[Vision2020] A Vatican Spring?

Thu Feb 28 06:51:17 PST 2013

------------------------------
February 27, 2013
A Vatican Spring? By HANS KÜNG

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[TGTG]>TÜBINGEN,
Germany

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[TASWtr]>THE
Arab Spring has shaken a whole series of autocratic regimes. With the
resignation of Pope Benedict
XVI<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/benedict_xvi/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
might not something like that be possible in the Roman Catholic
Church<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html?inline=nyt-org>as
well — a Vatican Spring?

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[OctISA]>Of
course, the system of the Catholic Church doesn’t resemble Tunisia or
Egypt so much as an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia. In both places
there are no genuine reforms, just minor concessions. In both, tradition is
invoked to oppose reform. In Saudi Arabia tradition goes back only two
centuries; in the case of the papacy, 20 centuries.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[YitYit]>Yet
is that tradition true? In fact, the church got along for a millennium
without a monarchist-absolutist papacy of the kind we’re familiar with
today.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[IwnIwn]>It
was not until the 11th century that a “revolution from above,” the
“Gregorian Reform” started by Pope Gregory VII, left us with the three
enduring features of the Roman system: a centralist-absolutist papacy,
compulsory clericalism and the obligation of celibacy for priests and other
secular clergy.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[TeoEtS]>The
efforts of the reform councils in the 15th century, the reformers in
the 16th century, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in the 17th
and 18th centuries and the liberalism of the 19th century met with only
partial success. Even the Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, while
addressing many concerns of the reformers and modern critics, was thwarted
by the power of the Curia, the church’s governing body, and managed to
implement only some of the demanded changes.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[TtdTtd]>To
this day the Curia, which in its current form is likewise a product of
the 11th century, is the chief obstacle to any thorough reform of the
Catholic Church, to any honest ecumenical understanding with the other
Christian churches and world religions, and to any critical, constructive
attitude toward the modern world.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[UttUtt]>Under
the two most recent popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, there has
been a fatal return to the church’s old monarchical habits.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[IioFyt]>In
2005, in one of Benedict’s few bold actions, he held an amicable
four-hour conversation with me at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo
in Rome. I had been his colleague at the University of Tübingen and also
his harshest critic. For 22 years, thanks to the revocation of my
ecclesiastical teaching license for having criticized papal infallibility,
we hadn’t had the slightest private contact.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[BtmBtm]>Before
the meeting, we decided to set aside our differences and discuss
topics on which we might find agreement: the positive relationship between
Christian faith and science, the dialogue among religions and
civilizations, and the ethical consensus across faiths and ideologies.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[FmaHit]>For
me, and indeed for the whole Catholic world, the meeting was a sign of
hope. But sadly Benedict’s pontificate was marked by breakdowns and bad
decisions. He irritated the Protestant churches, Jews, Muslims, the Indians
of Latin America, women, reform-minded theologians and all pro-reform
Catholics.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[TmsTms]>The
major scandals during his papacy are known: there was Benedict’s
recognition of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s arch-conservative Society of
St. Pius X, which is bitterly opposed to the Second Vatican Council, as
well as of a Holocaust denier, Bishop Richard Williamson.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[TwtAtw]>There
was the widespread sexual abuse of children and youths by clergymen,
which the pope was largely responsible for covering up when he was Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger. And there was the “Vatileaks” affair, which revealed a
horrendous amount of intrigue, power struggles, corruption and sexual
lapses in the Curia, and which seems to be a main reason Benedict has
decided to resign.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[TfpAnt]>This
first papal resignation in nearly 600 years makes clear the
fundamental crisis that has long been looming over a coldly ossified
church. And now the whole world is asking: might the next pope, despite
everything, inaugurate a new spring for the Catholic Church?

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[TnwThb]>There’s
no way to ignore the church’s desperate needs. There is a
catastrophic shortage of priests, in Europe and in Latin America and
Africa. Huge numbers of people have left the church or gone into “internal
emigration,” especially in the industrialized countries. There has been an
unmistakable loss of respect for bishops and priests, alienation,
particularly on the part of younger women, and a failure to integrate young
people into the church.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[OsbBtf]>One
shouldn’t be misled by the media hype of grandly staged papal mass
events or by the wild applause of conservative Catholic youth groups.
Behind the facade, the whole house is crumbling.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[ItdApw]>In
this dramatic situation the church needs a pope who’s not living
intellectually in the Middle Ages, who doesn’t champion any kind of
medieval theology, liturgy or church constitution. It needs a pope who is
open to the concerns of the Reformation, to modernity. A pope who stands up
for the freedom of the church in the world not just by giving sermons but
by fighting with words and deeds for freedom and human rights within the
church, for theologians, for women, for all Catholics who want to speak the
truth openly. A pope who no longer forces the bishops to toe a reactionary
party line, who puts into practice an appropriate democracy in the church,
one shaped on the model of primitive Christianity. A pope who doesn’t let
himself be influenced by a Vatican-based “shadow pope” like Benedict and
his loyal followers.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[WtnTwt]>Where
the new pope comes from should not play a crucial role. The College
of Cardinals must simply elect the best man. Unfortunately, since the time
of Pope John Paul II, a questionnaire has been used to make all bishops
follow official Roman Catholic doctrine on controversial issues, a process
sealed by a vow of unconditional obedience to the pope. That’s why there
have so far been no public dissenters among the bishops.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[YtCSfw]>Yet
the Catholic hierarchy has been warned of the gap between itself and
lay people on important reform questions. A recent poll in Germany shows 85
percent of Catholics in favor of letting priests marry, 79 percent in favor
of letting divorced persons remarry in church and 75 percent in favor of
ordaining women. Similar figures would most likely turn up in many other
countries.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[MwgMwg]>Might
we get a cardinal or bishop who doesn’t simply want to continue in
the same old rut? Someone who, first, knows how deep the church’s crisis
goes and, second, knows paths that lead out of it?

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[TqmTqm]>These
questions must be openly discussed before and during the conclave,
without the cardinals being muzzled, as they were at the last conclave, in
2005, to keep them in line.

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[AtlMtb]>As
the last active theologian to have participated in the Second Vatican
Council (along with Benedict), I wonder whether there might not be, at the
beginning of the conclave, as there was at the beginning of the council, a
group of brave cardinals who could tackle the Roman Catholic hard-liners
head-on and demand a candidate who is ready to venture in new directions.
Might this be brought about by a new reforming council or, better yet, a
representative assembly of bishops, priests and lay people?

¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[ItnItn]>If
the next conclave were to elect a pope who goes down the same old
road,
the church will never experience a new spring, but fall into a new ice age
and run the danger of shrinking into an increasingly irrelevant sect.
¶<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-vatican-spring.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130228&pagewanted=print#p[HKiHKi]>
Hans
Küng <http://www.weltethos.org/data-en/c-10-stiftung/10a-definition.php>

From:  *The New York Times*

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20130228/b72ce508/attachment.html>