Humanity and God in the Catholic Church

The election of Pope Francis I was significant because the Catholic Church is the world’s third largest human organization. With a membership of 1.1 billion, the church’s size is exceeded only by the countries of China (1.3 billion) and India (1.2 billion). Taken together, more than half of the world’s 7 billion people are either Chinese, Indian or Catholic.

More importantly, the Church of Rome has been the central, constant feature in the growth of Western Civilization since its founding nearly two millennia ago. During that time, it has played a number of different roles; its power has waxed and waned; and it has been endorsed and criticized. But it has always been there. Much of the character of today’s “Western World,” or in economic terms the “First World,” has been shaped in line with or in opposition to Catholicism.

Given this stature, we should analyze what the papal election reveals about the church’s concept of God before our memory of the media blitz fades away.

The pope was chosen in the traditional manner. All the church’s cardinals gathered, went into a secret conclave in the Sistine Chapel and voted. As in past elections, the choice was not made on a single ballot, but took several.

This conclave was fairly short, just two days; others have taken longer. Perhaps this was helped by the days of meetings beforehand, much like a business convention, where the cardinals got to know one another and shared their views of the state of the Catholic Church in both formal and informal sessions. According to media reports, they discussed the challenges facing the church, its present successes and accomplishments, and its future needs.

The cardinals’ votes and meetings show the human procedures the church undertakes to identify a new leader. God does not put in an appearance and publicly announce His choice. Nor does an Old-Testament-style prophet step forward to convey God’s word. God’s will, to use religious language, is instead sought by the cardinals through prayer, confession and shared worship.

Catholics certainly believe the pope is chosen by God, but the process reveals that the choice is mediated through and conveyed by human beings. It is not a revelation, but a group decision made by a majority (not a unanimity) of several dozen men. The face of God in this process is a human face.

This approach fits traditional Catholic theology nicely. The church understands its role as mediating between God and Christian believers. Its hierarchical organization places cardinals closest to God, and so they are best positioned to listen for and follow divine promptings. In a pope’s election, God reveals His will through them.

The human character of the pope was emphasized in Pope Benedict as well. In his decision to step down, Benedict showed he understood that his increasing frailness of both body and mind was beginning to hamper his ability to lead the church. He could no longer function as the “Vicar of Jesus Christ.”

In the past, it was believed that God would make this choice and that the pope would die at a moment of God’s choosing. But with the advent of modern medicine, it has become clear that this is no longer the case. Diseases that would quickly result in death just two decades ago can now be easily overcome and life extended for years.

But with long life often comes increasing mental and physical weakness, as is well known by people with elderly parents. A pope, like all human beings, experiences the diminution of old age, interfering with and ultimately preventing the fulfillment of his papal role, and even the ability to look after himself. Pope Benedict’s decision to step down was a recognition of this.

So the Catholic Church reveals God through its human members; He is mediated through humanity. Catholics may believe that God is unchanging and unchangeable, but human beings are not. Our increasing knowledge of humans’ physical, mental and social character, as well as the increasing role of technology in our lives, alters the way humans relate to the divine and to each other. In the end, it brings about changes even in the Catholic Church.

American Catholicism in Global Context

Make no doubt about it, American Catholics like their leaders. In a 2012 Pew Forum poll, 82 percent said they were satisfied with the leadership of their local priest and 83 percent approved of the leadership of U.S. nuns. Additionally, 74 percent of Catholics approved of the pope, while 70 percent approved of the U.S. bishops.

But, despite overall approval of their leaders, American Catholics do not hold to the church teachings which these leaders propound. More than 90 percent of married Catholic women of child-bearing age use or have used birth control (and thus so have 90 percent of married Catholic men), even though church teachings forbid it. Similarly, 54 percent of Catholics approve of gay marriage, even as the pope and the bishops rail against it.

At the same time, the American Catholic Church is changing. While the overall membership of the church is increasing due to Hispanic immigration, the traditional “white, non-Hispanic” membership (as the pollsters call it) has been declining for years. Fully one in 10 adult Americans are former Catholics; 40 percent of those born and raised in the church no longer belong. The vast majority of these cite the church’s teachings on sex and gender, ranging from abortion and homosexuality to birth control to the church’s treatment of women, as the reason for their exit.

With Pope Benedict stepping down, the challenges of the American church facing any new pope are clear. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction among American Catholics over the church’s stands on women and sexuality. To revitalize the American Catholic Church, something needs to change.

Is that likely? Probably not.

American Catholics constitute only 7 percent of the global Catholic Church. Even if you add them to European Catholics, where the same gender and sexual issues are in contention, that totals less than one-third of the world’s Catholics. More than two-thirds of Catholics live in Latin America, Africa and Asia. And Catholic membership in Africa and Asia is growing rapidly.

While European and North American societies are pulling the church toward greater freedom in sexual matters, the societies in Africa, Asia and Latin America tug Catholicism in the opposite direction. The vast majority of nations in these regions consist of traditional societies, at least with regard to the roles of women and men. A few nations in South America, with Brazil being the most prominent, are trying to Westernize by relaxing restrictions in these areas, but they are noticeable as exceptions.

A far more important dynamic appears in Africa and Asia, where Christianity exists alongside Islam and, in some countries, is overshadowed by it. As we have become aware in recent years, Islam has strong traditions about the subordinate role of women in the public sphere. Many countries even have “morality police” who enforce traditions of modest clothing and veiling. Islam also is strongly anti-homosexual.

For their own protection and the safety of their members, all Christian churches in these countries have pursued conservative social agendas with a vengeance. Two African nations are in the process of enacting legislation punishing homosexual activity with the death penalty, with Nigeria and Uganda in the lead. They do not want Islamic vigilantes targeting Christians as morally lax.

The Anglican Church, also a global church with a strong presence in North America and Africa, has found that American advances in gender equality have so angered African Anglicans that the church seems likely to split. Whereas Americans have ordained both female and gay bishops, the African branches refuse to even consider women as ministers, let alone admit the existence of gay priests.

This same dynamic is playing out in the global Catholic Church as well. The pressures from the largest and fastest growing regions of Catholicism suggests that American Catholics will see little reform or liberalizing of the church’s teaching on sexuality and the place of women in the church.

As Benedict has said, perhaps a smaller, more unified church lies in Catholicism’s future. If the present dynamics play out as expected, this will certainly be the case for American Catholicism.

Remembering the Names

During his visit to the Holy Land last week, Pope Benedict XVI worked diligently to show balance and understanding to both the Muslims and the Jews who live there. Benedict visited a Muslim nation, Jordan, and a Jewish one, Israel, as well as the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel; he prayed at both Muslim and Jewish holy sites and sacred buildings; he spoke alongside both Israeli and Palestinian political leaders, and supported both Palestinian desires for a nation of their own and Israeli desires for security.

But the Pope’s speech at Yad Va-Shem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial, became a significant misstep in Israeli eyes. Israeli media and politicians criticized him for saying that the 6 million Jews systematically eliminated by the Nazis were “killed” rather than “murdered,” making it sound as if their deaths were accidental.

The speech focused on the victims’ fate and did not mention the perpetrators: no comments about Nazis, war-time Germany, or death camps. The Pope thus acknowledged no wrongdoing by the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and offered no apology.*

Vatican officials were mystified by the Israeli reaction, as became clear in the fumbling responses they offered to deflect criticism. They thought the Pope had delivered an excellent speech at the Holocaust memorial.

Yad Va-Shem functions as a cemetery for the Jews the Nazis exterminated, few of whom received a proper burial. In Hebrew, “shem” means “name” and the memorial records in stone the names of the six million Jews, preserving each one, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, as “an everlasting name which shall not be cut off.”

Pope Benedict understood his visit as a pastoral act.** Like a priest accompanying a dead person’s family to the graveside, he offered support and empathy: “They lost their lives, but they will never lose their names; they are indelibly etched in the hearts of their loved ones.” Importantly, against people who say the Holocaust never happened, he added, “May [the victims’] suffering never be denied, belittled or forgotten!” He also aligned the Catholic Church itself with the Jewish vow of “never again,” by saying “I reaffirm…that the Church is committed to praying and working tirelessly to ensure that hatred will never reign in the hearts of men again.”

The Pope devoted half his speech to the importance of remembering names and the people who bore them. He even linked Yad Va-Shem to the divine memory by observing that the victims’ names “are forever fixed in the memory of Almighty God.”

But pastoral moments at the graveside are for the deceased’s close family. When the family addressed is the nation, it is not a time for intimacy and comfort. For Jews worldwide, the Holocaust holds the status of sacred history.

Just as the political and military stories of David, Solomon, Hezekiah and Josiah became Holy Scripture, so too the political murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust is now viewed as part of the Jews’ walk with God as the Chosen People. For the State of Israel, it has become its reason for survival, for Israel is the phoenix which rose from the ashes of the Holocaust.

The religiously important time of the Holocaust has become symbolized in the place of Yad Va-Shem. To visit that memorial and not understand one’s own position in relationship to the Holocaust, is to miss the sacred character of the Holocaust and its memorial.

Popes are men of two names, the name they were born with and the name they take when they become pope. The first represents their identity as individuals, the second their identity as the leader of Catholicism. When the previous Pope, John Paul II, visited Yad Va-Shem in 2000, he brought both his names. As Pope, he spoke of the Holocaust’s terribleness and uttered words of contrition and repentance. But as Karol Wojtyla, who grew up in Poland, he met with Jews from his own village, and several Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors took part in his visit’s ceremony.

In the view of Israelis, Pope Benedict visited Yad Va-Shem only as the Pope. He did not come as Joseph Ratzinger, who grew up in Hitler’s Germany, and who managed only imperfectly to avoid implication and involvement in that Nazi society. Benedict forgot his own name, not understanding that walking into Yad Va-Shem he walked out of a Catholic world into space defined by Judaism and which symbolizes the atrocities committed by the Germany of Ratzinger’s youth. He may have arrived at Yad Va-Shem’s gate as Pope Benedict, but he lost that identity when he entered. Not realizing that change, he failed to speak as himself. The important message to Israel was never uttered.



*I am quite puzzled why Pope Benedict decided to offer no apology or even refer to past apologies, either German or Catholic. Germany (West, East, and the now reunified Germany) has made a number of apologies in recent decades and is paying nearly $100 billion in reparations to the Jewish State and to individual Holocaust survivors. German bishops have apologized for the Church's silence during the Holocaust, and John Paul II made explicit apologies for Christian and Catholic sins against the Jews, both during his Day of Pardon in early 2000 and when he spoke at Yad Va-Shem later that year.

**Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, was incorrect when he observed, "The pope spoke like a historian, as somebody observing from the sidelines, about things that shouldn't happen."