New York Times: Benedict XVI and the Church That May Shrink. Or May Not.
May 29, 2005
By IAN FISHER
ROME - Joseph Ratzinger, as a theologian and cardinal, returned to the
question often over the years. And now that he is Pope Benedict XVI,
his
paper trail on the issue provokes skepticism about him among more
liberal
Roman Catholics.
The question, in his own words: "Is the church really going to get
smaller?"
At another point, in an interview published in 1997 in "Salt of the
Earth"
(Ignatius Press), he explained it this way: "Maybe we are facing a new
and
different kind of epoch in the church's history, where Christianity
will
again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in
small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intense
struggle against evil and bring good into the world - that let God in."
The standard argument is that Pope Benedict "wants a more fervent,
orthodox,
evangelical church - even if it drives people away," as a New Yorker
headline put it recently.
But as with much around this new pope, the whole story is complicated.
He
has yet to announce an overall program, having been in office just five
weeks, but both critics and supporters alike say that it is unlikely
that he
would plan to prune back the church intentionally - or that he could.
"I don't get any sense of him wanting to purge or anything," said
Christopher Ruddy, an assistant professor of theology at the University
of
St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. "But I think he is willing to say what he
thinks are hard truths, or unpopular truths."
The question is whether those hard truths - on sexuality, on the proper
celebration of Mass, on standards for receiving communion - will scare
off
Catholics who disagree.
>From its first days, the church struggled with sects and schisms and
later
with the Reformation, and in modern times it is torn by scores of local
interests, sex scandals, and dissent on contraception and the role of
women
in the church.
Perhaps of more interest to Pope Benedict is that the church is also
bombarded by a secular culture that he believes offers no fixed values.
And
the eternal question for the church remains: What do Catholics need to
do
and believe, in order truly to belong?
"There are those who argue that the best way for the church to spread
its
message is to embrace the largest number of people and to work with
them
where they are," said John-Peter Pham, a professor at James Madison
University and a former Vatican envoy. "And at the opposite end are
those
who would argue that actually the same message is much more credible
when
it's propounded by a smaller group of individuals who live it more
intensely."
Some experts question whether there is much any pope can do - apart
from
some seismic, and highly unlikely, reorientation of the church - to
scare
off large numbers of worshipers.
"The theory and the practice are very different," said Philip Jenkins,
a
professor of history and religion at Pennsylvania State University.
People
tend to belong first to their local parish, then their national church.
Local priests and bishops, Professor Jenkins said, often act as buffers
against unpopular decisions from the hierarchy.
An example is the resistance from Asian bishops to a Vatican document,
"Dominus Jesus," overseen by Cardinal Ratzinger in 2000, which referred
to
faiths other than Christianity as "deficient." Peter C. Phan, a
professor of
Catholic thought at Georgetown, noted that the Asian bishops,
surrounded by
other religions, responded by stressing less the truth of Catholicism
and
more the need "to listen to the teachings and practices of these
religions
respectfully."
Pope Benedict's own record on the idea of a smaller church is layered.
On
one hand, he has issued documents like "Dominus Jesus"; has condemned
Catholics who choose the teachings they like; and has spoken of cutting
down
the church bureaucracy and free universities and hospitals that are
Catholic
in name only.
But he does not seem to speak happily about the prospect of a smaller
church. "Most people admit that at the present stage of things in
Europe the
number of baptized Christians is simply dwindling," he said in a 2002
book
of interviews, "God and the World" (Ignatius Press). "We simply have to
face
up to it."
In that book, in fact, he strongly opposes the idea of being a "closed
club."
"I have nothing against it, then, if people who all year long never
visit a
church go there at least on Christmas Night or New Year's Eve or on
special
occasions, because this is another way of belonging to the blessing of
the
sacred, to the light," he said.
For Pope Benedict, fundamentally a man of Europe, the issue of a
smaller
church seems mostly to be defined by the losses in the developed world,
since growth in the third world has pushed church membership to more
than
one billion.
And his approach to re-evangelize Europe, some think, is likely to
differ
from that of Pope John Paul II and his stadium rallies. Many experts
expect
a greater focus on small groups, based on the model of his namesake,
St.
Benedict, who inspired the monastic order that spread Christianity and
Western culture in Europe in the Dark Ages.
Pope Benedict XVI has spoken favorably of Catholic lay groups,
especially
the more conservative Communion and Liberation, in Italy, but has also
worked with the more liberal St. Egidio, also in Italy. Critics of the
idea
say these small groups risk creating local church elites with less
loyalty
to the hierarchy than to the groups' founders.
But Dr. Jenkins said he believed emphasizing smaller associations had
"some
real merit to it." He added: "The Christian concept is 'leaven' and
that's a
very strong idea - which is you have these activist groups and by
pursuing
their own religious ideas they tend to revive the whole community."
Some day, Cardinal Ratzinger once wrote, the West will tire of
secularism
and spiritual loneliness. "And they will discover the little community
of
believers as something quite new," he wrote. "As a hope that is there
for
them, as the answer they have always been looking for."