A Pope with clear vision

The choice of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as the Roman Catholic Church’s 265th pope was hardly surprising but, as expected, is not eliciting unanimous praise. The newly-minted Pope Benedict XVI himself is being cited as the prime example of the profound debate and deep divisions within the Church.

Still, Catholics all over the world rejoice in his election and look forward to what ought to be an interesting papacy, although – we all pray – not in the sense of the ancient Chinese curse.

Ratzinger entered the conclave the clear front-runner, as we noted in our last column. He was the dean of the College of Cardinals, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and John Paul’s doctrinal policy chief since 1981, as well as a known close friend and adviser of the late, beloved pope.

While we will never know the full story of the dynamics behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel – we saw all 115 cardinal-electors take an oath of secrecy with one hand on the Bible, under pain of immediate excommunication – the markedly quick vote, four or, at most, five rounds in two days, indicates that the choice wasn’t too difficult for the cardinals.

A consensus was evidently formed relatively quickly. Although this is never a sure sign that the early favorites will win – Pope John Paul I, who was similarly elected after four votes in two days, was a compromise candidate after two frontrunners could not garner a two-thirds majority – it is probable that, given the specific circumstances facing them, the cardinals saw no real and viable alternative to Ratzinger

As it happened, it was probably Ratzinger himself who gave the cardinals a clear idea of what those specific circumstances were. He first showed his kinder, gentler side with a roundly-applauded homily, a loving tribute to his patron and mentor, at John Paul II’s funeral mass. Then, Ratzinger reasserted his decisive doctrinal conservatism when, as dean and primus inter pares (first among equals) among the Cardinals, he was given the privilege of delivering the homily at the Mass which kicked off the conclave.

In that homily, Ratzinger warned the cardinals of the dangers to the Church in tendencies such as evangelical sects, ideologies such as Marxism, liberalism, atheism and agnosticism. He then said: "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires."

He attacked those who characterize having "a clear faith, based on the creed of the Church," as "fundamentalism" while "relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching,’ looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards." In taking this stand, Ratzinger struck another blow for absolute Truths, which he and John Paul II spent their careers reinforcing, as against the "modernizers" who insist that because the world is changing, everything can be questioned, including doctrines which the Catholic Church considers basic to its teaching.

Critics of Ratzinger claim his homily was actually a cleverly-disguised last political campaign address, an opportunity not similarly given to the other papabili. If so, Ratzinger made good use of the opportunity. I believe it solidified his reputation as staunch defender of the Faith (remember "God’s Rotweiller"?). More important, it shifted the principal focus of the Papal election from a choice between the conservatives and bureaucrats in the Roman Curia, and the representatives of the Third World who now make up about 70 per cent of the Catholic Church’s 1.1 billion faithful, to the urgent need of addressing the dangers Ratzinger described.

Let’s not forget: Even in the Latin American, African and Asian churches, there are many conservative members of the clergy who live with the problem of poverty but reject solutions such as condoms and contraception as responses to rapid population growth. I believe there is widespread recognition that traditional doctrine may not be fully responsive to the problems related with poverty and political oppression. However, how far, indeed if, one can abandon doctrine is a matter which many Catholics, including those in the clergy, feel unprepared to address now.

Enter Ratzinger who presents the prospect of breathing room, the time and the intellectual space to sharpen one’s ideas about novel problems without precipitately throwing out doctrine on facile theories that they are "old-fashioned" or simply don’t work anymore.

I suspect Ratzinger, while not blatantly campaigning for the Papacy, wanted to be pope. This is not a pejorative comment. I think he wanted to be pope not only to continue John Paul’s work, in which he himself played a key part both in conceptualizing as well as implementing reform, but also to take the leadership role in defending the Church against the very dangers which he perceives the Church to be facing.

But what about his age? At 78, can he still be expected to be an activist pope? His own brother, also a Catholic priest in Germany, says he was against his younger brother’s candidacy, largely because Joseph would not be able to withstand the rigors of the job and would soon be manifesting the symptoms of advanced age.

On the other hand, Ratzinger supporters say that he is much healthier than John Paul II was at 78. The latter was already diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at that age. Moreover, the example of John XXIII is cited. Elected at 77, he was the driving spirit behind the Second Vatican Council and succeeded in putting lasting reforms in place before the end of his five-year reign. From all indications, Benedict XVI will not simply be warming his Vatican seat for his successor.

Some have also expressed disappointment that Ratzinger’s election evidences the triumph of the entrenched Roman Curia and that he comes to the throne of St. Peter, not as representative of the German or European Church, but as surrogate of the Italians who backed him to the hilt because not one of their own would have been able to mobilize the kind of support needed to win the vote. This is a bit more complicated and we will plunge into this controversy in our next column.