The First Synod after the Conclave Gets Underway. The Pope Is Being Tested

ROMA, October 3 – For three weeks beginning at the start of October, 250 cardinals and bishops from all over the world – the élite of the Catholic hierarchy – are meeting in synod in Rome. They will be dealing with the theme that Benedict XVI has put at the center from the beginning of his pontificate: the Eucharist.

An abstract theme? On the contrary. Joseph Ratzinger has been stressing this point for months: it is in the sacrament of the Mass that the Church comes to life; it is here that it has its model, here that it offers itself to the world. He has pointed to the example of Pope Gregory the Great: a great celebrator of the liturgy, a great constructor of civilization.

For Benedict XVI, everything hinges on this. In the homily for the Mass on October 2 in St. Peter’s Basilica, he explained that the opposite of the Eucharist is the devastation of “the Lord’s vineyard”: excluding God from public life in the name of a tolerance which in reality is “hypocrisy,” injustice, “the dominance of power and interests.”

And Christians are not exempt from blame, he warned. Especially the Christians of Europe and the West: “The Lord cries aloud into our ears, too, the words which in Revelation he addressed to the Church of Ephesus: ‘I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent’ (2:5). Our light can also be taken away, and we do well if we let this warning resound in all its gravity within our souls, and cry aloud to the Lord: ‘Help us to convert! Give us all the grace of true renewal! Do not permit your light in our midst to be extinguished! Strengthen our faith, our hope, and our love, that we may bear good fruit!’”

The synod will be a twofold test for the new pope. He will give the pros and cons, as he sees the situation, on the theme of the Eucharist. But he will be under close observation on many other themes.

Benedict XVI has already made known the path he intends to take on a number of them, both within and outside of the Church: with the other Christian churches, the Jews, the Muslims, the atheists.

Inside the Church, there is uncertainty about who will be named as the new secretary of state, and to other high offices in the curia.

But one important replacement has already taken everyone by surprise: as his successor as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the pope called an American, William J. Levada, who was part of the U.S. commission charged with remedying the scandal of pedophile priests.

And since his nomination, there have been measures proposed by the bucketful, aimed at cleansing the Church of the “filth” lamented by Ratzinger in the memorable Stations of the Cross last Good Friday.

The first decree signed by the new prefect, Levada, dated May 27, came against an Italian religious, Gino Burresi, 73, founder of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The charges against him went back to the 1980’s, and included violation of the seal of the confessional and sexual abuse of his young disciples. Burresi was questioned on several occasions, but had the protection of influential heads of the curia and always escaped untouched. And he would have emerged unscathed from another new investigation, which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith entrusted in 2004 to the archbishop emeritus of Siena, Gaetano Bonicelli, if the congregation – unknown even to Bonicelli himself – had not proceeded with its own parallel investigation, which ended with a condemnation. Now Burresi can no longer say Mass, hear confession, or preach in public. Bonicelli continues to claim that Burresi is innocent, and has lodged lively protests at the Vatican. But the condemnation, which was approved “in specific form” by Benedict VXI, cannot be appealed.

Accusations similar to those of the Burresi case have given rise to a much more volatile investigation, one regarding the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel Degollado.

The Legion is closing ranks in defense of Fr. Maciel, and Cardinal Angelo Sodano and other curia leaders are defending him, but the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has gathered corroborative denunciations over the past few months, and on the basis of these it will decide by next winter whether or not to open a formal process. Fr. Maciel’s advanced age – he is 85 – and the fact that he no longer holds any official post make it likely that the sentence, if there is any, will be as nontraumatic as possible for the order he founded.

Meanwhile, since the middle of September an “apostolic visitation” of the 229 seminaries in the United States has been underway, under the guidance of the Vatican secretary for Catholic education, Archbishop Michael Miller. This same congregation has prepared a document asking the seminaries not to admit any young men with pronounced homosexual tendencies.

Benedict XVI has already shown that he takes a great interest in the formation of future priests. He dedicated an ad hoc meeting to them during his visit to World Youth Day in Cologne. “Those responsible for formation have a decisive role,” he said. It is likely that a housecleaning will take place, beginning in the United States, among the rectors and professors of many seminaries, for both disciplinary and doctrinal reasons.

In Ratzinger’s vision, in fact, only a more “purified” Church can address itself more effectively toward those outside of it – without disguising any of its originality.

He demonstrated this during his trip to Cologne, in the heart of Protestant Europe. To the heirs of Luther and Calvin, Benedict XVI offered the image of a pontiff on pilgrimage to the relics of the Magi and in adoration before the sacred host: this is as Catholic as one can get, as far as one can get from a bare faith without pope, saints, symbols, or the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist, as is the state of modern Protestantism.

He told the representatives of the Protestant communities that he does not believe in an ecumenism made of negotiations on how to democratize the Churches. For the pope, the first question to put on the agenda for Christians is how to bear witness to the Word of God to the world. And the second is how to respond in unison to the “great ethical questions posed by our time” without giving way to the reigning relativistic culture.

One model of ecumenism between Protestants and Catholics that Ratzinger has said he admires is the “interiorized and spiritualized” ecumenism of the monks of Taizé. But he didn’t make the slightest reference, in Cologne, to the meetings in Assisi and the spectacular recreations of these organized every year by the Community of Sant’Egidio.

For reasons of theological proximity, rather than to Protestantism Benedict XVI is looking to the Churches of the East, and to the meeting with the patriarch of Constantinople that both of them wanted to hold next November 30, the feast of Saint Andrew, but which has been postponed because of resistance from the government of Ankara.

And he is looking with confidence toward the lesser chapter of ecumenism represented by the healing of the schism with the traditionalist followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. On August 29, he received their present superior, Bernard Fellay.

On the opposing side, on the frontier of “liberal” Catholicism, on September 24 he met with theologian Hans Küng. The meeting was “friendly” for both, and was focused upon “the dialogue between reason as found in the natural sciences and reason as found in in the Christian faith”: a theme dear to both the pope and Küng.

Another symbolic goal that Benedict XVI has outlined among his “priorities” is the Holy Land. For a long time, Ratzinger’s positions on Judaism have been among the most advanced of all in the Catholic world. And he restated these on August 19 while visiting the synagogue of Cologne.

For the pope, the covenant God established with Israel is still valid, even after the coming of Jesus. But the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, is convinced that Israel has been repudiated by God and replaced with the Church. On September 8, Benedict XVI placed at Sabbah’s side a coadjutor closer to his own outlook who is destined to succeed the patriarch, Fouad Tawl, a Jordanian by birth, formerly the archbishop of Tunisia.

On September 15, the pope received at Castel Gandolfo the two chief rabbis of Israel, Shlomo Moshe Ama, a Sephardic Jew, and Yona Metzger, an Ashkenazi, who renewed the invitation to visit Jerusalem.

And in mid-November he will be visited by Moshe Katsav, in the first visit ever made to the Vatican by a president of the state of Israel.

Even with the Muslim exponents he met in Cologne on August 20, pope Ratzinger acted with all his cards showing. He did not visit the mosque, as they had asked him to do; he received them at the archbishop’s residence with a great crucifix behind him. He urged them to become teachers of peace, even while so many bad masters are preaching in mosques and madrassas in Europe and throughout the world.

Seven days later, on August 27, he received at Castel Gandolfo the writer Oriana Fallaci, the professed atheist so incendiary in defending Christianity from Muslim attack.

But this audience was no surprise, coming from a pope like Benedict XVI. He has always sought out meetings with dyed-in-the-wool secularists, from the Frankfurt philosopher Jürgen Habermas to the famous aforementioned author of the “Letter to a child never born” and “Anger and pride.” On repeated occasions, including as pope, Ratzinger has asked nonbelievers to live “quasi Deus daretur,” as though God existed. One main motivation is that in today’s world, “moral values can stand only if God exists.” And another motive is that “this would be a first step for them in drawing nearer to the faith.”

While conversing with the priests of Aosta, Benedict XVI confided: “I see in so many forms of contact that, thanks to God, dialogue on the part of the laity is growing. I think of Jesus’s parable about the tiny mustard seed, which then becomes a tree large enough for the birds of the sky to nest in it. These birds could be the persons who have not yet converted, but have at least perched upon the tree that is the Church.”

To date, Benedict XVI has spoken only once about communion for those who have divorced and remarried. And this was not to reinforce the unconditional ban, but to say that the question “must be studied more deeply” at least in one case: that of the person who was married in church even though he did not believe, and then, having been separated and remarried with another person, arrives to the faith, but sees himself excluded from Eucharistic communion.

“This is truly a great suffering for these persons,” the pope said while speaking to the priests of the diocese of Aosta on July 25. “When I was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith I invited various episcopal conferences and specialists to study this problem: a sacrament, that of matrimony, celebrated without faith. I don’t dare say whether it is really possible to find here an instance of invalidity because a fundamental dimension was lacking in the sacrament. This was how I thought personally, but I understood from the discussions I had that the problem is very difficult and must be studied more deeply.”

Pope Benedict XVI delivers his speech during the first day of a three-week meeting of the world's bishops at the Vatican Monday, Oct.3, 2005. More than 250 bishops, cardinals, heads of religious orders and others from about 118 countries will take part in the Synod of Bishops.

"the problem (divorce and remarriage) is very difficult and must be studied more deeply"

I seems that divorce is a relatively new problem given the history of Grace-filled marriages. I still recall older couples and family members that would "stick it out" in spite of all difficulties.

It's scary to ask Jesus, "Lord, what would You do?" because many of us probably wouldn't like the answer. And in not liking the the tremendous challenge for those divorced and remarried couples, would there be any of us that can meet Jesus' command?

Perhaps Jesus would reply with a question to answer our nervousness:

"How did my step dad treat my Mom? How did my Mom get along after I died and Resurrected?"

Maybe the example of St Joseph and St John (Blessed Virgin's adopted son) is the answer to our pain. If we give up, rather than give into our carnal desires, then we make up for our painful (and possibly sinful) past through a celibate marriage to honor God's Grace given to us through the Sacrament of Marriage.

I'm no expert, but this is one of the things I wonder about considering I'm almost a single middle-aged man and many of my peers are on their second marriage with children from the first. I don't condemn them at all since I've listened to their painful stories. We'll have to place our faith in Jesus' healing for this one.

Pet peeve: I hate the way Magister uses the words "Ratzinger" and "Benedict XVI" interchangeably. He's the Pope now. Calling him "Ratzinger" is no more appropriate than calling the previous Pope "Wojtyla".

It's a sign of disrespect (usually) utilized by sedevacantists and virulent anti-Catholics.

It's because "Ratzinger" is easier to spell than "Wojtyla". If we start refering him as Pope "B16", then others wouldn't have a problem with spelling. For example, we all know who we refer to with "Pope JP2".

Please don't take what I said too seriously. ;-)

"For reasons of theological proximity, rather than to Protestantism Benedict XVI is looking to the Churches of the East, and to the meeting with the patriarch of Constantinople that both of them wanted to hold next November 30, the feast of Saint Andrew, but which has been postponed because of resistance from the government of Ankara.

And he is looking with confidence toward the lesser chapter of ecumenism represented by the healing of the schism with the traditionalist followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. On August 29, he received their present superior, Bernard Fellay."

Interesting comments.

"B16" also sounds like the next next next generation stealth bomber.

"An advanced, high speed, hi-tech stealth bomber using reverse-engineered technology from supernatural powers...it bombs Satanic forces into hell where they belong! Listen to the whispering prayers of Salvation as the B-16 Exorcist quietly slips the atmosphere just above our heads! And considering the gifted intellectual capacity, WAAAAAAYYYY above our heads too!"

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