Cardinals debate churchs
future
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff Rome
At the end of the largest gathering of cardinals in history, the
Catholic church is no closer to knowing the name of its next pope, but at least
his mandate seems clearer.
If signals this week mean anything, near the top of the next
popes agenda will be sharing power with national bishops
conferences and local churches, and above all taming the papal bureaucracy, the
Roman curia.
Though not universal, the call for decentralization, for a curia
that issues fewer edicts and a pope who works more in collaboration with the
rest of the church, was nonetheless persistent at the May 21-24 gathering of
155 of the worlds 183 cardinals. It was the sixth extraordinary
consistory of John Pauls pontificate.
The session was convoked by the pope to solicit advice on the
churchs future in the third millennium.
Given the sprawling nature of that agenda, cardinals made a wide
variety of points. Some were familiar and largely tame, such as invocations of
a universal call to holiness and exhortations to missionary work,
defense of the family and better use of the mass media.
Others were more visionary, such as English Cardinal Cormac
Murphy-OConnors idea for a council of all the Christian churches
that could meet in Jerusalem, or the old pilgrim stop of San Juan Compostella
in Spain -- or even, he added modestly, in England. If such a meeting were to
occur, he said, the Vatican could not set the agenda by fiat, and the pope
could preside only in love rather than as a kind of spiritual
CEO.
The proposal was, indeed, a bit too visionary for some. Cardinal
Christoph Schonbörn of Vienna told reporters after lunch with the pope on
May 24 that Murphy-OConnors idea is an eschatological
dream, a fancy way of saying it will never happen.
But the most intriguing issue to surface regularly was
collegiality, a term that in Catholic theological parlance means
decentralization. At least nine cardinals argued that the balance of power in
the church is currently out of alignment.
The theme of collegiality in the church is, whether you like
it or not, at the top of the agenda of public opinion in the church and in the
media, Godfried Danneels of Belgium told his brother cardinals.
The consistory took place behind closed doors, but many cardinals,
like Danneels, either made their texts available or responded to questions from
reporters.
Several cardinals urged changes in the organization of synods,
when bishops from around the world gather in Rome to advise the pope, in order
to make them better organized and more free from curial manipulation. Danneels
went so far as to suggest that reports prepared after small group discussions
at the synod are frankly deceiving because they tend to be heavily
sanitized by Vatican officials. He said the church needs instead a
culture of debate.
Other cardinals came at the collegiality issue in different ways.
Thomas Winning of Scotland insisted that curial offices do a better job of
consultation with bishops conferences and local churches before they put
out documents. Without mentioning it by name, Winning alluded to recent Vatican
norms for liturgical translation as an example (see accompanying article).
Winning did not release his text, but other sources confirmed his
remarks.
Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier of South Africa told NCR that
Winning wasnt speaking for himself alone. A lot of what he said
would have been the view not only of himself but also of other bishops
conferences, Napier said.
The drumbeat came at times from surprising quarters. Cardinal
Bernard Law of Boston -- certainly not a name associated with church
progressives -- suggested that synods be held once a year with an open
agenda.
At least two curial cardinals offered suggestions for reform.
One was Cardinal Mario Francesco Pompedda, head of the Apostolic
Signatura, a church court. He argued that local churches should have a greater
role in the selection of bishops.
The other was Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the office for
Christian unity. According to sources, Kasper argued that the church must
reform along the lines of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) if it expects to
make ecumenical progress. He specifically mentioned the synods, the Roman curia
and episcopal conferences.
Other cardinals stressing collegiality included Carlo Maria
Martini of Milan, Murphy-OConnor, Syrian Ignace Moussa I Daoud (who heads
the Congregation for Eastern Churches), and Italian Achille Silvestrini (former
head of the same office).
Outside the consistory, Cardinal Aloísio Lorscheider of
Brazil told a French newspaper that he thought the pope was
imprisoned by the curia, who seek to undermine him, and
that John Pauls attempts to change the situation had not succeeded.
All of us suffer from a faraway bureaucracy that seems ever more
deaf, he said.
In the end, it was not clear what immediate difference any of this
would make. Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, for example, told reporters
after the popes May 24 closing Mass that the cardinals expected changes
in the synod structure before the next session begins Sept. 30.
Yet two hours later, Schönborn said changes in the synod are
impossible in such a short time. It will certainly function as it has in
the last decades, he said.
Moreover, not everyone was ready to join the decentralizing
chorus. American Cardinal Avery Dulles defended a strong papacy, arguing that
other Christian denominations sometimes miss such a unifying center.
Schönborn struck a similar note, saying Catholics should be
grateful for the bond of unity offered by the successor of
Peter.
Information about the consistory was hard to come by. Officially,
the only channel was a daily press briefing delivered by papal spokesperson
Joaquín Navarro-Valls. However, the briefings for the first two days
were largely useless, as Navarro delivered impressions of what
cardinals had said and a few quotes without context. The session for the third
day was cancelled without explanation.
The Vatican press office never even produced a list of the
cardinals in attendance and after the first day stopped telling reporters who
had spoken that day.
Some attempts at controlling information appeared unusually
clumsy. On May 22, veteran Italian journalist Giancarlo Zizola asked Navarro if
any cardinal had discussed curial reform.
A flustered Navarro said: Not that I recall.
His lapse of memory was difficult to take at face value in light
of what emerged about what had been discussed, in many cases from the cardinals
themselves.
As for the papal sweepstakes, no clear frontrunner emerged.
Observers noted, however, Danneels smooth PR apparatus. On the afternoon
of May 23, he moved from one language group of reporters to another at
Romes Belgian College, handing out copies of his speech. Handlers kept
the cardinal on task and on time.
If one didnt know better, the 67-year-old Danneels would
have seemed like a candidate on the stump -- and not a bad one.
The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is
jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, June 1,
2001
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