Forum: The Evolving Catholic Church
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In one brief lifetime thee Roman Catholic Church has undergone vast reform It is now much more aligned with the political order in the democracies of the Western world than with its few remnants of the monarchical order. This has been especially true of the recent papacies of John Paul II and Benedict, wherein the popes have become champion proponents of the democratic political drives for freedom of thought, equality and participation.
Pope John Paul II endorsed the Vatican Council II’s decision to cooperate with the political democracies after years of papal fighting them in these and other matters. He exempted the Church from this process. Pope Benedict, while fighting the Council’s decision, likewise exempted the Church from this proc. It is in this way that the two men largely differ. Both exempt the Church from this process, which each agrees with for different reasons, believing that if they do not so exempt the Church form this process their position as papal leaders will be undercut, so closely do they identify the papacy and the Church. They are not alone in this view. It was until recently the commonly held view of most Catholics, although it is largely rejected as erroneous by these same Catholics at the present time Most Catholics no longer identify the papacy and the Church. The recent popes, for understandable if largely selfish reasons, taking exception to this view.
The truly important question in this regard is whether Vatican Council II did something significant or not. It did not answer Pope Benedict and his followers and, therefore, everything remains as it has been for centuries, especially the place of the papacy within the Church. It made a huge difference say many students of the matter, and among those rank this author who says a new Church was, in effect, borne during ‘Vatican Council II, one in which the place of the papacy is secure but not nearly so large as it is commonly thought to be discarded.
The key document of Vatican Council II in this respect was ‘’Guadium et Spes,’, The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World. It was accepted by Pope John Paul II, who described himself as a Vatican II man, and is generally rejected by Pope Benedict.
Rather than be dismayed by this development it offers genuine promise of being a breakthrough that unravels a number of seemingly impossible problems. With the papal position being satisfactorily resolved we can move on to the resolution of other problems.
If the pope is not infallible, and history proves he definitely is not, the machinery around him is not nearly so important. That is, the Curia Romana. The office staff of the Vatican with its principal persons, each a cardinal bound to the holy Father as his loyal collaborator is now subject to rational analysis and complete reform
It involves application of the democratic ideal of power coming from the bottom up, from the people, rather than from the top downwards, as the medieval theory held. Thus, while the extreme papal party held the democratic ideals of freedom of thought, equality and participation, they held onto the medieval theory of the nature of authority – a mixture logically impossible to uphold for long.
It is not that the Church had been administered by bad men, they were on the whole unusually good men, but operating from a bad theory It is not an unusual human condition. The two theories having been corrected, that of the unlimited rule of a single person and that of the true nature of authority, it will be possible to continue with the reform of the Church itself – Ecclesia simper reformanda. That is the work that must occupy us for the foreseeable future, and truly is a catholic sign of hope.
What do you think?
