Pope Benedict XVI's U.S. Visit

Reflections on Pope Benedict’s Visit to the United States, April 2008: Questions of Social Ethics

By Thomas Massaro, S.J.

In moments of honesty, social ethicists like me have to admit that we don’t have much to add to the fevered discourse about papal travels, such as the recently concluded visit of Pope Benedict to the United States. Catholic ethicists concerned about social justice issues are more attuned these days to rumors of a soon-to-be-released social encyclical, which some Vatican watchers expect as soon as this summer. Encyclicals stand as the highest level of ordinary teaching documents that popes publish, and this would be the first encyclical devoted primarily to social justice issues since John Paul II released Centesimus Annus, upon the hundredth anniversary of the original social encyclical Rerum Novarum, in 1991. I, for one, am most eager to see what this encyclical will contain, and I hope for ample treatment of globalization, the environment, the response to terrorism and the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.

Just a few comments, then, on the most interesting aspect of Benedict’s appearance here, at least from a social ethics perspective. On April 18, the Pontiff visited the United Nations in New York City, where he delivered an address, half in French and half in English, to the General Assembly. This fine tradition of papal addresses to that august body began with Paul VI in 1965. John Paul II followed suit in 1979 and 1995, and now Benedict in 2008. Notice the gaps of 13, 16 and now 13 years. Given Benedict’s advanced age (he turned 81 while in Washington, DC on this trip), it is unlikely that he would return to the U.N. if form holds. These realities perhaps conspired to lead Benedict to choose his words carefully and underline several key points in this, possibly the only address to the General Assembly he will ever make.

To the casual listener or reader, much of the pope’s speech might sound like boilerplate, a mere string of bromides without much bite. But we would do well to notice the way Benedict weaved together a set of specific concerns in the course of his address. Early on in his speech, he listed the following items of international import: “questions of security, the development goals, the reduction of inequalities, the protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate.” This constitutes a pretty good list of distinctive social justice concerns for our new millennium. Note the reference to the Millennium Development Goals adopted by many international agencies, as well as the invocation of ecological concern, a touchstone of a remarkable “greening of the Vatican” in word and deed in recent months.

The pope moved on to further themes that, while in definite continuity with previous Vatican social teachings, add up to more than just stale platitudes. The theme of “option for the poor” was invoked when Benedict expressed special concern for “the most fragile regions of the planet, especially those countries in Africa and on other continents which are still excluded from authentic integral development and therefore at risk of experiencing only the negative effects of globalization.” Sounds to me like a solid hint regarding the content of that upcoming social encyclical. In the same paragraph, the pope moved on to appeal for “a correlation between rights and responsibilities” and “a rational use of technology and science,” each of which are reminiscent of the personalist spin that his predecessor John Paul II placed upon venerable themes of Catholic social teaching.

Then a few surprises crept in during the course of the next paragraph. The pope placed front and center “the principle of the responsibility to protect,” an international relations principle that does not often find its way into papal diplomatic addresses. Benedict called attention to the obligations of states to protect both their own domestic populations as well as other members of the international community, from “grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made.” His emphasis on collective security actions in subsequent sentences indicates what he probably had in mind: this is not a call for unilateralism, but international cooperation. In the wake of horrors like genocide in Rwanda and Darfur and numerous similar crises, a moral appeal for such responsibility on the part of those who have the power to act constructively is an important reminder from a respected voice. That the paragraph ends with a further appeal for managing international conflicts “by exploring every possible diplomatic avenue” underlines the pope’s preference for reconciliation through dialogue rather than through the precipitous use of force.

The remainder of the address contains further advice and analysis of world problems. A most appropriate celebration of the upcoming 60th anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is followed by an acknowledgement of the need to balance individual human rights and concern for the life of the community. This reminder of the theme of solidarity is characteristic of recent decades of Catholic social thought, a tradition in which the common good emerges as a “master concept” dominating the whole terrain of church teachings on social relations. In those cultures (such as here in the U.S.A.) where crass individualism is a deep temptation, the Catholic community often constitutes the single strongest voice for communitarianism and high regard for the poor and vulnerable.

The final paragraphs contain one more “meaty” dollop of analysis, this time regarding the meaning of the right to religious freedom. A key sentence in this regard finds the pope affirming: “The full guarantee of religious liberty cannot be limited to free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion.” While this insight will seem blatantly obvious to most observers, those familiar with Benedict’s very first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est from 2006, will find the selection of words and concepts presented here most intriguing. In that encyclical, the Pope addressed the relationship between justice and charity, and certain sentences he included in the final text led some readers to conclude that he favored a rather sharp separation of private and public action, so that believers qua believers would bear practically no responsibility for the public order. Theologians at the time wondered precisely how the words of Benedict squared with previous Vatican calls for public engagement, such as those found in Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes. So it is intriguing to note here the way Benedict insists on keeping open at least the “possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order” as one face of the right to religious freedom. While Deus Caritas Est itself had already insisted that “the Church not remain on the sidelines in the struggle for social justice,” those who are particularly enthusiastic about church involvement in shaping a more just society (I hasten to place myself in that category) are encouraged by Benedict’s choosing this auspicious occasion to make this particular point.

The address concludes with several paragraphs devoted to saying the obvious: that the Catholic Church supports the goals and principles of the United Nations. Benedict says, “My presence at this Assembly is a sign of esteem for the United Nations,” and then “The United Nations remains a privileged setting.” Very much in line with his predecessors, particularly John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II, Benedict is eager to signal support for the many operations of international agencies in general, and the U.N. in particular, for promoting peace and economic development. On a personal level, both as a social ethicist and as a Catholic priest, I found it particularly edifying to witness on April 18 a “joint appearance,” as it were, of the two agents that inspire (at least in my heart) the most hope for a more peaceful world in the coming decades.

Thomas Massaro, S.J., author of Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching In Action; The Classroom Edition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) is Professor of Moral Theology at Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

Shatter, from Take Heart

By Brian Doyle

The most extraordinary moment of my Catholic lifetime was when little Angelo Roncalli politely grabbed the Church he loved by its ancient hoary arrogant throat and shook it until the dust fell like snow.

But that was forty years ago, and that twenty-third John died before he could bend the biggest corporation on earth back toward its original incredible idea, relentless love, and away from its addiction to control, and since then the hierarchy, up to and including the remarkable man who now steers the ship, has maybe been more interested in conserving power than in correcting pride.

The priesthood, including the late public relations genius of a pope, has in general wished to protect the cherished idea of a paternal and pastoral Church that led and taught its flock, even as the flock, at least in the Americas, increasingly found many of the men who vow to be their servants uninterested in and dismissive of what they thought and how they lived.

Which is why in my lifetime millions of American Catholics, including me, have saluted the hierarchy with respect and often affection even as they steeled their resolve to make their own moral decisions.

And then came revelations of rape, and more rapes, rapes beyond counting.

But none of us, not even cowards like the bishops and cardinals who with their lies let children be raped and ruined in their parishes, knew the true horror – how many twisted troubled priests there were and are, how many cruel inept bishops, how deep the squirming evil in the corporation expressly designed to fight evil. “The smoke of Satan,” as the American bishops themselves have said.

I have three small children; I am enraged; I am afraid; I am bitter. The organization into which I was born, in which I was schooled, to which I have devoted much of my professional life, is caught with its pants down, revealed to be a place where men at the highest levels shut their eyes to the screams of children in the next room.

Yet this acid bath may heal the church, may force it back into the clean future little Angelo Roncalli dreamed for it.

From these crimes may come a new Church – one that will, I pray quietly, be what it has always had the extraordinary potential to be: a stunning voice against poverty and hunger and greed and violence, a force beyond national and political and ethnic snarling, a clan of brothers and sisters bound by the insane faith that love will conquer blood.

A clan, an idea, a force, an energy, a prayerful verb that reaches for its brothers and sisters among other faiths and creeds; that reunites with other Christian faiths and with its parent and root, Judaism; that links arms with the other faiths that sense the One under all; that joins hands with the faiths that chase the holy miracle of life and call it many names; and together, the motley clan now comprising most of the people in the world, dream a new planet.

Probable? No. I am no fool.

Possible. Yes. I believe.

The Catholic hierarchy isn’t the Catholic Church. The men and women who take vows as priests and nuns, and the ones who are elevated to authority, like the many dozens of admirable cardinals and bishops in America and around the wild green bruised planet, are overwhelmingly brave and graceful and honest and unbelievably selfless – but they are a tiny percentage of the Catholic world.

So “the Church” will not be shattered by this horrific unveiling of rape and twisted sex and cowardly mismanagement, because the Church is us – mothers, fathers, children, single people, gay and divorced and separated men and women, all the people in the fifteenth pew and very many who never sit in pews at all but savor Christ’s words in their hearts.

What will shatter, what I pray will shatter, is a culture of paranoid power in the Catholic Church – a culture the Church has wrestled with for many centuries, because the Church is a human construct draped on an incredible idea, and human constructs, as you and I know all too well, are utterly liable to violence and greed, craven cupidity, arrogance, lies.

I do not forget the early Church, that band of brothers and sisters who grew up around the ludicrous idea that a young skinny intense devout poetic confusing dazzling Jew preaching love love love was Himself the distilled essence of the unimaginable Force that created all that is. A crazy idea, and they were crazy men and women, addicted to His stunning idea that love would conquer blood.

But they persisted – against the enmity of their Jewish brethren, against the enmity of the world’s greatest empire then, against the enmity of time. They did so in the early years by communal love: they chose their own priests from among themselves, they did not fetishize celibacy, they elected their own bishops, they met in fields and forests, they steered clear as best they could from power and money, and tried to stay focused on the young Jew’s message, and the carrying of that love to the ends of the earth, the forging of that wild message into a wild new peace, a new way of being, a revolution of the heart.

Inevitably it took an organization to carry that message, and no organization can persist for two thousand years without being subject to all the million sins and vices of the human engine: lust, greed, violence. And the Catholic Church has suffered them all in spades, being nothing more and nothing less, ultimately, than a corporation to house and protect the original crazy idea.

The corporation is brave and extraordinary and flawed and cruel. It has been responsible, perhaps, for more blood and death than any other corporation in the history of the world. It is, in its modern incarnation, egregiously mismanaged. It has far too few managers for its workforce – remember, this is a clan and corporation numbering more than a billion people – and those managers are all male, all unmarried, and almost all elderly. It is, despite its worldwide scope and influence, headquartered in a single vast ancient Italian castle where a cadre of mostly Italian men persist in trying to control the lives and loves of people around the planet. It is, despite its own very public cry for openness – aggiornamento! – forty years ago, in real ways closed to women, closed to gay people, closed to divorced people, closed to the very same scattered democracy of the first days after Christ, when a handful of men and women dispersed from Jerusalem to carry the news of a love that did not die.

But I suggest that this closed corporation, which I have loved and hated, which enrages me and has immensely enlivened and enlightened my life, which has fueled a million memoirs and movies, which has harbored the most amazing grace and genius and the most savage rape and sin, is dying and being reborn before our eyes. It is crumbling and shattering and turning to ash and roiling and churning and something in its hammered and flinty heart is struggling to be born anew.

I suggest that these days are the first blinking mewling days of the new Church.

I suggest that the Vatican as imperial corporate headquarters may someday become Buckingham Palace, a beloved and respected and necessary and nutritious element of Catholicism, but not at all crucial, and certainly not in charge.

I suggest that the pope will someday be elected not by cardinals but by worldwide acclamation of his people every bit as inspired by the Holy Spirit as their cardinals locked in a room together have been in the past.

I suggest that the Curia will someday be vastly expanded and vastly diluted.

I suggest that synods of bishops around the world will someday really be the leaders of the faithful in their nations, beholden not to Rome but to the people they have sworn to serve.

I suggest that dioceses and archdioceses may someday again elect their own priests and bishops.

I suggest that women will someday take their rightful place in the first rank of teachers and pastors in the church.

I suggest that the financial status of churches and schools and parishes and dioceses and archdioceses, already teetering, will change utterly into entities designed not as outposts of the diocese but as independent spiritual villages in large part devoted once again to what built the American Catholic Church in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, schools.

I suggest that my church will soon welcome and celebrate its gay members with all its heart, not in the current way of public speech and private disdain.

I suggest that my church will welcome and celebrate its divorced and remarried members without the clownish and Byzantine apparatus of annulment.

I suggest that the legacy of John Paul II will eventually be not his continued marginalization of women and insistence on corporate control, but his ferocious insistence that Christ’s message can destroy totalitarian governments without smart bombs, that wars are inarguably failures of the imagination, and that we are brothers and sisters with all people who pursue holiness.

I suggest that my church will slowly but eventually turn itself over, as it were; that its leaders in the future will be lay men and women, and the hierarchy, a brave and creative and committed and admirable tiny minority, will be celebrated for the extraordinary choice of life they have made, not feared for the crimes they may commit.

I suggest that my church will always be a struggle and a mess, will always be a human yearning and failure, will always be striving and falling, will always be a house for wonder and woe, will never be what it wishes to be; but will be closer to the spirit of its astounding and miraculous birth, in the years to come, than it has been in two millennia. And that, my friends, is a miracle.

The Catholic idea, all these years after Christ died and rose and his friends scattered around the world on their incredible public relations mission, remains stunning and unbelievable – and crucial. And the church which eventually enfleshed that idea, the church which has meant so much to so many, which has meant so much to Western civilization, which has in the most real sense imaginable saved so many souls and so many lives from despair, stands now at a crossroads the like of which it has not faced since the Emperor Constantine saw a sword of fire in the sky and reconsidered the whole idea of massacre of Christians. It will, in the years to come, fall into dusty insignificance, or be reborn and resurrected in a wild motley creative roiling singing form we can only dimly see; but I hope and pray with all my heart that before I die I see clear a church that matters more than it has since the skinny dusty confusing mysterious gaunt testy riveting devout Jew Yesuah ben Joseph selected his first team and so birthed an idea that might heal the bruised and wondrous world.

Amen and then again amen.

From Brian Doyle, “Shatter,” in TAKE HEART, Ben Birnbaum, ed. (c) 2007.

Used with permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.

Brian Doyle (bdoyle@up.edu) is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author of seven books, including Epiphanies and Elegies (Sheed & Ward, 2007), and most recently The Wet Engine, about hearts, and The Grail, about a year in an Oregon vineyard. His work appears in the Best American Essays collections of 1998, 1999, 2003, and 2005.

What the Pope Hopes to Accomplish, from his national column, Amazing Grace

By David Yount

   The first visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States this month will not be a purely social occasion. As the octogenarian leader of a 2,000-year-old church that commands the allegiance of 1.1 billion people world-wide, he can be expected to take a  hopeful view of history, and the longest view of all -- eternity.

   Unlike purely political leaders the pope does not expect immediate change. Then again, unlike politicians, he has no need to court the electorate and sample public opinion before acting.

   At the United Nations he will do more than appeal for world peace. He will press the leaders of all nations to grant religious freedom to their citizens.

   In meetings with American Jewish leaders, he will celebrate the Passover with them, affirming the Old Testament heritage of the Christian faith.

   Honoring his own national heritage, Benedict will meet in New York with Americans of German ancestry, and join in a prayer service with leaders of other Christian denominations.

   When he confers with American Catholic educators, he can be expected to insist that every Catholic school and college,

welcome students without prejudice to their religious faith, but also clearly incorporate Catholic values in their education.

   In his meetings with our nation's Catholic bishops, the pope can be expected to seek assurances that the scandals of abusive priests are at an end, and that seminary education in the U.S. will ensure American Catholics of a moral and celibate clergy.

   As a cardinal in the Vatican before his election as pope, Benedict XVI was the man charged with defending Catholic faith,

teachings, and practices. He is, in short, a traditionalist who brooks no compromise with secularism. Do not expect him to allow priests to marry or permit women to be ordained. Nor will he soften his church's condemnation of abortion and opposition to artificial contraception.

   Unlike his Polish predecessor, John Paul II, this German pope does not preach in memorable sound bytes but in structured paragraphs. Catholic commentators caution that his words may require not only attention but interpretation. Benedict speaks the language of faith, which can strike our ears as either quaint or steeped in scholarship. This pope is, after all, a Catholic theologian.

   We can expect a great surge of emotion during the pope's public events in Washington and New York. It will stem less from his eloquence than from the hearts of his followers.

   Today in America, one in every four citizens is Catholic, and most Americans think kindly of this pope. In turn, he is

impressed by the overwhelming religious faith of the American people -- Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims alike.

    It's true that American Catholics are inclined to think for themselves. By and large, they have made peace with contraception, tolerate abortion, and accept divorce and remarriage. But they are not secularists. This pope will applaud them for their faith, hope and constancy.

Permission to reprint from Scripps Howard News Service.                     

David Yount is the author of several Rowman & Littlefield titles, including How The Quakers Invented America and is also the author of Growing in Faith: A Guide for the Reluctant Christian (Seabury), now in its second edition. He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount@erols.com.

Getting to Know and Appreciate Pope Benedict

By Sister Mary Ann Walsh

One of the best things to come from Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States, April 15-20, will be that people will get to know him.

There’s a lack of awareness of who is for three reasons:

1.                  He follows Pope John Paul II who made headlines as he revolutionized the papacy. Before his election, the papacy had basically been a stay-at-home job. When John Paul with his fine stage presence set out globe-trotting, he captured the world’s imagination. With telecommunications, John Paul took the office public as no one before him. His is a hard act to follow.

2.                  Pope Benedict’s 24 years in his previous job, typecast him. He was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s faith and morals watchdog. He was arbiter of what was acceptable for theologians to write and teach. His statements were heard worldwide and often drew controversy. When he spoke of revealed truth, he was painted as a man wedded to the past. Despite his kindly nature, he was typecast as stern. Many made up their mind about him even before his election.

3.                  He is a scholar and introvert, not given to encourage a cult of the papacy around himself. He comes from the world of academia and of scholarship, where study, writing and thought are prized. He does not feel called to the stage, though he goes there when he must.

Those who know him, think many Americans will come to appreciate him when he journeys across the Atlantic. A recent survey reports he has an 80 percent approval rate. It will be even higher after his visit.

Pope Benedict, when he was elected, quickly told the cardinals inviting him to the United States that he wasn’t much into travel anymore. Doctor’s orders, he said, and his age. He was 79 then. Nevertheless, when he accepted the papacy he accepted all that comes with it, including his position as a world leader. When the United Nations Secretary General invited him to speak to the UN General Assembly, he accepted and prepared to bring his frequent call for peace, especially in the Middle East, beyond St. Peter’s Square, where he’s raised the subject many times. With his UN forum, people will see a man with a vision for peace rooted in respect for the intrinsic value of the individual. They will hear of the significance of faith and reason and his concern that often modern society is “deaf to the divine.” One can expect similar conversation when Pope Benedict visits the White House, the second pope to do so. John Paul visited there in 1979.

His only other civic engagement, so to speak, will be his visit to Ground Zero. The trip to what has become a national civic shrine expresses the pope efforts to touch and comfort the soul of America, which changed forever on 9/11. He will walk alone there, without crowds, an expression of oneness with the sense of inner loneliness sparked by the tragedy. True to his pastoral nature, he also will meet privately, one-on-one, for a few moments with those who know this loneliness most: first responders whose colleagues died and families mourning loved ones slain in the attack. The visit will reveal the deep caring and kindness of the man seeking to comfort both individuals and a nation.

Pope Benedict knew that he could not visit only the United Nations and its delegates. Having come so far, he knew he had to visit the 63 million Catholics as well as all the other people of the United States. With the aid of mass media, he will do that with trips to the Archdioceses of Washington and New York. In these archdioceses he will see people of every nation, in some ways, glimpse a picture of the entire world, and certainly of the entire United States.

After his visit to the White House, his first visit with the Catholic community will be at his meeting with the U.S. bishops at the Basilica of the National Shine of the Immaculate Conception. As chief shepherd of the church he can empathize with the bishops’ efforts to be spiritual leaders in a secular society. One can expect him to embolden the bishops in their efforts to bring religious values into what is more and more becoming an irreligious world.

The pope, a former university professor, will meet with heads of Catholic colleges and universities and diocesan education departments at The Catholic University of America in Washington. One expects he’ll feel at home with this primarily academic audience that is challenged not only to pass on secular knowledge but a Catholic vision imbuing it. This is second time a pope has invited Catholic higher education leaders to meet him at the university. Catholic university and college presidents were invited to his 1979 address at CUA.

That evening, the pope will meet with leaders of other religions, representatives of the Jewish, Buddhists, Islamic, Hindu and Jain communities. With concern for peace, especially in the Middle East paramount in his mind, the meeting will be one more opportunity to stress the role of religion in bridging the cultural divide at the root of many world conflicts. The following day, in New York City, the pope will meet with leaders of other Christian groups, an effort to shore up ecumenical efforts and to recognize the contribution that Christian groups have made in the shaping and serving the United States. Thanks to them, the United States boasts of a non-governmental educational, health care and social service systems second to none.

Among other meetings with the Catholic family will be a meeting with priests and religious at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In some ways, these are his troops, the men and women collaborators he relies on most to meet the needs of the Catholic community.     

As a pastor Pope Benedict also will meet with young people. They will be of all kinds, handicapped young people in the small setting of the chapel at St. Joseph Seminary in Yonkers; seminarians and young men and women in formation for religious communities; and young Catholics in general at a youth rally in the seminary grounds.  The former professor will be at home here and can be expected, like his predecessor, to challenge the youth to seek God’s will for them and strive to accomplish all they can with the talents God gave them.

Two stadium liturgies will be centerpieces of the visit – one at Nationals Park in Washington the other at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The pope, as any celebrant, will draw from the Scriptural texts of the Masses.  He is, of course, first of all a priest, albeit one with a worldwide parish, and he will offer words his people need to hear.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh is the editor of John Paul II: A Light for the World and From Pope John Paul II to Benedict XVI: An Inside Look at the End of an Era, the Beginning of a New One, and the Future of the Church and is frequent commentator on church affairs. She is director for media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and an award-winning writer, whose work has appeared in both secular and religious publications.

Reflections on Benedict XVI's Visit to the U.S.

By Joseph F. O'Callaghan

The visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States is an historic occasion that prompts a diversity of thoughts about the present and future status of the Roman Catholic Church. I want to reflect on just four issues, namely, the importance of dialogue within the Church; the Eucharist as the center of Catholic worship; restoration of the election of bishops; and the recovery of our conciliar tradition.

Dialogue with the Faithful

During his visit Benedict XVI will attend a number of events in Washington and New York, meeting with the president, 350 bishops, heads of Catholic colleges and universities, representatives of other religions, members of the United Nations, and young Catholics. On each occasion he will give a homily or a formal address. The faithful will hear him, but will he listen to them? He could learn much about the state of the Church in the United States by participating in informal listening sessions with ordinary laymen and laywomen and rank-and-file priests. He would hear first hand people’s worries about parish closings, the lack of parish priests, and the divergence between episcopal pronouncements on sexuality and the lived experience of the faithful. By listening, by engaging in real dialogue with the people in the pews, Benedict XVI would show himself to be a true pastor. He would also show other bishops how it’s done.

If the pope and his theologians can engage in dialogue with Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Muslims, and Jews in Catholic venues, he should ask our bishops: “why do you refuse to meet with faithful Catholics with whom you don’t agree and prohibit them from meeting on church property? Why do you deny members of Voice of the Faithful the right to gather in their parishes to discuss the scandal of priestly sexual abuse and the attendant cover-up by the bishops? Why do you deny them the right to gather in their parishes to discuss financial embezzlement by pastors and negligence in episcopal oversight? Why do you refuse to permit distinguished leaders of the American Catholic community, such as Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and Richard McBrien, to speak on church property if the events are hosted by Voice of the Faithful? Why do you not extend a warm welcome to survivors of priestly sexual abuse and encourage them to meet in parish churches to tell their stories if they wish to do so?”

Dialogue between the faithful and their leaders is essential if the bishops are ever to recover the credibility thrown away by their handling of the crises of priestly sexual abuse and financial embezzlement. Benedict XVI could further that goal if he instructed our bishops not to be afraid of the faithful they are appointed to lead, but rather to open the doors of parish churches to them and to welcome their assistance in restoring the good name of our Church.

The Eucharist as the Center of Catholic Worship

Benedict XVI also has the opportunity to assure Catholics everywhere that the Eucharist will always remain the central act of Catholic worship. At the Last Supper Jesus gave his disciples a very clear command. After giving them his Body and Blood to eat and drink, he told them: “Do this in memory of me.” Ever since then the Eucharistic celebration has been the heart of Christian life, but in our time its continued existence is under serious threat. The documented aging of our priests; the shortage of active priests; the precipitous decline in the ranks of seminarians; and the scant number of newly-ordained priests confront the Church with a grave crisis. As a consequence, parishes in town and country are being closed or clustered with slight regard for the spiritual life of the faith communities so affected. In many places the Eucharistic celebration is being replaced by communion services in the absence of a priest.

In dialogue with Benedict XVI, Catholics might ask: “Given the traditional role of the ordained priest as the presider at the Eucharist, what will happen to the Eucharistic liturgy in our parishes if there is no priest? Will a communion service in the absence of a priest become the norm of Catholic worship? Is that what Jesus had in mind when he told us to ‘do this in memory of me?’”

As the Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium 37) emphasized the right of the faithful to receive the word of God and the sacraments from their pastors and to express their opinion on matters pertaining to the good of the Church, Catholics ought to call upon Benedict XVI to address the crisis of the Eucharist at once. This is the most pressing issue in the Church today. Lest the Eucharist be lost altogether, Benedict XVI should act on the many proposals that have been put forward to alleviate this problem, namely, making celibacy voluntary; ending the ban on married clergy; allowing priests, currently inactive because they chose to marry, to return to ministry; and opening the priesthood to women, who are equally made in God’s image. These are possible solutions to the crisis of the Eucharist.

Restoration of the Election of Bishops

Benedict XVI could make history if he announced that the papacy is restoring the right of electing bishops to the clergy and people of each diocese. The papal claim to appoint bishops was first incorporated into the Code of Canon Law of 1917 (c. 329) and affirmed in the revised Code of 1983 (cc. 377-80). The tradition of the Church from the earliest times is quite different. The faithful of the diocese freely elected their bishop, a principle emphasized by two fifth-century Popes, Celestine I and Leo I, the Great. Celestine stated emphatically: “no one who is unwanted should be made a bishop; the desire and consent of the clergy and people is required.” Just as strongly, Leo I declared: “the one who is to be head over all should be elected by all.” He added: “it is essential to exclude all those unwanted and unasked for.” Over the succeeding centuries bishops were regularly elected (and deposed) in synods, that is, assemblies of provincial bishops meeting under the presidency of their archbishop. Only in modern times did the papacy begin to intervene in episcopal elections. In concordats with such dictators as Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler, popes allowed the secular power either to appoint bishops subject to papal approval or to veto papal appointments of candidates deemed politically unacceptable.

Papal appointment of bishops and their transfer from see to see has had unfortunate effects. To many of the faithful the bishop is merely a papal representative whose primary allegiance is to the pope and to furthering his own career rather than to the people whom he governs. Catholics might ask Benedict XVI: “Would not restoration of the ancient practice of election by clergy and people in a provincial synod presided over by the archbishop give new life to local churches? Would that not establish a firm bond of loyalty between the bishop and his people?”

Recovering the Conciliar Tradition of the Church

If Benedict XVI encourages our bishops to convene diocesan, provincial, and national councils or synods at regular intervals to act upon all issues relating to the Catholic faith, he will take another historic step in conformity with the long-standing tradition of the Church. By declaring that provincial councils should be held twice yearly, the Council of Nicaea (c. 5) in 325 recognized the important role that councils could and did play in the life of the Church. In the sixteenth century the Council of Trent, acknowledging that councils could further the reform of the Church and counteract the Protestant Reformation, decreed that diocesan councils should be summoned every year and provincial councils every three years. Frequent councils served to encourage cooperation among the bishops and also provided opportunities for fraternal correction.

In many ways the American Church in the nineteenth century was a conciliar church, as the bishops met with surprising frequency in provincial and later in plenary councils held at Baltimore. The 1917 Code of Canon Law required the convocation of diocesan synods every ten years (c. 356) and provincial councils every twenty years (c. 383). In the wake of Vatican II, many bishops convened diocesan synods, but the revised Code of Canon Law in 1983 ruled that provincial councils (which could include lay representatives) should be held whenever a majority of the provincial bishops determined that the moment was opportune (cc. 439-446, esp. 440). That has not become a consistent practice.

Catholics might pose these questions to Pope Benedict: “As the Church cries out today for new structures that will hold bishops accountable to the priests and people they lead, why should not the canons of Nicaea and Trent be implemented? Would not a return to the earlier conciliar tradition give new life and vigor to Christ’s Body? As all the members of that Body have their own special gifts that are essential to the well-being of the whole, should not these councils be fully representative of the whole body of the faithful, namely, bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and laymen and women? Should they not possess deliberative authority on every issue affecting our spiritual lives? Would not deliberation concerning doctrinal, liturgical, disciplinary, administrative, and financial issues by a diversity of councils communicating regularly with one another develop a true sensus fidelium?”

The recovery of the conciliar tradition of the Church would do much to revitalize local churches and to animate the bishops to take real responsibility to lead their people, rather than to wait for the latest directive from Rome.

If Benedict XVI prompts our bishops to engage in an open dialogue with the faithful; if he takes significant steps to preserve the Eucharist as the core of Catholic worship; if he restores the right to elect their bishop to the clergy and the people of each diocese; and, if he fosters the regular convocation of diocesan and provincial synods and councils, he will infuse the faithful with a new sense of purpose that will enable the Church to preach God’s message with vigor and authority.

Joseph F. O'Callaghan is professor emeritus in the department of history at Fordham University. He is past president of the American Catholic Historical Association and is the author of several books, notably Electing Our Bishops: How the Catholic Church Should Choose Its Leaders; Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain and Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa Maria: A Poetic Biography. 

Praying for the Jews: Two Views On the New Good Friday Prayer

by John T. Pawlikowski

On February 5, the Vatican published Pope Benedict XVI’s updated Tridentine-rite Good Friday prayer for the Jews. “Let us also pray for the Jews,” it reads in Latin. “May the Lord our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men.” It continues, “All-powerful and everlasting God, you who want men to be saved and to reach the awareness of the truth, graciously grant that with the fullness of peoples entering into your church all of Israel may be saved. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

The controversy over an appropriate prayer for the Jewish people in Catholic liturgy has been with us since the time of John XXIII. Even prior to the Second Vatican Council, he removed the term “perfidious” from the Good Friday prayer. Then in 1965, just before Vatican II’s “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church and Non-Christian Religions” (Nostra aetate), John’s successor, Paul VI, eliminated the nega-tive language about the Jews (the reference to their “blindness,” for example) from the Good Friday lit-urgy, while leaving the call for conversion intact.

The 1970 Missal, the definitive response to the liturgical changes mandated by Vatican II, further re-vised the 1965 prayer. It acknowledged the Jewish people’s faithfulness to God, but left open the eschato-logical resolution of the apparent conflict between Christ’s universal salvific action and the Jews’ ongoing covenantal commitment. The 1970 prayer is clearly in the spirit of Nostra aetate, which totally rejected almost two millennia of Christian theological perspectives on the Jews, but failed to offer a definitive re-placement. That task was left to subsequent generations of theologians and biblical scholars, work that has in fact been taking place since the end of the council. Two such ongoing efforts are the Christ and the Jew-ish People consultation, jointly sponsored by Boston College, the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Catholic Theological Union, and the Catholic University of Leuven with the encouragement of Cardinal Walter Kasper; and the multiyear study project on Paul and Judaism at the Catholic University of Leuven.

In an official international Vatican-Jewish dialogue in Venice in 1977, Tomaso Federici, a lay scholar highly respected in Vatican circles, proposed that in light of Nostra aetate Catholicism should formally renounce any proselytizing of the Jews. The official published version of his paper, which appeared sev-eral years later, was altered to call for a rejection of “undue” proselytizing.

A few years ago, Cardinal Kasper wrote that there is no need to proselytize Jews because they have au-thentic revelation and because, in the understanding of Vatican II, they remain in the covenant. But he did add that Catholicism must also retain a notion of Christ’s universal salvific work. Unfortunately, he never pursued how these two theological affirmations might be integrated.

The controversial 2002 statement, “Reflections on Covenant and Mission,” which was released as a study document by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and the National Council of Synagogues, called for an end to proselytizing Jews. It drew praise from Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, Kasper’s predecessor at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, but was strongly critiqued by Cardinal Avery Dulles in America (October 14, 2002). The month before, an ecumenical scholars’ group on Christian-Jewish relations published “A Sacred Obligation.” It also called for an end to proselytizing.

The discussion about the new prayer for the Jews began last summer, in the context of Pope Benedict’s motu proprio on the Latin liturgy (see Commonweal, August 17, 2007). Groups long associated with ef-forts after Vatican II at Christian-Jewish understanding—such as the Committee of German Catholics and Jews, the International Council of Christians and Jews, the Austrian Coordinating Council on Jewish-Christian Relations, and the North American Council of Centers on Christian-Jewish Relations—sent messages to the Vatican urging that the Latin version of the 1970 Good Friday prayer be inserted into the 1962 Missal. Important Roman Catholic leaders like Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Germany and the U.S. bishops’ conference weighed in, along with several Jewish groups, including the Vatican’s official Jewish dialogue partner, the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations and the Chief Rabbis of Israel. Concern over the prayer was shared equally by Christians and Jews. It was not, as the popular press has frequently suggested, a one-sided Jewish protest.

In late August, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone publicly acknowledged the con-cerns and suggested that making the 1970 prayer the common text for both missals might be the best solu-tion. But something happened to push that proposal off the table. Pope Benedict, it was announced, would compose a new prayer.

The new prayer has engendered much controversy. Protests have come from many countries and groups. The Italian rabbinical association has decided to suspend any Catholic-Jewish dialogue. While the pope’s new prayer removes the most offensive language from the 1962 Missal, it calls on Jews to acknowledge Jesus Christ as savior.

In reflecting on the controversy, four points need to be made. First, interreligious dialogue is an encoun-ter of people, not merely an academic theological exercise. In the spirit of the Vatican’s own 1974 docu-ment “Guidelines on Catholic-Jewish Relations,” it is vital for Catholics to understand why the issue of conversion strikes such a raw nerve in the Jewish community, particularly in light of the long history of Christian anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. In fairness, Jews must also appreciate that mission is at the core of Christian identity. In the end, authentic dialogue and understanding must involve mutual learning. The new prayer has no sense of this.

Second, Jews need reassurance that the use of the prayer will not generate new programs aimed at proselytizing Jews. Cardinal Kasper and others have attempted to set the prayer in an eschatological con-text, particularly in light of Romans 11. Whether such a reading will be convincing remains an open ques-tion. There is little hope of changing the prayer itself at this point. But it is possible to leave the issue as strictly a matter of a prayer, rather then using it to initiate a new missionizing program.

Third, a prayer on Good Friday, especially given that historically this day often provoked Christian vio-lence against Jews, should not become the occasion of a new theological understanding of the relationship between the church and the Jewish people. Unfortunately, the new oration could have been written before Vatican II. The 1970 prayer is superior because it affirms Jewish faithfulness without settling the question of how this might affect Christian notions of salvation. The theology behind this not-so-new prayer does not take into account what Gregory Baum, one of the drafters of Nostra aetate, called the council’s radical transformation of ordinary Catholic teaching on the Jews, the most striking turnabout to emerge from Vatican II.

Finally, at this critical moment we need to recommit to the Christian-Jewish encounter. Silence will get us nowhere. Various Christian and Jewish groups, including the USCCB, have called for continued dia-logue, despite the pain the papal prayer has caused. Two special opportunities present themselves in the near future. The October synod of bishops in Rome will focus on the Bible and has placed the issue of Jewish-Christian relations on its preliminary agenda. And the upcoming jubilee-year celebration of St. Paul, which begins June 28, offers the possibility of bringing popular attention to the emerging view of Paul as someone with a quite positive understanding of Judaism, not merely as an opponent of Jewish law. Both avenues need to be pursued in earnest as a countermeasure to the negative impact of the new prayer.

The situation regarding the prayer for the Jews in the 1962 Missal has been handled badly from start to finish. But the controversy may still open the possibility of new learning and renewed commitment to Catholic-Jewish reconciliation.

John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, is director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program at the Catholic Theo-logical Union in Chicago, and president of the International Council of Christians and Jews. He is the author of Two Faiths, One Cove-nant? Jewish and Christian Identity in the Presence of the Other , Reinterpreting Revela-tion and Tradition: Jews and Christians in Conversation, and Ethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust: Christian and Jewish Perspectives.