NEWS ANALYSIS: Pope Leaves Church a Theology of Apology

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Pope John Paul II launched an unprecedented “examination of conscience,'' culminating in a sweeping mea culpa on the first Sunday in the first Lent of Christianity's third millennium. “In this year of mercy the Church, strong in the holiness which she receives from her Lord, should kneel before God […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Pope John Paul II launched an unprecedented “examination of conscience,'' culminating in a sweeping mea culpa on the first Sunday in the first Lent of Christianity's third millennium.

“In this year of mercy the Church, strong in the holiness which she receives from her Lord, should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters,'' John Paul declared at a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica on March 12, 2000. “Let us forgive and ask forgiveness!''


In the wake of John Paul's death Saturday (April 2), what he called a “purification of memory,'' or what might be called a “theology of apology,'' may also stand as one of the most important, and least-recognized, legacies that he leaves behind.

More than a generic statement of regret, John Paul's millennium sermon referred specifically to the violence of holy wars among Christians and the Inquisition against non-believers, and, as if to ensure his message would not be lost on future generations, he had several cardinals _ many of them considered potential successors _ read more detailed indictments of Catholic sins.

Australian Cardinal Edward Cassidy, for example, recalled “the sufferings endured by the people of Israel throughout history,'' adding, “Christians will acknowledge the sins committed by not a few of their number against the people of the Covenant.''

Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze said, “Let us pray for women, who are all too often humiliated and marginalized, and let us acknowledge the forms of acquiescence in these sins of which Christians, too, have been guilty.''

“Lord God,'' the pope replied, “at times the equality of your sons and daughters has not been acknowledged, and Christians have been guilty of attitudes of rejection and exclusion.''

The pope's action were so far-reaching that they prompted a rare moment of agreement among erstwhile opponents within the polarized church.

“I think it's a turning point in Catholic history. It may be the most important thing the pope has done,'' the Rev Andrew Greeley, a prominent voice for church reform, said at the time.


The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things magazine and a staunch apologist for traditional Catholicism, agreed that “no other church or religious community, never mind secular institution, has so candidly, repeatedly and voluntarily accepted responsibility for its failings. It is the kind of thing made possible by an unshakeable communal confidence in the gospel of forgiveness.''

Just a month after his election, in November 1979, John Paul told a gathering of scientists at the Vatican that he was reopening one of the Inquisition's most infamous cases, the condemnation of Galileo, not to affirm the obvious fact of the astronomer's heliocentric theory, but to foster a “loyal recognition of wrongs'' by church authorities.

Three years later in Madrid the pope first referred to the “errors and excesses'' of the Inquisition, and in Vienna in 1983 he apologized for the wars of religion that scarred Christendom. With increasing regularity he issued mea culpas to different audiences: to indigenous peoples in Santo Domingo in 1984, to Muslims in 1985, to Africans in 1986, and most memorably, to the Jewish community at Rome's synagogue in 1986 and at several other points. He also pushed the Catholic Church further than ever in undoing the mutual anathemas leveled between Christian denominations.

With the approach of the millennium, an almost mystical benchmark for the Polish pontiff, John Paul in 1994 announced a formal program of penance leading up to 2000.

“Only the courageous admission of the faults and omissions of which Christians are judged to be guilty'' can lead the church forward, John Paul said at a public Mass on June 13, 1994.

By 1998, when veteran Vatican correspondent Luigi Accattoli published his book, “When a Pope Asks Forgiveness,'' he had toted up no fewer than 94 occasions at which John Paul apologized for some past action of the church, and their legacy in the present.


Naturally, many groups and critics viewed the pope's apologies as incomplete or a case of “too little, too late.'' The irony was that some of John Paul's toughest opposition came from within the church hierarchy. At one point Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the second-in-command at the Vatican, publicly warned the pope that, “As regards a global, general examination of the past history of the church, some of the cardinals have advised extreme caution and prudence, since this is a very difficult and delicate question.''

What John Paul saw as “the dark pages'' of church history were episodes that many thought should be better left buried. Others took issue with the pope's theology, saying he could not apologize for others, especially the dead. Some accused him of “presentism,'' imposing the standards of the present on the mores of the past.

John Paul's mea culpas were one reason that a splinter group of traditionalists broke with Rome in the late 1980s, the church's first schism in more than a century.

But that did not stop John Paul, and even after the Jubilee year of 2000 he continued his campaign.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

On a trip to Athens in 2001 he offered a formal apology for the “deep wounds'' that Roman Catholics inflicted on “their Orthodox brothers and sisters'' over the last millennium. In 2004, when the Vatican published several historical studies of the Inquisition, John Paul reiterated his apology for crimes carried out by that body: “The children of the church cannot fail to return in spirit to repentance for the acquiescence shown, especially in some centuries, toward methods of intolerance and even violence in the service of the truth.''

Yet some argued that these papal acts of penance made matters worse by not going far enough.


Many women felt that John Paul's apologies for the mistreatment of women were empty without concrete reforms to provide them with a greater role and voice in the male-dominated leadership. Homosexuals were excluded entirely from the mea culpas, and others were upset that John Paul asked forgiveness for the sins of the “sons and daughters'' of the church, rather than the church itself, something the pope would not do because Catholics believe the church remains holy and perfect even as its members frequently deviate from its teachings.

For others, no words, however sincere, were sufficient given the extent of crimes in which many Catholics played a role. The Jewish community, in particular, was disturbed when John Paul would apologize on one hand and then promote sainthood for controversial figures like Pope Pius XII, the war-time pope who many Jews feel did not do enough to stop the Holocaust.

Most telling, perhaps, was the absence of any formal public apology to the victims of sexual abuse by clergy in the scandal that mushroomed in revelations in 2002. While John Paul strongly condemned such abuse, victims and their advocates thought the pope should have taken responsibility himself, or made a fresh mea culpa for their suffering.

On the other hand, some say John Paul was so infirm by that point that he may not have had the force of will to overcome objections to such a statement by his inner circle, even if he had wanted to make such a declaration.

Critics will inevitably find gaps in John Paul's record of apologies, and Catholics of the future might in fact find lapses by the pontiff that a future pope may have to correct. But John Paul's extended Act of Contrition could also be seen as a beginning rather than an end, the start of the process of purification rather than a final justification for the past 2,000 years.

(David Gibson, a longtime religion writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J, is the author of “The Coming Catholic Church.'')


 

MO END GIBSON

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