I did not actually read the deathbed interview given by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini two weeks before he died until after I had seen the gloss which conservative Roman Catholics tried to put upon it. Do not believe media accounts, the reactionaries said \u2013 in what proved to be a dextrous display of revisionist mental gymnastics \u2013 the cardinal was calling for a religious revival, not for the abolition of unpopular church teachings.<\/p>\n
But go to the text and you see something very much what you might have expected from the man who was the guardian of a more open kind of orthodoxy for the past 30 years \u2013 and who was distinguished by his ability to communicate the message of the gospel to doubters and those who were far from faith. Unlike much of the hierarchy he was a man who was not afraid of dialogue.<\/p>\n
What was a surprise was how candid, and indeed withering, was his last spiritual testament. \u00a0\u201cThe Church is 200 years behind the times,\u201d he said. It is old, tired, bureaucratic, with liturgies and vestments which are pompous. Its wealth is as heavy a burden as was that of the rich young man who went sadly away . It needs a \u201cradical transformation beginning with the Pope and his bishops.\u201d The paedophilia scandals oblige it to undertake a path of conversion. It needs to see the sacraments not as \u201can instrument to discipline people but to help them on their journey of life and during their weaker moments\u201d. Unless the church \u201cadopts a more generous attitude towards divorced persons, it will lose the allegiance of future generations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
No wonder that The Tablet <\/em>called it \u201ca sweeping indictment of the last two papacies\u201d and saw the interview as \u201can agenda for a papacy that never was, but might have been\u201d. It was \u201ca manifesto for the next conclave\u201d from beyond the grave. No wonder, too, that the Vatican media ignored the interview; the in-house newspaper L\u2019Osservatore Romano<\/em> didn\u2019t even mention it. The degree of official concern in Rome was clear from the fact that neither Pope Benedict nor his number two, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, attended the cardinal\u2019s funeral. The Pope didn\u2019t dare mention the late cardinal during his Sunday Angelus prayer in St. Peter\u2019s Square.<\/p>\n Equally revealing was the language the Pope used in an address the day before Cardinal Martini\u2019s death in which he suggested that those who disagree with Catholic teachings should leave the church. \u201cJudas,\u201d the Pope said, \u201ccould have left, as many of the disciples did; indeed, he would have left if he were honest. Instead he remained with Jesus. He did not remain because of faith, or because of love, but with the secret intention of taking vengeance on the Master.\u201d<\/p>\n Note not just the extremity of branding those who dare to demand dialogue on church teaching as Judases, but also how he chose to refer to Jesus as \u201cthe Master\u201d. This is the language of power and control. By contrast a close friend of Cardinal Martini described his testamentary interview as \u201can act of love towards the Church\u201d. The 200,000 people who filed past the cardinal\u2019s body would appear to agree.<\/p>\n Among Cardinal Martini\u2019s final recommendations was that the Pope and the bishops should find \u201ctwelve unconventional people to take on leadership roles\u201d. They should be \u201cthose who are close to the poor\u201d or \u201cwho can galvanise young people by being willing to try new approaches\u201d. Those who are ratchetting the church further and further to the right are unlikely to embrace that notion. \u201cFrantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt,\u201d said Reinhold Niebuhr.\u00a0 A young Martini in the church today would not be made a bishop let alone a cardinal.<\/p>\n The Church Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I did not actually read the deathbed interview given by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini two weeks before he died until after I had seen the gloss which conservative Roman Catholics tried to put upon it. Do not believe media accounts, the reactionaries said \u2013 in what proved to be a dextrous display of revisionist mental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,41],"tags":[493,708,153,719],"class_list":["post-6024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-church","category-religion","tag-cardinal-carlo-maria-martini","tag-catholic-church","tag-pope-benedict-xvi","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6024"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8093,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6024\/revisions\/8093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}