake … for the Magisterium contraception is such a morally disordered form of behaviour that it constitutes gravely sinful matter,” explained professor of moral theology, Fr Lino Ciccone.

The only softening was an admission by Pope Benedict, two years ago, that the use of contraceptives was acceptable “in certain cases”, for example by gay prostitutes to reduce the risk of HIV.

However, the Vatican later stressed that the Pope was not redefining Catholic teaching and the pope had merely “considered an exceptional situation in which the exercise of sexuality represents a real risk to the lives of others”.

So, if you’re married and using contraceptives you are still engaging in “gravely sinful” behaviour. Meanwhile, it goes without saying that those unmarried people living in sin — with contraceptives or without — are hopeless cases whose eternal reward will likely be a fiery affair.

While the Church is happy to see women barefoot and pregnant, it definitely doesn’t want to see them ordained and anywhere near an altar. To understand why a penis is the most important qualification when becoming a priest, the faithful are asked to delve back into the mists of time and remember that Jesus chose 12 male apostles.

Writing in 1994, Pope John Paul II repeated this mantra, saying the Church therefore had no authority to ordain women, while Pope Benedict urged Catholics, seeking a more nuanced explanation, to submit to the “radicalism of obedience”. Basically, just accept it. In case there was any lingering confusion, the Vatican, in 2010, said that anyone involved in the ordination of women was engaged in a grave crime against the church, on a par with child abuse, and would be instantly excommunicated. Strangely, the fact that there were no female apostles is reason enough to debar women from ever being ordained, but the fact that the same apostles were married is not seen as convincing evidence that priests should also be allowed to marry. None of this makes any sense, but that doesn’t stop otherwise erudite members of the hierarchy trotting this out as a supposedly credible excuse when asked about the lack of women in positions of authority in the Church.

MEANWHILE, a recent discovery by a Harvard professor, who has found a scrap of 4th-century papyrus that indicates early Christians believed that Jesus was married and his wife was an apostle, could prove most inconvenient for the Church.

While the scrap of papyrus is still undergoing tests to prove its authenticity, a number of preliminary examinations by experts have found no evidence of any forgery — a minor detail that has not stopped the Vatican from claiming that it is a dud in order to avoid any awkward questions.

Instead of encouraging dialogue and debate about contested teachings, the hierarchy advises conflicted Catholics to either shut up or sling their hook — and then professes bafflement when church attendance is down and their archaic views don’t gain any traction in public debates.

Religious faith is a matter for each individual’s conscience, but the line of demarcation between faith and habit seems to have grown increasingly blurred for many still maintaining a tangential relationship with an organisation that displays so little comprehension of the reality of their lives.

The election of a new pope is certainly a historic occasion, but there has been no indication that a modernising or revitalising force is waiting in the wings to breath life into a decaying institution.

Once the pomp and spectacle is over, it is likely that nothing substantive will have changed and the inexorable decline of the church in the West will continue unabated.

Complete Article HERE!

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What kind of pope do Roman Catholics need?

By Cristina LH Traina

Selection of the next Pope will factor in a host of complicated variables as wings of the Church compete for ascendancy.

Pope Benedict XVI’s impending resignation has already fuelled all the usual speculation about candidates for his successor, accompanied by profiles, photos and odds of election. Behind the hoopla is the question, what sort of leader will really be best for the Church?

Benedict’s own admission that an elderly man cannot undertake the globe-trotting that effective relations require suggests that as a rule, a younger, healthier leader would be a wise choice. But the Church also faces the question what style of leadership would be most fruitful.

Despite the vision of Vatican Council II, which recommended collegial authority and granted the laity almost complete province over action in the world, Pope John Paul II’s and Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificates have echoed an ultramontane, top-down model in which the authority of the pope supersedes that of the bishops, individually or in national organisations.

History of papal power

Vatican I ratified the ultramontane model in an era in which the Roman Catholic Church felt besieged on all sides. The Church had just lost the Papal States and suffered long periods of anti-clericalism and persecution in Europe. The Council responded by absolutising the popes’ control over the one thing left to them: the Church. Over the next 50 years, popes declared a single standard of orthodoxy (the works of Thomas Aquinas) and published – and enforced – laundry lists of anathematised philosophical and political beliefs.

In earlier periods, strong central control could not be realised so easily in practice, except in cases like the Inquisition in which civil power could be conscripted. But when travel took place on foot, by horse, or by sailing ship, and all communications were carried by letter, people had to choose carefully what information to send up and down the chain of the hierarchy. Practices varied, and many “irregularities” simply went uncommented.

Flash forward to the present day, and ultramontanism becomes a little less forgiving. Photos, news reports and blog posts make their way across oceans in seconds or less. Not only does Rome have theoretical authority over every Catholic person and organisation, it has actual access to real-time information about them. This is not to belittle the silencings, excommunications, and even executions of earlier eras, or to overlook the inefficient contemporary Vatican bureaucracy, in which branches famously work at cross purposes. But strong central control combined with instant communication from every layer of the church in every corner of the world creates unprecedented micro-managerial possibilities.

Contemporary contradictions

Cue the debate over the next pope. So-called “conservative” Catholics will be cheering for a candidate who POPEX390continues Benedict’s line of strong Catholic identity. Conservatives, so the stereotype goes, will want a firm hand guiding a centralised, top-down hierarchy capable of overseeing of theology and charitable work all over the world. The ultramontane trend confirmed at Vatican I, and alive and well in the CEO model of the papacy, is their ideal.

A look back at Pope Benedict XVI’s career

In contrast, conventional wisdom says that so-called “liberal” Catholics will be hoping for a candidate who, like John XXIII 50 years ago, might surprise the world by changing direction. Liberals will want a decentralised, participatory structure that places most power in the hands of national bishops’ conferences, in collaboration with the laity. On this view, popes are good for inspiration, pastoral care and ecumenical diplomacy but too far removed from the local details of daily life to rule sensitively on regional questions.

Recent events seem to reinforce these stereotypes. Liberal Catholics took it amiss when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) undertook a comprehensive review of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the largest organisation of Catholic women major superiors. The CDF judged that rampant “radical feminism”, dissent and collaboration with questionable social justice organisations needed correction, and it appointed Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain to oversee the “renewal” of the organisation.

Liberals viewed this as an attempt to silence the most educated and independent branch of American women religious. Conservatives held up the smaller Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, which was not investigated, as an example of fidelity and obedience.

Similarly, when Benedict blocked Lesley Anne Knight’s run for a second term as director of the Catholic umbrella organisation Caritas Internationalis and issued his motu proprio on preserving the Catholic identity of Catholic charities, liberals fretted over Catholic groups’ losses of funds and of opportunities for collaboration with independent non-profits. Conservatives, on the other hand, heralded the increased oversight as an overdue means of ensuring the purity of Catholic teaching and of income streams.

The important exception seems to be the clerical sex abuse crisis. Here organs associated with American liberal Catholicism – Voice of the Faithful, The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Call to Action, BishopAccountability.org, the National Catholic Reporter and others – have echoed conservatives in demanding authoritative, decisive action from the Vatican against bishops who facilitated and hid priestly sexual abuse. Catholics in Ireland and much of Europe, not to mention other parts of the world, have joined them in this demand.

Demand for clerical accountability

And here’s the contradiction. Catholics may not be able to have their cake and eat it too. Some conservative laypeople have laid aside ultramontanism to join the liberal demand for clerical accountability to laypeople, and liberals have joined the conservative chorus requesting action from Rome. Only a tough, centralised hierarchy that monitors all of its outposts carefully can take the strong action against bishops that liberal Catholics seek. A truly collegial model – perhaps a federation of strong national churches with a single spiritual leader, as in the Anglican Communion – would yield more adaptability at the local level but would not have the central power to depose transgressing bishops.

Thus liberal Catholics face a quandary. A pope strong and authoritative enough to purge transgressing bishops is likely to use his power as well to purge liberal theologians, nuns and clergy. A pope who opts for a collegial style more in keeping with Vatican Council II’s precedent will have to rely on his fellow bishops to monitor each other, something they have so far shown little willingness to do.

Conservatives face a similar quandary. What will ensure that the strong hierarchy they envision protects laypeople from clerical transgressions?

There is a third option, of course. If the Catholic Church had structures of accountability that operated from below rather than from above, it would not need to rely on benevolent ultramontanism to get rid of destructive bishops. The next pope could undermine the Vatican’s managerial authority even more radically by insisting that bishops share power collegially with priests, vowed religious and laypeople, and by instituting term limits for bishops like those observed by many Protestant communions. Benedict XVI’s resignation could be the precedent. Stranger things have happened.

Complete Article HERE!

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Pope Benedict in shock resignation

File under: There’s More To This Than Meets The Eye.

Pope Benedict XVI is to resign at the end of this month after nearly eight years as the head of the Catholic Church, saying he is too old to continue at the age of 85.

sad lonely popeThe unexpected development – the first papal resignation in nearly 600 years – surprised governments, Vatican-watchers and even the his closest aides.

The then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope after John Paul II’s death.

The Vatican says it expects a new Pope to be elected before Easter.

The BBC’s Alan Johnston in Rome says the news has come “out of the blue”, and that there was no speculation whatsoever about the move in recent days.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is quoted as saying he was “greatly shaken by this unexpected news”.

A Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said that even the Pope’s closest aides did not know what he was planning to do and were left “incredulous”. He added that the decision showed “great courage” and “determination”.

The brother of the German-born Pope said the pontiff had been advised by his doctor not to take any more transatlantic trips and had been considering stepping down for months.

Talking from his home in Regensburg in Germany, Georg Ratzinger said his brother was having increasing difficulty walking and that his resignation was part of a “natural process”.

He added: “His age is weighing on him. At this age my brother wants more rest.”
‘Incapacity’

At 78, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was one of the oldest new popes in history when elected.

He took the helm as one of the fiercest storms the Catholic Church has faced in decades – the scandal of child sex abuse by priests – was breaking.
Continue reading the main story
POPE BENEDICT XVI

At 78, one of the oldest new popes in history when elected in 2005
Born in Germany in 1927, joined Hitler Youth during WWII and was conscripted as an anti-aircraft gunner but deserted
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spent 24 years in charge of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – once known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition
A theological conservative, with uncompromising views on homosexuality and women priests

How does a Pope resign?
How is a Pope elected?

In a statement, the pontiff said: “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

“I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.

“However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to steer the boat of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me.

“For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.”

A German government spokesman said he was “moved and touched” by the surprise resignation of the pontiff.

“The German government has the highest respect for the Holy Father, for what he has done, for his contributions over the course of his life to the Catholic Church.

“He has left a very personal signature as a thinker at the head of the Church, and also as a shepherd.”

There is a clause in Church Canon Law saying that a papal resignation is valid if the decision is made freely and manifested properly.

Complete Article HERE!

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Pope resignation: Full text

Pope Benedict XVI has announced his resignation. Here is the full text of his statement from the Vatican translated from the Latin:

Dear Brothers,

I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonisations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church.

After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.

However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to steer the boat of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me.

For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.

Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects.

And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff.

With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.

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Experts: Top 5 picks for the next pope

Three expert Vatican watchers list some of their leading papabile – Italian for cardinals who might be elected as the next pope. In alphabetical order:

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa, made headlines last year for a ripping attack on then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and other Italian leaders as unethical role models.

He’s “fairly savvy about both secular politics and the media,” writes National Catholic Reporter Vatican specialist John Allen.

Church historian Matthew Bunson, calls Bagnasco, 69, former professor of metaphysics and contemporary atheism “an intellectual heavyweight” who speaks multiple languages, and takes strong stands on doctrine.

But the biggest boost may come from Bagnasco’s role as two-time president of the Italian bishops conference. Italians hold about a fourth of the seats in the College of Cardinals that will choose the next pope.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Canadian-born former Archbishop of Quebec, now heads the powerful Congregation of Bishops, a “great spot for great spot for making friends and influencing people,” by choosing the global leadership of the Church, says Allen. He describes Ouellet, 68, as a veteran in dealing with the secularized West, someone smart and intellectual with “a cosmopolitan resume,” says Allen.

Ouellet is close to the late pope in theological thinking and someone who could bring a strong hand to the curia (the Vatican bureaucracy).

“The electors could get a traditional pick still say, ‘Hey, we’re innovators. We went to North America!’ He’s the eye-popping choice.” says David Gibson, author of several books on the Catholic Church including a biography of Pope Benedict XVI.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, elevated to cardinal in 2010 and head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, is so smart, says Allen, “if you were picking a quiz bowl team in the College of Cardinals, most people would start with Ravasi.”

Allen calls him “a master communicator who could take the world by storm. He can ignite rich, solid commitment to Catholic orthodoxy without ever coming off as a scold.”

The Italian-born Biblical scholar has the advantage of being based in Rome. Cardinals in the curia, the church’s governing bureaucracy, get to meet many of the electors that cardinals in far-flung posts scarcely know.

Still, Allen sees hurdles for Ravasi, who, at age 69 has never been a diocesan bishop. “Some would wonder if there were substance beneath the charm. He spends a lot more time talking to the outside world than within the church. Some see him as trying too hard. That’s off-putting.”

Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, 70, the head of the Vatican’s office for the Eastern Catholics and a longtime Vatican diplomat, would be the first pope from South America, the center of global Catholicism today, if he were chosen.

“He’s prayerful, well-liked around the world and very much aware, because of his diplomatic experience, of the global dimensions of the Church,” says church historian Matthew Bunson.

He may be best known in his role as No. 2 in the Vatican Secretary of State’s office. Sandri was the person who read the public announcement that Pope John Paul II had died in April 2005.

However, Sandri’s age, his lifelong background in the church bureaucracy, and his reserved demeanor may work against him, says Bunson.

Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan, leads Bunson’s list as “an Italian with the intellectual chops for the job” who would bring Benedict’s enthusiasm for “recapturing Catholic excitement in Europe.”

Benedict moved him from another high profile post, Venice, in July, 2011, thereby giving this Vatican insider a perch at Europe’s largest diocese. Milan and Venice together have produced five popes in the last 100 years.

A top scholar on Islam and Christian-Muslim dialog, Scola, 70, is “well positioned for dealing with the challenges of secularism and materialism in the West,” says Bunson.

Scola once said: “Our job now has to be to help people to remember God. People suffer from a kind of amnesia about God and we have to remind them to reawaken God in their hearts and in their minds.”

Complete Article HERE!