French cardinal challenges
Ratzinger
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff
A French cardinal seen by some Vatican-watchers as papabile
-- a candidate for pope -- has challenged Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, the churchs top doctrinal officer, on the need for Catholicism
to make structural changes arising from dialogue with the modern world.
Cardinal Pierre Eyt of Bordeaux published his comments in the
French Catholic newspaper La Croix in December, in response to a speech
by Ratzinger at the University of Paris in November 1999. Ratzinger had
lamented modernitys rejection of the synthesis between reason,
faith and life developed by ancient Christianity.
Ratzinger in turn responded to Eyt in La Croix.
In his December 1999 article, Eyt wrote that Ratzinger had left
out another element of the ancient Christian synthesis -- law. That makes the
situation more complex, Eyt said, because in the ancient world law was often
used to impose religious belief and to punish dissenters. At different times
Christians were both the victims and the perpetrators of the coercive use of
law, Eyt said.
This shows, Eyt said, that Christians cannot fall back on a
Golden Age as the basis for policies today.
Eyt said Ratzinger overlooked law because he sees structural
questions as secondary to matters of faith. Eyt disagreed: I believe on
the contrary that all these problems are related and of an equal gravity.
They belong to an indivisible unit.
Lay Catholics have insights to contribute in areas such as
politics, bioethics and theology, Eyt said, but when it comes time for the
church to draw structural conclusions, the conversation is brutally
closed.
Only rarely do our conclusions satisfy, he wrote. The
church seems to mark time without going beyond the initial
question.
Responding in La Croix, Ratzinger said he thought
institutional problems reflect a deeper crisis of faith. If there
is no common conviction among the faithful, he said, the
churchs pronouncements would be ineffective and seen as repressive.
Eyt wrote that Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan had
identified the core areas needing reform in a speech at the October European
Synod in Rome. They included the role of women in society and the church,
the participation of the laity in certain ministerial responsibilities,
sexuality, the discipline of marriage, penitential practice, relations with the
Orthodox sister churches, the need to revive ecumenical hopes, the relationship
between democracy and values and between civil and moral law.
Eyt said the evolution of Pope John Paul IIs teaching on the
death penalty in recent years might be a model for progressive adaptation in
other areas.
Ratzinger said he agreed with Eyt that the church cannot evoke a
Golden Age.
Nothing is further from my intention than wanting to limit
reason to the state that it had reached at the time of the fathers
of the church, Ratzinger said.
This is not the first time Ratzinger has crossed swords in print
with a fellow cardinal. In the English Catholic newspaper The Tablet in
1998, retired Cardinal Franz König of Vienna, Austria, accused Ratzinger
of over-reacting in his investigation of Belgian Jesuit Jacques Dupuis
views on religious pluralism; Ratzinger in turn expressed
astonishment, insisting he sought only dialogue.
The joust with Ratzinger will cast a new spotlight on Eyt, 64,
seen as a moderate conservative on most theological issues. He was
named archbishop of Bordeaux in 1989 and made a cardinal in 1994.
Eyt served as a second lieutenant in the French army during the
Algerian war of independence, before he entered the seminary. He acquired a
doctorate in theology at Romes Gregorian University, where his
dissertation concerned theology in the era of Luther. He became a faculty
member and then vice chancellor at the Catholic University in Toulouse, and
later directed the Catholic Institute of Paris.
Eyt has served as a member of the International Theological
Commission, a body that advises the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
and has led the doctrinal commission of the French bishops conference. In
the early 1990s, John Paul II named him to the editorial committee for the
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Currently Eyt sits as a member of Ratzingers
congregation.
The La Croix exchange is not the first time Eyt has
expressed reservations about Vatican policies. In 1993, Eyt complained about
Ratzingers criticism of three German bishops who suggested more pastoral
treatment of Catholics who divorce and remarry under civil law. In 1997, Eyt
said that a Vatican document restricting lay ministry had created a
climate of defiance in the church.
Eyt is said to be close to the new movements in
France, such as the Neocatechumenate, Communion and Liberation, and
Focolare.
At last falls European Synod, Eyt impressed some observers
by not backing down from confronting European culture and its rising
paganism, yet without the tone of condemnation that many conservatives
invoked.
Europe is mission territory, Eyt said, arguing for the need to
inculturate the gospel. The natural soul of Europe, he
said, is thus not Christian.
Marco Politi, Vatican affairs writer for Romes la
Repubblica newspaper, wrote at the time that Eyt had emerged as a strong
candidate for the papacy.
In 1995, during intense debate over controversial French Bishop
Jacques Gaillot, Eyt was asked what sort of epitaph he would like to see
affixed to his episcopacy. He responded: A traditional moderate who tried
to hold onto the old Catholic liberal wing because he knew they were
sincere.
The Catholic News Service contributed to this report.
National Catholic Reporter, February 18,
2000
|