Church And Society by Avery Cardinal Dulles

Author:Avery Cardinal Dulles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2008-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

JOHN PAUL’S PROPOSALS FOR REPENTANCE

The pope gathered up his thoughts on the theme most comprehensively in an unsigned twenty-three-page memorandum sent to the cardinals in the spring of 1994, in preparation for the consistory that met later in that year. This memorandum—which may well have been written by the pope himself2—was never published, but it was studied by all the cardinals and has been summarized and quoted in various places. It proposed “an attentive examination of the history of the second millennium in order to acknowledge the errors committed by its members and, in a certain sense, in the name of the Church.”3 “The Church,” it says, “should be aware with ever greater clarity of how much the faithful have proven to be unfaithful throughout the centuries, sinning against Christ and his Gospel.”4

The idea of acknowledging the faults of members of the Church, and especially of persons acting in the name of the Church, has been with John Paul II ever since his election to the papacy in the fall of 1978. Early in his pontificate he established a committee to reassess the condemnation of Galileo. This committee in 1984 reported its findings to the effect that Galileo’s judges committed an “objective error” in rejecting a theory that later proved to be sound.5 The memorandum of 1994, after alluding to this retraction, went on to speak of other cases in which the autonomy of the sciences might have been infringed. In addition, it declared, violence and undue pressure have been inflicted in the service of faith by the Inquisition, by religious wars, and by disregard of the rights of the human person.6 In his opening address at the consistory John Paul II expressed his intention in the following strong words:

With the approach of this Great Jubilee the Church needs a metanoia, that is, a discernment of the historical faults and failures of her members in responding to the demands of the gospel. Only the courageous admission of the faults and omissions of which Christians are judged to be guilty in some degree, and also the generous intention to make amends, with God’s help, can provide an efficacious initiative for the new evangelization and make the path to unity easier.7

As a result of the pope’s initiative, an immense program for the coming jubilee has been put in place. The first international meeting of the Central Committee for the Great Jubilee was held at the Vatican on February 15–16, 1996, with 107 delegates from national conferences of bishops and Catholic Eastern churches, and six additional delegates from sister churches.8 Of the eight commissions for the jubilee, the one most directly concerned with the theme of repentance and conversion is the historicotheological commission, which has two sections, the historical and the theological. The historical section has opted to concentrate for the present on anti-Semitism and the Inquisition, leaving other questions for later study.

The historical section has already convened an international symposium on “The Roots of Anti-Judaism in the Christian Milieu,” which met at the Gregorian University last fall.

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