Spanish writer Jose Luis Restan is the director general of programming content for COPE, Spain's largest radio network. Last year, he published a book on Benedict XVI called Diario de un Pontificado, and before that he wrote one on the Catholic faith called La Osadia de Creer [The Audacity of Belief]. He writes a regular column for Paginas Digital, a daily online journal in Spanish.
The Pope's passion for unity
by Jose Luis Restan
29/10/2009
As Providence would have it, a few days after the announcement of an open door for Anglican faithful wishing to return to the Church of Rome, the VAtican began Rome with representatives of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X (FSSPX) to clarify doctrinal points that have kept the followers of Mons. Marcel Lefebvre apart from Rome since 1988.
At the same time, in Cyprus, the mixed Catholic-Orthodox commission for theological dialog started to examine the crucial question of the role of the Papacy in a reunified Church.
It is not yet time to blow the trumpets. The path to unity has no shortcuts - it will be long and painful. And it will not be surprising if even the real steps forward in recent days will lead to new bottlenecks.
We see it in the Anglican world, where there has been no lack of bitter invective against Benedict XVI for his generosity, seen by some as an opportunistic move to avail of the internal weakness of Anglicanism.
It happened in Cyprus where the shrill protests from the monks of Mt. Athos and other ultra-conservative Orthodox circles protested the ecumenical dialog as a surrender by the Orthodox hierarchy to the Bishop of Rome.
But, as always, the saddest news comes from within the Catholic Church itself. There has been no lack of a whispering campaign by those who disapprove of the Pope's decision with regard to the Anglicans.
Some find the situation disturbing because it changes the status quo of the ecumenical dialog, and others because it would introduce the novelty of married priests [which is not unprecedented - it has been tried successully with Episcopalian clergy who became Catholics).
As for the dialog with the Lefebvrians, the fire has only just rekindled. There are those who do not hide their wish that the talks simply fail, whereas Hans Kueng, who daily grows more stale and less original, speaks of a Pope who is dedicated to 'fishing on the right'. So sad!
In the net of the Church - the one Christ wanted - are all those who recognize the apostolic faith expressed by the councils of the early centuries, that faith of which the successors of the crude fisherman of Galilee are the guarantors.
The problem is the same on the left or on the right, to use Kueng's terms. It is a question of who acknowledges the faith that the Church bears as a treasure of grace - it has to do with measuring oneself freely and simply against the authority of the apostles.
Are Kueng and company available for such a confrontation? Are they ready and willing to recognize themselves humbly in the faith that the Catholic faithful profess in the Creed and which is exhaustively proposed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church?
Nothing less is asked of them than what is asked of the Lefebvrians, with the differnce that the lattter have suffered the most extreme penalty that ecclesiastical discipline can impose.
In any case, the moment of truth has come for the FSSPX. The time is past for facile slogans about Vatican II, for liturgical excuses, and we must hope, also for those fantasies and prejudices so rooted in a certain sector of French Catholicism that has never overcome the trauma of the Revolution.
The start of the doctrinal dicussions with the Holy See marks a crossroads: one path leads back to the bosom of the Church, the other to sectarian isolation.
Peter has come forth to meet them. Let us hope that pride and blunted thinking will not waste this opportunity.
Through it all, in the face of meanness, calculations and suspicions in many sectors, Benedict XVI has only grown in stature. These days, it would be beneficial to read again the letter he sent the bishops of the world last March after he revoked the excommunication of the FSSPX bishops.
There we encounter the heart of the shepherd who cares about the sheep who are wandering far from home. There he deploys once more the lucidity of reason illuminated by the faith to which centuries of saints and martyrs have borne witness. There burns Peter's passion for the unity of the Church.
The Pope has shown that progress can be made along this path with patience and trust in God - not by seeking artificial consensus nor political strategies, but by recourse to the deepest and most authentic experiences of the faith in order to find once more the beautiful and joyous face of the Church which has guarded and guaranteed that faith in the face of all the storms of history.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/10/2009 14:00]