Rome sends mixed signals on Jesuit
contributions
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff Rome
Although media shorthand often makes the Vatican sound
like a monolith, in fact, the headquarters of the Catholic church, like
bureaucracies everywhere, is run by people with sometimes clashing views.
Nowhere was this clearer in recent weeks than at a conference at
Gregorian University, where an influential Vatican figure publicly defended a
Jesuit recently rebuked by another Vatican official for his work in
interreligious dialogue and missionary work.
Lauds for the Jesuit, Fr. Jacques Dupuis, and for other Jesuit
contributions to the field came just weeks after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the
Vaticans chief doctrinal authority, had publicly rebuked Dupuis. The
praise from Vatican officials also occurred against the backdrop of
Ratzingers recent document Dominus Iesus, which criticizes
approaches to religious pluralism set forth by Dupuis and other Jesuits.
Ratzinger is the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, the churchs top doctrinal agency.
The Vatican official defending Dupuis at the April 4 and 5
conference was Bishop Michael Fitzgerald, secretary of the Pontifical Council
for Interreligious Dialogue. Fitzgerald said April 5 that he wished to
put on the record a debt of gratitude to Fr. Dupuis and his pioneering
work.
I had the honor of being present in this hall during a
presentation of Fr. Dupuis book, Fitzgerald said. Some have
spoken of ambiguities, but since theology is a developing science, it is only
natural that various theories will be presented, discussed and brought into a
synthesis.
The conference marked the Jesuit-run Gregorian Universitys
450th anniversary.
Meanwhile Cardinal Roger Etchegaray issued a more oblique, but no
less significant, endorsement of the approach to both theology and mission work
that has characterized the Jesuits in the years after the Second Vatican
Council (1962-65).
I would like to be a witness, to pay tribute to a very
famous Jesuit, Fr. Pedro Arrupe, said Etchegaray.
[In 1981, Pope John Paul II suspended the rules of the
Jesuit order to prevent the Jesuits from electing a successor to Pedro Arrupe
as head of the order.] In part, the Jesuits were faulted for switching
from making converts as the goal of missionary work to service and activism
aimed at social justice. Etchegaray, who, like Arrupe, is of Basque ancestry,
described Arrupe as the forerunner of modern evangelism.
Etchegaray headed the office responsible for planning for the
Great Jubilee Year of 2000. Officially retired at 77, he still serves as an
ad-hoc diplomatic troubleshooter for the Vatican. Despite his age, his name
appears on many lists of papabile, or candidates to be the next
pope.
Etchegaray related a personal tie with the Jesuits by noting that
he comes from a village in France where the sister of St. Francis Xavier lived.
Xavier was one of the earliest Jesuit saints and a famous missionary. He was
sometimes called the apostle to the East.
I am a globetrotter on behalf of John Paul, said
Etchegaray, who in recent months has been entrusted with sensitive papal
missions in Russia and China. It is always a shock when I meet other
religions. But I must say it has helped me to better understand the mystery of
salvation offered in Jesus Christ.
Later Etchegaray came to the defense of another Jesuit once
accused of deviations by Vatican officials, the 16th-century missionary Fr.
Matteo Ricci. In the 16th century, Ricci made Christianity attractive to the
Ming dynasty in China by blending it with Confucian beliefs and practices. That
strategy was condemned by the Vatican.
Catholic writers on religious pluralism today often invoke Ricci
as an example of someone who could be fully Christian without denying the
validity of other religious pathways.
Etchegaray, who noted that he had visited Riccis grave in
China, said he hoped the Catholic church would someday recognize him as a
saint.
Dupuis, suffering from a bad back, was not present at the
conference. But reverberations from his case were in the air. His book
Toward a Theology of Religious Pluralism was criticized Feb. 26 by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a formal notice as expressing
notable ambiguities or difficulties (NCR, March 9).
Dupuis argued in the book that while Christ is the unique savior
of the world, other religions play a positive role in Gods plan for
humanity. Ratzingers concern, according to most observers, is that such
theories will lead to diminished missionary efforts as well as to a
ones as good as another religious relativism.
Dupuis and several other Jesuit theologians were among the primary
targets of Ratzingers September 2000 document Dominus Iesus, which
reasserted the supremacy of Catholicism over other religions and Christian
churches.
Those other Jesuits include Fr. Michael Amadaloss of India and Fr.
Aloysius Pieris of Sri Lanka. In response to Dominus Iesus, Pieris
warned in a Sept. 30 talk of a Catholic fundamentalism raising its head
among some members of the hierarchy in Europe, which is at once defensive
against what is non-Christian and what is non-Catholic.
At the Gregorian conference, Fitzgerald praised the Jesuit
contribution to the work of his office, noting the names of several Jesuit
theologians, including Dupuis, who have contributed to official church
documents.
Fitzgerald said theological investigation into religious pluralism
should be encouraged. He noted that the Vatican II document Gaudium et
Spes, in paragraph 22, describes followers of other religions as
partners in the paschal mystery in a way that is known to
God. Noting that the document does not say known only to God,
Fitzgerald said he interprets it to mean that God may choose to share
this knowledge with us through theological research.
Etchegaray was not the only presenter to comment on Jesuit
missions in China. Jesuit Fr. Nicolas Standaert noted that Ricci and others
were able to win over the Chinese not so much by theological discussion as by
knowledge of mathematics.
Standing in the aula magna of the Gregorian, where so many
famed theologians have studied and taught, Standaert dared ask if the Jesuits
were perhaps putting too many eggs into the theological basket.
Is the high number of theologians versus scientists in the
society really the best preparation for mission in the modern world? he
asked. He suggested the society should turn out more people trained in other
disciplines.
Whatever the merits of his argument, its a safe bet
Standaert could find at least one taker for the theory that there are too many
Jesuit theologians working on religious pluralism: Cardinal Ratzinger.
The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is
jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, April 27, 2001
[corrected 05/04/2001]
|