|
MATTHEW VELLA looks into the upcoming papacy’s agenda to see what’s in the in-tray for the next Pope
Pope John Paul II has left his faithful in a haze of cult adoration but with a fair share of criticism targeted at his staunchly conservative dictums on Catholic doctrine. The new pope is expected to continue John Paul’s unfinished business and take on a new agenda that will befit the demands of a papacy that follows on from John Paul’s and of the cardinal-electors in the secretive conclave. But is this next pope going to be another conservative?
The statistics are indeed on the conservatives’ side: 97 per cent of the 120 cardinals eligible to vote have been appointed by John Paul himself. And yet, according to Vatican expert John L. Allen, the new pope is likely to hail from a majority sector he dubs the ‘social justice’ group: strong on Third Word issues, but equally as conservative on Catholic doctrine on issues such as birth control and homosexuality. Yet, it does not mean that these people do not imagine a future different from John Paul’s papacy.
Birth control and homosexuality are believed will indeed represent two major challenges in the next papacy’s agenda, but Third World issues and inter-religious dialogue are also high on the list. Given that around 65 per cent of Catholics today live in the Third World – Africa, Asia and Latin America – many are banking their money on the first ‘Third World Pope’, with Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, 72, a possible candidate for the papacy. Arinze has however said that the West is not yet ready for a black pope.
Again, he is a hardliner on contraception and homosexuality, but issues such as poverty and debt cancellation are important aspects of the next papacy. Other Third World papabli include Honduras’ Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez, 62, who campaigned against Third World debt with U2’s Bono, and Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes.
In Malta, the newspaper columns have rightly pointed out the contradictions haunting Pope John Paul II’s papacy. Alfred Sant aptly remarked how Wojtyla’s own spirit in the battle against communism proved to be ineffective against the ‘blind’ pressures of market forces: “he did his best to vitiate within the Catholic Church the grassroots movement in favour of ‘liberation theology’ which tried to ground social activism in Catholic teaching… banning liberation theology from the religious mainstream must have driven away from the his Church some of the best, most idealistic spiritual leaders of the Third World.”
Dominican friar Fr Mark Montebello says the Church has never been so divided internally over the rift between Catholic conservatives and liberals. “While John Paul II proved to be an indefatigable defender of human rights and dignity throughout the world, he was an autocrat to Catholics themselves,” Montebello says, who believes the next pontiff will have to seek a better inter-religious balance with non-Catholics: “associations with Anglicans deteriorated in proportion to the improvement in dealings with Muslims and Hebrews.”
According to Montebello, women priests, homosexuality, divorce and contraception will be top items on the next pope’s agenda: “John Paul’s fixated concepts on such matters have to be purged.”
Next in line is the revitalisation of the “courageous stances” of Vatican II’s basic teachings, which Montebello says have been retracted by John Paul II: “collegiality has been abandoned, liberal theology has been seriously undermined, and decentralisation has been discarded.”
Third in the list, a healing process with the EU, since John Paul II – despite his great support of European unification and the accession of East European countries – “waged a most pungent confrontation with most of Europe’s representatives. This has not helped European Catholics.”
More vocal critics abroad, such as Marxist writer and critic Terry Eagleton, had unsparing comments about John Paul’s stand on sexual issues and his autocracy in the Church: “The greatest crime of his papacy… was the grotesque irony by which the Vatican condemned – as a ‘culture of death’ – condoms, which might have saved countless Catholics in the developing world from an agonising Aids death. The Pope goes to his eternal reward with those deaths on his hands.”
Even more observers look upon Pope John Paul II as a man whom many adored and whose charisma commanded the attention of millions who nevertheless, find themselves distanced from the fundamentalism of his Catholic doctrine on issues such as birth control and homosexuality, especially young Catholic followers.
Indeed, Wojtyla’s charm, charisma, and integrity, unmatched by any world leader, will be hard to match for any successor. But his Catholic Church will have to brace itself for demands by its faithful to become more meaningful on everyday issues and relate more to their everyday lives.
“They will not be looking forward to a pope who nurtures doctrinal fundamentalism,” says Malachi O’Doherty, a journalist from Northern Ireland, writing in The Observer. “They did not love him for his teaching. They forgave him his teachings because they loved him as a man.”
|
