World Youth Day: Benedict XVI on the road; WYDs importance;
ecumenical and interfaith opportunities: Protestant; Jewish; MuslimBy JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Next week the curtain rises in Cologne, Germany, on the biggest event of
the Catholic summer, as well as the most important road test to date of Benedict
XVI’s papacy.
World Youth Day begins August 15 with Marian celebrations
in local parishes, though Benedict XVI doesn’t arrive until Thursday, August 18.
The weeklong festival of Catholic youth, instituted by Pope John Paul II and
known affectionately as the “Catholic Woodstock,” closes with a papal Mass on
Sunday, August 21.
The drama of the pope’s first foreign voyage is not,
however, just about the encounter with youth, or the sense of anticipation that
comes with a new pope doing things for the first time. The trip also features
important sessions with both Jews and Muslims, representatives of the Catholic
Church’s most important inter-religious relationships, and both groups that have
expressed a degree of ambivalence about the new pope and his
policies.
Over these four days in August, therefore, the world will be
watching for:
- Turnout and mood,
especially at the August 21 concluding Mass on the Marienfeld plain outside
Cologne, as an indicator of Benedict XVI’s capacity to recapture John Paul
II’s magic with youth. Organizers have estimated some 800,000, which would be
an impressive accomplishment in ultra-secular Germany;
- The key themes Benedict
will strike in his public addresses, perhaps the most revealing indicator to
date of the big ideas of his pontificate;
- The pope’s ecumenical
message, given that his native Germany is the birthplace of the Protestant
Reformation, and is today roughly evenly divided between Catholics and
Protestants;
- The new pope’s reception
in Germany, home of the most successful liberal Catholic reform movement of
the modern era, the “We Are Church” movement, which garnered 2.5 million
signatures in the mid-1990s for a petition demanding liberalization of church
teaching in areas such as sexuality, women's issues, and the selection of
bishops;
- The pope’s message at
the Cologne synagogue, against the backdrop of sharp Jewish/Catholic debates
over the role of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, and equally vexed
Israeli/Vatican exchanges over terrorism as well as negotiations concerning
the legal status of church-run institutions in Israel;
- The pope’s message in
his August 20 session with Muslims, who number some 3 million in Germany, the
vast majority of whom are Turkish. Some observers expect Benedict XVI to take
a tougher approach to Islam than his immediate predecessor, beginning with the
question of Turkey’s candidacy to join the European Union, a move that
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger opposed prior to his election as pope.
Given all
this subtext, Benedict XVI’s four-day homecoming to Germany will offer
important clues as to both the content and the style of this new papacy, which
reached the 100th-day mark on July 27.
* * * World Youth Day was, in
a way, the part John Paul II was born to play. From his pastoral encounters with
married couples and students as a young bishop in Poland, to his appreciation
for popular culture as a way of shaping hearts and minds, John Paul was a pope
for youth. To take but one example, he didn’t sneer at rock-and-roll, but
challenged it to carry a message of moral purpose; U2 lead singer Bono once
dubbed him “history’s first funky pontiff.”
Precursors of World Youth Day
date to 1983. The United Nations declared 1985 an “International Year of Youth,”
and a youth gathering with the pope was organized in Rome for Palm Sunday. More
than 250,000 turned out.
Afterwards, the pope said that he wanted a
regular meeting with youth on Palm Sunday to be coordinated by the Pontifical
Council for the Laity. Those sessions eventually grew into World Youth Day, with
the first event under that title celebrated in Rome in 1986. In subsequent
years, World Youth Day has alternated between a massive international gathering
with the pope, and local celebrations on Palm Sunday scattered across the globe.
(This is why the 2005 edition is officially labeled as the 20th World Youth
Day).
World Youth Days with the pope have been held in Buenos Aires,
Santiago di Compostela, Czestochowa, Denver, Manila, Paris, Rome, and Toronto.
The Manila edition featured one of the largest crowds in human history, a
reported four million people for the final Mass.
The Cologne World Youth
Day was, at least in part, the brainchild of Cardinal Joachim Meisner of
Cologne. When John Paul II was hospitalized in March, Meisner urged him to keep
the appointment in Cologne, stressing to the ailing pope, who at the time was
struggling to speak, that his physical presence would be the most eloquent
possible homily. Meisner later urged his old friend, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
to confirm his participation after his election as Benedict XVI.
On April
20, the morning after his election, Benedict XVI came through: “If it is God’s
will, I will meet the Youth in Cologne at the next World Youth Day,” he
said.
Cologne’s cathedral is home to the relics of the Magi, the
legendary “three wise men” of the infancy narrative. The theme for World Youth
Day 2005, drawn from the account of the Magi in the New Testament, is “Come, let
us adore him.”
The official patron saints of World Youth Day are St
Boniface, the apostle of Germany, the Saints of Cologne, and in particular
Ursula, Albert the Great, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) and
Blessed Adolph Kolping.
On a more practical note, corporate sponsors
include DHL, Audi, Volkswagen, Bayer, Nestle, Deutsche Telekom, Shell and Cisco
Systems. The total cost of the event is estimated at 100 million Euros, which
will be offset by participant fees, plus 12 million Euros from the state, a 27
million Euro loan from 27 German dioceses, sponsor contributions, a lottery, the
sale of WYD articles, and donations.
* * * No one expects that Benedict XVI will strike quite the same charismatic
chord with young people that
John Paul II mastered. There will likely be no “woo, woo,” at the microphone, no
sing-alongs, no impromptu jokes or fits of fancy. Benedict is a more restrained,
less theatrical figure than his predecessor, determined to place the focus on
the message rather than the man.
Why is World Youth Day important?
First, in many parts of the world, including the developed
West, the Catholic Church faces a severe vocations crisis. In 1970, the Catholic
Church had one priest for every 1,000 Catholics in the world; in 2000, the ratio
was one priest for every 2,500 Catholics. (While the number of priests actually
increased slightly from 1961 to 2001, it did not keep pace with the rise in
Catholic population.
The worst-hit area was Europe; the number of secular and
religious clergy in Europe dropped from 241,379 in 1976 to 217,275 in 1995.)
This is not just a management or staffing issue, but one that cuts to the core
of the Catholic Church’s capacity to make the sacraments available to the
faithful. The ability to inspire new vocations to the priesthood, therefore, has
to rank among the most important tasks of any bishop, and a fortiori, of the
pope. World Youth Day is a privileged forum for “recruiting.” Around the world
today, one can find seminarians and newly ordained priests who report that their
first inkling of a vocation came as part of the World Youth Day experience. Many
report that it was the invitation issued by John Paul II, coupled with
admiration of his example, which caused the notion to blossom. To date, these
vocations have not offset the long-term trends, but the situation would be worse
without them.
Second, World Youth Day is the largest regular gathering of
Catholics in the world, and therefore offers the pope a critically important
opportunity to exercise his “bully pulpit.” Any event that involves a million
people will draw media attention, and the theatre of a high papal Mass offers
the global press irresistible imagery. All of this means that when Benedict XVI
speaks in Cologne, the world will be listening in a way it generally doesn’t to
papal addresses. (Some 4,000 journalists are already accredited for the event).
It’s an “at-bat” for the pope as a global communicator, and whether he strikes
out or knocks it out of the park will make a difference in the Catholic Church’s
capacity to “evangelize,” meaning to spread its message.
Third, youth are
critical to a pope’s capacity to lift the church out of the ideological ruts of
a given era. Adults tend to become locked in debates over a limited set of
issues, recycling those arguments in endless combinations. In the 16th and 17th
centuries, for example, Jesuits and Dominicans clashed over competing theories
of grace; in the 19th century, Catholic democrats and Catholic traditionalists
locked horns over the “Roman question”; today, “liberals” and “conservatives” go
at one another over sexuality, dissent, and the authority of the pope. Sometimes
resolution of these debates is less a matter of victory for one side, than the
capacity to see the entire matter in a new light. That’s what young Catholics
have to offer – a fresh perspective, not defined by the categories of the past.
In order for that to work, young people have to be willing to invest their
energy and creativity in the church. World Youth Day has the capacity to awaken
such passion and commitment.
If Benedict XVI wants to challenge the
dictatorship of relativism in the West, he’s going to need motivated,
well-formed youth, and there’s no place like World Youth Day to assemble his
team. The extent to which Benedict XVI succeeds in connecting with the youth who
assemble to hear him in Cologne, therefore, should tell us a great deal about
where his pontificate is headed.
* * * The Protestant/Catholic divide
in Germany lends an obvious ecumenical subtext to Benedict XVI’s trip.
As a German theologian, and a convinced Augustinian, Joseph Ratzinger has long
admired the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther. In 1965, commenting on the
document Gaudium et Spes from the final session of the Second Vatican Council
(1962-65), Ratzinger criticized the text for relying too much on the optimism of
French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, and not enough on Luther’s consciousness of
the Cross and of sin. (Note that Ratzinger was complaining that a Catholic
document neglected the father of the Protestant Reformation; that alone says
something about his ecumenical attitudes).
Later, Ratzinger played a key
role in rescuing an agreement with the Lutheran World Federation on the doctrine
of justification. It was announced to much fanfare in June 1998, then seemingly
unraveled, and rolled out again in June 1999. The heart of the agreement was
this sentence: “By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because
of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit,
who renews our hearts while equipping us and calling us to good works.”
When the agreement seemed to founder, German media reported that Ratzinger had
torpedoed it. On July 14, 1998, Ratzinger published a letter in the German
newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine calling those reports a “smooth lie.” He said
that to scuttle the dialogue would be to “deny myself.” On November 3, 1998, a
special ad hoc working group met at the home of Ratzinger’s brother Georg in
Regensburg, Bavaria, to get the agreement back on track. Lutheran Bishop
Johannes Hanselmann convened the group, which consisted of Hanselmann,
Ratzinger, Catholic theologian Heinz Schuette and Lutheran theologian Joachim
Track.
Given this background, coupled with the strong ecumenical commitment
that has so far characterized Benedict’s papacy, one would expect outreach
during his German swing. The ecumenical meeting on the pope’s program Friday
evening at the archbishop’s palace offers the ideal setting.
On the vexed
issue of inter-communion between Catholics and Protestants, however, it would be
naďve to expect a sea change in Cologne.
The 1994 Catechism of the
Catholic Church, issued under Ratzinger’s authority as prefect for the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, states that, “Ecclesial communities
derived from the Reformation and separated from the Catholic Church have not
preserved the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness,
especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Holy Orders. It is for
this reason that Eucharistic intercommunion is not possible for the Catholic
Church.”
This explains why Catholics can’t take communion from a
Protestant minister – from the Catholic point of view, that minister is not a
properly ordained priest, and hence the communion is not a valid
Eucharist.
On the other end, Protestants are generally not invited to the
Catholic Eucharist because, again from the Catholic point of view, receiving the
Eucharist implies unity in faith, and Catholics and Protestants have different
beliefs about the Eucharist. (The 1993 Directory for the Application of
Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, from the Pontifical Council for Christian
Unity, lays out the conditions for individual exceptions).
* * * Under the shadow of the Reformation, German Catholicism has long had an ambivalent,
cranky attitude with respect to Roman authority.
That “away from Rome”
thrust is not just a fossil of the past. In 1995, in Austria, the “We Are
Church” movement was born when a high school religion teacher named Thomas
Plankensteiner and a couple of colleagues went on television to announce their
frustration with the church’s handling of a sexual abuse scandal involving the
then-cardinal of Vienna, Hans Hermann Gröer. The movement leapt quickly to
Germany, where a petition demanding reform in the church garnered an astonishing
2.5 million signatures.
Though the movement has lost a good deal of steam
in the years since, it’s still around, ensuring that critical voices will be
heard during the pope’s German swing.
For example, We Are Church is
sponsoring a gathering called “World Youth Day 4 All,” which they say will
address “questions and highly controversial youth issues that are relevant to
young people – issues that are excluded from the Catholic World Youth Day that
is mainly focused on the pope and the bishops.” Press materials say that
“numerous” young people from Europe, Africa and the Americas will take
part.
This will be interesting to watch, because the normal critique of
Catholic reform movements is that they’re the hobby horse of aging ‘60’s-era
radicals. If there are large numbers of young people at these events, it might
challenge that impression; if the turnout is limited, it will reinforce
it.
The “We Are Church” folks plan to set up shop in an Old Catholic
parish in the center of Cologne from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm each day from August 16
through 19. They will also hold press conferences on August 9, 15 and 17.
* * * Since Vatican II, the central inter-religious relationship
for the Catholic Church has been with Judaism. This is not merely because
Christianity was born within Judaism, or because of the oft-troubled history
between the two faiths. Open wounds in the relationship remain today. Bitter
disputes between some Christians and Jews over the role of the Catholic Church
during the Second World War, and especially the alleged “silence” of Pope Pius
XII concerning the Holocaust, are still unresolved.
Moreover,
Catholic/Jewish ties inevitably are influenced by the diplomatic relationship
between the State of Israel and the Holy See. Recent days have seen another rift
between the two, as Israel accused Benedict XVI of overlooking anti-Israeli
terrorism, and the Vatican in turn accused Israel of both violations of
international law in its reprisals, as well as sticking its nose in Vatican
business. Negotiations that have dragged on for 11 years concerning the legal
and financial status of church-run institutions in Israel also generate
frustration and recrimination on both sides. Israeli politicians and diplomats
are frequently leery of the Vatican’s interventions in the Middle East, fearing
that it tilts towards the Palestinians because the vast majority of Christians
in the region are Arabs.
All of this will be in the air when Benedict XVI
visits the Cologne synagogue for a prayer service on Friday, August
19.
The visit will mark only the second time since the age of Peter that
a pope has entered a synagogue. (The first was John Paul’s visit to the Rome
synagogue in 1986). The Jewish community in Cologne is the oldest in Europe
north of the Alps, and at the time of Hitler's rise to power in 1933 numbered
some 20,000 people. Roughly 11,000 Jews from Cologne perished during the
Holocaust, and the rest fled to other countries. The community was rebuilt after
the Second World War, and today numbers 4,000 members.
Benedict XVI
brings to this encounter a lifetime of reflection on Christianity’s relationship
with Judaism, and the role of Judaism in salvation history.
Echoing both
Nostra Aetate and Pope John Paul II’s outreach to Judaism, Joseph Ratzinger has
long rejected stereotypes about Jews as the villains in the death of Jesus. In a
1994 address in Jerusalem, he quoted the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “All
sinners were the authors of Christ’s passion.” In that same Jerusalem address,
delivered at a first-ever International Jewish-Christian Conference on Modern
Social and Scientific Challenges, Ratzinger urged understanding between Jews and
Christians: “After Auschwitz, the mission of reconciliation and acceptance
permits no deferral.” He closed with a childhood insight. “I could not
understand how some people wanted to derive a condemnation of Jews from the
death of Jesus, because the following thought had penetrated my soul as
something profoundly consoling: Jesus’ blood raises no calls for retaliation but
calls all to reconciliation.”
Still, Ratzinger has never ducked a
contentious point in Christian/Jewish dialogue – whether Christians should
renounce efforts to convert Jews. He suggested in a 1987 interview with the
Italian newspaper Il Sabato that Jews could be fully true to their heritage only
by becoming Christian: “The Pope has offered respect, but also a theological
line. This always implies our union with the faith of Abraham, but also the
reality of Jesus Christ, in which the faith of Abraham finds its fulfillment,”
he said. Ratzinger referred to Edith Stein, a Jew who converted to Catholicism,
became a Carmelite nun, and was murdered by the Nazis. “Finding faith in Christ,
she entered into the full inheritance of Abraham,” Ratzinger said. “She turned
in her Jewish heritage to have a new and diverse heritage. But in entering into
unity with Christ, she entered into the very heart of Judaism.”
There is
little question about Ratzinger’s personal respect for Jews, or his opposition
to anti-Semitism. He has recalled seeing a slogan painted on Cardinal Michael
von Faulhaber’s residence in Munich in November 1938: “After the Jew, the
Jew-lover.” Faulhaber had resisted the efforts of Alfred Rosenberg and others to
purge Christianity of its Jewish elements. For Ratzinger, that phrase on the
cardinal’s wall summed up where the church stood. In another context, Ratzinger
was once asked by a Jewish leader if the existence of the state of Israel had
any theological significance for Catholics as it does for Jews. His response:
“If it has significance for you, it must have significance for
us.”
Moreover, Benedict XVI is aware that as a German pope who briefly,
albeit involuntarily, was enrolled in the Hitler Youth, and who later served in
the German army, his visit to a German synagogue has special
resonance.
That sense of history was clear on May 18, when Benedict XVI
watched a screening of a movie in Rome on the life of John Paul II that included
scenes of Nazi repression of Jews and Poles. At the end, he stood and
applauded.
He called the work a “moving film with very strong emotional
references to the repression of the Polish people and the genocide of the
Jews.”
“One is talking about atrocious crimes that demonstrate all the
evil contained in the Nazi ideology,” Benedict said. He said he saw a
providential design in the fact that a Polish pope was succeeded by a German
one.
“Both popes in their youth – both on different sides and in
different situations – were forced to experience the barbarity of the Second
World War,” Benedict told the audience.
It’s that sensitivity the world
will be waiting to hear in Cologne.
* * * Though not quite packing the
same historical punch, the meeting with Muslims on August 20 arguably has at
least the same political and theological significance as the encounter with Jews
the day before.
As of 2004, there were roughly 3.45 million Muslims in
Germany, making it one of the countries in Europe with the highest percentage of
Muslim immigrants. Many arrived as a result of work-related migrations in the
1960s and political upheavals in the 1970s, so by now the Muslim community in
Germany is well established, including families with two or three generations in
the country. The rate of adult conversion is low; only about 12,000 Muslims in
the country are ethnically German. The overwhelming majority of German Muslims
are from Turkey, and most are Sunnis.
According to a 2004 study by
Bielefeld University, some Germans are not entirely comfortable with the Muslim
presence in the country. Some 60 percent of Germans, according to the study,
believe their country is “too foreign.” Seventy percent of the Germans surveyed
said that Muslims do not fit in with Western society, and German society in
particular. That figure is up from 55 percent who felt uncomfortable with
Muslims two years ago. According to the authors of the study, the current
national unemployment rate of 10.5 percent, with rates much higher in the former
East Germany, explains some of this resentment. Benedict XVI will no doubt
want to strike a note of tolerance and dialogue in his August 20 session with
Muslim leaders at the archbishop’s palace. Some Muslim leaders greeted the
election of Benedict XVI with apprehension, wondering if his interest in Judaism
would mean correspondingly less attention to Islam. The pope will also want to
assure Muslims that Christian/Islamic relations will be a high
priority.
Benedict has already tried to strike reassuring notes with
regard to Muslims, aware of the potential for a “clash of civilizations” between
Islam and the West. When an aide recently termed the July 7 London bombings
“anti-Christian,” Benedict was quick to say that he didn’t see it that way – the
intent, he said, was “much more general.”
At the same time, Joseph
Ratzinger has long been associated with a somewhat “hawkish” approach to Islam,
especially on the issue of reciprocity – religious freedom for Christians and
other religious minorities in majority Islamic states. If the Saudi Arabian
government can spend $65 million to finance the construction of a sprawling
mosque in Rome, for example, then perhaps Christians ought to be able to legally
build churches in Saudi Arabia, something that is presently barred by law.
Observers will be listening attentively for any hints of a somewhat stronger
line from the pope on this issue.
A specific concern for Germany’s
Turkish community will be any comment from Benedict XVI on the question of
Turkey’s candidacy for the European Union, something Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
had opposed. In an interview last August with the French paper Le Figaro,
Ratzinger said: “Throughout history Turkey has always represented a different
continent, always in contrast with Europe.” He warned that taking Turkey into
Europe would lead to a flattening out of cultural characteristics on both sides.
“It would be a mistake to make the two continents the same, it would mean losing
the richness of their differences and giving up culture in return for advantages
in the economic field,” he said.
It’s not yet clear if that private view
will become the official position of the Holy See on Benedict XVI’s watch. This
meeting with a predominantly Turkish community in Europe would offer an ideal
opportunity for a clarification.
* * * The official web site for World
Youth Day can be found here:
http://www.wjt2005.de/index.php?id=6&si=1
An independent news service
about World Youth Day, staffed by freelance journalists, can be found here:
http://www.pulitzer.de/
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