When the members of the College of Cardinals stand up to recite the Veni Creator it becomes very obvious that some stand head and shoulders above the rest. On closer scrutiny one notices that a couple tower over and above all the rest. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini was one such cardinal.

Cardinal Martini’s criticism of Church structures is a heartfelt appeal for the resurgence of a relevant Church- Fr Joe Borg

I met Cardinal Martini in 1990 during a conference for Catholic communicators held in Bangkok. The cardinal of Italy’s capital city of television pluralism was invited to speak about the Church and the media. He had just published Ephphatha, Be Opened, a pastoral letter discussing the role of communication in a society situated between “the absolute incommunicability of Babel and the promise of communication found in Pentecost.” This is a profound pastoral letter on the fundamentals of communication based on a God who is the personification of the communicating community called Trinity.

At the time, Martini was also in the process of publishing another pastoral letter – The Hem of His Garment – about the relationship of the Church and Christians to the media. The inspiration of both pastoral letters was the Bible; which was the inspiration of all his works.

The healing of deaf and mute man in Mark, 7, 31-37 is the centrepiece of Ephphatha, Be Opened! The story of the woman healed after touching the hem of Jesus’s garment (Mark, 5, 25ff) provided the basis for the cardinal’s reflections on the media. His reflections take the form of a series of imagined conversations and unusual perspectives: from the living room, from the rooftops and from a satellite. This analysis from different points of view gives us a unique appraisal of a subject of the utmost importance for the Church.

Since then I ‘met’ Martini every year during my annual retreat. I was always accompanied by one of his books. These were generally the transcripts of retreats he has delivered himself. His books about Abraham, David, Mary, Paul and other Biblical figures provide deep and original insights based on the Bible as well as enlightening spiritual guidance.

Martini’s great love and tremendous knowledge of the Word of God provides us with the key to understand him, his actions and his contributions – sometimes controversial – to the media and the Church. Pope Benedict XVI perfectly summarised Martini as the “man of God, who not only studied Sacred Scripture but loved it intensely, making it the light of his life.” As a man of the Word he listened to its Speaker. He listened and dialogued with great openness of heart with all others: believers and non-believers.

As an attentive listener he became conscious of the limitations of the words he knew and enriched himself with the words of others for he believed that neither he nor the Church he loved had all the answers. Together with others he searched for these answers within and outside ecclesial structures. He was no lover of omertà; not one intent on behind the door dealings and discussions. He was not afraid to speak publicly about the Church, warts and all. His public utterings, especially when critical were his cris de cœur; acts of love in themselves for the Church he loved.

Martini lived the basic Christian attitudes of courage, openness and joy when confronted by new phenomena. This contrasts sharply with the attitude of fear, closure and panic that characterises Church men and women of lesser stature than the cardinal though, at times, of similarly important institutional positions. The latter hide behind rigid structures and degrade theology to an ideology of control for they are afraid of a theology that liberates.

During a special Synod of Bishops in 1999 Martini made waves when he proposed the convocation of a new council to unravel “doctrinal and disciplinary knots” such as shortage of priests, the role of women, the laity and the discipline of marriage. He was not afraid to tackle controversial issues head on. After all, his motto on his coat of arms read: “For the love of truth, dare to choose adverse situations”.

In a 2006 dialogue with Italian bioethicist Ignazio Marino in L’Espresso, Martini was not afraid to say that condoms could be considered as a lesser evil in combating Aids particularly for a married couple. In a 2008 book-length interview titled Night time Conversations in Jerusalem, Martini stated that Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae which taught that artificial birth control was morally wrong, led many Catholics to distance themselves from the Church.

In his last book Believe and Know he comments in a very straightforward and crisp way on artificial procreation, embryo donation and euthanasia. The local debate about IVF should be enlightened by the words of this Italian sage and prophet.

He loved the Church and loved it till the very end. His final act of public declaration of love for her was his interview given a short while before his death and published in Corriere della Sera after his demise as his will and testament.

In this last interview, Martini called for a “radical transformation” of the Church, arguing that Catholicism today is “200 years out of date.” He asks whether we are afraid of proposing faith and courage as the way forward.

“The Church is tired, in prosperous Europe and in America. Our culture is out of date; our churches are big; our religious houses are empty, and the Church’s bureaucratic apparatus is growing, and our rites and our vestments are pompous.”

His last earnest cry is an appeal for a solution to “the tiredness of the Church” calling for a “radical transformation, beginning with the Pope and his bishops”.

Cardinal Martini’s criticism of Church structures is a heartfelt appeal for the resurgence of a relevant Church; that is a Church which makes a difference in the lives of everyday people. His appeal comes from a deep yearning that the Church becomes the point of reference of contemporary society.

All Catholics should play an important role in this respect. His last public words contained in this interview/testament challenge all of us:

“I have a question for you: What can you do for the Church?”

We are not neutral bystanders. We are the Church.