Category: Vatican

 Thumbing through the pages, however, it is evident in the text – a relatively short text, 91 pages composed of 58 paragraphs – that the dominant hand is that of the German pontiff. And not just because the encyclical on faith concludes the triptych on the theological virtues starting with Deus Caritas Est on charity and followed by Spe Salvi on hope. The layout of the text, the frequent references to philosophers and live debates in the German culture of the ’60s, the insistence on some issues, and even the comparison between faith and Gothic cathedrals, where “the light comes from the sky through the windows where it represents the sacred history,” all testify that Pope Francis has decided to respect and accept the work of his predecessor.  Francis explicitly expresses in paragraph 7 of the Encyclical: “These considerations on faith – in continuity with all that the Church’s magisterium has pronounced on this theological virtue – are meant to supplement what Benedict XVI had written in his encyclical letters on charity and hope. He himself had almost completed the first draft of an encyclical on faith. For this, I am deeply grateful to him and, as his brother in Christ, I have taken up his fine work and added a few contributions of my own.”  The title of the Encyclical, Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith) summarizes the fundamental dynamic which moves in line with the text: the tradition of the Church has always associated faith being the light that dispels the darkness and illuminates the path. “In modernity, that light might have been considered sufficient for societies of old, but was felt to be of no use for new times, for a humanity that has come of age, proud of its rationality and anxious to explore the future in novel ways. Faith thus appeared to some as an illusory light, preventing mankind from boldly setting out in quest of knowledge.”  The text cites Nietzsche, one of the constant reference points – even if negative – of Ratzinger’s thought, for which “belief would be incompatible with seeking. But in recent decades,” he adds, “it was discovered that the light of autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future. As a result, humanity renounced the search for a great light, Truth itself, in order to be content with smaller lights which illumine the fleeting moment. For this, in today’s world, “there is an urgent need, then, to see once again that faith is a light,” discovering that only the light that comes from believing in God is “capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence.”  The road to the discovery of this bright character of faith happens naturally with the encounter with Christ and by His love. “Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfillment and that a vision of the future opens up before us.”  After the introduction, the Encyclical, in four chapters, traces

The Pope’s intention appears to be to translate into action the Second Vatican Council’s desire for a realignment of forces within the Church that has remained largely theoretical over the last half–century. So far, most of Pope Francis’ actions have been symbolic of his much less grandiose interpretation of the personal role of the papacy than all recent popes have followed, and he has now given that style of approach some embryonic structural shape.  The new team of eight will not meet as such until the autumn, though it is said the Pope began consulting them individually immediately. What is more significant is that they have been carefully chosen so that, virtually, every part of the world is represented and, in most cases, by men who have themselves been selected for leadership positions by their episcopal colleagues. Thus, the European representative is the German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who is president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community and hence can speak for the Catholic hierarchies of Europe. Similar qualifications – and a similar democratic mandate – apply to most of the others.  This shifts the balance of power in the Church in favor of national or regional conferences of bishops. They have hitherto suffered from lack of status as a result of the ruling by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that episcopal conferences “had no theological significance.” They were mere collections of bishops, and their theological weight was merely the sum of their parts. If they have now been recognized as key components in the Church’s new architecture, that may go a long way to incorporating the idea of episcopal collegiality at the heart of the Church. The Vatican II decree Lumen Gentium declared that the primary responsibility for the government of the Church lay with the college of bishops, with the Pope as its head. Hence, the Curia’s role should be as a civil service answering to the college of bishops headed by the Pope, not to govern the bishops on behalf of the Pope – which has been the pattern so far. This is where putting together a team of eight to advise him, and reforming the Curia, are two parts of the same project. If the team is really the beginning of Cabinet government under a “constitutional papacy,” particularly if the principle of subsidiarity is also to be followed, then the Curia will have to be reshaped and scaled back to provide appropriate structures. Clearly a period of upheaval has begun in Rome, with implications worldwide.  

Giovanna Chirri, the journalist who first sent out the news, through the ANSA agency, said that she just couldn’t believe her ears when she heard the first words of the declaration the Pope was making that Monday morning, 11 February, in front of a consistory of cardinals who were meeting to decide on the canonization of a new group of saints. Benedict XVI was reading it in Latin but she made it out immediately, got confirmation and sent it out. “I gave out the news and then just sat down and began to weep,” she told a fellow journalist.