Before the great reforming Second Vatican Council began in 1962, each of the 3,000 Catholic bishops was invited to write to the Vatican listing his concerns for the future church. Many were anxious about contraception; the threat of communism worried the bishops of Europe; most outside the Roman centre urged the dropping of Latin in church services. One bishop even argued that the council should inquire into the possible existence of intelligent life on other planets:, which drew the acid comment that perhaps he should enquire first into the possible existence of intelligent life in his own diocese.
This week the cardinals will enter an intense period of discussion and debate which echoes those deliberations of more than 40 years ago and forms an impression of the kind of leadership the church needs in the coming years.
They will not be able to neglect the deep divisions within Catholicism today. Many will be pondering the recent example of the Anglican church where rows over gay bishops resulted in chaos and fragmentation. John Paul kept the Catholic church from break-up by sheer force of personality. He will be a hard act to follow. And yet it is widely recognised that he was a source of some of the main antagonisms in the first place.
Cardinals and bishops have spoken increasingly in recent years of a growing imbalance. The church, they argue, has two “heartbeats”: the centre, represented by the pope and the curia in Rome, and the pulse of the local church, represented by the people and the diocesan bishops. The weakened peripheries were seen in the inept handling of the paedophile priest crisis. Before departing for Rome last week Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor spoke of the church as “never Peter without the 11, never the 11 without Peter”. This was code for “collegiality”, the need for the new pope to share more authority with his bishops.
Any such candidate would need to be a pope of reconciliation, healing the gulf between liberals and conservatives. which has come to resemble the gangs of New York.Catholic liberals believe in compassion for divorced Catholics who wish to remarry. They call for women priests, married priests and greater participation of the laity. They want to see a more important role for women and an end to the split between teaching and practice on contraceptives. They urge that the church should sanction officially the use of condoms for couples infected with HIV/Aids and that practising homosexuals should not be excluded from the sacraments.
They also believe in reconciliation with Anglicans and the Orthodox churches, as well as finding common cause with non-Christian communities, especially Judaism and Islam. They want more local discretion in the choice of bishops and see the role of pope as more a judge of final appeal than a day-to-day initiator.
Conservatives would oppose most of this, arguing that true Catholics do not pick and choose between items of faith like a smorgasbord. Encouraged by statements from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, watchdog of Vatican orthodoxy, they are not worried that the Catholic faith is dwindling in the developed countries to a loyal remnant in order that discipline and authentic belief are maintained. They support groups such as Opus Dei and Communione e Liberazione which owe their allegiance to the pope. They are cool on religious pluralism and, despite John Paul’s positive outreach to Judaism, took comfort from his endorsement of the Vatican document that referred to other religions as “defective”.
Conservatives believe that John Paul II saved the church by calling a halt to what the late church historian Peter Hebblethwaite described as a “runaway church, lurching out of control”. Liberals believe that while a disciplined hand was necessary, John Paul steered the church inexorably away from Vatican II’s call for greater compassion, its emphasis on individual conscience and on collegiality.
For liberal cardinals John Paul II, in death, may pose the greatest stumbling block. The expanding cult of his personality could define Catholicism for years to come. In the United States, conservative priests are already characterised as “John Paul priests.”.Powerful right wing voices in America are saying that there is nothing left for a new Pope to do, to write, or to say, as John Paul has left Catholics with enough to be getting on with for a century or more.
There have been strong rumours in Rome that in the wake of the vast outpouring of emotion, conservative cardinals are likely to acclaim the dead pope publicly as John Paul the Great. This, in the view of John Wilkins, former editor of The Tablet, the Catholic weekly, would be to attempt to “pre-empt the conclave”, reducing the new pope to a mere clone of his predecessor.
The consequences of such an outcome can be best estimated by considering the current relationship of the Catholic church to the non-Catholic world. It is in this arena that the papacy can be an influence for good, provided that it responds flexibly to the pressures and exigencies of the times. In 1978, when John Paul II was elected, Soviet communism was a potent force in the world. The cardinals saw in Karol Wojtyla a redoubtable evangelist for eastern Europe and a catalyst for challenging the Soviet system. After the fall of communism, however, John Paul tended to the view that history had come to an end. He believed that the future task of the papacy was to critique the flaws in democracy and capitalism.
Two crucial areas of concern will preoccupy the cardinals: how the Catholic church relates to an enlarged Europe with a new constitution, and the role of Catholicism in reducing tensions between Islam and the West. The two areas are deeply connected by Catholic social teaching on civic pluralism.
In the long struggle with communism, John Paul II appealed constantly to the ideal of pluralism. Later he changed his tune, heartbroken by the consequences of western-style democracy and capitalism in Poland (a parliamentary act endorsing abortion, and the advent of pornography, western films and consumerism).
He began an onslaught against pluralism. Vatican II had insisted that where Catholics were in conflict with civic law or prevailing mores on issues such as abortion, they should seek to influence by dialogue. From the mid-1990s, however, John Paul favoured denunciation, harping on the “culture of death” which included contraception, divorce and homosexuality and drew parallels between Nazi death camps and democracies that legalised abortion.
Small wonder that the architects of the new Europe refused to heed John Paul’s plea for his vision of a Christian dimension in the new constitution. And his attacks on pluralism have not encouraged radical Islam to believe that democracy is the best of worlds for the exercise of religious faith.
There are cardinals like the African Francis Arinze, and the French cultural specialist Paul Poupard, who have worked hard to forge links between the Catholic Church, Islam, and the new Europe.Vatican watchers, however, have been unanimous this past week in emphasising the importance of the Third World over every other issue. Now that a majority of Catholics live in the South America, Africa, and Asia, many of the divisions cited above appear like the anxieties of the privileged.There can be few cardinals who do not recognise that the Third World with all its problems and challenges offers the new pope his greatest opportunity. Christianity from the beginning was committed to the poor, the hungry and the dispossessed. When the church appeared to be crumbling in the Middle Ages, it was the mendicant orders such as the Franciscans who renewed the spirit of Christianity by placing poverty and the care of others at the centre. Cardinals who are closest to the poor, especially the Africans and the Latin Americans, will know that this is what strikes the deepest chord with the younger generation of Catholics.
Every social survey of religion and the young in recent years has emphasised the shift away from sexual ethics towards human rights and issues of poverty. A papal candidate who has not demonstrated a powerful and positive compassion for the poor is unlikely to appear attractive to princes of the church in this coming week.
