Is the Pope catholic?

What is the nature of truth? Are there truths for the ages or only an age-old struggle to find the truth? Is truth a destination we may aspire to reach, or is the search for truth a journey we never complete? Are there at least some certain truths, or is the fact of uncertainty the only truth? Fundamentalism or relativity. Absolutism or post-modernism. Papal infallibility or personal conscience?

Time and again, Paul Collins in God’s New Man: The Election of Benedict XVI and the Legacy of John Paul II - a report on the state of the church at this turning point in its history - returns to this dichotomy, in its manifold guises.

In Collins’ view, no choice need be made, there is certainty and uncertainty, rather than certainty or uncertainty: papal teachings and personal conscience. But there is the matter of which side of these scales one places one’s thumb.

“Theology”, Collins explains, “is largely about what you focus on and accentuate, rather than being about radically opposed points of view. Contemporary divisions within Catholicism are about emphasis ...” Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, sit firmly on the side of certainty. And this, in Collins view, has had devastating consequences for the Roman Catholic Church, its theology and liturgy, its priests and bishops, its structures and institutional behaviour, its mission on earth.

The word “catholic” derives from the Greek katholikos, meaning “general, broad or universal”. Quoting Cardinal Avery, Collins extends this notion by identifying four characteristics of “Catholicity”. It:

1. is open to truth and value wherever it exists;
2. is inclusive and open to various cultures;
3. bridges generations and historical periods; and
4. recognises the Holy Spirit as creating the unity of the church.

“This”, Collins says, “is the kind of Catholicism that I, and many others, have embraced throughout our lives.” But, save for point (4), it is not the kind of Catholicism which either Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI - "God’s New Man" - embrace, as Collins amply evidences.

The Roman Inquisition burned heretics at the stake. Now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), it was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger during the 23 years prior to his becoming Pope Benedict XVI.

Question: As “Prefect” of the CDF, did Ratzinger demonstrate that he is “(1) open to truth and value wherever it exists”?

Collins speaks about the CDF from personal experience: he was “delated” (reported) to the CDF for his writings while still a priest. (Collins is sure his accuser was Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, though Pell has never confirmed this.) Collins tells us “… people are never informed who has accused them … there is no presumption of innocence … they [the accused] do not know who is judging the assessment … prosecutors act as judges … they do not know who is defending them. They are usually never given a chance to defend themselves verbally. … It is [a process] that is characterised, above all, by extraordinary discourtesy and rudeness.”

Collins goes so far as to say that one accused man, Jacques Dupuis, died “of an illness that was certainly exacerbated by the congregation’s examination”. And “Ratzinger presided over all of this … and did nothing about it.”

Ratzinger is intellectually gifted. Uta Ranke-Heinemann, who studied with Ratzinger and knew Wojtyla (John Paul II) well, tells us, “The enormous difference between John Paul II and Ratzinger is intelligence. Ratzinger is much, much more intelligent. Quite frankly, John Paul was tedious without end.”

When just 31 years of age, Ratzinger was made Professor of Fundamental Theology at Freising seminary (after he verbally defended his thesis in Latin). As Prefect of the CDF, Ratzinger provided much of the intellectual leadership for Pope John Paul II’s papacy, the tenor of which, Collins argues, was to steer the church towards a closed certainty and away from the openness promulgated by the Second Vatican Council.

When made a cardinal, in 1972, Ratzinger chose as his motto, “Fellow worker in the truth” because, as he explained at the time, “… in today’s world the theme of truth has all but disappeared … and yet everything falls apart if there is no truth”. The emphasis on the need for certainty shines through, and it was this that he defended as the Prefect of the CDF.

What of the second criterion of Catholicity, “inclusive and open to various cultures”?

Ratzinger has born in rural Bavaria, which Collins reports is “completely Catholic. So in his childhood and youth, Ratzinger had no experience of living with other faiths or religious pluralism.” He followed his older brother Georg (also a priest) into the high school seminary at just 11-years-old.

The seminary was closed down in late 1942 and Ratzinger, like all his peers, was forced to join the Hitler Youth. After spending time on the Hungarian border preparing tank traps for the advancing Russians, he was back at the seminary by the autumn of 1945. And in a real sense, Collins shows, he has never really left.

As an aside, Collins is contemptuous of any tabloidesque opprobrium attached to Ratzinger by his having been yet another child victim of Hitler. Collins points out that Ratzinger’s parents’ attitude was strongly anti-Nazi, “specifically because the regime attacked the church and tried to replace Catholicism with an ideology of race”.

Bring Ratzinger’s intellectual bent and narrow upbringing together and we are not surprised to learn that he is “essentially a theologian” who is conservative, even veering towards fundamentalist. Ratzinger, with Balthasar and others, founded the scholarly review Communio, in 1972, to counter the progressive views of Concilium.

Both Ratzinger and Balthasar are essentially intellectuals who view the world from a cultured, scholarly and abstract non-experiential perspective. Both are influenced by fathers of the church and they look back to them as a resource to be recovered today. Both identify openness to the world, the kind of approach espoused by the [Second Vatican] Council … as dangerous because it … runs the risk of losing a specific Christian identity (emphasis added).

Collins mounts a case (or, perhaps simply observes) that Ratzinger and his fellow travellers within the church hierarchy have been steering the once universal Catholic Church towards a narrow, elitist, sectarianism. Collins view is that Ratzinger et al “… never engage with or attempt to understand, as does the historian, the ‘stuff’ of history, the people and processes, the unpredictability and serendipity. Their tendency is to ‘absolutise’, to turn history into ideology.”

This frame of mind, Collins suggests, “was why Ratzinger reacted so badly to the student radicalism and riots of 1967-68. … Ratzinger says he was horrified, and no doubt he was. He says that he increasingly came to see this lack of respect for authority and the constant demand for more rights, for example gay rights, as symptomatic of the abandonment of Catholic teaching and moral standards.” So much for Ratzinger’s “(3) ability to bridge generations and historical periods”.

The conclusion seems inescapable: Benedict XVI is Catholic, with a capital “C” rather than catholic, in the sense of seeking to a truly universal, ecumenical, inclusive approach to the world. Of course, whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on your own point of view.

It would be wrong to deduce from this that Collins is pessimistic about "God’s New Man", far less the prospects of the Catholic Church in the new millennium. Collins is no Latham, who seems to have thrown out the Labor party bathwater, baby and all.

Collins, a trained historian, keeps his eye on the big picture. “It is only [!] since the mid-1100s that popes have almost always been elected by the cardinals.” And the fact the church has been around since the time of Jesus Christ, continues to claim over one billion adherents, and is not going to disappear any time soon, leaves endless opportunity for change.

Collins is fully aware that the role of Prefect of the CDF is quite different from that of the papacy. His deep reservations about Ratzinger’s “baggage” notwithstanding, Collins is of the view that “... this does not mean that [Ratzinger] will be a rabid reactionary”. There is always the hope that it is conservatives who can best lead institutions towards the centre, if only because there is no where else to go. Furthermore, “[Ratzinger] had not climbed the greasy ladder of political opportunism required to make your way into the Curia”. And, “He is a substantial theologian, one of the best of the post-Vatican II generation. He is also a person of obvious spiritual and cultural gifts, with a gracious, gentlemanly, even shy personality. We do not need any more ‘super popes’ … Benedict is clearly a more modest man and for that Catholics can be grateful.”

"Above all”, Collins comments, “he loves Beethoven and especially Mozart … something very much in [his] favour”. And, as Collins also notes, he is an old man: this will not be a long papacy.

There is much more to this book than just an appraisal of Ratzinger’s endemic conservatism. Collins gives a thorough appraisal of the papacy of John Paul II, takes us on sweeps through the history of the church, examines in stringent terms several encyclicals (and especially Dominus Jesus, 2000), appraises the new religious movements (such as Opus Dei), provides extensive commentary on the Second Vatican Council and explores the role of the church in Nazi Germany.

Collins canvasses the role of the principal theologians of the 20th century (such as Rayner and Kung), discusses what life as a priest is actually like these days and explains how bishops are appointed. He takes us into the papal apartment, through the machinations of the Roman Curia (the Church bureaucracy) and even into enclave itself: the meeting of cardinals in the Sistine Chapel where each pope is elected.

While he points to directions he would like the church to take, Collins does not foist a set of prescriptions on his readers, and is never proselytising - he wears his faith lightly. It is something of a wild ride at times, but Collins manages the trick of being both scholarly and incautious, insightful but never hectoring, which makes this trip through Collins’ view of the church thoroughly enjoyable as well as richly informative.

However, Collins does miss a crucial perspective on these two popes. By the end of World War II, Europe was devastated. Countless millions had died on the battlefields, in the cities, in the concentration camps. Children had been massacred, women raped, cities destroyed. Many who had survived were themselves shattered people.

It is easy to see how any romantic notions of the inherent goodness of man lay in the rubble, and with that any confidence in the capacity of people to find their own way to “the truth”. It was surely reasonable for thoughtful people coming to maturity during this apocalyptic winter to seek sanctuary outside the world of man’s inhumanity to man and to draw themselves into a circle around a set of eternal truths, with entry into that circle limited to those who subscribed to those certainties. Especially if one was a young and thoughtful German, and consequently enmeshed with the perpetrators of much of the horror, or Polish and so a victim. I am not sure that Collins takes sufficient account of the impact of the unmitigated horror of this history on the formation of Woltyla and Ratzinger, young men at the time.

There also remains the broad, difficult, question: what should the church stand for? It is surely reasonable to suggest that it stand for more than “process”, be more than just a “community of seekers after the truth”; that it should lay claims to truth which extend beyond means to include ends. In shooting down, not so much the certainties which these two popes insist upon, but rather the emphasis they place on certainty, one is left unsure about how far Collins thinks the pendulum should swing. This said, he does not present himself as a theologian - he is more an historical journalist - so it is not reasonable to expect him to address this question here. The mandate he seeks to fulfill is to point to problems with the present balance - and this he does unsparingly - rather than posit the right balance. (If indeed, “the truth”, if such exists, is a matter of balance.)
 
Collins identifies a group of “progressive Catholics” who “still maintain strong cultural identity as Catholics, but who … have either ceased to attend Mass or only come to church intermittently”, which describes my personal engagement with the church. After reading his book, I can’t say that there is much to encourage me to go back. Though Collins’ unswerving passion for the church - which lends so much grace to his book - reminds me of what I am missing, and how extraordinarily significant it is.