Continuity in Pope Benedict's pontificate

There is no doubt about it. The majority of the cardinals came to a quick and definitive choice of former Cardinal Ratzinger because they opted for a policy of continuity with Pope Paul II's main lines of leading the Church.

Perhaps it would be interesting to see what exactly are these lines of continuity that the cardinals look to see implemented in the fortcoming pontificate.

A specialist in modern and contemporary Church history, Alberto Melloni, published recently a small study booklet on this theme. He says that one cannot understand the course that the present church is taking without reference to what has been going before.

The greatest impulse to move foreward to understand itself and its relation to the word around it, was given to the Church by the meetings and degrees of the Second Vatican Council. But as the great theologian Karl Rahner envisaged, this was only "the beginning of a beginning." In two decades after the end of this Council, trouble was brewing.

Pope Paul VI duly continued the Council and brought it to an end. The hitch was that he reserved to himself the hot issues regarding family morality, priestly celibacy, the role of women in the church and put a lot of explanatory text regarding the newly discovered teaching of collegiality and subsidiarity in the Church.

Fallout from Humanae Vitae

The matter came to a head with the publication of the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968 that was simply not accepted by many Catholics and their leaders. The Pope and his inner circle interpreted the reaction as a disobedient gesture against the Pope's authority and immediately set on a course to contain this crisis.

They did not see this debate in the light of the then prevailing 'cultural revolutions' but receded into the mentality that all expressions of disagreement were undermining and endangering the unity of the church. As a result the aggiornamento augured by Pope John XXIII was overtaken by a growing tendency to defend the church's tenets through more and more centralization. Reforms were to be left for a later date.

This line of action brought a reaction and the crisis came to a point that Cardinal Martini, then Archbishop of Milan, in the second extraordinary European Bishops' Synod in 1999 suggested another "collegial and authoritative meeting of all bishops," a euphemism for a council, should be summoned. No council was called because Pope John Paul II and his team (including Cardinal Ratzinger) were following another line to circumvent this crisis.

This included among other things: the personality of the Pope himself, a series of excellent Encyclicals, the success story of the Vatican's foreign policies, the Pope's voyages abroad, the centralisation of decision-taking exclusively in Rome. Not only bishops but also professors and other important key figures running local churches had to be vetted by Rome.

The Nuncios and the Vatican's Curia have a great say and this has brought about the impression that the church is run like an international body and not as a collegial body.

The recurring agenda

But the underlying questions haunting many Catholics and their leaders have not been thereby dispersed. Cardinal Martini mentioned at the turn of the millennium the following issues to be addressed: the diminishing number of priests servicing the faithful, the role of women and laity in church structures, the moral and ethical questions about sexuality, marriage legislation, ecumenism and the almost forgotten sacrament of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Regarding the last item - reconciliation - Melloni makes an important observation. Way back in the last century the Church tried to steer a neutral observer's role by teaching the principles of a just war and sending its best diplomats to forego or at least diminish the disasters of warfare.

Since the encyclical Pacem in Terris the Church has taken on a new course and tries to offer its services to develop the innate wish of the people for peace. She hears the people and offers its personnel and premises to help warring factions to hear and talk to each other. She is no longer the remote arbiter but seeks to respect each other's side even when there is wrongdoing. The important issue is that the sides come to mutual agreements that could promote the welfare of the citizens.

The sight of so may heads of state and delegations at Pope John Paul II's funeral was a confirmation that this role of the Vatican's foreign 'policy' was appreciated by one and all.

Where and how will Pope Benedict XVI follow Pope John Paul II? From the foregoing one can have an idea what challenges lie before his pontificate. What is sure is that he knows far better than us the dangers that beset the Church and will not answer them with a simplistic, relativistic action. He is also well aware that safeguarding the church and its doctrine is the prerogative of its head. He needs all our support to carry forward his mission.