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| Sunday, 26 June 2005 |
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Pope Benedict XVI: Servant Minister or Ecclesial Authority? by Eymard de Silva Wijeyeratne
Can wash the balm of an anointed king;" (Shakespeare: Richard II, Act III, Scene I) There may never have been a Pope Benedict XVI if there had not been a Pope John Paul II. The latter was evidently a holy and highly disciplined man, who created his own public image by assiduously visiting hundreds of countries across the globe, sample-kissing their native soils and blessing everyone around him. He was consequently portrayed as a popular pope though the extent of his popularity was not assayed on the touchstone of a critical analysis of how far his governance contributed to improving the spiritual quality of life within the Church in terms of absorbing the fullness of Christ, and making the Roman Church an admired moral force in its acceptance of the diversity and richness of creation that lies outside its ambit of power. His Papacy though lauded for the number of encyclicals and other documents he wrote, the number of saints he canonised, the number of men and women he beatified, the number of bishops and cardinals he appointed, was a troubled one. The prolixity of his literary output, as evidenced for example in his encyclicals 'Ut Unum Sint' (That all may be One) and 'Evangelium Vitae' (The Gospel of Life), are jejune when set beside the teachings of the universally acknowledged Founder of the Faith, Jesus Christ. In fact, those who are not blinded by a false sense of loyalty to the Papacy and its subordinate institutional network may justifiably say that these writings are marred by facetiousness and verbal conceits. Though he identified Latin America and Asia as places where he had to intervene to enforce conformity to his will and that of the Roman Curia, those were the very places where the Catholic church was strongest in the visible manifestations of loyalty to it both in terms of church-attendance and observance of spiritual values. If we take Sri Lanka as a locus for illustrating this troubling trend we will find that the collective mediocrity of the episcopate is marked by the lack of intellectual depth, prophetic vision and Jesus-elan. This loss of apostolic effervescence is the direct result of the Papacy's determination to demand uncritical and servile obedience from its subordinates. The transformation of Josef Ratzinger from Cardinal-Prince to Pope-King was a rite of passage that was well rehearsed and set in place by the life and style of Pope John Paul II. The minds of both men were cast in the same stoic, phlegmatic and conservative mould though, John Paul II was certainly more amiable than his successor. Furthermore, Ratzinger as the chief papal aide and advisor had a hold on John Paul II especially at a time when ill health and old age had diminished the acuity of the latter's critical faculties. Conservatism We need to critically analyse the notions of conservatism and loyalty: the latter notion being mistakenly interpreted as slavish obeisance to the former. To be conservative means to be endowed with an attitude of mind that is resistant to change in existing institutions and traditions even when such change is deemed to be necessary for moral, social or practical reasons. Conservatism cannot therefore be necessarily equated with high moral standards, spiritual excellence and social stability. The converse of this mistaken view is that the Conciliar decisions taken at Vatican Council II are responsible for the declining standards in the Catholic Church, especially as they relate to the conduct of priests and bishops. This is far from the truth. Vatican Council II did not legislate for a repudiation of the authority of the Papacy, the College of Cardinals and Bishops, the principal doctrines and dogmas of the Church or provide for a relaxation of priestly discipline. It merely made the Church an instrument that revealed to the faithful a loving and merciful God (notwithstanding the misconstrued theology derived from the Tsunami), who, ironical as it seems, is deeply solicitous of the wellbeing of his people. This new dispensation is in stark contrast to the pre-Vatican II concept of a tyrannical and jealous God who wished to gain vicarious satisfaction from seeing his creatures struggling under the dual yoke of the human predicament and the burden of synthetic sin crafted by an autocratic Church. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have often been portrayed as conservatives but for the wrong reasons. Yet, they must be commended for preventing cultivated licentiousness from corroding the fabric of the Church. They were one with the faithful in opposing trends in some Christian churches that licensed homosexuality, accepted gay marriages, incorporated gay priests as part of their apostolate, promoted euthanasia as a method of terminating a life that is declared to be vegetative and hence dispensable, or accepted abortion as a valid means of escape from parental responsibility. It would be fair and reasonable to say that most Catholics, even non-Catholic Christians, though they do not hunt, condemn or ostracise homosexuals, abhor homosexuality and for that reason treat gay marriages and gay priests as abominations. It would also be true to say that they would reject abortion out of hand except in very exceptional circumstances. There are two issues however of gathering social importance that would warrant calling both men conservatives and they are those of birth control and the ordination of women as priests. Birth control The issue of birth control is clearly a case of man-ordained sin being pretentiously added to the human predicament, which is clearly not a condition akin to that of a beast of burden that has to do man's bidding. The human predicament lies between two extreme responses, namely morbid lament and tragic heroism. In these circumstances what is essentially a matter of quiet dialogue between man's conscience and God's beatific understanding cannot be reduced to a situation where a superhuman could, with the best of intentions, intervene to lay down moral standards that are not derived either directly or indirectly from the Ten commandments or the teachings of Jesus Christ. To say that marriage is meant solely to promote and enhance the procreative propensity of humans is to hint that if that preordained ideal is circumvented, it would be reduced to the level of licensed fornication. Marriage is essentially an integral part of the human predicament, involving give and take, agony and ecstasy, joy and sorrow, success and failure, with children functioning as a conjugal gum. In days gone by, when we lived in a leisure-society, families with more than six offspring were a common feature, but today it is a rare phenomenon. Imagine getting one's child admitted to a school even after offering a donation. Therefore, even where Catholics are concerned the natural outcome is that of the first child issuing forth from the impulse of the 'Voice that breathes over Eden' with the second arriving as a companion for the first. Thereafter it becomes a mix of prudence and probability; both based on the balance of natural affection between husband and wife. This is what a Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Cathedral stated on this subject, "Soon after I arrived in London from Ampleforth to become Archbishop of Westminster in 1976, I made a decision never to talk of sexual ethics. I am not an expert on the subject. I am very conscious that I am a celibate and my comments will be interpreted because of that" (Cardinal Basil Hume in conversation with Peter Stanford). The answer is close to what Cardinal Henry Newman, a Jewel in the crown of the Catholic Church, said, though in other words. Man's conscience must take precedence over papal primacy. Women as Priests The resistance of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger to the idea of ordaining women as priests, is quoted as another example of their stubborn conservatism. In the early Church, St. Thomas Aquinas defined the position of women in the following words, "...Since women's state of subjection makes it impossible for the female sex to signify any pre-eminence in rank, women are incapable of receiving the sacrament of order" (Summa Theologiae). Pope John Paul II defined his position in a more defensive way in a letter written to his bishops: "I declare that the Church has no authority to declare priestly ordination on women, and this judgement has to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful" (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, May 22, 1994). He took up this position in spite of the fact that a Pontifical Biblical Commission had reported to Pope Paul VI that the issue of the ordination of women could not be decided on New Testament evidence alone. To be continued |
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