Chapter Seven

CHANGING THE CULTURE OF THE CHURCH

When Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez stepped out onto the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on the evening of Tuesday, April 19, to reveal the name of the new pope, several monsignors from the Secretariat of State were positioned on a balcony outside their offices awaiting the announcement. Curiously, as soon as Medina said “Ratzinger,” several of them turned around and went back inside. In the ever-cynical environment of ecclesiastical Rome, a joke quickly made the rounds about what they were doing: polishing their résumés.

Though there’s little evidence that Pope Benedict intends to conduct an immediate purge of the Roman Curia—indeed, one of his first steps was to confirm the heads of Vatican offices in their previous positions, albeit “for the time being”—most observers, including many of the cardinals who voted for him, expect a shake-up, and not in the terribly distant future. As evidence of this conviction, I relayed the joke above about officials in the Secretariat of State to one cardinal the day after the conclave, and with a twinkle in his eye, he looked at me and said, “That’s probably right.”

A reform of the Roman Curia, from Benedict’s point of view, assuming it comes, will not be an end in itself. It will be the first step toward a larger transformation of the culture inside the Roman Catholic Church, away from a system that mimics the bureaucratic patterns and psychology of secular institutions, toward a more evangelical and distinctively “Catholic” model of self-organization, asking at all times whether a particular structure or institution still promotes an alternative vision of life, or whether it has outlived its usefulness.

This attention to the internal dynamics of the Church will be another of the subtle differences between Pope Benedict and John Paul II. At age seventy-eight, nobody expects Pope Benedict to travel as much as his predecessor, or to spend as much time conducting mega-events in St. Peter’s Square. Benedict is expected to be more attentive to the internal nuts and bolts of governance, making sure that the pastoral and intellectual impulses of his papacy are translated into structural reality so they endure. In that fashion, many believe Pope Benedict will leave behind a Church that is leaner, streamlined, and more focused on core objectives. Given his reputation for doing his homework, many also anticipate a greater climate of accountability at all levels of Church life, a sense that somebody in the home office is paying attention. This shift should have consequences, to take one application, for how Rome responds to situations such as the sexual abuse crisis in the United States.

One aspect of John Paul’s outward-directed papacy that is unlikely to be repeated under Pope Benedict, for example, is his record-making pace of beatifications and canonizations: 1,338 beatifications and 482 canonizations all told, more than all previous popes combined. In 1989, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, at a conference held in San Rocco di Seregno outside Milan, wondered aloud if too many people were being raised to the altar “who don’t really have much to say to the great multitude of believers.” Italian headlines soon blared that Ratzinger had charged there were “too many saints” on John Paul’s watch, which brought the following clarification from Ratzinger in the pages of 30 Giorni:

I’ve never affirmed that there are too many saints in the Church. That would be an absurdity, because the Church can never have too many saints. . . . The number of saints, thanks be to God, is innumerably greater than that group of figures singled out for canonization. The question I raised, whether there has been too dense a series of canonizations, referred only to this second group. . . . In reality, I said that up to recently this problem didn’t exist, but now it needs to be addressed. This affirmation, which is very cautious, presupposes the consideration that every canonization is inevitably a choice in favor of a priority. . . . It seems legitimate to me to ask if the priorities in vigor at the present shouldn’t be revised with new accentuations, in order to place before the eyes of Christianity those figures who more than everyone else render the Holy Church visible, amid many doubts about its holiness.

While the cardinal’s language is measured, it seems reasonably fair to imagine that, on his watch, the standards for beatification and canonization will become more stringent—one element of a general “tightening up” that many anticipate.

After almost twenty-seven years in which everyone realized that the Pope was not terribly interested in matters of internal administration, a new wind is blowing in Rome. Though it has yet to gather strength, most forecasts suggest it will generate a number of ecclesiastical tsunamis before it fades.

POPE BENEDICT AND BUREAUCRACIES

One of the ironies of politics within Roman Catholicism is that on the issue of the distribution of power, positions are aligned in the exact inverse of secular politics in the United States. In America, conservatives tend to be the advocates of states’ rights, while the liberals support a strong central government, on the grounds that they generally trust federal officials in Washington more than local legislators in Mississippi or Oklahoma to uphold their values. In the Catholic Church, however, it is the liberals who favor decentralization, while the conservatives support strong central authority, because conservatives generally have more faith in the traditionalism of Rome than in bishops’ conferences in places such as Germany or the United States.

Because of this dynamic, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has sometimes been styled as a champion of big ecclesiastical government, because he has repeatedly made the case for strong central authority in the papacy. This is a serious misreading of his position. In the popular mind it may be difficult to distinguish the pope and the Vatican, but seen from Rome these are two different institutions, and Ratzinger’s theological belief in the Roman pontiff’s “supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power,” to use the language of the Code of Canon Law, does not translate into affection for a massive ecclesiastical infrastructure in the Vatican or elsewhere. Indeed, like most classic conservatives, Pope Benedict has a natural skepticism about bureaucracies, seeing them as too prone to become self-justifying and self-perpetuating, taking on logics and agendas that often are inimical to the ends they were originally intended to serve.

None of this should suggest that the Vatican is especially top-heavy on bureaucracy. A staff of some 2,700 people in the Roman Curia oversees the affairs of some 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide, which upon a moment’s reflection is a rather staggering indication of efficiency. Management guru Peter Drucker once calculated that if the same ratio were to be applied to the U.S. government, something on the order of 500 people would be on the federal payroll. That fact led Drucker to list the Catholic Church as one of the three most efficient organizations in history, alongside General Motors and the Prussian Army.

All the same, however well-oiled an organization may be, there is always the danger of overinstitutionalization, a kind of subtle shift in priorities that comes to regard maintenance of the apparatus itself as the greatest good. This risk has long been a preoccupation of the new pope.

“What the Church needs in order to respond to the needs of man in every age is holiness, not management,” he said in The Ratzinger Report. “The Church, I shall never tire of repeating it, needs saints more than functionaries.”

He expanded the point in Salt of the Earth.

“The great churches of the Christian countries are perhaps also suffering on account of their own over-institutionalization, of their institutional power, of the pressure of their own history. The living simplicity of the faith has been lost to view in this situation. Being a Christian means simply belonging to a large apparatus and knowing in one way or another that there are countless moral prescriptions and difficult dogmas. . . . The flame that really enkindles can’t, you might say, burn through because of the excess of ash covering it.”

In his 1988 work A New Song for the Lord, then-Cardinal Ratzinger was even more explicit: “In the past two decades an excessive amount of institutionalization has come about in the Church, which is alarming,” he said. “Future reforms should therefore aim not at the creation of yet more institutions, but at their reduction.”

All this suggests that Pope Benedict XVI, while certainly enough of a realist to understand that the Church cannot survive without an institutional dimension, is also keenly aware of the danger that institutions can sometimes get in the way of evangelization and pastoral care, and can stifle rather than foster the kind of alternative models of fully Christian life he wants the Church to offer, especially in the West, where the Church sometimes too often takes its cues from the cult of management in corporate and political life.

At the 1985 Synod of Bishops, devoted to assessing the implementation of the Second Vatican Council twenty years after its formal close, then-Cardinal Ratzinger struck many of these notes in a much-discussed speech on the synod floor. For many, he said, the Church has the image of “a great multinational” with a self-preoccupation that can never make it “the object of love” it should be. It is “a sad spectacle,” he warned, if “we are concerned only with ourselves and church structures.” Such an attitude, he said, will drive people elsewhere for religion.

Moreover, Benedict XVI is skeptical that the mere fact of creating or expanding allegedly representative bodies within the Church, such as pastoral councils or lay boards, will result in more collaborative governance. In at least some cases, he believes, these bodies simply end up imposing the views of a determined minority on the life of the Church, without making the Church more sensitive to the actual concerns and needs of the entire “People of God.”

“The Soviet Union began like that,” he argued in Salt of the Earth. “The ‘base’ was supposed to decide things via the councils; all were supposed to take an active part in governing. This allegedly direct democracy, dubbed ‘people’s democracy,’ which was contrasted with representative (parliamentary) democracy became, in reality, simply a lie. It would be no different in a Church made up of such councils.”

Benedict XVI’s papacy is therefore likely to be one where ecclesiastical institutions, and the personnel who serve them, will be reviewed, at all levels, with respect to the broader aims the Church should serve. By and large one should not expect the creation of new structures or institutions, but rather an attempt to foster a more robust Catholic spirit, and a critical eye toward the possibility that existing bureaucracy may actually stifle rather than promote life according to Gospel principles.

CURIAL REFORM

At first blush, Joseph Ratzinger may seem an odd choice to lead a reform of the Roman Curia, since he has been at the pinnacle of power in that system himself for almost a quarter-century. On the eve of his election a veteran observer of the Roman scene, Fr. Gino Belleri, director of Libreria Leoniana, argued before a packed audience at the Centro Russia Ecumenica on the Borgo Pio, just behind the Vatican, that it would be a mistake to elect Ratzinger. After so many years in office, Belleri asked rhetorically, “What does he have left to give the Church?”

Yet talking to several cardinals after the conclave had ended, it was clear that many of them indeed expect their new pope to lead an overhaul of the system in which he has lived and worked for twenty-five years. Their argument boils down to this: To reform the Curia you have to know it from inside, and on that count, no one fits the bill like Ratzinger. Further, as already noted, the cardinals came to see Ratzinger as a different sort of curial figure, a man who came into the system as a cardinal, and hence someone who does not have the same careerist debts as prelates who rose up through the Vatican’s standard pathways.

“Ratzinger has always managed to stay above the fray in the Curia,” one cardinal told me after the election. “The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on his watch was never a political office. His relationship with the Pope was substantial, so he didn’t have to worry about access. He was never seen as the quintessential curial cardinal.”

“A number of residential bishops are frustrated with the Curia,” this cardinal said. “They saw Ratzinger as someone who can take it in hand, and not be party to one section or the other. He knows the difficulties. There is attention needed, and he can give it.”

This cardinal confirmed that such thinking “was in my mind” when he cast his own ballot for Ratzinger.

Moreover, several cardinals confirmed that Ratzinger’s support in the conclave of 2005 was by no means exclusively, or even primarily, dependent upon other curial cardinals. The election of Benedict XVI was not a vote for the status quo with respect to curial patterns of governance. One of the main advocates of Ratzinger’s election, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, for example, is not a curial figure.

So what does curial reform mean to the cardinals who elected Benedict XVI?

First of all, as one put it, it means “fewer bureaucrats and more experts.” To be blunt, it means more people like Ratzinger himself in key Vatican positions, people who have the subject-area background to understand in depth the issues to which they are called upon to respond.

Ratzinger was an outstanding figure in his field, but the same cannot necessarily be said for other prefects and presidents of curial offices. At present, for example, the Congregation for Catholic Education is headed by a man who has never been an educator, the Council for Health Care is run by someone with no medical background, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith is led by a man with no missionary experience, and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments is presided over by a man with no background in liturgy. None of this is to say that, taken individually, these men are ineffective administrators; some people praise the work that Cardinal Francis Arinze has done at the Congregation for Worship, for example, arguing that his goodwill and openness compensate for his lack of background. Moreover, some Vatican officials, schooled in neo-Thomist thought, are skeptical of the very idea of a cult of “experts” who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Technical expertise, they insist, is less important in administering the Church than being sure that the imaginations and instincts of the people in charge are shaped by the culture of Roman Catholicism, rather than by that of whatever discipline or secular pursuit they represent.

At the same time, however, there has long been frustration among many bishops that it’s difficult to have meaningful discussions with some Vatican officials who are in over their heads, and who sometimes seem to make decisions on the basis of personal ties of loyalty, or simple bureaucratic reasoning, rather than a genuine grasp of the issues at stake. This is what makes dealing with Ratzinger refreshing, they say, because at least he has done the homework and understands the material. As pope, Benedict XVI is expected to appoint more men of substance to head these Vatican offices, so that decisions will become better reasoned, more objective, and more grounded in the real issues at stake rather than extraneous institutional considerations. Under Benedict XVI, being a graduate of the Accademia, the Vatican’s elite school for diplomats near the Piazza Minerva will no longer function as a quasi-automatic entitlement to hold almost any job in the Holy See.

The first sign that Pope Benedict may move quickly in this regard came on April 21, just two days after his election, when he confirmed the cardinals and archbishops currently in charge of the various offices of the Vatican, but did so donec aliter provideatur, roughly meaning “for the time being.” In other words, the new pope put people on notice that these are not five-year appointments, and that change may be in the offing.

“At first, I heard that he had reconfirmed everyone for a year,” one cardinal said the next day. “I thought, ‘No, that’s not good, it ties his hands.’ Then when I heard it was donec aliter provideatur, I thought, ‘Good, now he can move.’ ”

Second, curial reform under Benedict XVI may mean shrinking certain Vatican offices, eliminating some, consolidating others, and reducing the workforce of still others. It would not be surprising if certain offices of the “post–Vatican II curia,” meaning the councils that sprouted under Paul VI, were to be reexamined under Benedict XVI. Is a Pontifical Council for Migrants and Refugees, for example, necessary as a self-standing dicastery (the Vatican term for an office of the Roman Curia); and if it is, why not a separate office for other constituencies, such as a Pontifical Council for the Unemployed or a Pontifical Council for Expatriates? Is the Pontifical Council for the Family essential, given that many of the issues with which it deals already fall under the purview of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? Given Pope Benedict’s aversion to bureaucracies that become self-justifying, it’s conceivable that the need for some of these dicasteries will be examined anew.

None of this should call into question the positive contributions often made by these dicasteries, or the personal dedication of the people who staff them. The point, rather, would be to take a hard-headed look at whether these contributions could be performed more efficiently, with less danger of duplication of resources or working at cross-purposes, under another arrangement. Pope Benedict’s desire will be that the Curia have the bare minimum of structures necessary in order to accomplish its core purposes.

One department that will certainly not be eliminated, but may have its wings clipped, is the Secretariat of State, styled by Paul VI as a kind of “super-dicastery” that plays a coordinating role among all the others. Under Paul VI and John Paul II, in virtually every area of Church life other than doctrine, work from the other dicasteries had to move through the Secretariat of State before it could get to the pope. This was something of a reversal of curial tradition, since historically the doctrinal office (known before Vatican II as the Holy Office) was considered la suprema , meaning first among equals in the Vatican power structure. The ascendancy of the Secretariat of State was long seen by critics as a triumph of bureaucracy over content, and no doubt there will be a subtle, but real, shifting of power back to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope Benedict XVI. The Secretariat of State’s second section, which handles relations with states and diplomatic matters, seems relatively insulated from the impact of such shifts, but the first section, which deals primarily with internal church governance, may see some reduction in both size and influence.

The new Pope may also want to consolidate the Vatican’s communications operation, since one reason for the perception of conflicting messages is because there is no single office responsible for press relations. Under John Paul II, the Vatican Press Office under Navarro-Valls was responsible for relations with the print media, while the Pontifical Council for Social Communications under American Archbishop John Foley dealt with television and radio. In addition, Vatican Radio is in some sense too the “voice of the Pope.” The result was sometimes duplication of efforts and mixed signals, and Benedict XVI may well ask if the work of these various offices could be better coordinated.

Finally, curial reform under Pope Benedict XVI will mean a Vatican less likely to speak with different voices, operating with greater coordination and internal focus. The days when officials such as Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, could walk into the Vatican Press Office and condemn U.S. forces for treating the captured Saddam Hussein “like a cow,” then, when world headlines blared “Vatican blasts Americans,” insist he had been expressing only a personal opinion, will likely draw to a close. Similarly, public clashes between cardinals, such as the dispute between Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, over whether married couples may ethically use condoms to prevent the spread of disease, will also likely be brought under a greater degree of control. Even relatively trivial incidents of disarray, such as the embarrassing flap over whether the Pope did or did not say “it is as it was” with respect to the Mel Gibson film The Passion of the Christ , will be less likely to recur. Pope Benedict will try to ensure that the Catholic faithful are clear about the positions of the Holy See, especially when they brush up against a question of the faith.

This does not mean Pope Benedict will appoint only yes-men and choke off internal debate. In fact, if he surrounds himself with experts, men who are well-trained and creative thinkers themselves, the internal diversity of the Vatican will, if anything, increase. Moreover, Ratzinger is not expected to deny Vatican officials the opportunity to express themselves in a personal capacity. The one request he made of John Paul II when he was asked to head the doctrinal office was that he be allowed to continue publishing his own theological material, a condition John Paul readily accepted. The Pope honored that pledge, despite occasional grumbling that it was difficult to distinguish when Ratzinger was another voice in the theological conversation, and when he was speaking as the Pope’s doctrinal czar. Having requested that freedom for himself, Pope Benedict will be unlikely to refuse it to his aides.

At the same time, however, he will expect those aides to be prudent in choosing the time and place for those expressions, and to avoid provocative comments that will create confusion about what the Holy See is trying to express, especially on matters of faith and morals. The expectation, in other words, is that there will be greater discipline within the Roman Curia, with fewer impressions of disarray or working at cross-purposes.

In general, then, the cardinals who elected Pope Benedict XVI expect him to transform the culture of the Roman Curia, making it more responsive to the concerns of local bishops by virtue of the fact that real experts will be making decisions, not civil servants whose main interest sometimes seems to be reminding people who’s in charge. Decisions will be driven by argument, not by power plays. Further, they expect a more focused Curia, potentially a smaller one, which provides clearer direction to the bishops and to the wider world. The hope is that the relationship between day-to-day operations in the Vatican and the pastoral vision of the papacy will be less distant than it sometimes was under John Paul II, that the Pope’s own desire to be collegial and to make decisions on the basis of real doctrinal and pastoral concerns will be reflected in the day-to-day operating style of the bureaucracy that serves him.

It is not mere speculation to anticipate moves in this direction from the new Pope. In September 1990, at an annual Comunione e Liberazione convention in Rimini, then-Cardinal Ratzinger addressed explicitly the subject of curial reform:

After the Council we created many new structures, many councils at different levels, and we’re still creating them. . . . We have to be aware that these structures remain secondary things, of help with respect to the primary thing, and must be ready to eventually disappear, not substituting themselves, so to speak, for the Church. In this sense I’ve suggested an examination of conscience that could also profitably be extended to the Roman Curia, in the sense of evaluating whether all the dicasteries that exist today are really necessary. Following the Council we’ve already had two reforms of the Curia, so a third shouldn’t be ruled out.

This will not be, it should be noted, the kind of curial reform that some progressive Catholics in various parts of the world have long desired, meaning formally stripping power from the Vatican and transferring it to national bishops’ conferences and local dioceses. The new pope has said many times that a strong center of authority in Rome is essential to maintaining the unity of the Church, and that in an age of instant communications, it’s naïve to think that problems can remain “local” for very long. Pope Benedict, in that sense, is unlikely to deconstruct the powers of the papacy. Yet in the exercise of those powers, the cardinals who elected him expect him to be more collegial, and more reliant on good advice, than was sometimes the case under John Paul II, whose evangelical passion for encounter with the world often left him dependent upon “the system” at home.

“Reform of the Curia cannot be done without renewal of collegiality among the bishops,” one European cardinal said after Pope Benedict’s election. “In electing Ratzinger, we didn’t think he would be unfair in listening to the real concerns that people have.”

As a cautionary note, it should be said that more than one pope has come into office with the desire of shaking things up inside the Vatican, only to find the system remarkably durable and resistant to change. The extent to which these hopes for Pope Benedict’s impact will be realized remain to be seen. For now, however, the important point is to understand that by electing a “curial cardinal,” the conclave of 2005 was not thereby endorsing “business as usual.” In fact, the cardinals elected the one man whom they felt could get his hands around the Roman Curia to ensure that John Paul’s pastoral approach, and now presumably his own, are better reflected in the way the sausage is ground in Rome.

APPOINTMENT OF BISHOPS

As part of his willingness to leave routine governance in the hands of aides, John Paul II only occasionally took a strong personal interest in the appointment of bishops. As a general matter, he would tap the first name on the terna, a list of three recommendations, presented to him by the Congregation for Bishops. Only in a few well-documented cases did he set aside the terna to make another selection; this was the case, for example, with Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, whom John Paul II had known as a judge on the Roman Rota who worked closely with him on the revision of the Code of Canon Law in 1983. The Pope’s willingness to rely largely on the system meant that the appointment of bishops was handled in the first instance by the nuncio, or the papal ambassador, in most countries, and then by the Congregation for Bishops, which, since September 2000, has itself been headed by a product of the papal diplomatic corps, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.

Allowing Vatican diplomats to handle the selection of bishops, according to some critics, has meant that diplomatic criteria have been the dominant ones, which by and large have meant “safe” appointments. As a result, some Church officials believe that the quality of bishops appointed during John Paul’s papacy has been rather low, with a large number of “gray” figures—reliable administrators and good pastors, but too often lacking imagination, creativity, and personal vision. Evidence of the point, some believe, can be found in the College of Cardinals itself. As noted earlier, the short supply of truly outstanding figures in the College of Cardinals was one of the factors that made Joseph Ratzinger’s election seem such an obvious choice to many of the electors.

“The bishops appointed by John Paul II are generally very good pastors with good hearts, but they lack intellectual depth from time to time,” said Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium in an interview shortly before the April 18 conclave. “His nominations have been good shepherds, with a profound empathy for people, much more than thirty years ago,” Danneels said. “Yet if you compare the college of bishops today with fifty or a hundred years ago, the intellectual strength of the episcopacy is much lower. The intellectual standard for bishops has declined.”

One cause of this, Danneels said, is that under John Paul II, too many canon lawyers and church bureaucrats were appointed to the episcopacy and not enough theologians.

“They don’t make theologians bishops anymore,” he said. “The result is that you don’t have many bishops who have an active life of the mind.”

Danneels conceded that the vocations crisis, especially in Europe, is part of the problem, since there is often not a large corps of talented young priest-theologians in many places from whom bishops could be drawn. Still, he argued, in virtually every diocese, such candidates could be found; the problem, he insisted, is that under John Paul, such candidates were generally not desired.

One expectation among the cardinals who elected Pope Benedict XVI is that he will be more attentive to the appointment of bishops, reviewing the case files and intervening when necessary, especially in the critical early months, so that the nomination process learns to take its cues from him. They also believe he will be more likely to appoint bishops of substance, men of genuine intellectual curiosity and depth. This does not mean that anyone expects Benedict XVI to appoint theological liberals to key positions, but rather that being solid on matters of doctrine will become a necessary, not a sufficient, condition to be named a bishop. Beyond doctrinal orthodoxy, the electors expect the new pope to also look for creativity, imagination, and learning. This would be true especially of appointments to major archdioceses and positions in the Roman Curia, so that the College of Cardinals becomes more truly a collection of the “best and brightest” in the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church.

In that sense, some cardinals compare the kind of appointments they expect from Pope Benedict to those made in the era of Pope Pius XII. Although Pius XII was in most regards a theological conservative, he made a series of impressive appointments of men who did not necessarily share his views on every particular: Julius Döpfner in Munich, Josef Frings in Cologne, Franz König in Vienna, Giacomo Lercaro in Bologna, Bernard Alfrink in Holland, and Giovanni Battista Montini in Milan, who would later become Paul VI. All were men of genuine learning; Montini, for example, is said to have moved ninety cases of books with him to Milan from Rome. They were men of substance, who later became the architects of the Second Vatican Council precisely because they had the depth and independence of judgment to make decisions for themselves. Pope Benedict XVI, in the eyes of many of the cardinals who voted for him, can be expected to make similarly well-considered and thoughtful appointments to the episcopacy, identifying candidates on the basis of objective criteria, and looking for the best rather than the safest candidate.

One indication of Pope Benedict’s capacity for sound judgment about bishops’ appointments came in 1985, when the long-serving Cardinal Franz König stepped down in Vienna, Austria. At the time, Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary, then-Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz, informed the Congregation for Bishops that the Pope had Auxiliary Bishop Kurt Krenn of Vienna in mind as König’s successor. Krenn was known even then as not only sharply conservative but, at least in the minds of some, as an isolated and unstable figure. When John Paul had appointed Krenn as an auxiliary in Vienna with special responsibility for cultural affairs, the choice was ridiculed after Krenn admitted on national television that he could not name a single living Austrian artist, painter, poet, sculptor, novelist, musician, or scientist. Later he became the bishop of Sankt Pölten, and within the Austrian bishops’ conference Krenn developed a reputation as pugnacious, difficult, and somewhat erratic. In 2004, Krenn would have to resign in disgrace as bishop of Sankt Pölten when photos of seminarians and staff members in sexually provocative poses were published in an Austrian magazine, and one of his seminarians was found to have a computer brimming with images of child pornography.

According to reports in the Austrian press, it was Ratzinger who blocked Krenn’s elevation to the cardinal’s post in 1985, persuading John Paul not to make the appointment. Austrian journalist Norbert Stanzel reported the intervention in his 1999 biography of Krenn, Die Geisel Gottes (“The Scourge of God”). Krenn had studied under Ratzinger at Tübingen in 1965, and the two were colleagues on the theology faculty at Regensburg during the 1970s. Sources told Stanzel that Ratzinger had strong personal reservations about Krenn. Though Stanzel does not spell out what they were, it’s not hard to guess; Ratzinger knew that Krenn would be a disaster in a high-profile forum such as Vienna, and, in effect, saved the Pope from himself. It is the kind of sober, objective judgment that many cardinals expect him to bring to bear on a broad scale.

For the United States, this aspect of Benedict’s papacy could be especially important, given that four of the seven residential cardinals in the country are within two years of retirement age, if they have not already reached it. That suggests Pope Benedict will be in a position to make a series of appointments in the coming months that will shape the Catholic Church in the United States for years to come.

BISHOPS’ CONFERENCES

As the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger led a reevaluation of the nature and purpose of bishops’ conferences that resulted in the 1998 papal document Apostolos Suos. In effect, it held that episcopal conferences have no theological status of their own, and hence have no authority to teach unless they do so unanimously—that is, drawing on the individual authority of each member bishop, or with the prior approval of the Holy See. The point, as Ratzinger and others saw it, was to clarify that a conference is an administrative organism, not a theological reality; each bishop, by himself, is the vicar of Christ in his diocese, and cannot dislodge his responsibility onto a bureaucratic structure. Apostolos Suos built on Ratzinger’s long-standing concern that the expanding size and scale of conferences around the world, especially in places such as the United States and Germany, risked creating a situation in which majority votes and the agendas of ecclesiastical bureaucrats, rather than decisions made in conscience by bishops, would set the tone in the life of the Church.

“It is a matter of safeguarding the very nature of the Catholic Church, which is based on an episcopal structure and not on a kind of federation of national churches,” he said in The Ratzinger Report. “The national level is not an ecclesial dimension.”

To some extent, this wariness about conferences reflected his larger concern with bureaucracies, which in his view tend to flatten and institutionalize the creativity and boldness of individual leaders. He saw this, he felt, in the way the German Catholic Church responded to the rise of the Nazi movement.

“The really powerful documents against National Socialism were those that came from individual courageous bishops,” he said in 1985. “The documents of the conference, on the contrary, were often rather wan and too weak with respect to what the tragedy called for.”

Aidan Nichols, in his 1987 study The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger , argued that part of the cardinal’s ambivalence about conferences can be traced to the theology of the Volk developed by some German Protestants who became apologists for National Socialism. The danger, Ratzinger felt, is that of allowing an element of nationalism to creep into the Church’s self-understanding and theological reflection, so that a conference comes to see itself as a sort of mediator between the universal Church and the Church in a given nation. Taken to an extreme, this could produce a distorted sense of the universality of Roman Catholicism, whereby “American Catholicism” or “Brazilian Catholicism” end up as distinct religious groupings, rather than local manifestations of the one, universal Church.

Finally, Ratzinger has also been concerned that the bishops could find themselves manipulated by forces bent on co-opting the conference in favor of particular aims.

“In many episcopal conferences, the group spirit and perhaps even the wish for a quiet, peaceful life or conformism lead the majority to accept the positions of active minorities bent upon pursuing clear goals,” he said.

None of these reservations means that Pope Benedict will shut down bishops’ conferences around the world, or refuse to meet with their officers. On the contrary, he can be expected to maintain cordial relations with the officers of national conferences, most of whom he already knows and is accustomed to seeing on a regular basis. In the early 1990s, Ratzinger made a series of trips to various parts of the world to meet with the heads of doctrinal commissions of the various bishops’ conferences in those regions, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith instituted regular dialogues with the staff and officers of the bishops’ conferences. The new pope thus brings a history of what he regards as largely positive contacts with bishops’ conferences, and he will doubtless want that to continue.

“Above all, our contacts with the bishops’ conferences have led to greater mutual understanding and have also helped the bishops to a common view of their task, in common among themselves and in common with Rome,” he said in Salt of the Earth.

At the same time, however, Pope Benedict will strive to ensure that what he hears in these dialogues with episcopal conferences is truly the voice of the bishops, and not that of a class of ecclesiastical apparatchiks. Further, the fact that a bishops’ conference has adopted a given position by a majority vote will likely count for less in Benedict’s papacy when he has to make decisions about policies for a given nation or region. Given his skepticism about the inner dynamics of bureaucratic structures, this will not be a pope who defers to the judgments of conferences when he believes important matters of faith or church discipline are at stake.

Equally importantly, Pope Benedict will encourage bishops to take personal responsibility for the internal deliberations within conferences, so that the work is truly that of bishops and not a class of “experts” whose own judgments and instincts end up dominating the conference’s work. The Pope is therefore likely to encourage bishops, especially those in countries with powerful and well-funded conferences, to review their structures and systems to be sure that they truly serve evangelical rather than bureaucratic ends. In that sense, many conferences may be likely to undergo the same review and winnowing that many expect for the Roman Curia. The new pope may be skeptical of new structures—such as the National Review Board, set up in the United States to respond to the sexual abuse crisis—which he believes run the risk of relieving bishops of the personal responsibility for making difficult decisions.

The overall thrust of Benedict’s papacy in this regard will be to emphasize the direct responsibility of bishops to teach, sanctify and govern, and to take personal responsibility for these choices rather than shifting that responsibility onto staffs or structures, and to encourage Catholics to think of themselves as members of the universal Church first, so that other markers of identity—race, nationality, class—become relative and secondary. In the inevitable tension between the local and the universal Church, Pope Benedict is decidedly a man of the universal, and will not want to see institutional structures at varying levels confuse Catholics about their primordial membership by virtue of baptism in the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.

ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS

One of the longest-running controversies in the United States during John Paul’s papacy came over Catholic colleges and universities. In his August 15, 1990, document Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the Pope encouraged Church-affiliated colleges to revitalize their Catholic-Christian identity, ensuring that the values of Roman Catholicism, and not secular academia, set the tone. The point was not that Catholic universities shouldn’t strive to meet the highest secular standards of excellence, but that beyond these measures, they should foster authentic Catholic belief and practice, and ensure that Gospel principles are reflected in curriculum, instructional method, and every other facet of institutional life. To a great extent, John Paul had the United States specifically in mind, where critics charged that some of the nation’s premier Catholic institutions had unacceptably compromised their religious identity. A debate at the Jesuit-run Georgetown University over whether it is appropriate to display crucifixes in classrooms was often cited as a classic case in point. Fr. James Burtchaell’s much-discussed 1998 book, The Dying of the Light, was for some a wake-up call on the issue.

The most controversial provision of Ex Corde required Catholic theologians to receive a mandatum, or license, from their local bishop, certifying their orthodoxy. After years of resistance, including strong resistance from the leadership of Catholic colleges and universities in the United States, the U.S. bishops finally approved norms in 1999 that gave the Vatican most of what it wanted. The decade-long controversy had the effect of forcing many colleges and universities to confront anew what it means to call themselves “Catholic,” but at the same time it deepened a climate of resentment and mistrust between bishops and theologians in some cases, and resulted in the impression that Rome and elements of the American hierarchy wanted to squelch academic freedom on Catholic campuses. Some prominent Catholic theologians publicly refused to request a mandatum, and many others just quietly let it drop.

Under Pope Benedict, such a protracted struggle over the preservation of Catholic institutions would be less likely. The Holy See will be hesitant to expend resources to keep nominal control over institutions perceived as already lost to secularism. The new pope has on many occasions made the argument that it is a mistake for the Catholic Church to attempt to preserve a sprawling network of institutions if those institutions are no longer motivated by a strong sense of Catholic identity. Quality, not quantity, will be this pope’s watchword. The Church’s reason for existence, from his point of view, is not to operate more schools or hospitals than anyone else, but to ensure that in whatever the Church does do, a mode of life is fostered that allows the Gospel to shine through, showing the world what a life based on Christian principles looks like. Better to have one college that does this convincingly, from Benedict’s point of view, than ten that are muddled and compromised, bringing the Church into disrepute.

In part, this insight also reflects the Pope’s experience of German Catholicism during the era of National Socialism. In his memoir, Milestones , Ratzinger reflected on the German church’s struggle to hold on to its schools under the Nazis.

“It dawned on me that, with their insistence on preserving institutions, [the bishops] in part misread the reality,” Ratzinger wrote. “Merely to guarantee institutions is useless if there are no people to support those institutions from inner conviction.”

In fact, the new pope observed, by the 1930s, the older generation staffing most Catholic schools was rabidly anticlerical, reflecting the “away from Rome” mood of German Catholicism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The young generation, meanwhile, was infected with the ideology of National Socialism, and the consequent hostility to systems of thought that did not arise from German soil. Thus the overwhelming majority of those working inside the Catholic school system did not share the core principles the system was supposed to foster, and yet the German Catholic bishops fought titanic battles to maintain their control over the schools, preserving the fiction that they were still “Catholic.”

“So in these cases,” Ratzinger has written of those struggles, “it was inane to insist on an institutionally guaranteed Christianity.”

The new pope’s conviction is that sometimes the best thing the Church can do under such a set of circumstances is to let an institution go, recognizing that once its vital link with the faith is severed, clinging to it merely fosters the impression that the Church is interested in possessing institutions for their own sake. In other words, it too often gives people the impression that institutional Christianity is primarily about wealth, power, and social prestige, rather than the ideals it professes. Under some circumstances, Ratzinger has argued, it’s better to become smaller and less socially significant, in order to remain faithful.

He laid out this view in Salt of the Earth: “Once the Church has acquired some good or position, she inclines to defend it. The capacity for self-moderation and self-pruning is not adequately developed,” he said. “It’s precisely the fact that the Church clings to the institutional structure when nothing really stands behind it any longer that brings the Church into disrepute.”

The same point applies also to other institutions, such as hospitals and hospices, social service agencies, youth programs, and all the other structural expressions of the Church’s ministries. The important thing, from Pope Benedict’s point of view, is not to be the ecclesiastical equivalent of McDonald’s, with a franchise on every corner. The key is to make sure that those institutions the Church does operate are animated by an integral, uncompromised sense of Catholic identity.

The likelihood, therefore, is that the battles waged under John Paul II over the Ex Corde issue, for example, will not recur in the pontificate of Benedict XVI. The new pope will be inclined not to waste energy defending the nominal Catholic identity of institutions that have already, in his view, severed meaningful ties to the Church. His inclination would be to let these institutions go, concentrating instead on expressions of authentic ecclesial life, which may not be too numerous, but which in his view keep the Catholic vision of human life alive.

THE SEXUAL ABUSE CRISIS

When the Boston Globe broke a story on January 6, 2002, about Cardinal Bernard Law’s inaction regarding accusations of sexual abuse against a former Boston priest Fr. John Geoghan, it triggered what would eventually become the deepest crisis in the history of American Catholicism. Revelations that bishops had been aware of charges of sexual abuse against priests and yet left them in active ministry, in some cases transferring them to new assignments without notifying anyone of their past, generated wide indignation both at the grass roots of the Catholic Church and in the American press. The white-hot period of the scandal faded after 2003, but many dioceses around the country, including major urban dioceses such as Los Angeles, continue today to face potentially crippling litigation related to these episodes.

In the early stages of the crisis, a number of Vatican officials expressed skepticism both about the true dimensions of the scandal and the motives of lawyers and journalists for resurrecting cases that often lay decades in the past. While these officials no doubt intended to come to the defense of the American Church, in many ways the public statements proved unhelpful, creating an impression of a hierarchy “in denial” about the seriousness of the problem and engaging in the typical cover-the-wagons pattern of response that many critics felt had generated the crisis in the first place.

Among the senior Vatican aides making such statements was then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. His most explosive statement came during an appearance in Murcia, Spain, on November 30, 2002, at a congress titled “Christ: Way, Truth and Life,” at the Catholic University of St. Anthony. Ratzinger was asked, “This past year has been difficult for Catholics, given the space dedicated by the media to scandals attributed to priests. There is talk of a campaign against the Church. What do you think?”

“In the Church, priests also are sinners,” Ratzinger replied. “But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower. In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than one percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information or to the statistical objectivity of the facts. Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the Church.”

Many took the comments as an attempt to minimize the crisis and to blame the media for exaggerating its contours. In hindsight, Ratzinger had relied on misleading data about the percentage of priests against whom credible accusations had been made; a study commissioned by the U.S. bishops from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York that was released in February 2004, a year and a half after Ratzinger’s speech, found that in the period between 1950 and 2002, 4.3 percent of diocesan priests and 2.5 percent of religious order priests faced at least one accusation of sexual abuse. Ratzinger had based his November 2002 comment on an earlier estimate given by Philip Jenkins, an American Catholic writer, who drew on a study of accusations against priests in the Archdiocese of Chicago in a period well before the current crisis began.

In the aftermath of these comments, some American Catholics, especially the victims of sexual abuse and their advocates, styled Ratzinger as merely another bishop with his head in the sand about the reality of the crisis, unwilling or unable to take steps to address it. In fact, however, Ratzinger was by that time already getting “up to speed” on the American situation. In May 2001, John Paul II had entrusted his office with the juridical responsibility for processing accusations against priests. Under the weight of the evidence he reviewed, Ratzinger seems to have developed a new appreciation for the gravity of the situation, and the need for a firm response from church authority.

There are two tribunals in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that examined the cases, with the Promoter of Justice, Monsignor Charles Scicluna from Malta, in charge of coordinating this process. Under Scicluna’s leadership, by November 2004 the congregation had responded to more than 500 of the 750 cases submitted, an astounding turn-around given normal Vatican work rhythms. Among other things, this makes the new pope one of the few churchmen anywhere in the world, including in the United States, to have read the files of virtually every Catholic priest ever credibly accused of sexual abuse in recent decades, giving him a familiarity with the contours of the problem that virtually no other figure in the Catholic Church can claim.

Ratzinger has also learned something about the crisis from being the target of a lawsuit, in this case one filed in the 127th District Court of Harris County, Texas. Three alleged victims of sexual abuse in the United States (“John Does I, II and III”) sued Ratzinger on the grounds that he acted outside of his authority when he sent a letter to Catholic bishops around the world in May 2001, subjecting accusations of sexual abuse against priests to secrecy and the authority of his office. On March 25, 2005, attorneys representing Ratzinger filed papers in a federal court indicating that Ratzinger had acted as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and as such enjoys sovereign immunity. The filing came just eight days before Ratzinger was elected pope.

This experience seems to have had an effect in the mode of response to the crisis from the congregation. Of the five-hundred-plus cases Ratzinger’s office had dealt with as of fall 2004, the majority were returned to the local bishop authorizing immediate action against the accused priest. In a more limited number of cases, the congregation has asked for a canonical trial, and in a few cases the congregation has ordered the priest reinstated. This marks something of a reversal from the initial insistence from Vatican officials, Ratzinger included, that in most instances accused priests deserved the right to canonical trial. Having actually sifted through the evidence, however, Scicluna and Ratzinger drew the conclusion that in many instances the proof is so overwhelming that immediate action is justified.

The new pope’s sensitivity to the question can be glimpsed from an exchange on the subject with Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, which George described during a postconclave session with the press at the North American College.

Two days before the opening of the conclave, George said he had a conversation with Ratzinger about the American sex abuse norms, in light of the fact that the Vatican will shortly have to make a decision about whether to reauthorize those norms, which were initially approved for a provisional two-year period. George said he wanted to discuss with Ratzinger the arguments for leaving the norms, the heart of which is the “one strike” policy by which priests are removed from ministry for life for even one act of sexual abuse of a minor, more or less as they are. George asked if Ratzinger had any questions. Ratzinger, according to George, showed “a good grasp of the situation.”

Forty-eight hours later, Ratzinger was the pope. As George kissed his hand, Pope Benedict XVI made a point of telling him, in English, that he remembered the conversation the two men had had about the sexual abuse norms, and would attend to it. George said he hoped survivors’ groups would be “reassured” by the Pope’s comment. He also said he has “reason to believe” that the new pope will extend the American norms as they are.

Aside from this direct experience of the crisis, there are two other factors in Pope Benedict’s background that dispose him to react aggressively to the sexual abuse crisis. First, he has a high theology of the priesthood, and seeing it tarred through the abuse of children by priests is deeply shocking; second, Pope Benedict also has a keen sense of the bishop’s role as governor, and will be inclined to foster a stronger sense of accountability for the administrative dimension of the bishop’s task. Under Benedict’s papacy, Rome’s engagement on the issue is likely to be swifter and more aggressive. There will be a clear sense that someone in Rome is paying attention.

Finally, two responses to the sexual abuse crisis that were already under way prior to Benedict XVI’s election are likely to get an emphatic boost from the new pope.

First, an apostolic visitation of American seminaries is currently being organized, and the Pope will want to see this process taken seriously. He has a keen sense of the need for attention to priestly formation, especially the presentation of doctrine in seminary education and the kind of spiritual and personal disciplines seminary life fosters. The Pope is therefore likely to take a strong personal interest in the outcome of this process.

Second, the Congregation for Catholic Education has, for some time, been preparing a document on the admission of homosexuals to seminaries. The document was close to publication under John Paul II, and will now rest in the new pope’s hands. Though Pope Benedict will want to hear the views of the American bishops on the question, the document seems destined for eventual publication, especially given then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s unambiguous conviction, expressed in a 1986 document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that homosexuality is an “objective disorder” that implies an inclination to sin. This does not mean that Benedict XVI sees the sexual abuse crisis as a “homosexual” issue. It does mean, however, that in the general review of seminary policies occasioned by the crisis, this looms as one point where the Pope may support a tightening of discipline that he and others regard as a matter of fidelity to the priest’s capacity to stand “in persona Cristo, “in the person of Christ.”

CULTURE SHOCK

Pope Benedict XVI is not going to turn the Catholic Church on its ear overnight, nor is he going to launch a purge to get rid of “undesirables.” Despite the fevered imaginations of some parties on all sides of ecclesiastical debates, Benedict’s leadership will almost certainly be more measured, more moderate, and more collaborative, than most are expecting.

“My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at this hour of our history,” Pope Benedict said in his homily during his inaugural Mass.

At the same time, however, over the arc of his papacy, one can expect a gradual evolution in the culture of the Catholic Church.

“Evangelization” will be defined less in terms of mass events or numerical expansion, and more in terms of the Church’s capacity to inspire passion for living an authentically Christian life, however sociologically insignificant the number of people with this vocation may be.

“Ministry” will be defined less in terms of a profusion of programs and services that secular agencies can also offer, and more in terms of direct pastoral activity, celebration of the sacraments, and preaching of the Gospel.

“Collaboration” will be seen less as a matter of creating or expanding the structural dimension of the Church, through councils and boards, and more as immersion in the spiritual, liturgical, and ministerial activity of the Church, resulting, at least in theory, in a naturally reciprocal relationship between pastors and people.

“Catholicity,” meaning the markers of Catholic identity, will be defined less in terms of institutional affiliation, external indicators, or a general “feeling” of identification with the Catholic tradition, and more in terms of the interior life, belief, and practice associated with a given activity. In effect, this may mean that over time, fewer activities come to be seen as specifically “Catholic.”

“Episcopacy” will be understood less by way of analogy to the manager of large corporate structure, and more in terms of the role played by the early apostles of being the chief teacher, overseer, and liturgical leader of a local Church.

The net result, if Benedict XVI’s vision succeeds, will be a less sprawling form of Roman Catholicism, one more distinct from the culture that surrounds it, clearer on its own identity and purpose. The measure will not be how much activity the Church generates, but how much faith. As judged by the usual standards of secular success, it may seem smaller and less powerful, but, in the Pope’s mind, it will be more alive. In effect, Pope Benedict XVI adumbrated this vision in his homily at his April 24 inaugural Mass: “The Church is alive!” he insisted time and again, in a refrain that was both a propositional sentence and a statement of aspiration. It will be fanning the flames of that life that forms the heart of Benedict XVI’s agenda for the Catholic Church.