EDITORIAL Latest bump in contradictory papacy
Roman Catholicism is rooted in one
great creed. Its core beliefs are universal among its faithful.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in issuing Dominus Iesus, (see
story) believes that Catholicism is more than creed. He assumes that it is also
one great culture.
He is wrong.
His assumption is a flaw in a document that -- among its more
jarring assertions about other faiths -- denies to other world religions a role
in salvation independent of Christianity.
Ratzinger also denies that how ones faith is received and
lived in any place is inexorably and rightly shaped and shaded by that
place.
The reality Ratzinger refuses to accept is that faith is
translated through a places history, a cultures story, an
individuals life. It is shaped by geography, by its moment of
development, its interrelationships with different peoples and their different
cultures.
Dominus Iesus is a blow aimed directly at Catholic
theologians involved in interreligious dialogue in Asia.
The cardinal, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, uses the documents contention that Christians alone have the
fullness of the means of salvation, as a flail to whip those Catholic
theologians into place, almost mindless of the corollary lashes he
simultaneously lays on every believer in the world who isnt a
Catholic.
As a theologian, Ratzinger may have points to argue. It might even
be understandable that men who believe deeply in that vision of church would
promulgate a document of this kind. But to be clear -- the documents
purpose is not a matter, as Ratzinger said, of simply reaffirming
constant church teaching. It is a matter of trying to take control of issues
about which the church is profoundly divided and groping toward a solution. It
is a matter that has occupied serious and sincere thinkers, lovers of the
church, for decades. And it is not a matter to be settled with language that
inevitably will be seen as antagonistic toward people who have earnestly
believed for decades that they and the church were in dialogue.
What then, beyond subduing more Catholic theologians, is to be
gained?
Marco Politi seems to have it right. In an essay in the Sept. 6
issue of La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper, Politi wrote that
everything flowing out of the Vatican this summer is connected.
As Politi sees it, the connection between the Vaticans
scathing response to World Pride, the document on divorce and remarriage, the
note on sister churches, the beatification of Pius IX, and now Dominus
Iesus, is the looming conclave. Ratzinger and those like him in the curia
are doing everything possible to close doors and windows in an effort to make
it difficult for John Paul IIs successor to reverse their policies.
Politi ends his essay by asking where the pope stands, and his
punchline is powerful: The battle, he says, also runs though Wojtylas
soul.
NCR readers will readily recall the image of a solitary
John Paul II at the Western Wall in Jerusalem last March, deep in prayer,
leaving behind a handwritten note apologizing to Jews for the failings of the
church. Recall, too, the invitation he sent to leaders of other world religions
to meet for prayer at Assisi. The pope asked no one to convert, insisted that
no one accept Jesus -- instead he reached out in humility, using the common
language of penance and prayer. And in so doing, he dazzled the world.
How do we reconcile that behavior with what is in Dominus
Iesus?
The fact is Catholics have a serious gap between our practice of
dialogue, as illustrated by the pope himself in his encounters with members of
other religions, and the official theology of the church. It is one of the
paradoxes of a papacy riddled with contradictions.
We have, however, been given two paths -- a profound show of
respect and regard for other religions or a bullying document that demeans the
beliefs of others. For those of us who are happy to live day-to-day in
increasingly pluralistic circumstances, the choice is simple. Join, if only
figuratively, in the prayer at the Western Wall. Stand in awe of the response
our Islamic brothers and sisters make to the call to prayer. Rejoice that the
Protestant churches across the street, our sister churches indeed, are no
longer perceived as sinister and suspect.
And all the while, hold deeply the truths of our Catholic
Christianity, expressed in that great creed.
National Catholic Reporter, September 15,
2000
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