Stand Up 4 Vatican 2

On 12 May Pope Benedict XVI spoke about truth, history and the church. His backdrop was the surreal and voluptuous Gothic of the Jerónimos Monastery, overlooking the great river-mouth of the Tagus in Portugal, from which the first explorers of medieval Europe sailed to circle Africa and India and eventually to encompass the new world they called America.

It was an appropriate setting for this learned and subtle theologian to lay aside vexing stuff about sex scandals and say something about what the Catholic church is today. That turns out to be just what it always has been: no nonsense about lessons learned from the Enlightenment, still less the 16th-century Reformation. On the way, we caught a fascinating glimpse of how the pope views Iberian Europe's bloodsoaked ventures into new continents, that global enterprise which massacred Hindus and Muslims in Goa and captured countless millions of Africans for the Catholic slave-markets of Cartagena (as well as for Protestant plantations in the Caribbean and Deep South). Apparently, what the pope styled "the adventure of the discoveries" was inspired by "the Christian ideal of universality and fraternity". Not by a search for silk or sugar, then.

But the pope was at his most interesting when he jumped from the 15th to the 20th century at the culmination of his address, because he came out fighting for his own view of that most controversial and ambiguous of oecumenical councils, the second Vatican council of 1962-65 (Vatican II). For some Catholics, this revolutionised Roman Catholicism, pointing to new decentralisation, actively involving the whole congregation of the faithful in decisions, and jettisoning Tridentine triumphalism, opening the church to new humility in listening to alternative voices in the quest for the divine. To others, the council did some tinkering, reaffirming old certainties with a little adjustment of language (in more senses than one, since its one absolutely unignorable result was to turn most Catholic liturgy into the vernacular). The latter party would mostly have preferred the council not to have met at all, or at least to have stuck to a script written by Vatican bureaucrats if it did meet. These are two utterly irreconcilable views of an historical event. What would Pope Benedict say?

This. At Vatican II, "the church, on the basis of a renewed awareness of the Catholic tradition, took seriously and discerned, transformed and overcame the fundamental critiques that gave rise to the modern world, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In this way the church herself accepted and refashioned the best of the requirements of modernity by transcending them on the one hand, and on the other by avoiding their errors and dead ends." It's difficult from this to know what the pope might count as "the best" of modernity's requirements, but apparently even those can be transcended, and plenty of errors and dead ends just get avoided – a bit like a sacralised version of Lara Croft dodging through the nasties. You could hardly get a more defensive vision of the council than this. It sounds for all the world like that most unfortunate and embarrassing of Pope Pius IX's public statements, the Syllabus of Errors of 1864, which famously culminated in the proposition that it was wrong to believe that the pope "can and ought to reconcile himself with progress, liberalism and modern civilisation".

What it does mean is that the pope has put himself at the head of the small-earthquake-in-Chile-not-many-dead view of Vatican II? This is entirely to be expected. Neither he nor his predecessor John Paul II liked the direction which Vatican II took, though a veritable industry of official Catholic historiography has assiduously promoted the view that they were all for it and its results. The reality is that soon after the Council, leading Catholic theologians like Hans Küng, Edward Schillebeeckx, Karl Rahner and Yves Congar (whose now published journals do not reveal great enthusiasm for the future Pope John Paul II), complained that the Roman curia was putting brakes on reforms envisioned by Vatican II. That process much accelerated under John Paul. He worked with the curia consistently to police reforming theologians, dictated agendas for episcopal synods, and refused to allow bishops to discuss such matters as compulsory clerical celibacy. Küng was one of the theologians disciplined in his second year as pope. John Paul made it known that he did not like communion received in the hand, refused to laicise priests (as his predecessor had done) and marginalised local bishops by his actions on his frequent worldwide journeys. He also commissioned a Catholic catechism, which neither the council nor its convenor Pope John XXIII had wanted, and revised the code of canon law (likewise not wanted at the council). The theology expressed in both documents goes in a very different direction to Vatican II. One crucial principle so prominent in the council's thinking, "collegiality" in making decisions on the future of the church, has been set aside during both John Paul II's and Benedict's pontificates.

All this has happened while the Vatican has consistently spoken of its faithfulness to the principles of Vatican II. There have been two ways of opposing those principles: one to express opposition openly as some ultra-conservatives have done, the other to rewrite Vatican II's history, as curia officials and their admirers have been doing over the last quarter-century and more. This is what Our Lady of Belém was treated to last week. Well, she's full of grace, so I expect she smiled.

Reproduced with permission from America, the national catholic weekly

As a church we are a pilgrim people making our way together through history. Like Chaucer’s companions on the road to Canterbury, we have a variety of tales to tell and not all are edifying. The latest waves of the crisis of clerical sexual abuse of minors have made Catholics keenly aware that even in high places we are a company of sinners as well as saints, of fallible human beings as well as faithful followers of Jesus—everyone in need of the forgiveness Jesus proclaimed. That forgiveness is one of the religious experiences that binds us to one another along our pilgrim way.

The rituals of confession and repentance remain among the most identifiable practices of Catholic life. Their centrality to the Catholic imagination has made the reluctance of the hierarchy to acknowledge successive revelations of molestation all the more painful for us all. The church’s identity as a community of forgiven sinners makes particularly credible the demands by victims for public confession and open reconciliation. Even the church’s most bitter critics have been unwitting witnesses to that Christian duty. That same Catholic sensibility made the recent encounter between Pope Benedict and the victims of abuse in Malta both necessary and affecting.

The church has known dark times: domination by emperors, co-optation by feudal militarism and modern colonialism, gangland struggles by Roman families for control of the papacy, coercion of heretics and wars of religion. Still, we members of the church make pilgrimage together in hope that the church may be the visible expression in history of humanity’s new life in Christ. To us Jesus is the embodiment of fullest humanity and the model of its most appealing morality. Pope Benedict’s planned visit on July 4 to the tomb of St. Celestine V, a hermit who was elected pope and then resigned the papacy, will hold up for view a penitent form of Christian life marked by meekness, prayer and self-sacrifice, close to the pattern of Jesus that Christians strive to imitate.

One reason Catholics love the church is that it fosters just that sort of holiness. Even as the secular world exposes the hypocrisy of church officials, it acknowledges implicitly that the followers of Christ hold themselves to a “higher law” and try to practice a more demanding love. Some believe that calling is humanly impossible; others, even if they allow the Gospel little direct claim on their own lives, are disappointed upon failing to find holiness where they always presumed it might be found in a moment of need. But Catholics love the church because here we have companions who do strain, in their stumbling ways, to lead their lives by the light of the Sermon on the Mount.

We love the church because here we keep the company of men and women who have lived the Gospel even as they challenged both secular and religious rulers to reform. Among them are figures like Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Thomas More, Ignatius Loyola, Mary McKillop, Mother Théodore Guérin, Dorothy Day, Franz Jägerstätter and Oscar Romero. Their witness to the Gospel brought them into conflict with the church authorities of their day. Yet attachment to the visible, hierarchical church was intrinsic to their own path to holiness. In an age that experiences mostly opportunistic, transitory relationships, the church fosters high ideals and lifelong commitments. In a culture deprived of depth and transcendence, it encourages searching self-examination, ever more inclusive sympathies and attentive receptivity to the mystery of God. Some of the pain of the present crisis comes from the apparent loss of those practices and sensitivities when they were most needed among those from whom they were most expected.

We love the church, too, because, as can be seen in local parishes everywhere, it embraces the full diversity of humanity: the affluent and the poor, the native-born and the undocumented, conservatives and liberals, the simple and the learned. We also love the church because in every age, but particularly since the Second Vatican Council, it is dedicated to the service of the poor and defense of their human rights. Even non-Catholics see in the unselfish service of the poor the palpable holiness of the church. Asked once how he went from being a promoter of the free market to an advocate of the world’s poor, the economist Jeffrey Sachs answered, “The sisters—who, in so many places, took me to the back country to meet the very poor.”

Reproduced with permission from America, the national catholic weekly

Our pilgrim church, “at once holy and always in need of purification,” must constantly follow “the path of penance and renewal” (“Constitution on the Church,” No. 8). As in the United States eight years ago, in Ireland, Germany, India, and in Rome, steps are now being taken to institute strict accountability for the sexual abuse of minors. But direct efforts to correct and prevent abuse of minors are only the most obvious part of a larger healing needed in the church. The less obvious part is the reform of structures of church governance that turned a deaf ear for so long to the victims and repeatedly disparaged bishops who were seeking remedies to the problems haunting their dioceses. At all levels, right down to the parish, much of the church has proven deficient in its ability to listen and interact with adult believers. But at the center of the present crisis are found members of the Roman Curia.

The Latin word curia means both administration, as in a government apparatus, and court, as in a company of hangers-on whose life revolves around flattery and the favor of a ruler. Pope Benedict made a good start on responding to the Irish scandals, but that promising beginning was upended by the misguided statements of others in the Vatican. For weeks we witnessed the hard issues of sexual abuse being dodged while elderly and retired Curial officials, prodded by the press, made the red herring of Pope Benedict’s possible past mistakes the focus of their attention. Intelligent leadership was obscured by a black cloud of flattery. As it turned out, some of these same prelates stood at the very heart of the crisis, accepting payments from friends, like the disgraced Marcial Maciel, and offering high-level support to bishops for stonewalling civil authorities. What appeared to be vigorous emotional support for the pope turned out to be smokescreens for their own unconscionable actions. In those trying weeks, we witnessed the Vatican at its worst—as the last Renaissance court.

Beyond taking responsibility for the crisis of sexual abuse of minors by clerics, the renewal of the church must include the reform of the Roman Curia proposed by the Second Vatican Council and begun by Pope Paul VI. The interpersonal and institutional practices that blocked proper handling of abuse cases must be rooted out. Many American bishops can testify to their frustration in their attempts to get support from Vatican offices for disciplining offenders. Along with the victims, many bishops have suffered because of this. Favoritism and personal influence can never be wholly eliminated, but they can be held in check. Institutional reform is not the most elevated religious activity, but it is religiously necessary; and it is precisely the kind of endeavor for which God blesses us with the gift of wisdom.

To begin with, a system that effectively grants favored individuals virtual life-tenure as heads of offices must be ended. There must be term limits for senior officials and rotation back to regular pastoral roles for secretaries and prefects of congregations, as there are for ministers in secular governments and for major religious superiors. (In 1967, Paul VI tried to set five-year terms, with the possibility of one renewal.) In addition, communication and interaction between Vatican offices need to be improved. Crises occur, we are told, because communication within the Vatican itself is “broken.” To stimulate the needed give-and-take will require overcoming a culture in which major offices function as baronies immune to influence from others. Interagency committees, protocols for inter-office consultation and coordination would help; but recruitment of personnel with listening skills and readiness to cooperate with others, not just their superiors, are equally necessary, as are leaders who encourage open communication both with their peers and their subordinates.

Likewise, two-way communications must open up between bishops and the Holy See. In an age of globalization, centralized church government has a special role to play, but overcentralization was a contributing factor to the dysfunction that has prolonged this crisis for more than two decades. Curial officials expected deference and bishops gave it. Centralization will be healthy only insofar as there is genuine subsidiarity within the church, with dioceses and bishops’ conferences able to carry on their pastoral activities without undue intrusion from favored cliques and individuals in Rome.

Finally, the council called for laymen and laywomen to be given greater voice and to take greater part in church affairs. Diocesan pastoral councils, presbyteral councils and parish councils must have a say in the running of their local communities. Pastors or bishops who dissolve them or refuse to work with them regularly should be regarded as delinquent. For the good of the whole church, the faithful need to be heard and fully engaged in local church life. Bishops and people, priests and people must act as the one body of Christ.

Press release  Madrid / Rome, April 17, 2010
We are Church: "Now is the time to start reforms long overdue: Benedict XVI's fifth pontifical anniversary"
International Movement We are Church asks all the faithful to support Hans Kung’s open letter to the bishops
The International Movement We are Church regrets that the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's election is so much tarnished by the deep crisis our Church at present is undergoing. We  refer to  the world-wide disclosure of sexual abuse scandals and their cover up for such a long time.

"It is not growing secularism that has caused the most profound crisis of our Church, but the inability of the Papacy to read the signs of the time", declares Raquel Mallavibarrena from the Spanish Somos Iglesia, present Chair of the International Movement We Are Church. "The abuse crisis and its concealment are due to an inhumane conception of sexuality and outdated patriarchal power structures. The actual global crisis makes it clear that the clerical hierarchy alone can’t serve any longer as the foundation and justification of the Catholic church's institutional structure and authority."

We are Church appreciates the present activities of the Pope combating paedophilia in the Church. Benedict’s tragedy is caused by the fact that he started it too late, too weakly, and that he is not supported enough by all cardinals, bishops, and the Roman Curia. He is now harvesting the fruits he sowed, when in 2001, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) he ordered all bishops in the universal church to conceal from public authorities any case of sexual crime against minors by members of the clergy and instead to inform his office.

Joseph Ratzinger, who has held over the past three decades the highest institutional responsibility for shaping official Catholic doctrine, is accountable for the failure to respond to the challenges of our time in many fields, ignoring time and again the requests presented to him by some bishops, theologians and many lay faithful from all over the world, who have to face concrete pastoral challenges in their countries. Especially he has opposed with hostility the theology of Liberation. Now the five years of the pontificate of Benedict reveal more and more the fundamental weakness of the whole system of the Roman Catholic Church - its hierarchical constitution, "two-class society" priests / laity, the Roman centralism.

Moreover the strong opposition to the war, which characterised John Paul II, was abandoned by Benedict XVI who met very on friendly terms with the former US president George W. Bush, responsible for the attack on Iraq. The Pope must come back to vigorous opposition to heads of the States working for war and must speak very clearly about wars, disarmament and weapons trade.

"The uproar that went through the church all over the world when the Pope, in a solitary move of total disrespect for the principle of collegiality, lifted the excommunication of the four bishops of the SSPX, was a clear manifestation of the distance of Pope Benedict XVI from the Second Vatican Council", states Pedro Freitas from Nos Somos Igreja in Portugal, who will soon take the Chair of International Movement We Are Church. "The extreme centralization of power and a total disregard of the principle of subsidiarity in the Church that has characterized Benedict's governance has alarming consequences, and accounts to a great degree for the growing pastoral challenges the local churches have to face, with vocations to an outdated form of priesthood dropping ever more and growing numbers of laity deserting."

The International Movement We are Church firmly supports Hans Kueng’s open letter to the bishops in which he urges them to push for reforms. We are Church asks all the faithful to send emails and letters to their bishops and nuncios in support of Kung’s open letter. The present crisis and the inadequacy of the response to the crisis by the church authorities show with unprecedented urgency that structural reforms in line with the Second Vatican Council We Are Church also has been asking for for 15 years cannot be postponed. Now is the time to start these reforms:

1. The People of God have to be allowed to participate at all levels of our Church so that innovative ways to meet the pastoral challenges of our time can be started. The faithful should have a say in the appointment of their bishops, otherwise Rome will continue appointing bishops who care more for the institution than for their flock.
2. Ecclesial misogyny should come to an end and women be admitted to all church ministries, which need to be ministries of service and not of power.
3. Celibacy should become optional, so that marital love is no longer a taboo for clerics.
4. The results of Human Sciences concerning sexual morals should come to be acknowledged and the primacy of the individual informed conscience should be respected.
5. The Gospel should be proclaimed as an invitation to life in fullness and not a means to discipline people through intimidation.

Pope Βenedict should understand the ever louder, world-wide criticism of his pontificate as an expression of deep concern for the welfare of the faithful of the whole Church. The Code of Canon Law says in Can. 212: “The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires.” (§2.) “According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.” (§3.)

Background Information: 
The International Movement We Are Church, founded in Rome in 1996, is represented in more than twenty countries on all continents and is networking world-wide with similar-minded reform groups. We Are Church is an international movement within the Roman Catholic Church and aims at renewal on the basis of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). We Are Church was started in Austria in 1995 with a church referendum, answering the paedophile scandal of the former Cardinal of Vienna/Austria, Hans-Hermann Groer.

Please contact / Póngase en contacto con / Contatti / Contacter /Kontakt/ Por favor entre em contato:
Austria: Hans Peter Hurka +43-650-315 42 00 hans_peter.hurka@gmx.at
Belgium: Edith Kuropatwa-Fèvre +32-(0)-2-567-09-64 ekf.paves@happymany.net
Brazil: Irene Cacais +55-61 3223 4599 luisirenecacais@solar.com.br
Canada: Jean Trudeau +1-613)745-2170 trudeau.jean@videotron.ca
Cataluña: Francesc Bragulat somescat@somesglesia-cat.org
Chile: Enrique Orellana +56-696 4491 lapazesobradelajusticia@yahoo.com
Finland: Giovanni Politi giovanni.politi@kolumbus.fi
France: Hubert Tournès +33-240119873 hubertourne@orange.fr
Germany: Christian Weisner +49-172-518 40 82 media@we-are-church.org
Hungary: Dr. Marcell Mártonffy +36 1 2190621 martonffy@pantelweb.hu
Ireland: Helen McCarthy wearechurchireland@eircom.net
Italy: Vittorio Bellavite +39-02-70602370 vi.bel@IOL.IT
Netherlands: Henk Baars +31-20 6370221 hbaars@steknet.nl
Norway: Aasmund Vik aasmund.vik@nationaltheatret.no
Peru: Franz Wieser +51-1-4492716 fwieser@speedy.com.pe
Portugal: Maria Joao Sande Lemos +351.91 460 2336 mjoaosandel@gmail.com
Spain: Raquel Mallavibarrena +34-649332654 rmallavi@mat.ucm.es
Sweden: Krister Janzon krister.janzon@comhem.se
Switzerland: Brigitte Durrer +41-819212725 bridu@gmx.ch
United Kingdom: Martin Pendergast +44 (0)208 986 0807 martinjp@btinternet.com
United States: Anthony Padovano +1 973-539-8732 tpadovan@optonline.net
Homepage: http://www.we-are-church.org/int/

HANS KÜNG (From the Irish Times)

Pope Benedict has made worse just about everything that is wrong with the Roman Catholic Church and is directly responsible for engineering the global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests, according to this open letter to all Catholic bishops

VENERABLE BISHOPS,

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.

I deeply appreciated that the pope invited me, his outspoken critic, to meet for a friendly, four-hour-long conversation shortly after he took office. This awakened in me the hope that my former colleague at Tubingen University might find his way to promote an ongoing renewal of the church and an ecumenical rapprochement in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

Unfortunately, my hopes and those of so many engaged Catholic men and women have not been fulfilled. And in my subsequent correspondence with the pope, I have pointed this out to him many times. Without a doubt, he conscientiously performs his everyday duties as pope, and he has given us three helpful encyclicals on faith, hope and charity. But when it comes to facing the major challenges of our times, his pontificate has increasingly passed up more opportunities than it has taken:

Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.

Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church, and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.

The fact is, Benedict sees in Judaism only the historic root of Christianity; he does not take it seriously as an ongoing religious community offering its own path to salvation. The recent comparison of the current criticism faced by the pope with anti-Semitic hate campaigns – made by Rev Raniero Cantalamessa during an official Good Friday service at the Vatican – has stirred up a storm of indignation among Jews around the world.

Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.

Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the religion of their European conquerors.

Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.

Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.

Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.

This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council fathers. Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church:

He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of religion and the rapprochement with Judaism).

He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation.

He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.

He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world.

Pope Benedict XVI seems to be increasingly cut off from the vast majority of church members who pay less and less heed to Rome and, at best, identify themselves only with their local parish and bishop.

I know that many of you are pained by this situation. In his anti-conciliar policy, the pope receives the full support of the Roman Curia. The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its disposal. With a return to pomp and spectacle catching the attention of the media, the reactionary forces in Rome have attempted to present us with a strong church fronted by an absolutistic “Vicar of Christ” who combines the church’s legislative, executive and judicial powers in his hands alone. But Benedict’s policy of restoration has failed. All of his spectacular appearances, demonstrative journeys and public statements have failed to influence the opinions of most Catholics on controversial issues. This is especially true regarding matters of sexual morality. Even the papal youth meetings, attended above all by conservative-charismatic groups, have failed to hold back the steady drain of those leaving the church or to attract more vocations to the priesthood.

You in particular, as bishops, have reason for deep sorrow: Tens of thousands of priests have resigned their office since the Second Vatican Council, for the most part because of the celibacy rule. Vocations to the priesthood, but also to religious orders, sisterhoods and lay brotherhoods are down – not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Resignation and frustration are spreading rapidly among both the clergy and the active laity. Many feel that they have been left in the lurch with their personal needs, and many are in deep distress over the state of the church. In many of your dioceses, it is the same story: increasingly empty churches, empty seminaries and empty rectories. In many countries, due to the lack of priests, more and more parishes are being merged, often against the will of their members, into ever larger “pastoral units,” in which the few surviving pastors are completely overtaxed. This is church reform in pretense rather than fact!

And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.

There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.

The consequences of all these scandals for the reputation of the Catholic Church are disastrous. Important church leaders have already admitted this. Numerous innocent and committed pastors and educators are suffering under the stigma of suspicion now blanketing the church. You, reverend bishops, must face up to the question: What will happen to our church and to your diocese in the future? It is not my intention to sketch out a new program of church reform. That I have done often enough both before and after the council. Instead, I want only to lay before you six proposals that I am convinced are supported by millions of Catholics who have no voice in the current situation.

1. Do not keep silent: By keeping silent in the face of so many serious grievances, you taint yourselves with guilt. When you feel that certain laws, directives and measures are counterproductive, you should say this in public. Send Rome not professions of your devotion, but rather calls for reform!

2. Set about reform: Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the just complaints of the faithful.

3. Act in a collegial way: After heated debate and against the persistent opposition of the Curia, the Second Vatican Council decreed the collegiality of the pope and the bishops. It did so in the sense of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Peter did not act alone without the college of the apostles. In the post-conciliar era, however, the pope and the Curia have ignored this decree. Just two years after the council, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical defending the controversial celibacy law without the slightest consultation of the bishops. Since then, papal politics and the papal magisterium have continued to act in the old, uncollegial fashion. Even in liturgical matters, the pope rules as an autocrat over and against the bishops. He is happy to surround himself with them as long as they are nothing more than stage extras with neither voices nor voting rights. This is why, venerable bishops, you should not act for yourselves alone, but rather in the community of the other bishops, of the priests and of the men and women who make up the church.

4. Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason, you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the church, your diocese and your country. Your model should be the apostle Paul, who dared to oppose Peter “to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong”! ( Galatians 2:11 ). Pressuring the Roman authorities in the spirit of Christian fraternity can be permissible and even necessary when they fail to live up to the spirit of the Gospel and its mission. The use of the vernacular in the liturgy, the changes in the regulations governing mixed marriages, the affirmation of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the opening up of an ecumenical approach, and the many other reforms of Vatican II were only achieved because of tenacious pressure from below.

5. Work for regional solutions: The Vatican has frequently turned a deaf ear to the well-founded demands of the episcopate, the priests and the laity. This is all the more reason for seeking wise regional solutions. As you are well aware, the rule of celibacy, which was inherited from the Middle Ages, represents a particularly delicate problem. In the context of today’s clerical abuse scandal, the practice has been increasingly called into question. Against the expressed will of Rome, a change would appear hardly possible; yet this is no reason for passive resignation. When a priest, after mature consideration, wishes to marry, there is no reason why he must automatically resign his office when his bishop and his parish choose to stand behind him. Individual episcopal conferences could take the lead with regional solutions. It would be better, however, to seek a solution for the whole church, therefore:

6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. There is no question that the Curia, fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops.

With the church in deep crisis, this is my appeal to you, venerable bishops: Put to use the episcopal authority that was reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council. In this urgent situation, the eyes of the world turn to you. Innumerable people have lost their trust in the Catholic Church. Only by openly and honestly reckoning with these problems and resolutely carrying out needed reforms can their trust be regained. With all due respect, I beg you to do your part – together with your fellow bishops as far as possible, but also alone if necessary – in apostolic “fearlessness” ( Acts 4:29, 31 ). Give your faithful signs of hope and encouragement and give our church a perspective for the future.

With warm greetings in the community of the Christian faith,

Yours, Hans Küng – (New York Times Syndicate) © Hans Küng

Analysis (Reproduced with kind permission of the NCR)

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a series exploring the long-standing “liturgy wars” and how they shape today’s understanding of the Second Vatican Council.

It would be difficult to find two more incongruous words to utter in the same phrase than “liturgy” and “war.” Yet those are the terms that have been widely used in the English-speaking world to discuss a struggle that has dominated much of the Catholic community’s life since the Second Vatican Council, that remarkable series of meetings of the world’s bishops that occurred 1962 through 1965.

With recent decisions on translations of the prayers we pray during Mass, with Vatican officials openly urging a “reform of the reform,” and with a pope who has made significant overtures to groups within the church who are eager to restore Latin as well as some of the more elaborate manifestations of episcopal office, the question becomes: Are the liturgy wars at an end stage?

Arguably, no other single issue has occupied as much of our time and energy, nor caused deeper divisions, than the liturgy wars. And with good reason.

Liturgy, the central act of worship, embodies the genetic code of the community. It holds the key to what we think about God; about Christ’s action in human history; about our relationship to the Trinity; about our relationship to each other; about the relationship between ordained and lay, between the community and the wider world. In the big picture, a lot hinges on the way we approach liturgy.

The council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy is so important, said Jesuit historian Fr. John O’Malley, because liturgy “is at the heart of what we do.” He considers the recent attempts to change the sense of the liturgical renewal from the top down a serious matter. “In 1985,” he said in a phone interview with NCR, “the synod of bishops said of those four constitutions [of the Second Vatican Council], those are the standards against which all the other documents are to be interpreted. Once you start to play with one of those, you’re playing with everything.”

The state of the liturgy debate can also be a leading indicator of which view is prevailing in the equally long and divisive battle over how to interpret Vatican II a half century after Pope John XXIII first conceived the idea of the council and 45 years after it ended.

How the changes in liturgy were arrived at in the four decades since the council is significant, because the process speaks a great deal about whose articulation of the elusive “spirit of the council” is in ascendancy. By most indications, the way the liturgy has been changed in recent years would suggest that those who hoped that the pervasive themes of collegiality and dialogue evident in the Vatican II documents would lead to a change in the style of church governance have been on the defensive for a long time and may now be in full retreat.

Altar servers process from Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago following a Mass in August 2008. (CNS/Catholic New World/Karen Callaway)The story of the liturgy battles, while often conducted in rigorous intellectual theological terms, is also a story of ecclesiastical politics played out on an international stage. It is telling to note, also, that the lines of battle are not joined solely along liberal-conservative or pro- and anti-reform boundaries. While that may be the case generally, one of the earliest giants of the modern liturgical movement also voiced, 30 years after the reforms were enacted, some of the same criticisms leveled today by those who opposed the reforms from the beginning.

Liturgy set the tone

When the assembled bishops of the world ratified the first document of the Second Vatican Council on Nov. 22, 1963, the groundbreaking Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the tone and direction of the rest of the council’s session was irrevocably set. It is not overstatement to say that with that document, the church as the modern world knew it was changed forever.

For even with the “reform of the reform” in motion, history has amply recorded what followed the council:

• Altars were turned so the priest faces the people;
• Communion rails disappeared;
• The Eucharist was distributed to standing, rather than kneeling, communicants;
• Latin was replaced the world over by languages spoken by the people;
• The liturgy was seen as intimately connected to what takes place outside the sanctuary walls, particularly regarding issues of social justice;
• In a deeper change, an understanding of Christ’s humanity took its place in a profound way in the Mass alongside reverence for the divinity of Christ, and there was a shift in emphasis from a vertical relationship with God to a more horizontal relationship to God in the community;
• Perhaps most important for average churchgoers, everyone became participants, and not simply passive observers, in the eucharistic celebration.

As described by the late Benedictine Fr. Godfrey Diekmann of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., one of 55 international liturgists who helped write the document, “It was a Magna Carta of the laity.”

It might be reasonable to presume that with the world’s bishops and the pope signing off on liturgical reform, all would be set for the foreseeable future. But the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, a solemn pronouncement of the council, was also a political document. Its implications went far beyond what prayers people would say and when they would stand and kneel, or what motions a priest would make during the ritual.

The further-reaching implications had to do with ecclesiology, what kind of church we were becoming. It was clear in 1963 to then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger what was at stake with the newly affirmed document. In what appear approving tones, Ratzinger wrote of the “decentralization of liturgical decision-making.”

“The first chapter of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy contains a statement that represents for the Latin church a fundamental innovation,” he wrote, and that innovation was a new independent authority for national conferences of bishops.

“Perhaps one could say that this small paragraph, which for the first time assigns to the conferences of bishops their own canonical authority, has more significance for the theology of the episcopacy and for the long-desired strengthening of episcopal power than anything in the Constitution on the Church itself,” wrote Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict XVI. It was a pronouncement of decentralized church authority on steroids.

Pulling back

If strengthening of episcopal power was much desired then, time has changed that opinion. During the quarter of a century of John Paul II’s papacy and continuing into Benedict’s, quite the opposite has been true. John Paul, often using the congregations on doctrine and liturgy, especially clipped the wings and authority of national conferences, and a favorite target was the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. One of the mechanisms for trimming its authority was rejection of liturgical texts previously approved by the conference.

Gladys Rodriguez distributes Communion during Mass at Transfiguration Church in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, N.Y., in February 2008. (CNS/Gregory A. Shemitz)U.S. resistance to Rome’s interference abated over time as John Paul continued to appoint bishops of unquestioning loyalty to his wishes and point of view.

It is difficult to measure the accumulated anger and disappointment among many liturgical experts who had enthusiastically embraced the changes brought by the council over what one Vatican official recently termed “the renewal of the renewal.” The new translations being imposed on the English-speaking Catholic world have recently drawn a lot of attention because of objections to awkward phrasing and ungrammatical construction aimed at restoring reverence and awe in the liturgy.

Yet it must be noted that even Diekmann, as early as 1993, voiced concern that “in the liturgical movement, we have lost the sense of mystery, of the sacred.” While rejecting such “false props” as Latin, he said that the prior 30 years had seen an overemphasis on God as immanent and loving, creating at times a “feel-good” religion. He recommended restoration of “kneeling, genuflecting, bowing or even lying prostrate on the floor” as gestures that express “making ourselves small before God.”

Those are concerns identical in many ways to the objections voiced by many who opposed the reforms from the start. The question remains how to find common cause and make change. It would appear that the manner in which change has occurred is cause for perhaps even a deeper divide, and in some minds, an even deeper betrayal of Vatican II, than the changes themselves.

Historian O’Malley referred to a canon law principle that essentially says, “An abuse doesn’t mean you change what you’re doing. You try to correct those who are abusing things.”

More to the point, he said the papacy should be a mediating force among different points of view. Instead, he said, “the professional liturgists have been elbowed out. This is your research branch. Management should listen to the research branch.”

O’Malley’s contribution to the recent book Vatican II: Did Anything Happen? makes a detailed case for how dramatically different the council was in its language, purpose, and particularly its attention to collegiality and dialogue. It was the first council that did not address a crisis; it also did not issue anathemas. And it paid unusual attention to the laity.

The Georgetown University professor termed the way the “reform of the reform” is being conducted a “partisan” attempt. “They don’t listen to liturgists and they don’t listen to local communities,” he said in an interview.

Indeed, while the council set up a process for doing translations of sacred texts and prayers for worship, a widely consultative process that went on under the guidance of English-speaking bishops from around the world and liturgical and scriptural experts for more than 30 years, the reform of the reform began in earnest in a secret Vatican meeting in 1997. That year, as NCR’s John L. Allen Jr. reported at the time, 11 men met in secret in the Vatican “to overhaul the American lectionary, the collection of scripture readings authorized for use in the Mass. Short-circuiting a six-year debate over ‘inclusive language’ by retaining many of the most controversial uses of masculine vocabulary, and revamping texts approved by the U.S. bishops, this group decided how the Bible will sound in the American church.

“Powers in Rome handpicked a small group of men who in two weeks undid work that had taken dozens of years,” Allen continued.

In ensuing years the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, known as ICEL, which was created at the Second Vatican Council as a joint project of 11 English-speaking bishops’ conferences and not under control of the Vatican, has essentially been supplanted by a Vatican-controlled agency, the Vox Clara Committee, with a mandate to advise the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on English translations.

ICEL, meanwhile, under great pressure from the Vatican, has revised its statutes and overhauled personnel to be more in line with Vatican wishes and a 2001 Vatican document, Liturgiam Authenticam.

In late January, Vox Clara released a statement saying its work on a new English translation of the Roman Missal, the book of prayers used at Mass, is nearly complete. When it goes into use, as expected, in Advent 2011, a major battle, at least, in the liturgy wars will have been won.

Can the factions that fought, sometimes bitterly, come together in the future in the kind of unity the liturgy begs? Benedictine Sr. Mary Collins, a liturgist and professor emeritus at The Catholic University of America in Washington, said, “I do think there needs to be a change of heart running through the whole ecclesial body.” A reality in the church today, she said, “is that we are still in the winners-and-losers game. I think unless the church can get beyond that, we can’t tell ourselves we’re responding to the call of the Holy Spirit.”

[Tom Roberts is NCR editor at large. His e-mail address is troberts@ncronline.org.]