Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  Rereading a Crisis

  In 1970, there were 448,508 Catholic priests around the world. Twenty-five years later, despite a considerable growth in the world’s Catholic population, that number had dropped to 404,750. Almost 46,000 priests had left the active ministry. Recruitment to seminaries had plummeted in the developed world, and seminaries themselves had experienced conditions ranging from confusion to turmoil since Vatican II. Discipline among the clergy faltered, and while statistical evidence demonstrated that malfeasance among Roman Catholic priests was no more severe (in absolute and relative terms) than among the clergy of other Christian denominations or among professionals in society, scandals involving priests were evils in themselves and another barrier to recruitment and reform within the presbyterate.80

  Celibacy and authority are conventionally taken to be the roots of the post-conciliar crisis of the Catholic priesthood. The suggestion is that the crisis will be resolved when Latin-rite Catholicism ordains married men to the priesthood and adopts a more congregational, less episcopal (and papal) style of leadership and decision making. Throughout his pontificate, John Paul attempted to reform the priesthood on the basis of a different judgment. The roots of the crisis of the priesthood, he believed, went much deeper into the subsoil of both Church and society, and involved the Church’s sometimes bracing, sometimes disorienting encounter with modern culture.

  While pressures on family life in the late twentieth century, the sexual revolution, and the attractions of a consumer society all had had a bearing on the crisis, the Pope suggested that an even more profound challenge came from four ideas. An unconscious rationalism had made biblical revelation seem, at best, a noble fiction. A closed individualism had made it very difficult for men and women to form binding and enduring relationships; the resulting loneliness was one cause of hedonism and the frantic pursuit of pleasure. A kind of practical atheism had drained life of its mystery. And the distortion of freedom into an assertion of the individual’s will-to-power had uncoupled freedom from truth.81

  Absorbed into the Church from the wider culture, these four ideas had had a powerful and often corrosive effect on priests’ understanding of their ministry, on recruitment to the priesthood, and on priestly formation in seminaries. In John Paul’s view, the path to reform lay in revitalizing the idea of the ministerial priesthood according to Vatican II’s teaching on the universal call to holiness. That reform, with specific reference to how priests were trained, was the agenda of the Eighth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which met in Rome from September 30 through October 28, 1990.

  Men for Others

  The work of this Synod was completed by the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis [I Shall Give You Shepherds], which took its title from the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible (Jeremiah 3.15). Issued on March 25, 1992, Pastores Dabo Vobis is quite likely the longest papal document ever written: 226 pages in the original Vatican edition. Given the seriousness of the crisis in the priesthood, the exhortation is strikingly positive and relaxed. Like the Synod whose work it incorporated, Pastores Dabo Vobis describes itself as an address “on the formation of priests.” It is also John Paul’s most comprehensive statement on the nature and function of the Catholic priesthood. Like Christifideles Laici, the 1988 exhortation on the vocation of lay Christians, it provides an authoritative “key” to interpreting Vatican II.

  Lifting up the distinctive vocation of the ministerial priesthood, which in turn ennobles the priestly character of all baptized Christians, was very high on John Paul II’s teaching agenda in Pastores Dabo Vobis. The roots of that distinctiveness, he insists, can only be understood theologically and biblically. When Jesus told his fellow townsmen in the Nazareth synagogue that Isaiah’s messianic prophecy was being fulfilled in their midst because he had been consecrated by an anointing with the Holy Spirit, he was describing the essence of the new kind of priesthood he was bringing into the world—a priesthood of perfect mediation between God and humanity. This was something new in salvation history and is, according to John Paul, “absolutely necessary” for understanding the nature of the Church’s ordained ministry, which is a unique participation in the priesthood of Christ.82

  To be a priest, then, is not to perform a task or play a role, but to become an alter Christus, “another Christ,” a personal continuation of the mediating priesthood of Jesus himself. Ordination does not simply authorize the priest to conduct certain types of ecclesiastical business. It “configures” him to Christ in a unique way.83 That configuration confers a solemn obligation to serve the Christian community. Service is the way the priest’s unique sacramental authority becomes an image of “Christ the Priest.”

  The image of Christ the Good Shepherd reveals the specific form of holiness that must inform the priesthood—the holiness of “pastoral charity.”84 The priest’s “headship” of a local Catholic community is not defined by power. Christian “headship” consists in being a servant, a man suffused with pastoral charity—one who makes a “total gift of self to the Church, following the example of Christ.”85

  John Paul analyzes the “vocation crisis” and the dynamics of vocational discernment in a distinctly countercultural way. Discerning a priestly vocation, he proposes, is not a matter of deciding on a worthwhile career. It is the fruit of “an inexpressible dialogue between God and human beings, between the love of God who calls and the freedom of individuals who lovingly respond to him.”86 A priestly vocation begins with God, not with an individual. It is a summons from God, not a means of advancing ambitions within the Church. Priesthood conceived as a means of “empowering” individuals is utterly foreign to John Paul II’s and the Council’s thinking on the subject. So is any notion of the priesthood as membership in a clerical caste.87

  At the same time, the “call” to the priesthood is heard in the Church and judged by the Church. No one can claim a “right” to be ordained on the basis of a personal discernment alone. The Church, through the local bishop, decides whether a “call” is authentic.88 The bishop and his priests, for their part, have a serious pastoral obligation to preach and teach about the priesthood as a possible vocation.89 But this is not a responsibility of priests and bishops alone: “all the members of the Church, without exception, have the grace and responsibility to look after vocations.” 90

  Pastores Dabo Vobis makes priestly training more rigorous by stressing the centrality of spiritual formation and a demanding academic formation in philosophy and theology. In many countries, John Paul writes, priests serve the most well-educated laity in the history of Christianity. Priests who lack intellectual maturity and an ongoing interest in theology will not be able to make the Gospel “credible to the legitimate demands of human reason.”91 Priests should study theology as a discipline “ordered to nourishing the faith,” he writes, for theology is, at bottom, a means of fostering a deeper personal and communal relationship with Jesus Christ. Theology can “know” many things, but what theology should seek to know above all is Jesus Christ.92 As for the seminary, it should be conceived, the Pope suggests, on the biblical image of Christ, who, after calling his apostles, took them aside to give them a special period of teaching and formation.93 That this has not always been the experience of seminaries goes without saying. That it ought to be the image informing the seminaries of the third millennium is John Paul’s evangelically centered proposal.94

  Thinking in Centuries

  One of the most interesting and least commented-upon facets of John Paul II’s pontificate has been his exceptional success as a recruiter of priests: “the best vocation director the Church has ever had,” as one curial cardinal put it.95 While there has been no scientific survey on the subject, the cardinal’s praise seems borne out by experience, at least of an anecdotal sort. Seminaries today are replete with young men who quite frankly say that John Paul’s personal example was instrumental in leading them to discern a priestly vocation. Why is an interesting question, the answer
to which suggests another countercultural facet of John Paul’s personality and accomplishment.

  A clue can be found in an observation from one former seminary rector: “a man will give his life for a mystery, but not for a question mark.”96 On this analysis, the confusions about priestly identity that had followed Vatican II had raised so many questions about the nature and function of the priesthood as to make it a very unattractive proposal for many young men. By reviving the idea of the priesthood as a sacral vocation rather than an ecclesiastical function, John Paul has given young men a challenge to heroism that many have found compelling.

  John Paul’s impact on the future of the Roman Catholic priesthood during the next two generations or so has been more than a matter of breathing new life into an ancient idea—the priest as alter Christus, “another Christ.” It has also been a matter of persuasion by personal example. To Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, the Pope’s “personal witness of priesthood has integrated and spiritually enriched his theological statements,” and has been “of utmost importance” in making the priesthood a compelling possibility over against the myriad possibilities of making a success of one’s life in the world.97 That personal witness has also provided at least an existential answer to those wondering whether the “gift and mystery” of the priesthood, as John Paul described it in his vocational memoir, is worth the sacrifice of family life and personal independence it involves. Karol Wojtyła has lived an immensely rich human experience as a celibate priest under a vow of obedience.

  The reform of seminaries envisioned in Pastores Dabo Vobis will take longer to realize. Contrary to popular imagination, the Roman Catholic Church is not governed like a well-run army, in which a decision at the top of the chain of command is quickly and efficiently transmitted to and carried out at the corps, division, regiment, battalion, company, and platoon levels. Local bishops who have not been persuaded by the vision of a new evangelization, or who are unsympathetic to the theology of priesthood in John Paul’s apostolic exhortation, or who are unwilling to challenge entrenched seminary faculties can impede or block a full implementation of the document’s prescriptions. Nor has John Paul II’s view of ordained ministry been eagerly embraced by many theologians on seminary faculties. As that generation of intellectuals fades from the stage, a new generation, less scarred by the post-Vatican II battles, may be willing to look afresh at John Paul’s ideas and prescriptions and see in them a path beyond the clericalism the older generation rightly criticized. Again, there is at least anecdotal evidence to suggest that this process is already under way. Seminaries that have embraced Pastores Dabo Vobis and whose faculties teach the theology of priesthood on which it is based tend to be growing, while seminaries resistant to John Paul’s reform are either static or dying. That growing seminaries self-consciously attuned to the Pope’s vision can be found in two countries where the crisis of the priesthood was most acute—the United States and Holland—is interesting, if not definitive.

  The impact of Pastores Dabo Vobis will only be measured accurately sometime in the middle of the twenty-first century. That it set in place a reference point that demands attention is conceded by virtually all but its most implacable critics.

  RETURN TO THE GEMELLI

  John Paul had been experiencing occasional intestinal discomfort for some time when his physician, Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, sought the advice of Dr. Francesco Crucitti, who had performed the life-saving surgery on the Pope on May 13, 1981. After examinations in the Apostolic Palace, Crucitti decided that in-hospital tests were necessary, and during his Angelus address to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday afternoon, July 12, 1992, the Pope announced that he was leaving for the Policlinico Gemelli later that day and asked for prayers. Further testing revealed a growth in the large intestine, and John Paul was operated on early in the morning of July 15. During the four-hour procedure a large, benign tumor was removed, along with some stones from the Pope’s gall bladder. Laboratory tests on the tumor revealed a small “center” of atypical but nonmalignant cells. The surgery was completely successful, no further therapy was required, and John Paul was out of bed and sitting in an armchair the next day.98 He met what he often called his Angelus “appointment” with Romans and pilgrims on Sunday, July 19, through a tape-recorded message. Leaving the Gemelli on July 28, the Pope continued his recuperation at Castel Gandolfo and three weeks later flew to Lorenzago di Cadore in the Dolomites, where he stayed in a cottage for more than two weeks of convalescence and holiday before returning to Castel Gandolfo on September 2.

  Despite the seventy-two-year-old Pope’s reasonably rapid recovery from major surgery, this episode launched a series of speculations about his health and his imminent demise that would intensify throughout the 1990s. Some of this may have been the result of conscious or unconscious assumptions that John Paul had fulfilled his historic role in the collapse of communism; some of it, from the Pope’s detractors in the Church and in the press, was, it ought to be admitted, a matter of wishes fathering thoughts. The traditional silence of the Holy See on such matters had created a working assumption among Vatican reporters that the Church bent or obscured the truth when making statements about the Pope’s health. Nothing that press spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls, himself a trained physician, could do could shake this conviction in the minds of some journalists.

  Interest in the Pope’s health, and in details of it that undoubtedly struck curial officials and the papal apartment as no one’s business but the patient’s, was inevitable. Yet the greatest health crisis in the history of the modern papacy—John Paul’s lengthy convalescence from Agca’s assassination attempt—had not generated the raft of rumors about a “failing” Pope that followed John Paul’s colon surgery in 1992 and his subsequent health problems. The relative lack of rumor-mongering in 1981 was due in part to Cardinal Agostino Casaroli’s initiative in bringing in an international group of consultants to review the work of the local physicians and to make recommendations. Casaroli’s prudence had given the entire process public credibility. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Casaroli’s successor and the only man in a position to make such a decision, evidently saw no need to convene such a body in this instance, nor did he do so in later cases. A different result followed the return to the traditional practice.

  On October 9, 1992, John Paul II flew to the Dominican Republic, where the fourth general conference of CELAM, the council of Latin American bishops’ conferences, was meeting to mark the fifth centenary of the evangelization of the Americas, begun with Columbus’s voyage in 1492. The Columbus quincentenary launched an intense controversy in Europe and the Western Hemisphere over the heritage of colonialism in North, Central, and South America. John Paul saw the occasion in explicitly evangelical terms, and tried, once again, to link the Church’s work for justice and development in Latin America to the Church’s primary task of evangelization. As at Puebla, the Pope stressed the obligation to work for justice and the importance of doing so as the Church, not as a partisan political actor imposing a Catholic “model” of development.99 And, as at Puebla, much of the commentary on the Santo Domingo address misread this as papal quietism.

  At Santo Domingo John Paul also proposed a Pan-American Synod that would bring the CELAM bishops together with bishops from North America to consider the new evangelization in hemispheric perspective. The Pope’s imagination was fired by the idea of one hemisphere with one (admittedly complex) history of evangelization—far more fired, in fact, than the imagination of virtually any local bishop in the New World. Latin Americans feared that, in any Pan-American Synod, their concerns would simply be overwhelmed by the rich bishops from El Norte. The North Americans found it hard to think of their pastoral situation as analogous to the Latin Americans’. John Paul continued to push the Pan-American idea during the 1990s, convinced that the evangelization of the Americas 500 years earlier had created an imperative for common reflection and action.100

  THE SYMPHONY OF TRUTH

  On October 1
1, 1992, the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II signed the apostolic constitution Fidei Depositum [The Deposit of Faith], promulgating the new Catechism of the Catholic Church mandated by the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in 1985. Fidei Depositum and the Catechism were formally presented by the Pope at a special Vatican ceremony on December 7, 1992, attended by the College of Cardinals, curial leaders, the diplomatic corps, and representatives of bishops’ conference doctrine committees from around the world. During the ceremony, the Pope gave copies of the Catechism to two children, representing the world’s young people.101 The Catechism’s logo, used in all language editions, was taken from a Christian tombstone in the Catacombs of Domitilla in Rome. The late third-century carving depicts a shepherd under a tree, holding a pastoral staff and a flute while tending a sheep: Christ the Good Shepherd, leading the flock by the authority of his staff, draws them to the shade of the tree of life by the melody of what John Paul calls, in Depositum Fidei, the “symphony of faith.” That ancient image sums up the purpose and content of the thoroughly contemporary Catechism of the Catholic Church.