c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Pope Benedict XVI may be the most sophisticated theologian ever chosen to head the Roman Catholic Church. As an expert adviser at Vatican Council II he helped the church regain its ancient sense of being “a people of God” on pilgrimage through history rather than a vast, multilayered institution anchored in one port of time.

He understands that as pope he is the servant rather than the master of this people. Politically minded commentators characterize him as a figure of power, the cardinal-electors embrace him as a stable commander, and anxious analysts fear him as an uncompromising authoritarian.

But is there any evidence that he thinks of himself in any of these ways? Or does his profound theological background attune him to the lasting conviction of the Vatican Council reforms that the pope is not in himself the church but that the Catholic people are?

Perhaps the least anticipated but most positive side effect of the sex abuse scandal is the operational realization on the part of millions of Catholics that they, rather than the bishops or the buildings, constitute the church. This sense of the nature of the church rose from its lowest levels as reporters questioned ordinary men and women outside their parishes as the scandal broke.

“No,” they would reply, “this does not shake our faith in the church because we know that we are the church.”

This Catholic awareness of the real nature of their church has enabled it to survive and, indeed, thrive during these years when its hierarchical top-down institutional managers fell on the rusty sword they had wielded vainly to keep the scandal under control, and the people in their place, at the same time.

Catholics understand that “their place” is not one of childish submission at the very bottom of the hierarchical pyramid but as adults who stand on the same level with their pastors and bishops. This understanding is the real dynamic of Catholicism at this historical period.

Pope Benedict XVI, described as a good listener, may well hear something different in what many eager commentators describe as “cafeteria” Catholicism by “dissenters” in the United States. These are cheap and inadequate ways to describe the dialogue that adult, well-educated Christians expect to have, especially about matters that affect their personal lives and the future religious well-being of their families.

Many of the statements issued from Roman offices do not concern revealed truths but rather address issues that can still be legitimately discussed. These include many issues of sex and gender as well as such church disciplines as celibacy for priests and the possibility of ordaining women as priests.

The new pope is wise enough to know that, according to one of the oldest tenets of the church, abstract teachings must be tested against human experience. The church refers to this as the gift of Reception and acknowledges that nothing can be considered a teaching of the Church if it is not received by the believing people.

The decision on which books to be included in the canon of the Bible depended on their reception by good Catholic people. Theologians agree that Pope Paul VI’s encyclical _ Humanae Vitae _ banning birth control has not been received by the Catholic people. Even Pope John XXIII’s efforts to restore Latin in seminaries failed when tested by the experience of the people who are the church.

We have reached a remarkable and perhaps very fruitful moment in Catholicism. The new pope is a great theologian who is well suited to enter the dialogue already under way with a Catholic people who are more theologically sophisticated than at any time in history. He is wiser than the observers who expect him to crack down on or otherwise dominate a people of God who are no longer children in the faith.

He is superbly qualified to enter into the ongoing theological conversation that, beneath all the headlines, is the real story of contemporary Catholicism.

MO/PH RNS END

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)