Perspective Seeking John XXIIIs vision at European
Synod
By THOMAS C. FOX
With several hundred Italian
pilgrims singing loudly under the dome of St. Peters Basilica where they
celebrated mass at the high altar, John Allen, my wife, Hoa, and I slipped
quietly down some circular marble steps a few feet away to visit the papal
crypts.
I find peace and perspective here. Not far from the steps is the
crypt of Pope John XXIII. Memories and the ageless marble invite prayer.
Failing official proclamation, John XXIII fits the bill as NCR patron
saint. It was out of his vision, hope and council that NCR was born in
1964.
It was on Oct. 11, 1962, 37 years ago this month, John XXIII
opened the Second Vatican Council, his gift to the church. He spoke that day
and told us not to fear. He told us to have faith and to dispel the
prophets of gloom. He meant, of course, those members of the Roman
curia whom he saw as having a stranglehold on the church. He was open and
wanted a church engaged with the modern world. He saw the Holy Spirit active in
the world. It was to be our task to find Her by understanding the signs
of the times.
How seemingly different is the mood among the hierarchy in Rome
today. If images speak, then in place of the smiling John XXIII, we see a
pained John Paul II, his face grimaced, his tired body leaning on his crosier,
carrying the worlds burdens on his shoulders. Pope John gave us Pacem
in Terris, a map to worldwide human understanding. Pope John Paul II gives
us an analysis of the culture of death, an acknowledgment of global
human failure.
This is not to say John did not understand the cross or John Paul
the resurrection. It is to say their views of how grace operates in the world
are radically different. John saw the church as an instrument of cooperative
acts. John Paul sees the church as a fortress tested by evil. John saw the
world, the playground of Gods love, as primary. John Paul sees the
church, instrument of salvation, as primary. Operating out of Johns
vision, the church not only can but also must adapt. It changes because
the world changes. Operating out of John Pauls vision, the church must
strengthen itself by purification. It must not adapt because to do so is to
blur the sign of contradiction.
The pain Catholicism has endured this past quarter century has
resulted in large measure from being conflicted by these seemingly
irreconcilable ecclesiologies.
At the synods first press conference Oct. 2, journalists
asked a handful of synod bishops, including Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco
Varela, archbishop of Madrid, the synod general relator, what the synod
fathers had new to offer the people of Europe. The question was significant
because Rouco Varelas opening relatio, or reflection, was viewed
as quite pessimistic. His remarks mirrored those found in the synods
Instrumentum Laboris, the synods official working document. It
spoke of European apostasy.
Entirely gone this time was the hope expressed at the first
European synod, in 1991, held just months after communist regimes were swept
off the European map. In 1991, John Paul looked out across Europe at his native
Poland and saw infinite possibilities, new hope for an unshackled church coming
to full life. By contrast today, he is deeply troubled, seeing his fellow Poles
lost in misused freedom.
As if to reflect this view, one British journalist claimed a word
search found the most frequent noun in Rouco Varelas opening remarks to
be despair.
Given such utter failure, such inability to convincingly preach
the promise and path of salvation, then what radical change might the church
fathers consider? It seemed a reasonable question.
The late NCR Vatican Affairs Writer Peter Hebblethewaite
once said the deeper underlying problem with John Pauls black and white
assessment is not that the world is so black but it makes the church so white.
So unrepentant. So resistant to change. The perfect instrument of God requires
no change. Further, it must not change.
Off the ecclesial roadmap, then, are reasonable correctives that
could fundamentally alter the course of Catholic history overnight. Clericalism
could end with a married priesthood. Sacramental life could be enriched by
inviting the divorced and remarried back to the Eucharist. Women could be
rightfully recognized as complete images of the divine by encouraging an open
theological discussion on the ordination of women. Theologians could again
reflect upon the lived experiences of Catholic couples who could finally emerge
from bifurcated lives torn between official church teaching and marital love.
Church teachings on human sexuality could finally become relation-based.
Similarly, gays and lesbians could more readily recognize Gods hand in
their lives. Catholic scientists could freely enter into pressing examinations
of complex questions, seeking deeper answers in the expanding field of
bioethics.
So is the turn-of-the-millennium crisis to be placed entirely at
the feet of an apostate people?
Or is Roman Catholicism increasingly irrelevant to a younger
generation of honest and intelligent, spiritually and ethically motivated men
and women?
The Pope John figures who sit among the bishops at this synod have
learned they must temper, even hide, their thoughts and remarks. Conversation,
the sharing of ideas as normally understood, is not encouraged by the synod
format in which bishops speak, one at a time, without theme and without debate.
In the perfect church there is not debate because there is only one
truth and it is proclaimed by only one man for all time. One only
has to learn the catechetical response.
Some might say the John figures no longer exist among the
assembled bishops of Europe. This would be an incorrect assessment. Like so
many others, they, too, have learned to bite their tongues and wait for another
day.
Tom Fox is NCR publisher.
National Catholic Reporter, October 15,
1999
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