Back to the Catholic Future

By Richard N. Ostling

Wearing white chasubles, a grand assemblage of Roman Catholic bishops will file through St. Peter's Square and into the basilica next Sunday to con-celebrate a Mass with Pope John Paul II. The stately ritual will mark the beginning of a two-week world synod of bishops, summoned by the Pope to commemorate and evaluate the results of the Second Vatican Council, which concluded 20 years ago.

With the exception of the 1978 conclaves that elected Pope John Paul II and his short-lived predecessor, John Paul I, no meeting in Rome since Vatican II has provoked as much advance speculation as this synod. One reason is sheer mystery; its agenda is wide open, and no one knows what will happen. Beyond that, many liberals fear that the synod may be part of John Paul's ongoing campaign to enforce discipline and theological orthodoxy. Conversely, some conservatives look to the synod as an opportunity to act against what they see as near heretical aberrations that have sprung up since the council.

Authorized by Vatican II, the synods are periodic gatherings of bishops, convened to advise the Pope. They have no authority of their own to pass church laws. Since the council, seven synods have been held to discuss such specific topics as the role of the Christian family and the sacrament of penance. Next week's synod, however, is an "extraordinary" meeting, outside the regular three-year cycle. There will be 165 delegates, 102 of whom are presidents of national bishops' conferences. Other participants: 14 Eastern Rite prelates, 25 Vatican officials and three superiors of men's orders. Also present for the first time: non-Catholic observers.

The synod will meet in an ultramodern Vatican conference room. John Paul, who plans to attend most of the plenary sessions, has appointed a balanced slate of three presiding cardinals: Johannes Willebrands, 76, a Dutch ecumenist who is president of the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity; John Krol of Philadelphia, 75, a conservative on ecclesiastical matters; and Joseph Malula of Zaire, 67, a symbol of the Third World, which accounts for three-fifths of both the synod delegates and the globe's 825 million Catholics.

On opening day, Godfried Cardinal Danneels, a progressive Belgian, will deliver a summary of written reports from national bishops' conferences. Each delegate will then be allotted eight minutes to speak on subjects of his choice. After the speeches, the bishops will form small groups and try to work out recommended courses of action. The Pope will be free to accept, reject or even ignore any or all of the bishops' recommendations.

John Paul surprised the bishops last January with his call for the synod, allowing a mere ten months for planning. Many observers think the meeting will be too brief and ill prepared to do more than celebrate Vatican II's accomplishments. Still, says Father Paul White, editor of Boston's archdiocesan weekly, the Pilot, "the Pope didn't call this for nothing."

That is precisely what worries some of John Paul's critics. One concern: the questionnaire soliciting the reports from national bishops' conferences asked about "errors or abuses" in applying the teachings of Vatican II. Peter Steinfels, editor of the U.S. journal Commonweal, says that among his colleagues "damage control is the most pertinent phrase" in synod talk. Father Simon E. Smith, former executive secretary of U.S. Jesuit Missions who is now working in Kenya, sees a Vatican scheme to "box in the spirit" of the council. This can be "thwarted only if the assembled bishops take their own agenda in hand," he says.

Catholic liberals are also concerned about the conservative views expressed by some of the Pope's principal associates. Chief among them is Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and adjudged the Pope's most influential aide on internal church issues. The cardinal spelled out his views in a series of forthright interviews that were published in book form this year in several languages (U.S. version, published last month: The Ratzinger Report, Ignatius Press, $9.95). Ratzinger's remedy for the "self-destruction" of Roman Catholicism over the past 20 years is to "reconstruct the church" by returning to "the authentic texts of the original Vatican II."

Ratzinger also criticized the growing role of national bishops' conferences as an ecclesiastical innovation that has no warrant in Scripture or tradition. At the synod the president of the U.S. bishops, James W. Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, expects to defend the conferences and their pastoral and social involvement. Malone got a boost at last week's meeting of the American hierarchy in Washington, D.C., when Papal Pro-Nuncio Pio Laghi praised the U.S. bishops' conference and its pastoral letters on nuclear disarmament and economic morality for "offering the service of leadership on public issues." Malone said last week that he will also press in Rome for "new initiatives" on ecumenism.

The conservative mind-set is expressed by Msgr. Wilhelm Schaetzler, secretary general of the West German bishops' conference: "Following the euphoria of the council, certain negative developments have crept in, and they must be soberly analyzed and, if necessary, corrected by the synod." Conservative U.S. lay Catholics have lobbied for synod action on empty seminaries, dissident priests and nuns, and what they consider to be inadequate parish education. But the most noteworthy reforms enacted by Vatican II are no longer at issue.

At the synod, Ratzinger and his allies are expected to warn that the church is endangered by being too immersed in worldly matters. Father Edward Schillebeeckx, a liberal theologian in the Netherlands, whose theology has been investigated by the doctrinal commission, predicts that there will be attacks against Ratzinger at the synod because, he says dryly, "it is always easier to voice criticism to a cardinal than to a Pope." The Pontiff does not necessarily share all of Ratzinger's views. During an August plane trip returning from Africa, John Paul told reporters that Ratzinger's plea for reconstruction is "his personal opinion ... However, it must not be interpreted in the sense that the council has caused damage to the church."

Just before the synod starts, the Pope will play host to another gathering: an unusual three-day business meeting of the entire 150-member College of Cardinals. The purpose is to offer John Paul advice on a proposed reorganization of the Vatican bureaucracy. Most of the reforms to be considered are name changes that, remarks one observer in Rome, would merely "give the Vatican printers and sign painters a lot of work."

Two proposals, however, are freighted with importance. One would place Willebrands' Christian Unity secretariat under the scrutiny of Ratzinger and two other watchdogs to protect against doctrinal deviations. Willebrands has been lobbying hard against the move and appears likely to fend it off. The other proposal would shift supervision of graduate-level seminaries from the Congregation for Catholic Education to the Congregation for Clergy, which stresses piety and spirituality. The clergy office is headed by Silvio Cardinal Oddi, a hard-line conservative. A liberal educator in Rome protests that the quality of priestly training "will drop tremendously" if the shift occurs.

While the synod could issue important new interpretations of Vatican II, it could also produce, in the words of one prelate, nothing more than "a rainfall of ideas." But President Theodore Hesburgh of the University of Notre Dame muses that the synod would be an apt prelude to a papal call for a Third Vatican Council: "I don't want to wait another 450 years before there's more change in the church." --By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Daniela Simpson and Wilton Wynn/Rome, with other bureaus

With reporting by Reported by Daniela Simpson, Wilton Wynn/Rome, with other bureaus