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Bishop Mark Coleridge of Melbourne, Frances Kissling of Catholics for
a Free Choice, and historian Paul Collins in Rome, comment on the
election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new Pope Benedict XVI.
Program Transcript
Bishop Mark Coleridge on Pope Benedict XVI
Frances Kissling on Pope Benedict XVI
Paul Collins on Pope Benedict XVI
Noel Debien: Hello and welcome to the Religion Report. Noel Debien
here stepping in for our regular presenters, Stephen Crittenden and
David Rutledge.
The big story of the week is the new Pope, Benedict XVI. And what a
birthday present Cardinal Ratzinger has received. The high drama of it
has never been so public or so transparent.
Cardinal Medina Estévez : Dear Brothers and Sisters. Anuntio vobis
gaudium magnum (cheers) Habemeus Papam. (I announce to you with great
joy, We have a Pope)
Noel Debien: The successor of Peter, the Universal Shepherd and
according to Roman Catholic teaching, chosen under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit.
ORGAN/CHOIR
Noel Debien: Charles-Marie Widor’s great anthem, ‘You are Peter and
upon this rock I will build the church’.
For the first time ever, the TV Cameras are transmitting just about
everything the Vatican Conclave had to offer
The world has never seen the likes of all that led up this before; A
megastar papacy, and a very public suffering and death. And the
publicity simply didn’t stop when John Paul II died. Even from inside
the Sistine Chapel as the Cardinals entered and took their oaths of
secrecy. The Cameras were only locked out after the oaths were
completed.
Pope John Paul called the Vatican the “House of Glass”. And the
coverage we’ve seen is utterly unprecedented. All live on TV, radio,
and internet streaming. All planned by Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the
first professional director the Vatican Press Office has ever had; and
who - like Pope John Paul who appointed him - took the “means of
social communication” very seriously indeed.
Against many media predictions, the New Pope is a Curial Cardinal. He
entered the conclave as a favourite – breaking the old Roman adage “He
who enters a Conclave a Pope, exits a Cardinal”. Cardinal Ratzinger
even looked a little bit like a Pope as he entered the Conclave
wearing the red stole almost identical to one frequently worn by the
late Pope.
His media persona is one of hard-line Orthodoxy. He taught at the
University of Tübingen with the famous Hans Küng. His history included
a brief period drafted, along with his seminary class, into the Nazi
anti-aircraft corp in 1943. He also served in the German Army until
1945. There are already those who say that the main mistake the media
has made about Pope John-Paul II is that he was a Conservative.
What Can the World expect of this German theologian?
Bishop Mark Coleridge worked from 1998 in the Vatican Secretariat of
State.
In 2001, he became a chaplain to his late Holiness, Pope John Paul. He
returned to Australia 2002 to be bishop in the Archdiocese of
Melbourne. He has just returned again from Rome.
Bishop Coleridge, at this early stage; what’s your reaction to this
new German Pope?
Mark Coleridge: The stereotypical image of him as this ferocious
right-winger or a fierce ideological warrior, or a desperate man of
the right, that is very, very far from the mark. What you are dealing
with in Josef Ratzinger is a man of - first of all - the highest
intelligence and the broadest culture in that grand European
tradition. You are also dealing with a man who is a man of deep
personal grace; he’s the most gracious of characters. He has a
courtliness about him, he doesn’t have the expanse of personality of
John Paul II, not even close to it, so that I think in personal style
this pontificate will prove to be a very different kind of pontificate
from John Paul II.
Ratzinger was a theologian in a university, a Don, and there is a
touch of the Don about him. He’s a more restrained character, though
he has about him a quiet radiant humanity. In that sense he’s a very
attractive personality. But I think you can expect to see a
pontificate that is more restrained in personal style, that will
continue the deep intellectual and spiritual trajectories of John Paul
II’s pontificate, but which will do so in a quite different style. And
obviously for a quite different length. I mean the Cardinals have
patently not opted for a youth policy.
I personally was surprised that Cardinal Ratzinger was elected, mainly
because of his age. He was the name much mentioned, but I had thought
at 78 he might be considered too old. But the Vatican is full of fit
old men, and Josef Ratzinger is one of those. He may be 78, but he’s a
small, fit man, and so whilst this won’t be a 26 year pontificate, I
think it may not be the five minute job that some might either expect
or indeed want. But my feeling, or my suspicion at this very early
stage, is that the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI may turn out to be
a very surprising affair, and very different in all kinds of ways,
from the kind of pontificate that the stereotypical image of Cardinal
Ratzinger as this arch-conservative would suggest. I think we might be
in for quite a few surprises both internally in the Roman Curia,
internally in the Catholic church, but also in the way the church
addresses the world of today.
Noel Debien: What sort of surprises are you anticipating? You must
have some idea in your mind.
Mark Coleridge: I only have a very sketchy idea at this stage, but I
think for instance, that a man of Cardinal Ratzinger’s impeccably
orthodox credentials, is in a position to move on internal change. For
instance, in the Roman Curia, now I’m not saying that the Roman Curia
needs to be changed from top to bottom, I don’t think that’s true, but
I think inevitably it’s a kind of structure that needs to be adapted
to changing circumstances.
Noel Debien: And this is an insider who knows how the structure works?
Mark Coleridge: An insider who knows the Roman Curia through and
through and through. No-one could claim a more sophisticated and
profound knowledge of the way it works. And in that sense, no-one is
better poised to take the great institution of the Roman Curia and
adapt it in ways that perhaps need to be adapted to meet changing
circumstances. John Paul II did it to some extent, but questions that
were strictly internal to the church or the church’s bureaucracy,
didn’t really engage the energies of John Paul II. He was much more a
Pope ad extra, he was energised by questions of how the church
addresses the world, he was always looking outside the church.
Ratzinger may well be a pope who looks more inside the church than did
John Paul II. And in all kinds of ways, with his impeccable
credentials, impeccably orthodox credentials, Cardinal Ratzinger may
have a freedom to move that another pope with different credentials
may not have had quite. So in that sense I think internally he may
prove to be a pope other than many expect.
The other thing is, you can never predict how a man will grow into the
office. No-one foresaw that John Paul II would become the Titan that
he did become. So we just have to wait and see how Pope Benedict XVI
grows into the office, because very often the pressure of the papacy
brings to light things we haven’t suspected, even in old popes like
Benedict XVI.
Noel Debien: There is a sense in which those who identify themselves
as ‘progressives’ within the church will have a certain anxiety.
Mark Coleridge: I think that’s certain, and I fully understand that.
The problem with those sorts of tags however is that they tend to be a
politicised model of the church, and they understand the church as if
it were a political party. Now, that there has been a political
element in this election is clear, that’s stating the obvious. That
there is a political element and a powerful one, in the Catholic
church, and in particular in the workings of the Holy See, that is
also stating the obvious. But to reduce this election or the office of
the pope or the Catholic church as a whole, to a merely political
reality, is again to miss most of the mystery.
So tags like ‘progressive’, ‘liberal’, ‘moderate’, tend to be far too
simplistic, crude and politicised to make sense of a much more
mysterious and messy phenomenon. I mean it was like the convenient
media tags applied to Cardinal Ratzinger when he was the Prefect of
the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, these were very crude
attempts to describe something quite complex in the man and in his
performance in the office. So I can understand that people of more
liberal and progressive instincts would have a sense of apprehension
perhaps. I think it’s misplaced, and I think in fact they may be in
for a surprise.
But the other thing is, people need to have realistic expectations of
any pope. People who think that Pope Benedict XVI or any other pope is
going to come in and overturn fundamental points of Catholic teaching
are simply chasing a mirage. There are certain things that no pope can
do. People talk about the pope as if he were omnipotent, but this is
not true. The papacy is hedged in in all kinds of ways, so that
neither Benedict XVI nor any pope, could change fundamental points of
teaching. So I think in this sense, people need to be realistic in the
kind of expectations they have, either of Pope Benedict XVI or any
Catholic pope for that matter.
Noel Debien: I think it would be fair to say that you’re clearly no
ultra-Montanist, but at the same time there would be a sense in which
we could expect this pope to enforce orthodoxy, this is the tag he has
as one who asserts orthodoxy rigorously.
Mark Coleridge: That’s right. And I think we can expect that, but then
I would expect no less from any pope. Any pope is the guardian of
orthodoxy, that’s essential to the apostolic office, but orthodoxy not
understood as it often is, as a kind of straightjacket, that is
destructive of human life, or life-denying. I mean the path of
orthodoxy as we understand it, takes us back to Jesus Christ, and
therefore is a path of liberation, that in fact leads us, albeit by a
strange way, into the depth of humanity that comes to us only in Jesus
Christ. So that some would use the word orthodoxy with pejorative
overtones. Any bishop or any pope or any Catholic for that matter, who
understands orthodoxy, you’re right, would see it on the contrary as
something profoundly creative and liberating, so in that sense, to
defend the gospel is to defend orthodoxy, to proclaim the gospel is to
proclaim orthodoxy. So someone like Ratzinger wouldn’t see a
distinction between the gospel of Jesus Christ and orthodoxy as
understood and taught by the Catholic church. Neither would I. So I
think again, to drive a wedge between the good news of Jesus Christ
and Catholic orthodoxy, is somehow to get things wrong, to
misunderstand both.
Noel Debien: I call to mind examples of those who were brought into
line under the past pontificate, the Tissa Balasuriya’s, the Paul
Collins’s of the world, the Michael Morwoods of the world. This new
pope is an academic, he is an intellectual too. Can we expect from him
expansiveness - intellectually?
Mark Coleridge: Well I think yes. He’s always shown that. He’s a man
of profound intellectual power, and anything he’s written suggests it.
But many of those have made up their mind about Josef Ratzinger have
never read a word that the man has written. This is a man of high,
high sophistication and intellectual culture. So I think yes, we can
expect a pope who will engage the great currents of intellectual life
around the world, but not just in some small part of the Western
world. You see the poor old Western world, one of its besetting
problems is it thinks it’s the only world that exists. Now Ratzinger
has clearly had problems, as did John Paul II, with certain element of
Western intellectual life. And that will continue, that critique, but
I mean it’s a critique made in order to create, not to destroy. And I
think in fact this pope will turn out to be surprisingly perhaps to
some, a pope of dialogue. You see it’s interesting that he’s taken the
name Benedict, and these names are always symbolic. The last Benedict
was Benedict XV, Giacomo de la Chiesa, who was pope during the First
World War, fascinating, given that we’ve got a German pope.
Now what was Benedict XV in the First World War? He was, in a sense, a
voice crying in the wilderness. He strove desperately to bring peace
and reconciliation, and I would suspect that in choosing the name
Benedict, Josef Ratzinger has in mind the figure of Benedict XV, and
the role he played, albeit too briefly, that’s another fascinating
element of Benedict XV, he was pope for a short time. But in those few
years that he was pope, Benedict XV strove mightily for peace and
reconciliation, in an apocalyptic time. Now again, I suspect the
choice of the name says that this is a pope who wants to choose the
way of peace and reconciliation on all fronts, within the church, and
even with those most unnerved by his election. But also outside the
church, because he has to pursue the path of dialogue with other
religions, and dialogue with all and sundry outside the church. No
pope has a choice on that.
Noel Debien: Sandro Magister, who writes in ‘Inside the Vatican’ is
one of the pundits of this papal election, and he suggested that
Cardinal Ratzinger was of the party which has identified modern
Western secular humanism as the real enemy. How right is he in that?
Mark Coleridge: Well it’s hard for me to judge. I think he’s right on
certain elements. I don’t doubt that Cardinal Ratzinger, like John
Paul II again, because again their conversations through the 26 years
of the pontificate, were crucial, and they shared so many of these
fundamental insights. Both men were, or are, rather bleak in their
account of contemporary Western culture. It doesn’t mean to say
they’re blind to the triumphs and all that is positive in Western
culture, but at the same time they are not prepared to write a carte
blanche and say nothing. In other words, what Ratzinger has offered as
John Paul II did, is a critique of ideology in all its forms. Now in
the first place, this would be a critique of communism and fascism.
But at the same time there are certain more subtle ideological forces
of work in the Western world. And in a sense, Ratzinger has subjected
those ideological pressures to the same kind of critique. And again,
it’s not a knee-jerk critique that is driven by ideological blindness
or a kind of blind, stupid religious faith, this is a critique that
Ratzinger has made consistently through the years. Many find it too
bleak, but few are prepared to deny that it has truth of any kind. So
it’s intellectually grounded, it has been long and deeply pondered, so
that I think you will find that as pope, he will continue the critique
of ideology that we’ve seen so strikingly in him through more than 20
years in his service of John Paul II.
Noel Debien: He comes out of the German church, and the German church
that I know is a deeply liturgical church, a more liturgical church
certainly than Australia is, strong in music, strong in tradition,
conservative.
Mark Coleridge: True, as German culture is generally, as European
culture is generally, but certainly in Germany. And Ratzinger has made
it very clear that he thinks that we have problems on our hands in the
area of the church’s worship. He has been a very vocal critic of the
banality of much Catholic worship, in particular, music, because he is
a musician, he’s a beautiful pianist, which is part of what I mean
when I say he’s a man of high European culture. So I suspect that the
church’s liturgy may well be one of the areas to which he turns with
particular energy and attention in his pontificate, because it’s all
there in what he’s written, the critique of much contemporary worship,
which he finds banal, one-dimensional, and inadequate to the mystery
that the church celebrates at the altar. So that would be one of my
guesses, is that the church’s liturgy, the church’s music, the
language we use in worship, that he will be much more engaged by those
questions than was John Paul II, because again, those liturgical
questions were not something that engaged the deepest energies of John
Paul II.
Noel Debien: Are you predicting that this is not a pontificate for the
Medical Missionary sisters and the St Louis Jesuits?
Mark Coleridge: I would have to say it’s unlikely to be a thriving
pontificate for either. But nor will it be draconian. This is a man of
reasonableness, a man who is prepared to sit down and talk with
anyone, and in fact many of those who are most strongly critical of
him are those who are far less given to dialogue, in my own
experience, than is Ratzinger himself.
Noel Debien: Bishop Mark Coleridge, thanks for joining The Religion
Report.
Mark Coleridge: Thank you very much indeed.
Noel Debien: Bishop Mark Coleridge there, the Auxiliary Catholic
Bishop of Melbourne, and Mark worked from 1998 in the Vatican
Secretariat of State.
Veni Creator Spiritus, mentes tuorum visita…
Noel Debien: The hymn, Veni Creatus Spiritus, sung at the beginning of
the Papal Conclave to invoke the Holy Spirit.
Well earlier this week, French Cardinal Lustiger said that the
Conclave process is not political. He said it’s really a process where
the cardinals purify their minds, get rid of distractions and arrive
at a clear recognition of a worthy candidate. It’s a very
spiritualised explanation. But for the ungodly press, the Conclave is
much more easily understood politically. It was Eurocentric. 49%
European to be precise, and it has now produced another European Pope.
But it did change under John Paul II. He doubled the representation of
Eastern European Cardinals, now up to 10%. Latin American
representation has also been bumped up slightly, by 1%.
Well the Holy Spirit may have inspired the cardinals in their choice
of a German pope, but perhaps not all Catholics see it as such a
charismatic choice.
On the line is Frances Kissling, President of “Catholics for s free
choice”; an American Organisation supporting democratic reform in the
Catholic church; and particularly the rights of women - including
reproductive rights.
Frances Kissling, what avenues are left for progressive Catholic
movements?
Frances Kissling: It’s a great disappointment, and it means a
continued inability to really have any sort of meaningful dialogue
within the church, or to move forward on many issues related to
women’s rights within the church. I mean we now have a new pope who is
very much cut in the mould of the old pope, and that wasn’t very good
for dialogue within the church, and this will not be very good either.
Noel Debien: What avenues do you see for advancing the issues that are
dear to Catholics for a Free Choice, women’s choice, reproductive
rights?
Frances Kissling: I think the avenues are the avenues of the people of
the church. And we know that a very significant majority of Catholic
people believe that they have a right to follow their conscience on
these issues, and believe that, and indeed are practising, their faith
in a way that they are comfortable with. That is, they are using
contraception, they are making the decision to have an abortion when
they believe that is the morally correct decision for them, and I
think that what we will continue to see is a dichotomy between the
official church, the papacy and the cardinals, who think one way, and
the people who will just continue to go on about their own business.
This is a sadder situation for the institutional church than it is for
ordinary people. Ordinary people have found their way and found their
consciences, but unfortunately this means that the institutional
leadership of the church will be further alienated and marginalised,
and really not be listened to by Catholic people.
Noel Debien: How will American Catholics react to the election of this
Pope?
Frances Kissling: Well this will be a particularly bitter pill for
American Catholics to swallow. American Catholics, like European
Catholics, tend to be more progressive than conservative; in terms of
internal church issues. We have long hoped for a papacy in Rome where
the church would become more of a mirror of the message of Jesus
Christ which was the message of equality, and we have seen Cardinal
Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, really be very punitive and
punishing to our own theologians in the United States of America, to
sisters in the United States, to nuns in the United States in America,
and indeed even to Catholic politicians in the United States of
America. So this is not a Pope who many Catholics in the US are going
to consider ours.
Noel Debien: What options do American Catholics have to remain
practising and to remain faithful to their own consciences?
Frances Kissling: Well the options have always been there for
Catholics. You know we live in the 21st century in which the Vatican
doesn’t have prisons, it can’t burn us at the stake, and so for
ordinary Catholics it’s quite possible to do what we have done all
along, which is to practice our faith within the church, to be
spiritually connected to the sacraments, and yet to go about our own
business in terms of those issues that relate to our sexual and
reproductive lives, and indeed to women I think that we may also
certainly find some Catholics for whom this is the last straw, Some
American Catholics will say “this is the last straw, it’s time for me
to worship in an Episcopal church or a Lutheran church or some other
church”, or to stop going to church. So I think we will hear a variety
of responses. I think we certainly also will see a growth in what in
the United States is a trend towards what we call house churches,
where Catholics who have similar understandings of what it means to be
a Catholic and to follow the message of Jesus Christ, don’t go to
church and simply hold services privately on their own and in each
other’s homes, very much the way early Christians did.
Noel Debien: Effectively, American Catholics of the progressive
variety will vote with their feet?
Frances Kissling: I guess some of them certainly will vote with their
feet, and in a way I think the interesting thing is that John Paul was
Pope for such a long time, and he had a great personal charisma and
great political clout, and there were many Catholics who disagreed
with him in terms of his positions, but who still had enormous respect
for him and thought of him as a kind and compassionate person. I don’t
think Cardinal Ratzinger becomes Pope with that kind of good feeling
there for him, and therefore I think that actually the level of
resistance and outspokenness by progressive Catholics is going to
increase.
Noel Debien: Frances Kissling, thanks for your time.
Frances Kissling: My pleasure. Bye bye.
Noel Debien: Frances Kissling, President of the American organisation,
Catholics for a Free Choice. Currently in London.
Paul Collins is a church historian, author and specialist commentator
on the papacy. Cardinal Ratzinger called Paul Collins to account for
his book “Papal Power” in 1998, and accused the former Missionary of
the Sacred heart of holding “an erroneous concept of papal
infallibility”. The election of Benedict the sixteenth is the election
of Paul’s chief Inquisitor. Paul remains a practising Catholic, but
resigned from priestly ministry in 1998.
Paul Collins, how do you respond to the election of this German Pope?
Paul Collins: I’m somewhere between cautious pessimism and cautious
optimism. When I first heard when Cardinal Medina Estevez who is the
senior Cardinal Deacon named “Josephus”, I knew that we had the
Josephus Ratzinger, and I must admit that I felt a kind of a sense of
pessimism. However when his name, his Style, as it’s technically
called, was announced, Benedict XVI, I found myself changing a little
bit and moving in a more cautious optimistic direction, because within
Catholicism, things like names and styles, they matter, they’re
important, because it’s if you like, a sacramental religion, it’s not
so much a religion, well it is about words and it’s about concepts,
but it’s also about style and the way things are done, and they are
often even deeper symbols from the words and concepts used.
Noel Debien: Why the name Benedict?
Paul Collins: Well that’s the very interesting one. I think it’s
simply saying “I’m not John Paul III, I’m not Paul VII, I’m not John
XXIV, I’m someone completely different”. I’m myself. So I think we are
going to see a serious change in style from that of the papacy of Pope
Wojty³a. Clearly Cardinal Ratzinger is not a globetrotter and he’s not
going to be someone whose populist in that Pope John Paul II sense. I
think it’s going to be a short papacy, that’s quite clear since no-
one’s eternal, and this man turned 78 on Saturday. So, in other words
I think the Cardinals see him as a transitional pope. Clearly, he went
into the Conclave at somewhere between 35 and 50 votes, they were the
estimates that were here in Rome. He’s obviously pulled in quite a few
votes more because there must have been at least some negotiation went
on to get those more moderate kind of Cardinals on side. And it must
have been done pretty quickly, because at most there were 4, possibly
5, ballots, and that’s pretty quick I think for a College that at the
beginning of last week, was seen as very divided.
Noel Debien: Are we to expect a Ratzinger that we understand and know
as Pope, or are we going to get something new?
Paul Collins: I think that’s an important question. Josef Ratzinger,
the “Panzer” Cardinal, is no longer. Pope Benedict XVI now exists.
This is a man who comes to the papacy with a clearly articulated
policy, a clearly articulated approach to things. The interesting
thing about that is that you can change from when you’ve articulated
something, if he was a person without known or obvious opinions, then
we’d all be at sea. At least we know where this man stands, and what I
think he can do is move beyond and outside of the kind of categories
he’s already defined for himself. So that’s the kind of source of my
cautious optimism, and there’s no doubt that he comes with a big load
to the papacy. I’ve already had several email messages, one of which
from a priest in Melbourne, said “Where to from here? (question
mark!)” You know, that is a really serious question. It may be that
progressive Catholics and more open Catholics will continue to be
deeply disappointed, but I still maintain a sense of cautious
optimism. I may be a fool in that, but I think that he’s signalling
something to us especially n the change of name.
Noel Debien: Paul Collins, former priest, broadcaster, and author of
“Papal Power” there on the line from Rome.
And that bring the programme just about to an end. Thanks for
listening - and don’t forget to follow up on all the papal election
information on the web – a transcript should be up by this afternoon
at abc.net.au/rn and follow the prompts to the Religion Report.
Thanks to John Diamond for some high pressure Studio Production today.
I’m Noel Debien, and I’ll leave you with a little music – this time by
the German composer Johannes Nucius – and the word, of course, are “Tu
Es Petrus”. You are Peter.
MUSIC
Guests on this program:
Mark Coleridge
Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne
Frances Kissling
President, "Catholics for a Free Choice"
Dr Paul Collins
Broadcaster, and author of “Papal Power”
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