Blog of Q's

The following
article (always click on titles for links to originals) appeared
shortly before the election of the pope. Thanks to James Murphy for
sending it to us.

By John L. Allen, Jr., National Catholic Reporter

… In his memoirs, “Milestones,” Ratzinger reflected on the German
church’s struggle to hold onto its schools under the Nazis. “It dawned
on me that, with their insistence on preserving institutions, [the
bishops] in part misread the reality. Merely to guarantee institutions
is useless if there are no people to support those institutions from
inner conviction.”   In the case of at least some colleges,
Ratzinger’s instinct would thus be to drop the pretense that these are
still Catholic institutions. He spelled this out in a book-length
interview called Salt of the Earth: “Once the church has acquired some
good or position, she inclines to defend it. The capacity for
self-moderation and self-pruning is not adequately developed …. it’s
precisely the fact that the church clings to the institutional
structure when nothing really stands behind it any longer that brings
the church into disrepute.”  The point applies also to hospitals,
social service centers, and other institutions…
 
Because Ratzinger is the prime theoretician of papal authority, it is
often assumed that under him the Vatican would take on even more
massive proportions. In fact, like most conservatives, Ratzinger feels
an instinctive aversion to big government. …  “The power typical
of political rule or technical management cannot be and must not be the
style of the church’s power,” Ratzinger wrote in 1988’s “A New Song for
the Lord.” “In the past two decades an excessive amount of
institutionalization has come about in the church, which is alarming. …
Future reforms should therefore aim not at the creation of yet more
institutions, but at their reduction.”   While Ratzinger
would not hesitate to make decisions in Rome that others believe should
be the province of the local church – revoking imprimaturs, replacing
translations, dismissing theologians – he would not erect a large new
Vatican apparatus for this purpose. Ratzinger would encourage bishops’
conferences and dioceses to shed layers of bureaucracy where possible…

This entry was posted on Friday, April 22nd, 2005 at 5:56 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.