Address to the Bishops of Chile: Unity in the Tradition of the Faith
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
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| (Cardinal Ratzinger at the Catholic University of Chile, July 12, 1988) |
Dear and beloved brothers,
First of all, I wish to thank you most warmly for your kind invitation to visit your country, and also for offering me this occasion of fraternal encounter and dialogue. I harbor no illusion that one can come to know a country in a stay of only a few days; nonetheless, the opportunity to see the places where you labor, and to have in some measure the experience of the atmosphere of the Church's life in this land, is of great importance to me.
The purpose of my words is to enrich the mutual dialogue we desire. As a general rule, I tend to take advantage of the occasion such meetings provide me to set forth briefly some of the more pressing questions arising from the work of the Congregation. The schism, however, which appears to have opened with the ordinations of bishops on June 30th, leads me to depart, this once, from that custom. Today, I should like simply to reflect on certain aspects of the matter that concerns Archbishop Lefebvre. Rather than dwelling on what has already occurred, it seems to me of greater consequence to evaluate the lessons which the Church can draw, for today and for tomorrow, from the totality of these events. To that end, I wish to offer first some observations on the attitude of the Holy See in its conversations with Archbishop Lefebvre, and then to pursue a reflection on the deeper causes which gave rise to this situation — causes which, beyond the particular case before us, touch us all.
I. The Attitude of the Holy See in Its Conversations with Lefebvre
In recent months, we have invested a considerable amount of work in the problem of Lefebvre, with the sincere desire to create for his movement an adequate living space within the Church. The Holy See has been criticized for this from many quarters. It has been said that Rome had yielded to the pressure of the schism; that it had not defended the Second Vatican Council with sufficient force; that, while acting with great severity toward progressive movements, it showed excessive understanding toward a restorationist rebellion. The subsequent course of events has sufficiently refuted these claims. The myth of the Vatican's harshness toward progressive deviations has turned out to be an empty fabrication. To date, what has been issued has essentially amounted to admonitions, and in no case to canonical penalties in the proper sense. The fact that Lefebvre ultimately repudiated the agreement he had signed demonstrates that the Holy See, despite having made genuinely broad concessions, did not grant him the blanket license he sought. In the essential part of the agreements, Lefebvre had acknowledged that he was bound to accept Vatican II and the affirmations of the post-conciliar Magisterium, each according to the authority proper to the document in question. It is a contradiction that those who have never let pass any occasion to proclaim their disobedience to the Pope and to the magisterial declarations of the past twenty years should be the very ones who judge this position too timid and demand that unconditional obedience to Vatican II be required. There was also the claim that the Vatican had conceded to Lefebvre a right of dissent persistently denied to those of a progressive tendency. In reality, what the agreement affirmed — in keeping with Lumen Gentium, n. 25 — was simply the fact that not all documents of the Council are of the same rank. The agreement also explicitly provided that public controversy was to be avoided, and that a positive attitude of respect toward official measures and declarations was to be maintained. It was further granted that the confraternity might present to the Holy See — whose right of decision remained wholly intact — its difficulties concerning questions of interpretation and of reforms in the juridical and liturgical sphere. All of this sufficiently demonstrates that Rome, in this difficult dialogue, has united generosity in all that was negotiable with firmness in essentials. The explanation that Archbishop Lefebvre himself gave for his withdrawal of consent is most revealing. He declared that he had now understood that the agreement he had signed aimed solely at integrating his foundation into the "Church of the Council." For him, the Catholic Church in communion with the Pope is the "Church of the Council" — a Church that has broken with its own past. It seems he is no longer capable of seeing that what is at issue is simply the Catholic Church in the fullness of its Tradition, to which the Second Vatican Council also belongs.
2. Reflections on the Deeper Causes of the Lefebvre Affair
The problem raised by Lefebvre, however, does not end with the rupture of June 30th. It would be far too comfortable to surrender to a kind of triumphalism and to suppose that this problem has ceased to be one from the moment that Lefebvre's movement has clearly separated itself from the Church. A Christian can neither rejoice in, nor ought he rejoice in, a disunity. Even though the blame cannot with any certainty be laid at the Holy See's door, it is our obligation to ask ourselves what errors we have committed, what errors we are still committing. The principles by which the past has been evaluated since the promulgation of the Vatican II decree on ecumenism must, as a matter of logic, retain their validity for the present as well. One of the fundamental discoveries of ecumenical theology is that schisms can occur only when certain truths and certain values of the Christian faith are no longer being lived and loved within the Church. The marginalized truth acquires an independence of its own, is wrenched from the totality of the ecclesial structure, and a new movement then forms around it. We ought to give serious thought to the fact that not a few people, well beyond the narrower circle of members of Lefebvre's confraternity, see in this man a kind of guide, or at the very least a useful teacher. It is not sufficient to invoke political motives, or nostalgia, or other secondary cultural reasons. Those causes would not be sufficient to attract also, and in a special way, young people from very diverse countries and under entirely different political and cultural conditions. The narrow, one-sided vision is certainly detectable everywhere; yet the phenomenon as a whole would be unthinkable if there were not also at work positive elements which generally fail to find sufficient living space in the Church of today. For all these reasons, we ought to regard this situation above all as an occasion for an examination of conscience. We must allow ourselves to be seriously questioned regarding the deficiencies in our pastoral practice that are being pointed out by all these events. In this way we will be able to offer a home to those who are seeking and questioning within the Church, and so succeed in rendering the schism superfluous from within the Church itself. I should like to name three aspects which, in my view, play an important role in this regard.
a) The Sacred and the Profane
There are many reasons that may have moved many people to seek refuge in the old liturgy. A first and important one is that there they find the dignity of the sacred kept intact. Following the Council, many had deliberately elevated "desacralization" to the level of a program, explaining that the New Testament had abolished the worship of the Temple: the veil of the Temple torn at the moment of Christ's death on the Cross signified — so they argued — the end of the sacred. Jesus's death outside the city walls, that is, in the public realm, is now the true worship. Worship, if it exists at all, takes place in the non-sacrality of daily life, in love as it is lived. Driven by such reasoning, sacred vestments were set aside; churches were stripped, to the greatest extent possible, of the splendor that calls to mind the sacred; and the liturgy was reduced, as far as possible, to the language and gestures of ordinary life, through greetings, common signs of friendship, and the like.
Yet such theories and such a practice completely misunderstood the real connection between the Old and the New Testaments. It was forgotten that this world is not yet the Kingdom of God and that "the Holy One of God" (Jn 6:69) remains in contradiction with the world; that we stand in need of purification in order to draw near to him; that the profane, even after the death and resurrection of Jesus, has not become the sacred. The Risen One appeared only to those whose hearts had opened themselves to him, to the Holy One — he did not manifest himself to the whole world. Out of this world a new space of worship has been opened, to which we are all now directed; that worship which consists in drawing near to the community of the Risen One, at whose feet the women fell and worshiped him (Mt 28:9). I do not wish to develop this point further at this moment, but only to draw the immediate conclusion: we must recover the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festival; it is not a pleasurable gathering. It matters not at all, or next to not at all, whether the parish priest succeeds in realizing clever ideas or imaginative inventions. The liturgy is the making-present of the thrice-holy God in our midst; it is the burning bush; it is God's Covenant with man in Jesus Christ, who died and rose again. The greatness of the liturgy does not rest on its providing interesting entertainment, but on the fact that the Wholly Other, whom we could not cause to come, comes to touch us. He comes because he wills to. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common rite of the Church; everything else debases it. People experience this vividly, and feel themselves deceived when the mystery becomes entertainment, when the chief protagonist in the liturgy is no longer the living God but the priest or the liturgical animator.
b) The Non-Arbitrariness of the Faith and Its Continuity
Defending the Second Vatican Council, against Archbishop Lefebvre, as valid and binding in the Church is and will continue to be a necessity. There exists, however, a narrow-minded attitude that isolates Vatican II and has provoked the opposition. Many presentations give the impression that after Vatican II everything has changed and that what came before can no longer have validity, or at best only in the light of Vatican II. The Second Vatican Council is not treated as part of the whole living Tradition of the Church, but directly as the end of Tradition and as an entirely new beginning from zero. The truth is that the Council itself defined no dogma and consciously chose to express itself at a more modest level, as a merely pastoral Council; and yet many interpret it as though it were a kind of superdogma that renders everything else of no importance.
This impression is reinforced above all by things that occur in ordinary life. What was once held to be most sacred — the form of the liturgy as transmitted — suddenly appears as what is most forbidden, the one thing that must certainly be rejected. Criticism of post-conciliar measures is not tolerated; but where the ancient rules are at stake, or the great truths of the faith — for example, the bodily virginity of Mary, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the immortality of the soul, and so forth — either there is no reaction at all, or the reaction is extremely attenuated. I was able to see for myself, when I was a professor, how the same bishop who before the Council had dismissed an irreproachable professor for speaking in a somewhat crude manner was, after the Council, incapable of dismissing another professor who openly denied certain fundamental truths of the faith. All of this leads many people to ask whether the Church of today is really still the same as the Church of yesterday, or whether it has been exchanged for another without their having been informed. The only way to render Vatican II credible is to present it clearly for what it is: a part of the one and entire Tradition.
c) The Uniqueness of Truth
Setting aside for the moment the liturgical question, the central points of the conflict at present are the attack on the decree on religious liberty and on the so-called spirit of Assisi. On these points Lefebvre draws the boundaries between his position and that of the Catholic Church of today. It is unnecessary to add explicitly that his assertions in this domain cannot be accepted. But we are not here to concern ourselves with his errors; rather, we wish to ask where the lack of clarity lies within ourselves. For Lefebvre, what is at stake is the struggle against ideological liberalism and against the relativization of truth. We clearly do not agree with him that the Council text on religious liberty, or the prayer at Assisi as the Pope intended it, constitutes a relativization. Yet it is true that in the spiritual movement of the post-conciliar period there was frequently an oblivion — indeed a suppression — of the question of truth; perhaps here we are touching upon the crucial problem of theology and pastoral practice today. "Truth" suddenly appeared as too great a claim, a "triumphalism" that could no longer be permitted. This process is clearly manifest in the crisis into which the missionary ideal and missionary practice have fallen. If we are not aiming at truth when we proclaim our faith, and if that truth is no longer essential to the salvation of man, then the missions lose their meaning. Indeed, the conclusion was drawn and continues to be drawn that in the future one should seek only that Christians be good Christians, Muslims good Muslims, Hindus good Hindus, and so on. But how can one know when someone is a "good" Christian or a "good" Muslim? The idea that all religions are, properly speaking, nothing more than symbols of what is ultimately incomprehensible is gaining ground rapidly in theology as well, and is now making deep inroads into liturgical practice. Wherever that phenomenon occurs, the faith as such is abandoned, for it consists precisely in my entrusting myself to the truth as recognized. Thus we certainly have every motivation to return to good sense in this domain as well. If we succeed in showing and living anew the fullness of what is Catholic in these points, then we may hope that the schism of Lefebvre will not prove of long duration.
[Rorate translation; the address was originally given in Spanish.]