I did not read the deathbed interview given by Cardinal Carlo
Maria Martini two weeks before he died, until after I had seen the
gloss that some conservative Roman Catholics tried to put upon it
(News, 7
September). Do not believe media accounts, the reactionaries
said - in what proved to be a dextrous display of revisionist
mental gymnastics: the Cardinal was calling for a religious
revival, not for the abolition of unpopular church teachings.
But go to the text, and you see something very much as you might
have expected from the man who was the guardian of a more open kind
of orthodoxy for the past 30 years - and who was distinguished by
his ability to communicate the message of the gospel to doubters
and those who were far from faith. Unlike much of the hierarchy, he
was a man who was not afraid of dialogue.
What was a surprise was how candid, and indeed withering, was
his last spiritual testament. "The Church is 200 years behind the
times," he said. It was old, tired, and bureaucratic, with pompous
liturgies and vestments. Its wealth was as heavy a burden as was
that of the rich young man who went sadly away. It needed a
"radical transformation beginning with the Pope and his bishops".
The paedophilia scandals obliged it to undertake a path of
conversion. It needed to see the sacraments not as "an instrument
to discipline people, but to help them on their journey of life and
during their weaker moments". Unless the Church "adopts a more
generous attitude towards divorced persons, it will lose the
allegiance of future generations", he said.
No wonder that The Tablet called his comments "a
sweeping indictment of the last two papacies", and saw the
interview as "an agenda for a papacy that never was, but might have
been". It was "a manifesto for the next conclave" from beyond the
grave. No wonder, too, that the Vatican media ignored the
interview; the in-house newspaper L'Osservatore Romano did not even
mention it. The degree of official concern in Rome was clear from
the fact that neither Pope Benedict nor his number two, Cardinal
Tarcisio Bertone, attended the Cardinal's funeral. The Pope didn't
even dare mention the late Cardinal during his Sunday Angelus
prayer in St Peter's Square.
Equally revealing was the language that the Pope used in an
address the day before Cardinal Martini's death, in which he
suggested that those who disagreed with Catholic teachings should
leave the Church. "Judas", he said, "could have left, as many of
the disciples did; indeed, he would have left if he were honest.
Instead, he remained with Jesus. He did not remain because of
faith, or because of love, but with the secret intention of taking
vengeance on the Master."
Note not just the extremity of branding those who dare to demand
dialogue on church teaching as Judases, but also how he chose to
refer to Jesus as "the Master". This is the language of power and
control. In contrast, a close friend of Cardinal Martini described
his testamentary interview as "an act of love towards the Church".
The 200,000 people who filed past the Cardinal's body would appear
to agree.
Among Cardinal Martini's final recommendations was that the
Pope and the bishops should find "12 unconventional people to take
on leadership roles". They should be "those who are close to the
poor", or "who can galvanise young people by being willing to try
new approaches". Those who are ratcheting the Church further and
further to the Right are unlikely to embrace that notion. "Frantic
orthodoxy is never rooted in faith, but in doubt," Reinhold Niebuhr
said. A young Martini in the Church today would not be made a
bishop, let alone a cardinal.
Paul Vallely is associate editor of The
Independent.