|
| All Things Catholic |
 |
| Aug. 11, 2006 |
Vol. 5, No. 48
|
NCR Senior
|
The pope's Schülerkreis takes on 'Creation and Evolution'; Auxiliary bishop consecrated for Baghdad; The incoming Vatican secretary of state; Cardinal Willebrands: pioneer of ecumenism
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Leaders generally can't afford the luxury of "thinking out loud," since anything they say is subject to scrutiny and, often enough, misunderstanding. For creative minds accustomed to examining issues from a variety of perspectives before reaching conclusions, it's therefore crucial to carve out a few safety zones where ideas can be tossed around freely. In that spirit, Pope Benedict XVI has his own "kitchen cabinets," and perhaps his favorite is a group of former doctoral students with whom he meets each year, known in German as his Schülerkreis. In German academic life, the bonds between a Doktorvater and his disciples have always been strong, but even by that standard Joseph Ratzinger seems to inspire a special loyalty among those who studied under him. After Pope Paul VI called him out of the academy in 1977 by naming him Archbishop of Munich-Freising, Ratzinger and his students adopted the custom of meeting over a weekend once a year, in a cross between a retreat and an academic seminar. You can take the professor out of the classroom, but you can't take the classroom out of the professor. When Ratzinger was elected as Benedict XVI, his students feared the new pope's calendar would render these gatherings impossible. In fact, however, Benedict appears to savor them now more than ever. Two days after the pope's April 24 installation Mass, he met with 72-year-old German Salvatorian Fr. Stephan Horn, the informal chair of the Schülerkreis, to tell him he wanted the meetings to go forward. In late August 2005, the group assembled at Castegandolfo, where the pope has his summer residence, for a two-day meeting. They will do so again Sept. 1-3 of this year. If these sessions were merely a case of Benedict catching up with old friends, it would perhaps be noteworthy only as a color story about how the pope spends his "down time." In fact, however, the Schülerkreis has become an opportunity for Benedict to gather thoughts on some of the most important issues on his docket. Last year, the group discussed God in Islam. Though these are closed-door events, leaks indicated that Benedict XVI expressed reservations about the capacity of Islam to adapt to pluralistic Western cultures, given that the Koran is regarded by Muslims as the literal word of Allah and hence less amenable to interpretation than the Christian Bible. This year, the theme for the Schülerkreis's Sept. 1-3 meeting is an equally explosive subject -- "Creation and Evolution." Understanding who takes part in these gatherings, and what kind of thinking they represent, is fast becoming an important "hermeneutical key" in interpreting where the pontificate of Benedict XVI may go. * * *Even after John Paul II's famous 1996 statement that evolution is "more than a hypothesis," Catholic scientists and philosophers have debated the extent to which Darwinian theory is compatible with orthodox Catholicism. Most recently, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, set off a firestorm with a July 7, 2005, op/ed piece in The New York Times asserting that the Catholic church cannot accept "evolution" in the sense of a philosophy that excludes intelligent design in nature. The article triggered a fierce reaction from many Catholic scientists and theologians, who felt the cardinal was blurring scientific and theological arguments, and inadvertently aligning himself with anti-evolution activists in the States. It didn't help matters that Schönborn's piece in The Times was placed with the help of a PR firm retained by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based institute which supports "intelligent design." Four speakers have been invited to lead the discussion of evolution during this year's gathering of the Schülerkreis. One will be Schönborn himself, a longtime member of the group. (In fact, Schönborn was not really a graduate student of Ratzinger, spending just a year in Regensburg with him in the late 1970s doing post-doctoral work. Yet Schönborn has always been considered part of the Schülerkreis). The other three are: Jesuit Fr. Paul Erbrich, emeritus professor of natural philosophy from the University of Munich; Professor Robert Spaemann, a political philosopher; and Professor Peter Schuster, President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Given the background of these speakers, it's reasonable to expect two things from the discussion:
Evolution as Science
Perhaps the most famous Achilles' heel in Darwin's theory was the lack of fossil records to demonstrate a smooth progression of intermediate forms between one species and the next. Darwin himself said future discoveries should plug the gap, but that has not happened. Experts, however, sometimes suggest that where the fossil record has failed, molecular biology has triumphed. At the molecular level, they argue, one finds precisely the relatively smooth transitions that evolution predicts. In an influential 1985 essay, however, Erbrich poked holes in that claim. Proteins with essentially the same structure and function, he said, are found even in very distantly related species. To explain this, evolutionary theorists would have to posit that essentially the same proteins developed two or more times, independently of one another, and both by chance. "The probability ... of the convergent evolution of two proteins with approximately the same structure and function is too low to be plausible, even when all possible circumstances are present which seem to heighten the likelihood of such a convergence," Erbrich wrote. From there, Erbrich drew a broader conclusion. "Why does the scientific theory of evolution hold on to the concept of chance to the degree it does?" he asked. "I suspect it is the fact that there is no alternative whatsoever which could explain the fact of universal evolution, at least in principle, and be formulated within the framework of natural science. If no alternative should be forthcoming, if chance remains overtaxed, then the conclusion seems inevitable that evolution and therefore living beings cannot be grasped by natural science to the same extent as non-living things -- not because organisms are so complex, but because the explaining mechanism is fundamentally inadequate." On the other hand, the Schülerkreis will likely hear a more positive treatment of evolutionary theory from Schuster, a distinguished expert on molecular biology. Schuster, who turned 65 this year, is not much for sound-bite science. Heres a typically sexy essay title: "Bistability of Harmonically Forced Relaxation Oscillations." Broadly speaking, however, Schuster accepts evolution as a valid scientific hypothesis, and has little patience for ideological opposition to it. He had this to say, for example, about the creationist movement in a 2004 essay titled From Belief to Facts in Evolutionary Theory: The United States [has seen] an unfruitful and special development that is not shared by Western Europe , Schuster wrote. Almost militant opponents of the idea of evolution in the American society make the request that a Science of Creation in the spirit of the nineteenth century is taught simultaneously with evolutionary biology at school. Schuster cited a critical appraisal of creationism published by the National Academy of Sciences in the United States in 1999. Following Schönborns New York Times piece, Schuster wrote a critical response, to appear in the journal Complexities. His blunt conclusion: "Darwinian evolution … is an empirical scientific fact, a fact in the same class with the Copernican solar system, Newtonian mechanics, Einstein's universe or the world of quantum mechanics, and is neither one hypothesis among others, nor an ideology. The interpretation of observations in biology, as we understand it today, does not need a plan, nor does it provide obvious hints for an active designer." In an Aug. 11 interview with NCR, Schuster said it was Schönborn who asked him to take part in the Castelgandolfo seminar. "I asked Schönborn, 'Why me?' " Schuster said by phone from Vienna. "The cardinal said he had discussed it with the pope, and the pope wanted a scientist who in no way can be suspected of being a creationist." At the same time, Schuster is not a Darwinian dogmatist, saying that the mechanism of natural selection is only one of several principles that determine the course of biological evolution, and macroscopic evolution is seen now as an exceedingly complex overlay of many influences. Evolution as Philosophy
What this amounts to is a distinction, which unfortunately comes more naturally in German than in English, between evolution and "evolutionism" -- between a scientific hypothesis, and a philosophical system. That seemed to be the drift of an exchange I had with Schönborn last August, in the wake of The New York Times piece. "For Catholic thinking," Schönborn told me, "it was clear from Pius XII's encyclical, Humani generis, that evolutionary theory can be valid to understand certain mechanisms, but it can never be seen or accepted as a holistic model to explain the existence of life." That seems close to Robert Spaemann's approach as well. In 1988, Spaemann published a book called Evolutionismus und Christentum, in which he laid out what he sees as the contradictions between Christianity and "evolutionism" considered as a philosophical theory. Christianity, Spaemann argues, rests on the philosophical assumption of stably existing entities with fixed natures -- most importantly, human nature created in the image of God. "Evolutionism," he says, instead posits that everything is in flux, so the only permanent reality is change, thereby undercutting the basis for belief in a universal human nature. Over the years, Spaemann (who, at 79, is the same age as the pope) has put his money where his mouth is. In 1991, he was active in organizing opposition to a series of lectures in Germany by the Australian ethicist and animal rights activist Peter Singer, whom some critics have accused of blurring the metaphysical distinction between human beings and the rest of the natural world. Spaemann, who is a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, circulated a "Kinsauer Manifesto," which endorsed efforts to disrupt Singer's appearances, and expressed opposition to both abortion and euthanasia. * * *Horn has told the German press that Benedict is keen on the need for science and faith to be in dialogue, and that he ultimately takes a positive view of evolution. "By no means is the Pope tending towards Creationism," Horn said. "Rather he is convinced that creation and evolution can go together." Horn said that Benedict certainly believes that human beings owe their existence "to God's creative 'Yes,'" but, Horn said, the pope also regards what this means in detail as something to be worked out in dialogue with natural scientists. Among the members of the Schülerkreis are three Americans: Jesuit Fr. Joseph Fessio, Provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida; Social Service Sr. Maria Lugosi of Buffalo, New York; and Fr. Antoine Saroyan of St. Gregory the Illuminator Church, an Armenian Catholic parish, in Glendale, California. The informal secretary of the group is lay German theologian Siegfried Wiedenhofer, a former Ratzinger student who today serves as professor of systematic theology at the Johan Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. * * *On Aug. 10, I had a brief interview with Horn about the Schülerkreis. It's worth noting that we used Italian, so the quotes below represent my translation of his remarks. What significance do these events have for you? In the first place, we try to come together with the same spirit we had when we first met during the time of our studies. We have theological discussions, of course, but these are always linked with a spiritual element -- the Holy Mass, or the Prayer of the Hours, or Vespers. As the years have gone on, we've deepened our relationships among ourselves, who were students with J. Ratzinger at different times -- in Bonn, or Münster, or Tübingen, or Regensburg. We've shared experiences, academic studies, and also our thoughts. We've also sought out dialogue with other professors and their thinking. Sometimes, therefore, the meetings have had an ecumenical character. In so far as you can say, what's the significance for the pope? How are the themes chosen, such as "Islam" last year and "Creation and Evolution" this year?
In the case of the theme "Creation and Evolution," we selected two principal speakers: Professor Peter Schuster and Cardinal Schönborn. But given the vastness and the complexity of the theme, it seemed useful to have two other experts with us as participants (Gesprächspartner), a philosopher (Professor Spaemann) and a scientist (Fr. Erbrich). Have texts from the presentations ever been published? In a recent interview with a German newspaper, you said that Pope Benedict believes creation and evolution can be reconciled. Can you say more? Bishop Andreas Abouna was consecrated an auxiliary of Baghdad in Rome on January 6, 2003, and shortly afterwards we sat down for an interview in which he voiced concern about the possibility of a Christian exodus from Iraq in the wake of a then-hypothetical U.S.-led invasion. Today, Abouna says, his worst fears have been realized. "The constitution and the political developments of the past 18 months or so have not helped at all. It is just a theory," he told the German agency Aid to the Church in Need this week. "Everyone is asking: when will the violence stop? They want to rest. They cannot live like this -- everyday there are these terrible things." As a result, Abouna said, the Christian population of Iraq has been cut in half over the last three years, from an estimated 1.3 million to 600,000. In Baghdad, he said, historically home to a disproportionately high number of Christian residents, up to 75 percent have left -- some to safer zones in the north of the country, some abandoning Iraq altogether. "When so many are leaving from a small community like ours, you know that it is dangerous -- dangerous for the future of the Church in Iraq," Abouna said. Iraqi Christians who took refuge in Syria, Jordan and Turkey and have attempted to return, Abouna said, are generally disheartened by what they've found. Abouna indicated that Christians in Iraq are not necessarily being targeted more than other groups, but given that they were already a small community facing an uncertain future, instability and difficult living conditions have added to the demoralization. Sadly, Abouna said, many of the Christians who remain are simply too poor or too weak to leave. "What we are hearing now is the alarm bell for Christianity in Iraq," Abouna said. * * *Giovanni Cardinale of the Italian journal 30 Giorni is the reigning master of the Q&A format with senior church leaders. The latest case in point comes in his interview with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, the incoming Secretary of State, in the July/August issue of 30 Giorni. We learn that Bertone's mother Pierina was a follower of Don Luigi Sturzo and the Partito Popolare, the forerunner of the Christian Democratic Party. During the pontificate of Pius IX, Sturzo's desire to build a Christian presence in civil society was sometimes viewed as disloyal to the pope's rejection of a secular Italian state on principle. For Italians, the name "Sturzo" became synonymous with moderate reconciliation with modernity. When Cardinale points out that the only other Secretary of State who belonged to a religious order was Cardinal Luigi Emmanuele Nicolò Lambruschini, from 1836-1846, Bertone brushes off the parallel. "For goodness' sake, don't compare me with Lambruschini," Bertone responds. "He was a holy man, but politically he was a complete reactionary!" Bertone is an expert in canon law who worked on the revision of the Code of Canon Law in 1983. In 1989, while serving as rector of the Salesian University, Bertone chaired a working group of rectors that prepared John Paul II's apostolic constitution on Catholic education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae. He was also asked to be part of the negotiations with traditionalist followers of the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, which ultimately failed to avoid a schism in 1988 when Lefebvre consecrated bishops without the pope's approval.
Bertone has a well-known sense of humor; he once quipped that perhaps the Catholic Church should make an exception to its opposition to cloning in the case of Italian beauty Sophia Loren. It shines through in the 30 Giorni interview; when Cardinale notes that Bertone's appointment breaks the tradition of picking the Secretary of State from the Vatican diplomatic corps. Bertone quips that Benedict XVI does not feel bound by "traditions with a small 't'." Yet Bertone can also be quite serious, as with his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq. "I repeated with conviction the judgment on the war formulated by John Paul II and the Holy See," Bertone said. "The current situation in Iraq manifests how prophetic that judgment was." Bertone also said, however, that he's opposed to an immediate pull-out, worrying that it would leave the civilian population in greater danger. Bertone is blistering in his criticism of international economic systems. "I've repeated many times the judgment of experts and entire bodies of bishops: the international loans made by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as bilateral loans, are by now a form of usury and should be declared illegal," Bertone said. "Debt becomes usury when it undercuts the inalienable right to life and to all the other rights which are not conceded to human beings, but belong to them by nature," he said. "Based on the social doctrine of the church, we need a popular democratic capitalism, as well as a system of economic liberty which does not amount to an oligopoly, which makes room for the greatest number of participants possible, giving them a chance to engage in enterprise and creativity, favoring a healthy competition within a clear legal framework," he said. Bertone was also critical of social practices he alleged are sometimes required as a condition of financial assistance. "Some technocrats, especially those of the multinationals, of the World Bank and the IMF, have imposed unacceptable conditions on the poor, including forced sterilization and the closing of Catholic schools," he said. Bertone calls Islam a "delicate question." He said he's not opposed to the construction of mosques in Italy, although he would wish for a reciprocal form of religious liberty for Christians in majority Islamic states. He also said that in principle he's not opposed to teaching Islam to Muslim students in Italian schools, though both teachers and curriculum should be subject to control to ensure that schools aren't inadvertently fostering extremist positions. One challenge Bertone will face as the Vatican's voice on global affairs: he doesn't speak English, which today is the common language of diplomacy and the global press. "I said this to the pope when he asked me to serve as Secretary of State," Bertone told Cardinale. "He encouraged me, saying that other important personalities, such as the great Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany, also didn't know English. Anyway, the Holy See has excellent interpreters at its service." * * *Speaking of vaticanisti, there has been concern in the tribe since July 23, when colleague and friend Orazio Petrosillo, who covers the Vatican for the Italian daily Il Messaggero, suffered a heart attack while covering Benedict XVI's vacation in northern Italy. After two weeks in the hospital there, Petrosillo was transferred to the Gemelli in Rome. Luigi Accattoli, the distinguished Vatican writer for Corriere della Sera, has used his blog to collect messages for Petrosillo, which Accattoli prints and takes to him in the hospital. For those who read Italian and know Petrosillo's work, the messages can be found here: www.luigiaccattoli.it/blog/?p=148#comments On Aug. 10, Accattoli told me that there's been little change in Petrosillo's condition since July 23. He's under the care of Dr. Rodolfo Proietti, director of the Gemelli's emergency and admissions department, and the physician who headed the medical team that cared for Pope John Paul II when he was hospitalized at the Gemelli Feb. 1-10, and again Feb. 24 to March 13, 2005. Proietti, Accattoli said, believes it will still be "a few weeks" before he can make an evaluation of Petrosillo's long-term condition. Petrosillo is still not completely alert, but the doctors are relatively optimistic based on his partial responses to stimuli they have administered. * * *Progress in the church generally rests upon the intersection of two distinct but equally important charisms. There's the prophetic impulse, standing outside official structures and pushing the church to realize the best version of itself. Then there's the institutional function, working inside official structures to make change happen. The latter inevitably involves one in the gray world of compromise, half-measures, and striking a balance among competing visions, but it's essential to moving things forward. One of the great modern avatars of this second charism passed from the scene on August 1, with the death of Dutch Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, the Catholic pioneer of ecumenism. Willebrands, the Vatican's top ecumenical official for 40 years, had passed the last several years of his life in a Dutch nursing home. One story about Willebrands seems to capture the essence of the man. Among the main events of the Great Jubilee Year of 2000 was the opening of the Holy Door at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls on January 18, 2000, which also marked the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. For the occasion, Pope John Paul II was flanked by Metropolitan Athanasius, representing the Patriarch of Constantinople, and George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury. That week, John Paul II invited the staff of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, the Vatican's ecumenical office, to have lunch with him in the Apostolic Palace. Willebrands, then 90 years old, was also on the guest list. When the group assembled, John Paul unexpectedly said that the one person who truly deserved the right to speak was Willebrands. His friends were a bit nervous, since by that stage Willebrands was often disoriented and confused, and they obviously didn't want to see him embarrassed in front of the pope. Instead, those present say that Willebrands delivered a simple and beautiful impromptu talk about the call to Christian unity, speaking directly from his heart. It crystallized his spirit: even when his other powers were failing him, Willebrands' ecumenical clarity and passion were undimmed. For a half-century, Willebrands was synonymous with Catholic ecumenism. In 1960, Pope John XXIII inaugurated a Secretariat for Christian Unity, with Willebrands as its first secretary. (Paulist Fr. Tom Stransky, one of four original staffers of the Secretariat, once told me the first offices were located in an old apartment, leading to the charming improvisation of using a bath tub as a make-do filing cabinet). Willebrands was an ideal pick, since he had imbibed the ecumenical idea in post-war Holland, and bolstered his academic grasp of the issues with a thesis on Cardinal John Henry Newman at Rome's Angelicum University. It was Willebrands, for example, who met with the Protestant and Orthodox observers at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) every Tuesday afternoon at the Centro Pro Unione in the Piazza Navonna to lead them through a discussion of the council's texts. The clash between prophecy and management became painfully real for Willebrands in 1975, when Paul VI asked him to become the Archbishop of Utrecht, attempting to steer the breakaway Dutch Catholic church in a more moderate direction. Most observers say the effort did not end well. There are neither worlds enough nor time to recount Willebrands' contributions to the ecumenical cause. Suffice it to say that he embodied a generation of trailblazers, and there's much ground yet to cover before their vision is fully realized. The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is jallen@natcath.org |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2006 The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company, 115 E. Armour Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64111 TEL: 1-816-531-0538 FAX: 1-816-968-2280 |
