Chapter Eight

SURPRISES AND CHALLENGES

Despite persistent media images as a “conservative” pope, John Paul II was in many ways the least traditional pope of modern times. Over the course of a quarter-century, he redefined the nature and the style of the papal office, making it a more evangelical and less managerial position. He did all manner of things that popes weren’t supposed to do, like saying he was sorry (more than fifty times, all told), beatifying and canonizing at a dizzying rate, and breaking the old model that the world comes to the pope by traveling the equivalent of three and one-third times the distance between the earth and the moon. Until the very end, he remained a pope of surprise, always capable of upending business as usual.

This capacity to do the unexpected came across in matters large and small. On the eve of his trip to Greece in 2001, for example, I was interviewed on Greek state television about whether the Pope would apologize for the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the sack of Constantinople and hardened anti-Latin feelings among the Christians of the East.

“You shouldn’t expect it,” I said in response. “Though John Paul has apologized for different historical episodes such as the Galileo case, these are always controversial moves that have to be well-prepared theologically. A pope doesn’t simply offer an apology off the cuff.”

Those comments were broadcast on Greek television screens just before John Paul sat down with Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens on the Acropolis on May 4, 2001, and offered precisely the apology I had confidently predicted he would not utter.

A similar scene played out in Toronto in 2002, when John Paul II arrived for World Youth Day. By that stage, the Pope’s Parkinson’s disease and other ailments had rendered him effectively unable to move. As I walked down the rear stairway of the papal plane and across the tarmac, I got a call on my cell phone from a producer at CNN asking if the Pope would walk down the front stairs under his own power, as a show of resolve.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “He can’t do it. It’s not going to happen.”

The producer then suggested I look over my right shoulder to the main stairwell, where John Paul had just begun to do what I had once again predicted he could not, and would not, do.

A POPE OF SURPRISES

If John Paul II was a consummate man of surprise, at first blush his successor seems a man cut from a more conservative, traditionalist cloth, less likely to dazzle the world with unpredictable flourishes. Yet it is precisely the rigidity of those expectations, the popular sense that one knows exactly what Joseph Ratzinger will do now that he holds the top job in Roman Catholicism, which may actually transform him, too, into a “pope of surprises,” though perhaps not quite in the same world-shaking way as John Paul II.

The reality is that one cannot draw a straight line from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s service as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and his new role as Supreme Pontiff. An erudite and spiritual man, Pope Benedict XVI understands that he is playing a new role, that his prime task is less defending the faith than inspiring it, and that this calls on him to think and act in new ways. Whatever people’s expectations, their hopes or fears about the pontificate of Benedict XVI, the new pope may well confound them all.

Public Image

For one thing, Pope Benedict XVI will not come across as the dour, pessimistic figure that many associate with his years as the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office. As already noted, this is a man with an impish sense of humor, a reservoir of grace in interpersonal situations, and a genuine appreciation for beauty and the arts. He will be a much more positive, upbeat public figure than many expect. Despite his somewhat gloomy diagnosis of the contemporary situation, Pope Benedict XVI is a happy man, and this will become clear as the world gets to know him.

Benedict XVI will also be someone to whom the world pays attention. Whatever people make of his doctrinal views or his cultural criticism, everyone understands that given the force of his intellect, he is a figure of whom one must take account. When he speaks, he will not do so in empty platitudes or superficial formula that come off as simplistic sermonizing; he will cut to the quick, sparking debate, generating conversation, making headlines. Heads of state and other VIPs will seek his counsel, will invoke his words and take note of his teachings. He will be a forceful participant in moral and political debates. In the language of street politics, he will be a “player.”

His pontificate will not be a repeat of the final years of Pope Paul VI, when the “Hamlet pope” retreated into a self-imposed exile. Benedict XVI will be a consequential public voice, a leader who will inspire pride among Catholics who want their pope to be taken seriously. That heft will generate enthusiasm when he travels and during public events in Rome, and although no one expects that Benedict will have the same populist magic associated with John Paul II, he will nevertheless generate surprisingly large and enthusiastic crowds, startling many who expect a drop-off in the drawing power of the papacy.

Benedict will also make a special point of reaching out to the young, again surprising those who regarded the outreach under John Paul II as an unrepeatable feature of his papacy. The new pope struck this very note in the homily at his inaugural Mass. Addressing young people, Benedict quoted from John Paul’s own installation Mass on October 22, 1978: “Be not afraid of Christ!” Boisterous cheers erupted. “Yes, open the doors to Christ,” he said, continuing John Paul’s words, which have become something of a motto.

For Benedict, this is not simply a matter of fidelity to the pastoral approach of the Pope he served, though that in itself would be a weighty consideration. It is also consistent with his deep desire to encourage the formation of islands of Christian life in contrast with the dominant culture. He realizes that it is far easier to entice young people to disengage themselves from the dominant ethos than adults, who are often less open to significant change in worldview and lifestyle. To be the “Benedict” of his era, the man who marked out a new path as an old order fell apart, the Pope realizes that he must establish a rapport with the young.

Pope Benedict has another advantage as a public figure that has been underappreciated: his remarkable command of languages. When he addresses groups from various parts of the world, he will be able to do so in their own language, and not just working from a prepared text, but making the impromptu comments and off-the-cuff quips that cement a pope’s bond with his audience. His fluency is not just a matter of grammar and syntax, but it reflects the extent to which he grasps the cultural and intellectual forces that have shaped different parts of the world. He will be able to draw upon that fluency as he crafts his messages. In that sense, while Benedict XVI may never attain the moniker of Great Communicator, by which John Paul II was known, he will nevertheless be surprisingly effective.

Finally, it is still unclear to what extent Pope Benedict’s reputation as an “enforcer” will follow him to the Apostolic Palace. The very name “Ratzinger” strikes terror in some quarters, and progressive-minded Catholics received his election as an omen of dark days ahead. Such reactions are perhaps not entirely exaggerated, as the Pope has previously suggested that the Church may need to become smaller to remain true to itself, and no doubt some elements on the liberal wing of Catholicism are part of what he has in mind in terms of potential downsizing. In September 2003, Raymond Arroyo of the Eternal Word Television Network asked then-Cardinal Ratzinger if his vision of the future meant “smaller numbers.” He replied:

Smaller numbers, I think. But from these small numbers we will have a radiation of joy in the world. And so, it’s an attraction, as it was in the old Church. Even when Constantine made Christianity the public religion, there was a small number at this time; but it was clear, this is the future. . . . And so, I would say, if we have young people really with the joy of the faith and this radiation of this joy of the faith, this will show to the world, “Even if I cannot share it, even if I cannot convert it at this moment, here is the way to live for tomorrow.”

Yet Pope Benedict has not given any indication that he intends to artificially force a contraction by drumming people out willy-nilly, the episode involving Fr. Thomas Reese notwithstanding. Immediately after his election was announced on April 19, some Catholic conservatives began talking about the great crackdown to come, but the very choice of the Pope’s name might have given them pause. Benedict XV, to whose memory the new pope explicitly linked himself, was the man who brought the antimodernist crackdown under Pius X to a halt, saying that elaborate loyalty oaths were not necessary. Benedict XV said instead that it was enough for one to say, “Christian is my name, Catholic my last name.” He was seen as a pacifier and reconciler after years of bruising intra-Church battles.

Whether Benedict XVI will be inspired by the same moderate, healing impulse remains to be seen. No doubt he will be resolute if matters of faith are at stake, but to date there are no signs of any great putsch. Ironically, it may turn out to be the self-appointed members of the “orthodoxy police” who are most disappointed in Pope Benedict’s reign, given their high expectations.

None of this should obscure the reality that Pope Benedict will lead a decisive pontificate, which will include some difficult moments. He will discipline theologians, intervene to correct pastoral practices he believes have gone astray, and issue challenging documents that will generate controversy and, in some quarters, pain. Some will see this as fueling polarization in the Church, others as the price that must be paid for fidelity. The point, however, is that causing division will not be the aim of his pontificate, and perhaps not its most memorable feature.

Ecumenism

Traditionally, in Church politics, those most passionately in favor of ecumenism, or the search for unity among the various Christian denominations, have been liberals for whom doctrinal disputes have never been as important as the basic sense that in order to credibly preach the Gospel, Christianity must demonstrate love and reconciliation. Conservatives, on the other hand, sometimes worry that ecumenism means glossing over important markers of identity, in effect sacrificing truth for good intentions.

Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani of Lima, Peru, one of the world’s two Opus Dei cardinals and a classic Catholic conservative, offered an example of these reservations about ecumenical dialogue in a June 2004 interview at his residence in Lima.

“[Other Christians] are blocked on the primacy of Peter,” Cipriani said. “But that’s a matter of divine will, it’s not just a question of moving cards around. It’s of a divine nature . . . there’s one Peter. It was not Peter and Paul, it was Peter. I understand that some people would like to continue on very aggressively with this movement [ecumenism], but I am a little bit worried that it will take a high cost on the Church. So I will not agree with people who think that way.”

On the basis of this sort of analysis, which many Church-watchers associate with Pope Benedict, the early consensus was that his election would, on the whole, slow down Catholicism’s ecumenical outreach. Pope Benedict XVI has been at pains to say this is not so, committing himself to the search for “full Christian unity” in his first message as pope, in the Mass he celebrated in the Sistine Chapel with the cardinals on the morning of April 20. Yet many observers have taken this as the sort of pro forma statement that new popes always make, and fear that as the substance of the pontificate begins to unfold, ecumenical dialogue may take a backseat.

In truth, however, the new pope is a committed ecumenist, even if his realism means that he is not terribly sanguine about the prospects for swift progress toward full structural unity.

Benedict XVI can be expected to press especially forcefully on the dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox, in particular the Russian Orthodox Church. In part, this is because he believes the Orthodox have an important role to play in his project of stirring the Christian identity of Europe. In part, too, it is because the Orthodox tend to be more theologically conservative than many of the Protestant churches of the West, so there is greater common ground on some issues. Finally, Pope Benedict is a keen student of the liturgy, and a great admirer of the liturgical traditions of Eastern Christianity.

In a 1986 work called Seek That Which Is Above, then-Cardinal Ratzinger said that “Rome’s single condition for intercommunion should be to accept the teachings of the first millennium on the primacy of the Pope.” Neither the Catholic nor the Orthodox side, he said, should view subsequent developments as heretical. This point has long been advanced by the Orthodox themselves as the sine qua non of reunion, and is sure to be well received among Eastern theologians and bishops.

Reflecting this background, reaction within the Orthodox world to the election of Benedict XVI has been remarkably positive.

Patriarch Alexei II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, for example, told the Moscow daily Kommersant on April 27 that Benedict has a “powerful intellect,” and he praised the new pontiff’s record for strenuously defending traditional Christian values.

“The entire Christian world, including the Orthodox one, respects him,” Alexei said. “Without doubt theological differences exist [between Catholics and Orthodox]. But as far as his views on modern society, secularization and religious relativism are concerned, our points of view are very similar.”

Alexei held open the possibility of a meeting with Benedict XVI, something that he would never permit with John Paul II.

“My meeting with the new representative of the Roman Catholic Church will depend on his approach to the Russian Orthodox Church, on how much willingness, wisdom and tact he shows in attempting to resolve the existing problems,” Alexei told Kommersant. “If it happens, our meeting must demonstrate to Christians and to the whole world that our relations have changed for the better, that the difficulties of recent years have been overcome.”

In light of this opening, Pope Benedict XVI may be in a position to realize the most cherished of all John Paul II’s unfulfilled dreams: a trip to Moscow, to herald a new era in relations between Eastern and Western Christianity.

In his first Sunday Angelus address from the window of the papal apartments overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Benedict XVI’s thoughts went out to the Orthodox, noting that this day, May 1, marked their celebration of Easter.

“From my heart, I hope that the celebration of Easter will be for them a choral prayer of faith and praise to He who is our common Lord, and who calls us to pursue decisively the path toward full communion,” the Pope said.

Benedict will not, however, forget the Churches of the West. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1999 was responsible for rescuing the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, an agreement signed by the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation declaring the sixteenth-century dispute over whether salvation came by faith alone, or also through works, largely resolved. The heart of the agreement was this key sentence: “By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping us and calling us to good works.”

As noted earlier, Pope Benedict is enthusiastic about the growing rapprochement in the United States and elsewhere between conservative Evangelical Christians and the Roman Catholic Church, an ecumenical flowering he will want to pursue.

The new pope’s background is a bit more mixed with respect to Anglicanism. In July 1998, Pope John Paul II issued Ad Tuendam Fidem, a document adding penalties to canon law for dissent from certain kinds of Church teaching. Ratzinger penned a commentary offering a series of doctrines as examples of this category of teaching, which included Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 document Apostolicae Curae that declared Anglican ordinations to the priesthood to be “absolutely null and utterly void,” meaning, in effect, that priests in the Anglican Communion aren’t really priests. That statement produced deep irritation among many Anglicans. More recently, the decision by Episcopalians in the United States to consecrate an openly gay bishop exacerbated Ratzinger’s reservations about the future of the dialogue with Anglicans, since it seemed to him like a backward step on a core matter of moral teaching.

On the other hand, the new pope has shown interest in factions within Anglicanism striving to defend a more traditional interpretation of doctrine and church discipline. On October 8, 2003, Ratzinger sent a letter to 2,700 dissident Episcopalians meeting in Dallas, assuring them of his “heartfelt prayers.”

“The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond [Texas],” he wrote. “In the Church of Christ, there is a unity in truth and a communion of grace which transcend the borders of any nation.” The conservative Episcopalians at the meeting, who opposed the consecration of the gay bishop, greeted the letter with a standing ovation. Some critics on both sides of the Anglican/Catholic divide criticized Ratzinger for meddling in the internal affairs of another denomination, but he wanted to encourage fellow Christians striving to resist the relativistic tide.

Pope Benedict the pragmatist understands that with the Churches of the West, especially the more liberal, “mainline” Protestant denominations, reunion is unlikely in the near term. He will strive to deepen theological dialogue with these bodies and seek to make common cause on the social and cultural front, but at the same time one imagines that he might entertain some potentially provocative steps from which his predecessor shrank. It’s possible to imagine, for example, Pope Benedict expanding the “Anglican use” provision for members of the Anglican Communion who wish to join the Roman Catholic Church while preserving their own liturgical and devotional traditions. (In 1980, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger approved a “pastoral provision” for Episcopalian clergy and laity entering the Catholic Church in the United States.) He may even entertain the idea of creating special Church structures, such as prelatures or apostolic administrations, for dissident Anglicans or Evangelicals who desire union with Rome but who require special pastoral care.

The leadership of those denominations might be scandalized by such moves, seeing it as a “divide and conquer” strategy on the part of the Roman Catholic Church. Ecumenical experts on the Catholic side will urge the Pope to practice caution. Benedict XVI, however, has never been a man to be hamstrung by diplomatic logic, and if he sees a pastoral and doctrinal exigency, he will act. Benedict XVI will always be polite, but one expects that his will be an ecumenism of truth, as he sees it, not of good manners.

Social Justice

Speaking with one American cardinal the day after the conclave ended, I asked what he expected to be the distinguishing features of Benedict XVI’s papacy. He immediately said “secularism, those issues,” almost dismissively, as if it were obvious that Pope Benedict could be expected to engage the crisis of truth in the West. Then, however, he came quickly to the point that interested him: “He will also carry forward the social thinking of John Paul II on the north/south divide.”

As noted earlier, this is perhaps a surprising claim for a man remembered as the chief opponent of liberation theology in the 1980s, a movement that sought precisely to place Roman Catholicism on the side of the poor in north/south debates. Yet this cardinal insisted that Pope Benedict will not retreat from the Church’s “preferential option for the poor.”

“He’s very aware of the growing inequality of resources, education, health care, and the spread of disease such as HIV/AIDS, which plague the developing world,” the cardinal said. “This man is very committed to that agenda.”

“I had breakfast with him on Tuesday morning, before the balloting resumed,” the cardinal said. “He talked about the situation in Asia and Africa . . . he brought it up himself. He said he had been moved listening to bishops from the south. He said that John Paul himself said the issue of the future for the Church was no longer the East/West divide, but the north/south divide.”

In his programmatic speech just twenty-four hours later, after celebrating Mass in the Sistine Chapel, the new pope indeed committed himself and the Church to pursuing “authentic social development,” meaning a better deal for the world’s poor. Perhaps just as decisively, he pledged continuity with the pontificate of John Paul II, and the former pope was a tireless champion of economic justice. As a final, somewhat more political consideration, Pope Benedict knows that many Catholics in the developing world were hoping for a pope from the south, precisely because they felt such a pope would give voice to their struggles and aspirations. Benedict will not want these Catholics, who today represent two-thirds of the Catholics in the entire world, to feel that the election of a European means the Church will be insensitive to their concerns.

There are intriguing hints in Pope Benedict’s personal background of a largely unacknowledged social consciousness. In 2003, for example, he was part of an effort with Deutsche Bank to launch a new credit card, the “Hope 2000 Card,” styled as an “ethical card.” A percentage of all purchases made on the card are destined to help needy children around the world. Benedict XVI is also the first pope to enter office as a declared organ donor. In the late 1990s, a debate arose among some Catholic ethicists about the conditions under which organ transplantation is licit. On February 3, 1999, Ratzinger himself acknowledged that he was enrolled in an association of organ donors, and carries with him at all times a card indicating that he had authorized the use of his organs after his death.

“To offer, spontaneously, parts of one’s body for someone who needs them is an act of great love,” Ratzinger said then. “It’s a gracious act of affection, of availability for others.” It will be interesting to see, when the time comes, if his wishes are still honored. The worldwide impact from the example of organ donation by a pope could be remarkable indeed.

This sort of hidden activism may help explain the surprising sensitivity to issues of debt, poverty, and underdevelopment many cardinals from the south detected in then-Cardinal Ratzinger during the interregnum.

The Pope’s social concerns touch not just questions of poverty and development, but also war and peace. In explaining his choice of name to the cardinals inside the conclave, he invoked the memory of Benedict XV, whom he described as a “man of peace in a time of war.” In his first General Audience on April 27, he returned to the theme, referring to Benedict XV as “that courageous prophet of peace, who guided the Church through turbulent times of war,” adding, “In his footsteps, I place my ministry in the service of reconciliation and harmony between peoples.” In that light, one can expect Benedict XVI to emerge, as did John Paul II before him, as an apostle of peace on the global stage, and perhaps an inconvenient one for politicians accustomed to invoking the Church’s moral stature on other questions.

Collegiality

A large part of the reason that conclave handicappers held back from declaring Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger a shoo-in for pope was because so many of the cardinals heading into the election described “collegiality,” meaning a less authoritarian, more participatory style of governance in the Catholic Church, as a top concern. The oft-cited lament among Catholic bishops, and even some cardinals, is that under Pope John Paul II, his minions treated them like “glorified altar boys.” In the minds of many analysts, that more or less ruled out Ratzinger, who had been at the pinnacle of power in Rome for twenty-four years, and thus, in the public discussion, was seen as a principal architect of the very system of Roman absolutism that some cardinals were saying they wanted to deconstruct.

What never occurred to most observers is that a solid majority of cardinals could see Joseph Ratzinger as the solution to, not the cause of, a lack of collegiality in the governing structures of the Church. In fact, however, that’s how many cardinals saw things. Essentially, they felt, if anyone can change the way the Vatican does business, it’s Ratzinger.

“The vision that some have of the Holy Father as not being a man of dialogue is skewed,” Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., said. “Sometimes when people don’t get the answers they want, they feel they weren’t listened to. But that’s not been our experience.”

Over and over, cardinals insisted that in their personal interaction with Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had been patient, solicitous, always open to reasonable argument—a way of doing business, many of them wryly noted, not always associated with some of his colleagues. The cardinals said they fully expect that style to flower in his papacy.

How might Pope Benedict act collegially?

First, he will continue the meetings of Synods of Bishops, but try to infuse them with more of what Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium calls “a culture of debate,” in which participants have a more open-ended and thorough opportunity to talk through issues and present the Pope with candid advice. When Benedict XVI confirmed that he wanted the already scheduled October synod on the Eucharist to go ahead, it was taken as a positive signal in this regard. While many bishops expressed frustration with the way the Synod functioned under John Paul II, with weeks devoted to aimless speech-making and little real opportunity for a clash of ideas, with the conclusions generally determined well in advance, they still see the Synod as the best vehicle for collegial consultation currently available to the Church.

“The Synod doesn’t need to have deliberative powers if there’s a real culture of debate,” Danneels said in a preconclave interview. “If there is a real consensus among bishops on a given point, and the Pope hears it, he will feel himself bound to act on it.”

Second, Benedict XVI will likely seek other opportunities for the members of the College of Cardinals to interact with one another, aside from formal settings of consistories when new cardinals are created. One of the great frustrations voiced by cardinals during the interregnum was that they didn’t know one another well, and many expressed a desire to meet, at least in subgroups, on a more regular basis. Benedict XVI will doubtless try to find such opportunities.

“He wants to be collegial,” McCarrick said of the new pope the morning after his election. “He wants the advice of the cardinals, and of the other bishops. He’ll look for it in the Synods and on other occasions.”

Third, Benedict XVI is expected to bring to the papacy the same approach he had as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is a willingness to talk matters through with bishops and other figures involved, and to wrestle objectively with the substantive issues involved before reaching a judgment. This doesn’t mean that he’ll satisfy all parties, and not everyone concurs that his tenure at the doctrinal congregation was always distinguished by such a collaborative style. Nevertheless, in comparison to other dicasteries, most cardinals seemed to feel they got a better deal with Ratzinger than virtually anywhere else.

As already noted, all this amounts to collegiality within the context of strong papal authority. No one expects Pope Benedict to authorize the election of bishops by local churches, or to give up oversight of liturgical translation in favor of regional or national translation bodies, or to surrender the notion that the Vatican has the right to launch a doctrinal investigation of a theologian. At the level of principle, his will remain a papacy unapologetic about its sweeping claims to the “Power of the Keys.” Benedict has never been a man who believes that structural reform is the answer to revitalizing the Church, and least of all on questions of papal authority.

It is in how he chooses to exercise that authority, however, that many cardinals appear to expect a surprise. They expect to be consulted, listened to, and heard to a greater extent than has been the case in the recent past. No doubt Pope Benedict will listen; it will be fascinating to watch what he does with what he hears.

CHALLENGES

When a new pope is elected, there is a natural desire among most Catholics to support him, to give him the benefit of the doubt, so that in the early stages most criticism gets smothered under the cry of “give him a chance.” This period of goodwill strikes most people as a healthy thing, and Benedict XVI is presently reaping its benefits. At the same time, however, despite the overwhelming support for the Pope in the broader Catholic community, or at least the willingness to wait before making judgments, one should not be in denial about the fact that Pope Benedict, given his history and reputation, faces challenges to win over some elements of his own flock.

If Benedict is to be the leader of the entire Roman Catholic Church, and not just its conservative wing, there are two groups particularly at the outset of his pontificate that he will need to reassure: Catholic theologians in the developed world, and progressive Catholic women. Both often feel that they were specially targeted by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and both approach his papacy with a palpable heaviness of heart.

Professional Theologians

The theological community in the Catholic Church is not homogeneous, and there are many Catholic theologians who celebrated Ratzinger’s election as an endorsement of a more “orthodox” standard. A large swath of the professional theological world, however, especially in the United States and western Europe, already feels that the climate of “thought control” was excessive under the pontificate of John Paul II, and is leery about where things may go under Pope Benedict.

These apprehensions have deep roots. In 1985, for example, in an interview with the New York Times, the respected Catholic theologian David Tracy of the University of Chicago was critical of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

“The problem for many of us,” he said, “is that Cardinal Ratzinger seems to be conducting a campaign to impose a particular theology upon the universal Church and upon all theologians. It won’t work.”

Though it’s been twenty years since Tracy spoke, such attitudes have not visibly softened. In February 2005, responding to a critical notification from Ratzinger’s office that barred Jesuit Fr. Roger Haight from teaching as a Catholic theologian because of doctrinally suspect claims made in his 1999 book Jesus: Symbol of God, the board of directors of the Catholic Theological Society of America complained:

Ironically, rather than promote greater criticism of the book, the Congregation’s intervention will most likely discourage debates over the book, effectively stifling further criticism and undermining our ability as Catholic theologians to openly critique our colleagues. In short, the Congregation’s intervention in this case gravely threatens the very process of serious, systematic, internal criticism which the Congregation and the bishops have long been encouraging among theologians. While this process of internal critique can never replace the proper teaching and disciplinary roles of the Magisterium, the intervention of the Magisterium should be a last resort, reserved for situations where this process has clearly failed.

In response to this sort of critique, Ratzinger has himself occasionally been acerbic.

“This is His Church, and not a laboratory for theologians,” he snapped in 1997.

Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese, well before he resigned as editor of America magazine under pressure from Ratzinger, said that the relationship between theologians and Church authorities was at the lowest ebb in Church history during the Ratzinger years than in any era since the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Even Ratzinger admirers such as Michael Waldstein, an Austrian theologian who taught at the University of Notre Dame in the 1990s, said he observed a striking degree of alienation.

“It’s a really unfortunate thing that a high level of irritation among many academic theologians has developed,” Waldstein said. “I saw it when I was at Notre Dame. It would have helped a lot if Ratzinger had reached out more.”

This, then, marks one of the first challenges of Benedict’s pontificate: a gesture of reconciliation with the mainstream Catholic theological community, a way of showing that he still respects the guild and wants its support as the main lines of his papacy take shape.

The Pope might consider, for example, inviting one of the main associations of the Catholic theologians in Europe or North America, such as the Catholic Theological Society of America, for an audience in the Vatican. Certainly, he would not shrink from using the opportunity to issue a challenge to theologians to take their Catholic identity seriously. At the same time, it would be a chance to say that he wants to listen as well as to teach. No one understands the essential role of theological debate in the life of the Church better than Pope Benedict XVI, and such an event would be an opportunity to assure theologians who may have different ideas on some issues that they will remain part of the conversation, however challenging and uncomfortable that conversation may sometimes become.

Another step that would be received as reassuring by many in the theological community would be to appoint at least one or two theologians known for moderate views, while still robustly orthodox, to the International Theological Commission, the advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That, too, would be taken as a welcome sign that the new pope wants to reach out, especially since the commission has been criticized over the years for representing a fairly narrow band of theological opinion.

Progressive Catholic Women

In the wake of Joseph Ratzinger’s election as Pope Benedict XVI, few constituencies in the Church felt more demoralized than Catholic women who dream of what they term a more “inclusive” Church, one in which the “voice of women” is heard with more regularity and effect. This group includes, but is by no means limited to, women who support a change in the teaching restricting sacramental priesthood to men. Even Catholic women who steer clear of the ordination issue, however, often feel that the Church as presently structured and administered does not do a good job of listening to women’s concerns, and they see little in Ratzinger’s life and career that suggests things will be different on his watch.

Over the years, the new pope has repeatedly expressed concern with what he sees as an exaggerated form of the feminist movement, even within the Roman Catholic Church.

“What radical feminism—at times, even that which asserts that it is based on Christianity—is not prepared to accept is precisely this: the exemplary, universal, unchangeable relationship between Christ and the Father. . . . I am, in fact, convinced that what feminism promotes in its radical form is no longer the Christianity that we know; it is another religion,” he said in The Ratzinger Report. In a 1988 news conference at a conference on biblical scholarship in New York, Ratzinger critiqued feminist exegetes: “Whatever else one may say about them, [they] do not even claim to be interested in understanding the text itself in the manner in which it was originally intended. . . . They are no longer interested in ascertaining the truth, but only in whatever will serve their own particular agendas.”

Neither do such views represent a dated expression of opinion. As recently as May 31, 2004, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s chief doctrinal agency, put out a “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World.” The letter criticized tendencies in modern thought that create an “opposition between men and women, in which the identity and role of one are emphasized to the disadvantage of the other, leading to harmful confusion regarding the human person, which has its most immediate and lethal effects in the structure of the family.” The document cited “radical feminism” as the source of this confusion.

Many Catholic feminists were immediately critical. Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister charged that the document “demonstrates a basic lack of understanding about feminism, feminist theory and feminist development,” and that “both the terms used and the theory appealed to in the argument is pitiably out of date and embarrassingly partial in its analysis of the nature of feminism.” Her reaction offers in microcosm a version of the frequent alienation between the Catholic Church and many educated, emancipated women.

Obviously, not all Catholic women reacted in the same way. Many appreciate what they regard as the support for a “new feminism,” sometimes called a “Christian feminism,” in the John Paul II/Ratzinger years, which endorses the struggle for women’s emancipation in the social and political spheres but without devaluing their traditional roles as wives and mothers. In this circle of thought, the new pope has been well-received.

Yet among Catholic women more persuaded by Chittister, a Benedictine sister, than by Benedict himself, there is enormous apprehension about what the new papacy may mean. (As a footnote to the above, in the immediate aftermath of Benedict’s election, Chittister, who was in Rome, came across as unfailingly positive, stressing that she wanted to give the Pope a chance.) This group, representing a considerable cross-section of women’s opinion in the Catholic Church, especially in the developed world, will have to be persuaded that the Pope is genuinely interested in their experiences and perspectives.

To some extent, of course, no pope can satisfy everyone, and anyone who expects Pope Benedict to ordain women or revise Church teaching on matters of abortion or birth control is living in a fool’s paradise. If the only way to have a genuine dialogue with progressive Catholic women is to put those issues on the table, then it’s a futile enterprise.

Yet most observers, including most women, acknowledge that the ordination issue is not the only, and perhaps not even the most important, way to phrase the debate over women’s role in the Catholic Church. Women can certainly play meaningful roles in Roman Catholicism without being ordained; the confusion arises because historically, priesthood has been the gateway to power in the Church, but it does not have to be so. The priesthood is supposed to be about service, not power, and in fact there are opportunities for laity to exercise managerial and administrative authority that are not dependent upon sacramental ordination.

Here the new pope might agree.

“If I see the Church only under the aspect of power, then it follows that everyone who doesn’t hold an office is ipso facto oppressed. And then the question of, for example, women’s ordination, as an issue of power, becomes imperative, for everyone has to be able to have power,” he said in Salt of the Earth.

If Pope Benedict elects to reach out to this sector of opinion, one move he might consider is to invite a group such as the International Union of Superiors General, the main umbrella group for women’s religious congregations, to a Vatican audience. Like a session with theologians, this would afford the Pope a chance to make a goodwill gesture.

Another gesture would be to extend the precedent set by John Paul II of appointing women to superior-level positions in the Vatican. John Paul named Salesian Sr. Enrica Rosana as undersecretary in the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life, the first woman ever to hold such a high position in the Roman Curia. There would be some precedent for Pope Benedict to follow suit, since for many years one of his collaborators at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was a woman, a Belgian named Marie Hendrickx. She presented the Pope’s Apostolic exhortation “On the Dignity of Women” to the press in 1988, and supervised the theological preparation of some of the Pope’s letters. Hendrickx gained a fleeting fame in January 2001 when she published an article in L’Osservatore Romano criticizing unnecessary cruelty to animals, citing specifically the modern food industry. She also questioned the moral legitimacy of bullfighting.

Of course, those with deep concerns about the place of women in the Catholic Church will be looking, over the long run, for more than token symbolism and good manners. Yet one of the miracles of Catholicism is the deep desire that Catholics have to hope; usually all it takes from authority to win back public trust is the most minimal gesture of reconciliation and understanding. A man of Pope Benedict’s personal charm and sincere humility will, if he wishes, certainly be able to come up with something.

SUMMARY

The papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, 265th Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, promises to be the stuff of high drama. It will be driven by deep ideas, fueled by a sense of limited time and much work to do, and, perhaps, scarred by conflict inside the Church and misunderstanding without. Despite following a pontiff many believe will one day be remembered as John Paul the Great, Benedict XVI has, in some ways, an even better point of departure for greatness. He has a deeper theological and cultural preparation, a greater grasp of the dynamics of ecclesiastical governance, and an immediate international stature that it took John Paul II years to cultivate.

The peculiar drama of this pontificate is that Benedict XVI could spend that capital in so many different ways, that one can imagine such a riot of different outcomes and scenarios. Benedict could steer Catholicism into a more defensive, insular stance, persuaded that the “dictatorship of relativism” he described on the morning of the conclave is, at present, impregnable. He could cede to the desires of some of his most ardent admirers, and preside over a winnowing within the Church, a time of purification intended to eliminate once and for all dissenters and “cafeteria Catholics.” Like any attempt at surgical prophylaxis, he might deem it necessary, but in the short run it would make the Church bleed.

Or, Benedict could succeed in his teaching mission to stir anew in Europe and beyond a love affair with Truth, leading to a cultural Renaissance on a grand scale. In the mode of “only Nixon could go to China,” he could engineer a cultural change within the Catholic Church that deemphasizes structures in favor of mission, power in favor of love. With a gentle touch and one of his generation’s best minds, he could inspire a reawakening of the Catholic intellectual and artistic tradition, based on his own conviction that “A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology.”

Every new pontificate stirs a sense of new possibilities, and few in recent memory feel as full of portent at the outset as that of Benedict XVI. Whatever the broader world may conclude about having a seventy-eight-year-old conservative German on the Throne of Peter, anyone who understands this man must intuit that there are days of great adventure, and potentially deep angst, ahead.

Will the Pope have the time to realize the epic potential before him?

Only God knows the answer. By 1998, when John Paul II was seventy-eight years old, he was already well into the winter of his life; his long, slow decline had been visibly under way for some years. How long it will be before the twilight begins to gather around Benedict XVI is anyone’s guess. In September 1991, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that temporarily affected his left field of vision, but there is no indication that it left lingering difficulties. In August 1992, he cut his head after slipping in the bathroom during a vacation in the Italian Alps, once again without permanent consequences. In comments immediately after the conclave, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said that two years ago the Pope seemed to experience some “difficulties,” but had come back from that and “seems strong now.”

The papacy, of course, weighs on a man in special ways, and Benedict’s reserves of strength may be depleted quickly under its unimaginable burdens. After hearing of the result of the conclave, Benedict’s own brother was dismayed: “At age seventy-eight, it’s not good to take on such a job which challenges the entire person and the physical and mental existence,” Georg Ratzinger, eighty-one, said. The elder Ratzinger was said to have initially sat shocked in front of his television screen in Regensburg after the announcement was made, unable to process what had just happened. Then, ever the Ratzingerian realist, he said simply: “At an age when you approach eighty, it’s no longer guaranteed that one is able to work and get up the next day.”

Indeed.

And yet . . . and yet, given the inner fire that still lights those piercing eyes of Joseph Ratzinger, one imagines that he will nevertheless get up, day after day, for whatever time divine providence allots him, putting his indelible mark on the Catholic Church and on history. No one who has read this Pope, who has spoken with this Pope, no one who understands the depth of his thought and the gravity of the crisis he believes stands before him, can fail to see that his papacy will be marked by the spirit of Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans,” Burnham said. “They have no magic to stir men’s blood.”

Benedict XVI, whatever else history may eventually say of him, will not preside over a pontificate of small plans.