A radical path of change.

September 1, 2012 10:16 AM

Top Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini: Church 200 years behind the times. 'Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini was a courageous and outspoken figure during the years he headed Europe's largest Catholic diocese'. In an interview recorded in August, and published the day after his death, he said: "The Church is tired... our prayer rooms are empty." 'Martini, once tipped as a future pope, urged the Church to recognise its errors and to embark on a radical path of change, beginning with the Pope.'

In the interview, the cardinal made sweeping criticisms of the Catholic Church.

'Catholics lacked confidence in the Church, he said. "Our culture has grown old, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our religious rites and the vestments we wear are pompous."'

posted by VikingSword (49 comments total)

Interesting article on the American church's finances at The Economist.
posted by Egg Shen at 10:20 AM on September 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

As a life-long Catholic, here's what I have to say: You systematically enabled child molesters for decades, shuffled them around when their crimes became too frequent to hide and then attacked those children for daring to speak out. Your sins are much more than pompous rites and robes.
posted by tommasz at 10:29 AM on September 1, 2012 [32 favorites]

"The child sex scandals oblige us to undertake a journey of transformation," Cardinal Martini say.

A bit of understatement.
posted by asnider at 10:35 AM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Is there a link to the interview that was published the day after his death?
posted by klarck at 10:36 AM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

our religious rites and the vestments we wear are pompous

That's the only thing they got going for them.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:39 AM on September 1, 2012 [5 favorites]

I couldn't find it by searching the Corriere della Sera website, but I gave up after the sixth page of obituaries and tributes and similar.

Agree that Martini was one of the good eggs.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:49 AM on September 1, 2012

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posted by rattleandhum at 11:09 AM on September 1, 2012

Here's the interview. (In Italian, but should be google-translatable.)
posted by madcaptenor at 11:23 AM on September 1, 2012

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posted by vorpal bunny at 11:26 AM on September 1, 2012

[A few comments removed. Please do not predict the bad things that might happen in a thread; that does not make the thread better.]
posted by cortex at 11:28 AM on September 1, 2012 [5 favorites]

MARTINI, L'ultima intervista via SKY.it
(in Italian, of course)
posted by liza at 11:28 AM on September 1, 2012

My favorite words of the Cardinal:
Vorrei essere parte di una Chiesa che s'indigna e combatte a fianco dei poveri e dei diseredati, che striglia i potenti della Terra quando si riempiono la bocca di Dio e sono così lontani nel loro operato.
I wish I were part of a Church that gets mad, that fights for the poor and homeless, that disses the Wolrd Powers when they talk and talk about God but don't act according to the Word of God.

I couldn't find it by searching the Corriere della Sera website, but I gave up after the sixth page of obituaries and tributes and similar.
Several links in the Front Section
posted by francesca too at 11:28 AM on September 1, 2012 [19 favorites]

PDF OF THE INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

L'ultima intervista: «Chiesa indietro di 200 anni. Perché non si scuote, perché abbiamo paura?» with Google Translate link.
posted by liza at 11:35 AM on September 1, 2012

"strigliare" is Italian for "disses"? Cool. I never would have guessed that from the dictionary.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:52 AM on September 1, 2012

Paging Pope Guilty.
posted by telstar at 12:05 PM on September 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

Thanks liza, that is a powerful and direct piece of writing, hopefully it will gain increased weight with his passing.
posted by meinvt at 12:05 PM on September 1, 2012

I wish I were part of a Church that gets mad, that fights for the poor and homeless, that disses the Wolrd Powers when they talk and talk about God but don't act according to the Word of God.

Sounds a lot like Liberation Theology, which has at least one very powerful opponent in the Church's hierarchy.
posted by hangashore at 12:11 PM on September 1, 2012 [6 favorites]

Liberation theology does have a powerful advocate or two, though.
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:22 PM on September 1, 2012

(Oh, and St. Basil as well.)
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:27 PM on September 1, 2012

200 hundred years behind? That's generous and a bit too kind.
posted by loquacious at 12:36 PM on September 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

St Peter says he's sorry: deathbed repentance is one thing; posthumous publication, you're just having a laugh.
posted by Segundus at 2:00 PM on September 1, 2012

"Father Karl Rahner willingly used the image of the embers hidden under ashes. I see in the Church today is so much ash over the coals that often comes over me a sense of helplessness. As you can release the ash from the fire so as to revive the flame of love? First we have to look for this fire. Where are the single people full of generosity like the Good Samaritan? "

Where are they? In the orthodox religious orders. Those groups are growing and gaining in numbers. The liberal groups backed by Rahner and Martini continue to fade away with no prospects for revival.

The Jesuits in the U.S. have started to make a bit of a come back... where? In the conservative Louisiana province first of all. The Dominicans in the U.S. are making a comeback... where? In the eastern and western provinces, which are conservative... not in the liberal southern province. (Archbishop DiNoia, O.P. explains why.)

Monasteries that chose a liberal and reformist path after Vatican II are starting to close.

Places that have taken a traditional line are building new buildings due to lack of space.
posted by Jahaza at 2:26 PM on September 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

I don't think he was speaking of the situation of church in the USA.
posted by hat_eater at 2:29 PM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Jahaza, should I take it that you take the view that Vatican II was a mistake?
posted by jaduncan at 3:26 PM on September 1, 2012

strigliare

1. = brush or groom
2. = castigate
posted by francesca too at 3:34 PM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

The Jesuits in the U.S. have started to make a bit of a come back... where? In the conservative Louisiana province first of all. The Dominicans in the U.S. are making a comeback... where? In the eastern and western provinces, which are conservative... not in the liberal southern province. (Archbishop DiNoia, O.P. explains why.)

Monasteries that chose a liberal and reformist path after Vatican II are starting to close.

You know, it's entirely possible that this is as much a result of the church having swung violently away from any sort of reform and alienated many liberal Catholic to the extent that they do now feel welcome in the church as anything else.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 3:34 PM on September 1, 2012 [10 favorites]

I don't think he was speaking of the situation of church in the USA

No, he was talking about the empty churches of Italy. It has been a long, long time since they were full. Italians still get baptized, they mostly get married, they definitively get a funeral in a church, but the attendance to the required weekly Mass is low. Their voting rarely reflects how the Church would want them to vote.
posted by francesca too at 3:50 PM on September 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

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posted by Flood at 4:04 PM on September 1, 2012

You know, it's entirely possible that this is as much a result of the church having swung violently away from any sort of reform and alienated many liberal Catholic to the extent that they do now feel welcome in the church as anything else.

Probably not the case. Liberal churches in all denominations are empty; it's the liberal, mainline Protestant denominations that are dying, while the reactionary conservative end of the spectrum continues to grow.
posted by sonic meat machine at 4:19 PM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I don't think he was speaking of the situation of church in the USA.

You can describe the situation in France or England the same way, and I believe the situation in Italy is similar though I don't have the same level of knowledge of it. Other countries have different circumstances, but nowhere I am a aware of where liberalization of the sort Rahner and Martini has filled the seminaries, monasteries or churches.
posted by Jahaza at 4:23 PM on September 1, 2012

The end of Catholic Ireland: Many Irish people have ditched the religion of their ancestors, but the generous impulses of faith live on
posted by homunculus at 4:26 PM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

"The child sex scandals oblige us to undertake a journey of transformation," Cardinal Martini say.

Not everyone seems to really understand this.
posted by homunculus at 4:29 PM on September 1, 2012 [2 favorites]

Was the publication deliberately delayed until his death, or is that just a coincidence?
posted by Brocktoon at 5:20 PM on September 1, 2012

mainline Protestant denominations that are dying, while the reactionary conservative end of the spectrum continues to grow.

The Southern Baptist Convention has seen a decline in membership as well. Just for the record.
posted by raysmj at 7:00 PM on September 1, 2012

Liberalism in the western Church, both Catholic and Protestant, has been a dead end, a stepping stone to outright irreligion, where liberalism alone remains as the article of faith. It certainly wasn't intended as such, and when you meet the 70- and 80-something year old remnants of the great wave of 1960s and 1970s modernizers, at least the ones that didn't go full on pagan in their anger at Reagan, Falwell, and/or John Paul II, they still don't get it. Clearly not enough Burke was read in the seminary or they would have guessed that 2000 years of faith propogated and preserved by othodoxy and obedience wasn't going to fare well when told it had to conform to the politics of the moment.
posted by MattD at 7:04 PM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

You know, it's entirely possible that this is as much a result of the church having swung violently away from any sort of reform and alienated many liberal Catholic to the extent that they do now feel welcome in the church as anything else.

So are you saying that--if they haven't left for a denomination or are simply staying home on Sundays--these people would have become priests or taken religious vows? But they didn't because they left the church? That makes no sense; if you believe the Catholic Church is what she claims to be, then that's not an appropriate response; you'd stick it out and make do. If we look at the Episcopal Church in America--which has enacted every change liberal Catholics have clamored for, every single one, women priests, birth control, abortion, homosexual bishops, blessing of homosexual relationships, permitting anything imaginable liturgically, and on and on--how do its numbers of priests and religious fare? Not good. If you were correct, the Episcopal Church would be bursting at the seams.
posted by resurrexit at 7:19 PM on September 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

I wish I were part of a Church that gets mad, that fights for the poor and homeless, that disses the Wolrd Powers when they talk and talk about God but don't act according to the Word of God.

Sounds a lot like Liberation Theology, which has at least one very powerful opponent in the Church's hierarchy.

Well, to be fair, the guy who has Ratzinger's old job as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Inquisition!), is an open admirer and student of Liberation Theology. He was appointed by the Pope. Just this summer. The Church is super-complicated and just doesn't lend itself well to revolutionary connotations of left and right... On the complex issues, the Church's response is more often a both/and ("liberal and conservative," to use other inadequate terms) answer, not the either/or institution it's often made out to be.
posted by resurrexit at 7:27 PM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ratzinger himself is an admirer of Liberation Theology properly understood. Yes, there's the "Instruction on certain aspects of the 'Theology of Liberation" in 1984, but there's also the "Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation" in 1986. And that phrase "certain aspects" is critical.
posted by Jahaza at 8:56 PM on September 1, 2012

The seeming trend that liberal, "adaptive" religion does not always fare as well as more "orthodox"or strict interpretations seems to be the flipside of Sam Harris's attack on religious moderates. Harris says that moderates are problematic because they (inadvertently) "cover" for the zealots.

I would add -- as someone who lacks belief -- that religious moderation in many ways makes no sense. Having myself left Catholicism when I reached the age of reason, I think it is odd that there are people who want to "reform" Catholicism or somehow make it catch up to the times. If you get rid of the hierarchy, the gender roles, and the other assorted anachronisms, it is not Catholicism anymore.

We can see similar examples with the "revelation" to LDS hierarchy in 1978 (only a few years after the civil rights movements of the 60s, which I am sure is just a divine coincidence!) that people of African descent could (finally) fully participate in all of the rites of that church.

I also think to some people I know who are homosexual and who participate in liberal Christian denominations. I can't wrap my mind around it. Numerous passages in the Bible rather clearly state that homosexuality is not to be looked on with favor. Thus, it seems plain (to me) that this means that the Bible is wrong and hateful. Instead, many people go through elaborate mental contortions to say that the Bible can be "read" in ways that are not blatantly homophobic.

Finally, to preempt arguments that theology is a rich discipline with varied facets, I do not dispute that there is an impressive corpus of literature which makes sense if you accept certain precepts (for which there is no evidence) as given. Just like alchemy.
posted by dhens at 9:22 PM on September 1, 2012 [3 favorites]

Rome is 200 years away from modernity and, by turning its face away from modernity, will increase the gap. The subjugation of women had a long run. Slavery had a long run. The Inquisition had a long run.
posted by SteveLaudig at 10:52 PM on September 1, 2012

Numerous passages in the Bible rather clearly state that homosexuality is not to be looked on with favor.

Not really. You could count the number of verses homophobes cite without running out of fingers. They'd fit on one index card. They're all ambiguous.

Sodom? Well, if we read the Bible literally, Jude 1:7 tells us that the men of Sodom were destroyed because they were heterosexuals. When they tried to rape some angels, they were going after "strange flesh" (sarkos heteros), flesh that was different from theirs.

Leviticus calls sex between men an abomination. It also calls eating shellfish an abomination. Anyhow, the New Testament explicitly throws out the rules of the cleanliness code (Peter's treyf smorgasbord).

Paul is as close as the Bible gets to unambiguous homophobia. Of course, what he was condemning was temple prostitution, not loving same-sex partnerships, but Paul certainly does sound pretty angry about it in two or three sentences.

That's...about it.

Don't get me started on abortion. The verses most commonly quoted by pro-lifers are actually pro-choice. (previously)

The Bible was written by oppressed people, carrying the message that oppression will not last forever. It requires elaborate mental contortions to turn the Bible into a book about homophobia. Whether or not you're a Christian, there's no reason to reinforce reactionary propaganda to the contrary.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:49 AM on September 2, 2012 [14 favorites]

Piggy backing on justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow's point, I don't understand any Christian religion using anyone but Christ as the model for how believers should behave.

Sure, your Peters, Pauls, Augustines, Aquinases, John Paul II's have great things to say, but the best lessons all stem from Christ.

It's pretty simple, folks: Love your God and love your neighbor. I always find it odd when Christians quote the bible to support their homophobia but no one ever quotes Christ in these situations.
posted by EJXD2 at 4:21 AM on September 2, 2012 [4 favorites]

The catholic church has a long history of brilliant and humane reformers who generally were completely ignored, if they weren't burned at the stake.
posted by empath at 7:25 AM on September 2, 2012

> Where are they? In the orthodox religious orders. Those groups are growing and gaining in numbers. The liberal groups backed by Rahner and Martini continue to fade away with no prospects for revival.

I can't understand why any Catholic would want to turn the clock back to the pre-Vatican II era, knowing what we now know about the terrible abuses that resulted from that era's culture of secrecy and unaccountability. Yes, there are some things worth salvaging from the wreck, like church music and liturgy, but make no mistake, it is a salvage operation, not a revival. And just because I happen to like plainchant and traditional liturgy (very much in the Vatican II spirit of ressourcement, by the way), that doesn't mean I buy into the whole grisly package of conservative Catholicism that you label 'orthodoxy'.

> Other countries have different circumstances, but nowhere I am aware of where liberalization of the sort Rahner and Martini has filled the seminaries, monasteries or churches.

Where does it come from, this assumption that the success of religion can be measured in terms of 'full churches'? Perhaps it has something to do with Dawkins's reductive notion of religion as a meme whose sole purpose is to reproduce itself. It certainly has very little to do with my idea of Christianity. Not for the first time, I'm reminded of Bonhoeffer's distinction between cheap grace and costly grace. Maybe falling numbers and declining vocations are the price the Catholic Church has to pay in order to recover its soul.
posted by verstegan at 7:55 AM on September 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Rome is 200 years away from modernity and, by turning its face away from modernity, will increase the gap.

Well that's part of the point of Archbishop Di Noia's address, which I linked above. Rahner, Martini, et al. were, like certain of the 19th century modernists and certain of the Cartesian influenced neo-scholastics struggling to make the Church modern, but at this point in history, such a project is backward looking. Di Noia describes the young Catholics relationship to modernity:

Whereas [the older generation] tended to experience modernity (and then post-modernity) as a kind of adventure that never or rarely touched the core of our faith, these 20- to 30- somethings have experienced the moral relativism and eclectic religiosity of the ambient culture-and possibly of their own personal experience- and recognized it as a chaotic but radical alternative to Christianity with which no compromise is possible.

It may be hard for us to comprehend, but these young people do not share the cultural optimism that many of us learned to take for granted in the post-conciliar period, even if with deepening unease and disillusionment as the years of the late twentieth century wore on.

The Second Vatican Council, even for those untroubled by the hermeneutics of discontinuity, was nonetheless seen as an affirmation of modern culture. There was the perception that the Church had previously adopted an overly negative view of the culture, creating a Catholic culture that was insulated from the wider culture (cf. Gleason 1987). But now the Church seemed to be promoting an embrace of that culture and an affirmation of its humanistic values and its social advocacy. In hindsight, we see the terrible irony of this move, as it coincided precisely with increasingly radical departures from the Christian worldview throughout western culture, as the sexual revolution gathered momentum, as abortion came to be legalized in more and more societies, and as a media-driven materialistic consumerism spread widely in the West and elsewhere (see Rowland 2003). With these and other developments, the already fragile social, cultural and, in some countries, political legitimation and reinforcement of Christian values in the wider society began to unravel. The Church now finds herself at odds with many powerful trends in western culture. What is more, "In the powerful yet soft secularising totalitarianism of distinctively modern culture, our greatest enemy is...the Church's ‘own internal secularisation' which, when it occurs, does so through the ‘...largely unconscious' adoption of the ‘ideas and practices' of seemingly ‘benign adversaries'" (Nichols 2008, 141). There are many signs of this invasion of modern cultural assumptions.

posted by Jahaza at 8:47 AM on September 2, 2012

I can't understand why any Catholic would want to turn the clock back to the pre-Vatican II era, knowing what we now know about the terrible abuses that resulted from that era's culture of secrecy and unaccountability.

This is some bizarre kind of strawman you are constructing, suggesting that my terms pick out the worst abuses of the past to be repeated.

Yes, there are some things worth salvaging from the wreck, like church music and liturgy, but make no mistake, it is a salvage operation, not a revival. And just because I happen to like plainchant and traditional liturgy (very much in the Vatican II spirit of ressourcement, by the way), that doesn't mean I buy into the whole grisly package of conservative Catholicism that you label 'orthodoxy'.

Could you just say what you mean instead of e.g. "Grisly package"? What is your dispute with orthodoxy, if you have one?

Where does it come from, this assumption that the success of religion can be measured in terms of 'full churches'? Perhaps it has something to do with Dawkins's reductive notion of religion as a meme whose sole purpose is to reproduce itself. It certainly has very little to do with my idea of Christianity. Not for the first time, I'm reminded of Bonhoeffer's distinction between cheap grace and costly grace. Maybe falling numbers and declining vocations are the price the Catholic Church has to pay in order to recover its soul.

It comes from reading the interview that is the topic of the FPP. I agree that "full churches" is not the measure of holiness and zeal, but my point is that to the extent that it is, in some limited way a meaure of sucess, it's not achieved through liberalization, but generally through challenging people.

I agree to some extent that declining numbers is to some degree the result of the abscense in this generation many of the e.g. lukewarm time-serving clergy. But the shortage was not as inevitably bad as it became, as there were ways of attracting people that we are now figuring out (or remembering).
posted by Jahaza at 9:01 AM on September 2, 2012

recognized it as a chaotic but radical alternative to Christianity with which no compromise is possible.

I agree that modernity is a radical alternative to Christianity with which no compromise is possible.
posted by empath at 9:12 AM on September 2, 2012 [1 favorite]

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini made three suggestions, not one.

1. Radically turn away from corruption.

2. Reading the Bible and being changed by it.

3. An embracing of the sacraments.

I agree with the Cardinal that trying to achieve #1 without the others will be fruitless.
posted by michaelh at 2:22 PM on September 2, 2012

Here is one translation of Martini's last intervier. Here's another.
posted by aqsakal at 10:43 PM on September 2, 2012