John L. Allen Jr., NCR senior correspondent, writes weekly on the goings-on in Vatican and in the church around the world.
In an interview this week
with the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Cardinal Alfonso
Lopez-Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said
that those who take part in embryonic stem cell research are subject to
excommunication.
"Destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion... it's the same
thing," Lopez Trujillo said.
To the surprise of no one, Benedict XVI has
appointed Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, who worked alongside
then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1995 to 2003 as the secretary of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to be his new Secretary of
State.
The move makes Bertone, 71, the most powerful
figure in the Vatican after Benedict XVI himself. Since the era of Paul
VI, the Secretariat of State has played the role of a "super-dicastery,"
to some extent coordinating the work of all the other departments of the
Vatican. It is also responsible for the Vatican's relations with states,
hence its "foreign policy."
After a lengthy and, at times, contentious debate over
recent years about a new English translation of the Order of Mass, which
relies more heavily on a sacred vocabulary closer to the Latin originals,
some observers were surprised by the relatively anti-climatic nature of
the vote of the American bishops last week in Los Angeles. Following a
fairly brief discussion, the bishops approved the translation by an
overwhelming vote of 173 to 29.
Several factors no doubt help explain the result, including a recent
letter from Cardinal Francis Arinze of the Congregation for Divine Worship
to Bishop William Skylstad, president of the American conference, which
made adoption of the text seem inevitable, and the general fatigue many
bishops feel with the "liturgy wars" which have rocked English-speaking
Catholicism since the mid-1990s.
Arguably, no one was more instrumental than Dominican
Fr. Enrico di Rovasenda in the Vatican's decision to reevaluate the case
of Galileo Galilei, which over the centuries had become the leading symbol
of a supposed clash between religion and science, between rigid dogmatism
and the free spirit of scientific inquiry.
Still going strong, di Rovasenda celebrated his 100th birthday in Genoa
on June 17. Cardinals Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, the next Secretary of
State, and George Cottier, the Dominican who served John Paul II as
theologian of the papal household, were present for the festivities.
Anyone who has followed American politics in recent
years knows the revolution that has taken place in the "religious vote."
Once the Democrats were the party of immigrant Catholics, and the
Republicans the party of the Protestant establishment; today the Democrats
tend to be the party of secularism, and Republicans the party of voters
for whom religion is a major concern.
Now a provocative article by Italian political scientist Ernesto Galli
della Loggia suggests there is a parallel phenomenon in Italy, which he
calls the "death of cattocommunismo," the term for the Catholic
version of leftist radicalism which was long a potent force in Italian
politics.
When I give talks in Europe or North America, I
usually get some version of the following question: "What are the church's plans
for dealing with the priest shortage, or the decline in vocations to the
religious life, or dwindling Mass attendance rates, or the problem of
transmitting the faith to the next generation?"
The premise is usually that
the church is in a crisis, one serious enough to provoke a re-examination of
current doctrines or disciplines.
While there's perfectly legitimate debate to
be had on each of these questions, the underlying assumption of decline reveals
a particularly Western focus. The reality is that worldwide, these are boom
times for Catholicism, not bust.
Tuesday night, Georgetown University hosted its annual event for alumni
and friends at Rome's Minerva Hotel. I was asked to moderate a panel
discussion on Vatican diplomacy featuring Ambassadors Francis Rooney, who
represents the United States to the Holy See, and Francis Campbell,
representing the United Kingdom.
Both are Catholics who do not come out
of conventional diplomatic circles. Campbell is a policy wonk who worked
for Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street, while Rooney is a
successful businessman with construction firms in Oklahoma and Florida.
Rooney said there is a great "symmetry" between the interests of the
Holy See and the American government in promoting "human dignity and
essential freedoms in the world," which he described as "under attack" in
places such as Venezuela, China, Bosnia and Russia. He specifically
mentioned the struggle for religious freedom in various parts of the
world.
A long-time veteran of Jewish-Catholic relations told NCR this week that the Vatican has confirmed Benedict XVI's intention to visit Israel in 2007, though no date has yet been established for the trip.
According to this source, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo relayed the pope's intention in conversations with Israeli officials.
Lajolo, this source said, expressed two "desires" with regard to the prospective visit. The first is that long-running negotiations between Israel and the Vatican over the tax and juridical status of church institutions in Israel will be resolved before it happens. The second is that no violence will occur during the pope's trip, to avoid it being "instrumentalized" to serve the political ends of any party to the Middle East conflict.
On Wednesday, Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls released a statement which is also likely to cause some consternation in Israel and among sectors of Jewish opinion. In the wake of Israeli bombings in Gaza and elsewhere that have resulted in civilian casualties, Navarro said:
"The Holy See is following with great apprehension and sorrow the episodes of growing, blind violence which are causing blood to flow in these days in the Holy Land. The Holy Father is close, especially in prayer, to the innocent victims, to their families and to the populations of this land, hostages to those who delude themselves that the ever more dramatic problems of the region can be solved with force or in unilateral fashion."
News reports last week suggested that a U.S. district court in Oregon had opened the door to legal action against the Holy See in a case related to the sexual abuse of minors. If that ruling were to hold up, it would mark an important blow to the immunity the Holy See generally enjoys as a sovereign entity under international law.
In fact, legal experts stress this was merely a preliminary decision, and that we're a long way away from any American court actually agreeing to hear a lawsuit seeking damages against the Vatican.
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