On Friday, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini passed away: millions mourned the passing of the former archbishop of Milan, an unsually prominent Jesuit and a one-time rumored possibility to succeed Pope John Paul II.
How close did he come to the papacy? Well, by the time John Paul died, Cardinal Martini, almost 80, was visibly frail; he suffered from Parkinson's and did not make it far in the voting process. The result of the early ballots are disputed: Martini may have won more than Ratzinger did in the first bout, or close to it, or far behind, depending on who you ask. Regardless of whether he was a serious rival of Ratzinger's at the election, he was certainly considered a possible future pope just a handful of years before.
So consider: had Martini been just a few years younger, or just a little stronger and healthier, there is a very real possibility that the cardinals at the papal conclave would have elected to the head of the church a man who believed:
- That the Church is 200 years behind the times, and in desperate need of transformation;
- That the refusal to fully acknowledge divorce, remarriage or blended families cuts believers off from the church, which ought to be avoided;
- That the revelations of child abuse indict the church at the highest level and demand fundamental change and reorganization, and are not simply an embarrassment to be concealed or covered up;
- That the use of condoms can be a "lesser evil" in some cases and that the Church's position on contraception was poorly expressed;
- That the terminally ill and dying should have a right to refuse treatment; in fact, as he was dying Cardinal Martini himself eventually refused treatment;
- That the church should reconsider the traditional role of women in church hierarchy, and that female deacons should be ordained;
- That state recognition of same-sex unions is not only perfectly fine, but in fact a positive good, promoting stable relationships (even if they are not relationships that the Church will acknowledge);
- That the structure of the Catholic church was overly authoritarian, that the robes were pompous, and that the Church bureaucracy was overgrown;
- That the church, to remain true to its calling and to raise its relevancy in the modern world, should return to a stronger focus on promoting social work and social justice, particularly in helping the poor and oppressed.
Sound like the Vatican you know?
Martini's death didn't get too much airtime in the States. I first read about it in Spanish, stumbling over ecclesiastical words I didn't know, and then sought out longer profiles and interviews from European publications. American papers gave him only cursory obits. And I think that's part of a larger trend in American reporting on the Church, which is to behave as though the institution is as monolithic as the Holy See likes to claim. (This trend might be changing, as nuns become more popular subjects of profiles, and the split between official Church policy on birth control and actual Catholic practice remains central to issues of public policy). I think we should have talked about him more, as a reminder that the Church is a complex church, full of possibilities for change; sometimes unrealized, but not unimportant.
The death of Martini reminded me of something I learned from an old Jesuit priest in the Philippines: that before the Church authorities declared their official position on new forms of contraception, they convened a group of Catholics - priests and lay believers - to investigate the issue. A married couple interviewed Catholics across the world, asking about their sex lives, their faith, and what contraception would mean for both. The working group recommended that the church allow the use of contraceptives by married couples; famously, the Church rejected this finding, and the rest is history.
History, but not inevitable history. Martini's death as a retired archbishop - and not as pope - was no more inevitable.
An extraordinary number of church leaders believe that their fundamental calling is to help the poor and allieve the pain of the suffering. The fact that the Church today is most famous as a safe haven for sexual predators, a shadowy organization of unimaginably wealthy men, and an aggressive, political force for social conservativism around the globe - rather than as the world's largest source of food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, and education for the impoverished - is in many ways an accident of history. Votes that went one way and not another. Illness at the worst possible times, deaths when not expected. Not inevitable, and still not guaranteed.
The Church once gave Mass only in Latin. Things change. They still might.
