CATHOLICISM from JOHN PAUL I to BENEDICT XVI 1. The

CHAPTER SEVEN FACING PLURALISM: CATHOLICISM FROM JOHN PAUL I TO BENEDICT XVI 1. The Year of Three Popes Exactly a century after the death of Pope Pius IX, the year 1978 is widely known as “the year of the three popes.”1 Following the death of Pope Paul VI on August 6, his successor, Pope John Paul I, died surprisingly at the end of September, after only thirty-three days on the chair of Saint Peter. Finally, in October 1978, Pope John Paul II stood at the head of the Roman Catholic Church, and would lead the Catholic Church into the third millennium—a point to which the pontiff paid ample attention, as he himself stressed in his 2001 Apostolic Letter Novo millennio ineunte of 2001.2 John Paul II’s death, in 2005, brought an end to a long, richly filled, and eventful pontificate. That he died just a few years ago has, of course, implications for this last chapter. Certainly any critical and balanced judgment by church historians requires a longer time frame for perspec- tive and objective reflection. There are limitations therefore in evaluating the last two decades of Pope John Paul II’s pontificate; and the authors are well aware of this fact. By no means can this chapter be presented as a final word regarding this recent pontificate, nor is it an attempt to do so. Nevertheless, we have thought it useful, keeping in mind the evolutions sketched in the previous chapter, to trace some of the important patterns in this very recent period in our church’s history. This may also allow us to look at the last completed pontificate with fresh eyes, for the conclave of April 2005, brought in Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict XVI inherited a church whose configurations worldwide were far more different than ever before: an existential and structural crisis in North America and Western Europe, where the church was being ques- tioned on very pragmatic grounds, and a spiritual and numerical flowering 1 Peter Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes (London, 1978). 2 John Paul II, ‘Novo millennio ineunte (January 6, 2001),’ AAS 93 (2001), 266–309. 184 chapter seven in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, where the universal vision and approach of Rome often stood in stark contrast to the challenges being contextually determined. In particular for Western Europe and North America, the question of “the chicken or the egg” remains urgent: are social and ideological evolutions forcing the church to do more fold- ing back on itself, or is it a too tightly controlled church leadership that is producing more “unchurched” flocks? Like all complex realities, it may not be a question of an “either . or” but an “and. and” situation with shared responsibility and high comple- mentarity, but also with major consequences for both the church and for Western civilization. Understanding the position of the Roman Catholic Church after Paul VI is a complex undertaking. Much of the experience of Western Catholicism would appear to be a prolongation of tendencies already set in motion under earlier pontificates. There was a severe drop in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. The overall age of the clergy increased and the number of parishes decreased, as active church practice by the faith- ful diminished as well. Sunday Mass attendance went down as well as baptisms and church weddings. Funerals held up better.3 To complicate matters, many of these contemporary evolutions lay hidden under loaded terms such as de-traditionalization, postmodernity, individualization and secularization. What stands out in this language is not just that it is pri- marily sociological language, but that it is a language which can only be understood in the light of the past. At present, Vatican II, with its initial plea for a church that would adapt to the needs of people and the contemporary world, seems far away. For some the handbrake must be strongly set to keep the church pure and free from societal influences. Doctrinal obedience is stressed, and compromises rejected. For others the same contemporary reality calls for renewal of the church, in its structures, governance, and focus. These questions, these tensions, when looking at the Catholic Church’s evolution throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are hardly new. Instead, the struggle between those longing for ecclesiastical aggiornamento and renewal and those anchored in self-protection and restoration seems age-old. It was already there under the pontificate of Pius IX. 3 An inspiring analysis was given recently by Étienne Fouilloux in his ‘Essai sur le deve- nir du catholicisme,’ 526–57..

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