Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini died last August, one of my favorite Church leaders. He was one of the best scripture scholars in the world. He headed the famous Biblicum in Rome and when he died he was a marvelously successful archbishop in Milam. Two weeks before he died, he said, “The Church is 200 years out of date and in need of radical transformation. The Church is tired. Our culture has grown old, our churches are big and empty and the Church bureaucracy rises up. Our religious rites and the vestments we wear are pompous.”
None of that was new. Many of us have been saying it for many years but when Benedict was pope he did not see the need or have the strength to make the necessary changes. What will happen now? With Pope Benedict breaking new ground with his extraordinary resignation, this is a time to question many aspects of Church administration. Systems of governance in the Church has changed several times over the last 2,000 years and, believe me, it was not always monarchy. Look through the four Gospels and you will find very little in the life of Jesus of Nazareth that you would instinctively connect with monarchy – total power in the hands of one person.
My heartfelt prayer is that the cardinals will endeavor to come to grips with the extraordinarily serious problems in the Church with basic structural changes that are required, and that they will have the vision and the courage to do so.
God bless the new pope. A great deal of work awaits him.

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An outspoken Australian bishop is generating a lot of interest in the discussion of the need for changes in the Church’s administrative structure and how it operates, deals with conflict and handles dialogue. I am referring to Bishop Geoffrey Robinson who was removed from office by the Holy See over a year ago for publicly expressing his views that the Church needed to confront and resolve views on certain areas like the shortage of priests and conduct a thorough review on the Church’s overall positions on human sexuality. The Vatican then removed him from office! Nevertheless, Bishop Robinson continues to challenge the Church to face some really very difficult issues.

Bishop Robinson is now on a lecture tour. Speaking in Chicago to a very mixed audience, including about 150 priests, Bishop Robinson stated that the roots of the decades long clergy sex abuse scandal lie not in any set of rules or practices, but are found deep in the culture of the Church itself-

The “major fault” of the Church in the scandal, Robinson said, is that it “refuses to look at any teaching, law, practice or even attitude of the Church itself as in any way contributing to the crisis. In studying abuse, we must be free to follow the argument wherever it leads rather than impose in advance the limitations that our study must not demand change in any teaching or law.”

It is reported that his brother bishops were upset with his lecture tour and that Cardinal Roger Mahoney, then the Archbishop of Los Angeles, had denied Robinson permission to speak in the Archdiocese.

The Church certainly has many problems but one that always saddens me is an utter inability to enter into direct dialogue in areas or subjects that are either controversial or uncomplimentary to the Church. Today, the Church is badly battered and only an honest confrontation of its structural weaknesses will enable us to get out of this morass.

I side bar: In keeping with this, I noted that Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts withdrew an invitation to Mrs. Ted (Vicki) Kennedy as a commencement speaker and to receive an honorary degree. In doing so, the local bishop stated that he was merely following the 2004 statement that, “Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.

Does dialogue in the Church always have to be a one-way street?

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Two very small but I think extremely important meetings have occurred recently, the first in England in the summer of 2010 and the second in December of 2011. The meeting was between Lord Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and Pope Benedict XVI. While they are the chief representatives of different faiths, the two men have a tremendous amount in common. Lord Sacks said that, “Soul touched soul across the boundaries of faith and there was a blessed moment of meeting”.

These two men are very conscious of the weakening state of religious values throughout Europe and both have warned individually and now warned together the need for Europe to regain its religious soul based on faith. The Chief Rabbi told those listening to him, “Christians need to come to grips with what it means to be a creative minority.” The Rabbi stated, “If there is one thing Jews know how to be, it is a creative minority. So my proposal is that Jews and Catholics should seek to be creative minorities together. A duet is more powerful than a solo.”

Because leaders on both sides are aware of the religious threat confronting the modern age, this meeting is being used to initiate a range of activities to capitalize on the importance of this meeting of two like-minded men of God.

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Benedict XVI celebrated Mass the other day in Madrid for hundreds of thousands of young people who had come to the 26th edition of World Youth Day. This new tradition was launched by Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1985 and every few years has been gathering crowds in excess of ten million. That makes World Youth Day the largest regularly held international religious gathering on the planet.

As usual, the event was joyful and filled with celebrations of faith, but there was a cloud over the gathering this year as all of Europe and especially Spain flirted with financial disaster. Spain has a banking crisis and agonizing unemployment and so there was considerable controversy about the costs of the event. Some 150 groups organized a protest under the slogan, “The Pope’s Visit, Not With My Taxes.”

Despite the rough edges of this year’s event, it is a real credit to the lively and dynamic faith that still marks so much of today’s young people. John Paul II captivated the young of the planet and Benedict XVI, while not the star attraction that his predecessor was, is still doing a good job. In a world with so many other problems, it is hard to complain about the fact that millions of kids want to get together and celebrate their common faith in Jesus Christ.

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This is May 2011 but it is hard to get through the morning paper without one or another reference to who will be elected president to the United States in 2016. The incumbent is usually considered the frontrunner but a lot can happen in the next two years. As I said, we are used to that for political office but how about the papacy?

The present Holy Father is in his mid-80’s carrying an awesome burden in administering the world’s largest voluntary organization with over a billion members. It is only natural for observers of the College of Cardinals and the cardinals themselves to look around and wonder who will get this responsibility next.

Like many bishops, I follow the writing of John Allen, Jr., the best known American reporter on Vatican affairs, and I saw with some very real interest that he has already advanced three possible cardinals who might be elected in the next conclave, whenever that might be. I know nothing about any one of them but I am fascinated in one aspect of his choice. Of the three he mentions, one is Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a 66 year old Canadian. Then there is Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, a 68 year old Italian. A third is Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, an Argentian with Italian background. Allen points out certain strengths and weaknesses on each of his “nominees.” Only time will tell. Remember, in addition to these three, there are about 117 other possibilities!

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The Church is old!  It will soon have clocked twenty centuries of history.  Throughout all of that period, it has been led by the Bishop of Rome.  During those nearly twenty centuries, 266 men have sat in the chair of St. Peter.  The story of the papacy is closely intertwined with the story of the Universal Church and quite a story it is.  Throughout this unfolding story, the papacy has been, for the most part, a constant source of strength and unity.  With the passage of centuries, the papacy has gathered to itself more and more administrative responsibility for the Universal Church.  The pope today is concerned about what is going on in Quito, Ecuador and suburban Tokyo and everything in-between.  With assistance, he is in direct contact with the Church across the world.  If he were suddenly to be incapacitated, things would really become difficult!

Throughout most of the papal story, men who became seriously ill usually died but in today’s world with the advanced technology that we have it is a fact that people can be kept alive long past the time when they can function in a meaningful way.  Suppose the pope has a stroke or moves into advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.  With the pope unable to function and no system for replacing him, chaos could result.  Father James Provost, a prominent professor at the Catholic University of America, pointed this out in his writings back in 2000.  The issue has not been dealt with.  There are absolutely no provisions of replacing a pope or transferring his authority should he become incapacitated for an extended period of time.  This is a serious vacuum in the Church’s constitutional law and perhaps Pope Benedict XVI, who is himself 82, should consider making some canonical provision to deal with the situation.

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Pope Benedict XVI is now back in the Vatican and protected by the powerful halberds of the Swiss guards.  Thanks be to God!  I say that because I was so relieved that our Holy Father is back from a pastoral visit to England and Scotland that was viewed by many as a risky undertaking.

Organized protests developed with some groups even threatening to have him arrested because of his alleged malfeasance, etc., etc.  The fact is that the opposition melted into an insignificant sideshow whereas the crowds came out in tremendous numbers in every place that the Pope stopped.  I think that the Catholics turned out in great numbers because they are proud of the fact that they are a strong minority church in England today while the Anglican communion is declining in everything except the number of its bishops.  This strong support is even more surprising in view of the terrible track record of the Vatican in terms of its very failed public relations activities of the last two years.  The people are aware of the administrative blunders of this papacy but, by gosh, he is the Pope and he is OUR Pope.

I am told that Benedict addressed the government leaders of England in the very hall where St. Thomas More was condemned to death by Henry VIII.  Thomas would be proud…we are all proud.

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Two weeks ago, a new book rolled off the presses in Italy reporting on the public relations train wrecks that have burdened the pontificate, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.  The authors are two Italian reporters who specialized in covering Vatican issues.  They have good reputations and are respected.  I don’t have a copy myself and even if I did, I don’t know Italian.  However, I do have great respect for John Allen, the most respected American expert on Vatican affairs, who did a fine report on this book on the 27^th of August.  Allen tells us that:

“While the sexual abuse crisis has occasioned the most serious criticism of Benedict XVI, it’s hardly an isolated case. Tornielli and Rodari treat a long list of other controversies and PR debacles too, including:

• A September 2006 speech in Regensburg which triggered Muslim protest by appearing to link Muhammad with violence;
• The appointment, followed by the swift fall from grace, of a new Archbishop of Warsaw who turned out to have had an ambiguous relationship with the Soviet-era secret police;
• Reviving the old Latin Mass, including a controversial Good Friday prayer for the conversion of Jews;
• Lifting the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, including one who has denied that the Nazis used gas chambers;
• Comments aboard the papal plane to Africa to the effect that condoms make the problem of AIDS worse;
• Criticism from the Catholic right of Benedict’s social encyclical Caritas in Veritate;
• Open conflicts among cardinals, most notably Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, and Angelo Sodano of Italy, the Secretary of State under John Paul II;
• Ecumenical tensions related to the creation of new “ordinariates” to welcome traditionalist Anglican converts.

It’s a measure of how bad things have been that this is actually far from a complete list. The authors could have included other calamitous episodes, such as Benedict’s 2007 trip to Brazil, when he seemed to suggest that indigenous persons should be grateful to their European colonizers….”

These are difficult times for the Church and its relationship to the larger world and we need that our leaders be blessed with great skill and diplomacy as they work their way through dangerous minefields.  Let’s pray for them.

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