Papal Resignations! VI

Coat of Arms of Benedict XVI

In my preivous entry I mentioned Father Robert  Barron’s assessment of the papacy of Benedict XVI.  I am a fan of Father Barron and his work, but he is an apologist (one whose work it is to present the Church and its teaching in a light that is meant to win souls to its truth) not a historian.  From an apologist’s perspective, I think he did a fine and fair evaluation of this papacy, but I would like to tackle the subject from a historian’s perspective.  It might be somewhat less sugar-coated, but I would be far from negative.  That being said, I would have to begin by saying that overall the pontificate of Benedict XVI has been a tremendous disappointment, more to the Holy Father, I would imagine, than to anyone else.  His aim from the beginning was to revive the Christian faith and culture of Europe but there is no evidence of success in this matter.  Voices that have called for the very sort of renewal that would fan into new flame the embers of Christian Europe—voices such as the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini or the Swiss Abbots Martin Werlen and Peter von Sury—have been pushed to the margins while prelates that echo the same-old-same-old, and bizarre movements such as the Restorationist Institute of Christ the Sovereign Priest have found encouragement, albeit not by Benedict himself but by a Roman bureaucracy that has no consistent focus.  The result is that there has been absolutely no improvement in Benedict’s eight year reign in the state of the European Church. 

In my years in Rome I saw Benedict often—both as Cardinal Ratzinger and as the Pope.  He is a gentle and cultured man.  A sincere man.  Ironically in his days as the theological adviser to Cardinal Frings of Cologne during the Council, he was one of the principal sub-architects of the Council, but he seems—like the children of Israel in the desert—to have had a failure of confidence somewhere along the way.  He also seems to have had a compulsive need for control and management yet been unable to assert that control once in a position to do so.  His accession to the papacy in 2005 was according to a carefully engineered plan that Cardinal Ratzinger had meticulously put in place over the last ten years or so of John Paul’s papacy. He did this not out of ambition, I believe, but of a deep felt need to take control of the Church to correct the course that the Council had set and of which he had second thoughts.  He had no idea of reversing the Council but of a rather drastic revision of its course. In the end he was not successful in this matter other than ordering some still unpopular changes in the Roman Missal’s vernacular translations. 
His legacy will be his resignation.  What will give him a place in the history books is his courage to walk away from a task that is greater than his strength.  There is no shame in this—to the contrary he is to be congratulated for his candor and his rigorous self-awareness and for his putting the good of the Church ahead of his own desires.  Moreover, he has set a precedent giving future popes an option—and perhaps even a mandate—to do something popes have not felt free to do in centuries.     

Voices For Dialogue

Bishop John England

1786-1842--a bishop

ahead of his times

In my last posting I mentioned that Abbot Peter von Sury of Mariastein Abbey in Switzerland spoke out in favor not only of expanding the role of the laity in the Church today but of creating structures of accountability that guarantee an honest and sincere two-way communication between the bishops (including, ultimately, the Holy See) and the Christian faithful (faithful being inclusive of laity and lower clergy).  Abbot Peter was clear in his claims that this is no innovation but rather a restoration of the life of the early Church in which not only the election of bishops but the formulation of doctrine was built on the premise of the involvement of the laity and clergy with the hierarchy and not a unilateral exercise of authority on the part of bishops.    Some years ago a prominent Catholic layman, Frank Butler—at the time President of FADICA—Foundations And Donors Interested in Catholic Activities—proposed to the American Bishops that he would gather a small group of Catholic executives to advise the bishops on how they might best approach business and public relations issues.  Butler is no “mere layman” even if any member of Christ’s Mystical Body can be considered to be “mere.”  He was the first non-ordained to earn the Pontifical Degree S.T.D. (Doctor of Sacred Theology, but in Latin which is why the letters are reversed) from the Catholic University of America.  He worked for years at the Bishops’ Conference and he served on a Vatican Congregation or two.  And—and this might be most significant—he wasn’t proposing lay “interference” in doctrinal matters but lay involvement in matters of lay expertise.  Nevertheless, his offer was declined.  When are their mitered heads going to “get it?”  The Church is administratively in a shambles and the bishops aren’t interested in help from the quarter that is best qualified to help.  Infallibility—even if it exists at the top certainly doesn’t “trickle down.” 

Swiss Catholics organized the Swiss Parish Initiative a year ago to push for greater lay involvement in charting the course for the Church to take as it moves into a new millennium.  Based somewhat on the Austrian Preachers Initiative—a movement which Pope Benedict criticized in his Maundy Thursday homily last year—the Swiss Parish Initiative has organized laity and clergy into a voice for dialogue with the hierarchy.  To date all the Swiss bishops but one—the controversial bishop of Chur, Monsignor Vitus Huonder—have expressed themselves to be open to such dialogue.   What do we need to get such dialogue going in the American Church?

It may surprise you but in the nineteenth century there was one bishop who was way ahead of the times on this very question.  When John England, an Irish born prelate, was made the first bishop of Charleston (at that time comprising the states of North and South Carolina and Georgia), he had a constitution written for the Diocese spelling out the active roles he expected the laity to take in Church matters.  He also convoked an annual convention of the diocese to give voice to the clergy and laity.  We could use prelates like Abbots Martin Werlen and Peter von Sury and Bishop John England.  The Church of the Future will be all the stronger if the laity are brought into the conversations that to date are dominated by the hierarchy. 
note of Appreciation to Ann: thanks for pointing out the fact that I had originally entered John Ireland rather than John England--two quite different temperments. 

Let's Hear It For Those Swiss Abbots

Mariastein Abbey

A few weeks ago (see entry for January 15, 2013) I published an entry about Martin Werlen, the Abbot of the famous abbey of our Lady of Einsiedeln in Switzerland and his call for radical reform in the Church—echoing the same call of the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini shortly before his death last year (cf blog entries for September 2, 3, 4, and 12, 2012).  A reader sent me a link to an article about another Swiss Abbot, Peter von Sury, Abbot of Mariastein , a Benedictine community in Solothurn Canton.
Like Abbot Martin, Abbot Peter pulls no punches in his estimation of what the Church needs today.  Abbot Peter is trained in the canon law and he sees the problem is that the structures of authority in the Church are broken.  He calls for consistency and transparency in the way decisions are made in the Church.  He thinks that politics have replaced the action of the Holy Spirit in Church administration (ya think?) and that there is a need to return to the ancient system of choosing bishops by involving the local faithful and clergy along with the regional bishops.  The present system is nothing more than turning the local dioceses into “papal fiefs.” 
An article by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt in the National Catholic Reporter quotes the abbot:
Asked why episcopal nominations are so important, he replied: "The bishop has a pivotal position in the church. He is a 'pontifex,' that is, a bridge-builder, and must have a personality that integrates. Unfortunately, we have again and again experienced the opposite, as, for instance, at the moment in the diocese of Chur. There the bishop is obviously not a bridge-builder, but someone who sows discord, and that is disastrous.
"In my opinion, a bishop who sows discord is morally obliged to step down. The same applies to an abbot or a parish priest. If they sow discord, they destroy a part of the church. It is not a case of blame. There are simply situations when people sow discord -- perhaps even without meaning to do so, and then they must step down."
"Church institutions, including the papacy, should have an opposite number as it were. In economics or politics we speak of checks and balances," von Sury said. Parishes have parish councils, dioceses have priests' councils, which the bishops are supposed to listen to. "But for the bishops' conference level and the world church level there is nothing similar. This is a great mistake," he said.
Boy, this guy should visit the Church in the United States and see the damage that prelates such as Bishop Robert Finn (Kansas City), Bishop Robert Morlino (Madison WS), Bishop Thomas Olmsted, (Phoenix)  and Archbishop William Lori (Baltimore, formerly Bridgeport) have wreaked  in their climbs up the ecclesiastical caterpillar pillar.  On the other hand, Rome did get Cardinal Law and then-Archbishop (now Cardinal) Raymond Burke out of Boston and St. Louis respectively before they totally trashed those dioceses with the discord they had caused.    
The Bishops of Switzerland, with the exception of the aforementioned Bishop of Chur, Vitus Huonder, have shown themselves very willing to listen to the faithful in their dioceses and the move for more dialogue in the Church. 

My correspondent wondered what sort of water these Swiss Abbots are drinking and if we can bottle it.  O Please God, let such waters flow in your Church today.