Roncalli is touchstone for future of Catholic Church

By TP O’Mahony WHEN the cardinals of the Catholic Church gather in conclave to elect the next Pope, what will they use as their papal template?

Will they seek a clone of the autocratic Polish Pope who has sat on the throne of Peter for the past 25 years, or look to the reforming vision of a Pope who died 40 years ago this month?

One Pope started a revolution, the other initiated a counter-revolution.

The big question for the Catholic Church in the 21st century is which papal blueprint to opt for?

Will it be the Roncalli model or the Wojtyla model?

Angelo Roncalli was close to his 77th birthday when the idea of embarking on a revolutionary journey came to him.

As Pope John XXIII, he decided to summon a General Council of the Catholic Church.

The Second Vatican Council began in St Peter's Basilica in October, 1962, in the presence of nearly 3,000 bishops, a gathering so rare that only 20 others like it had been convened in 2,000 years of Christianity.

Although the 21st council, it was called Vatican II because, like the 20th, Vatican I (1869-70), it met in the basilica that is the centrepiece of the 108-acre Vatican City State.

In a cover story on The Condition of Catholicism, published a fortnight before the opening of Vatican II, TIME magazine reminded readers that ecumenical councils of the past were summoned "when the church was faced with clear and present danger heresy, schism, internal corruption, or the violent enmity of civic states."

This time it was different. This time the emphasis was on renewal and updating.

Two words that afterwards became familiar during the Gorbachev era in the Soviet Union: glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) could be said to capture some of the essence of what Vatican II was about. A third word, aggiornamento (renewal), sums up the spirit of the Council.

"Open the windows," said John XXIII, "and let the fresh air in." The implications were clear, theological cobwebs and accretions of the past had darkened and stultified the life of the church.

The work of the council was spread over four years (1962-1965), and bore fruit in the form of 16 conciliar texts.

These were profoundly to reshape Catholicism and create a new awareness of the need for unity between all Christian churches.

Reaction was mixed: enthusiasm for the council was distinctly lukewarm in places, not least in Ireland.

Although Pope John died on June 3, 1963, he had set in motion a process his successor, Paul VI, could hardly abandon.

Not that Paul VI ever wished to do so. He steadfastly steered the church through a period of revolutionary change without schism.

He balked, when faced with a critical decision in the area of human sexuality and reproduction.

By 1968, there had been a growing expectation that Vatican opposition to contraception (first officially formulated by Pius XI in the encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930) would be eased.

The publication of Humanae Vitae in July 1968 was to prove a watershed for millions of Catholics.

For many, it meant conscience prevailing over blind obedience to church authority.

Today, astonishingly, John Paul II still insists on obedience to the teaching of Humanae Vitae

The potential of the council, , has never been realised. Its reforms were stifled and stultified by Karol Wojtyla, whose avowed policy of "restoration" as Pope John Paul II has created a dilemma that his successor will have to confront.

Should the Church revisit and re-embrace the revolutionary vision of John XXIII or stick with the counter-revolution of John Paul II?

At the heart of this dilemma are two conflicting ecclesiologies.

This in turn raises a key question for Catholicism in the 21st century: how is authority to be exercised?

By a Pope who is an autocrat, and for whom the world's bishops are merely glorified altar boys, or by a Pope who sits in a college with these same bishops, exercising collegial rule as primus inter pares?

Vatican I, which had to be abandoned because of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, supplied a partial answer.

It defined papal infallibility, though never got around to the other big item on its agenda, the role of the bishops. Vatican II, with emphasis on collegiality, on co-responsibility, and on the concept of the church as "the people of God", was seen as a corrective to the inordinate depositing of authority in one person.

The need to build bridges within a divided church will be one of the chief tasks of the next Pope, plus his ability to move away from the concept of Rome as a corporate headquarters with franchises in Ireland, Germany, USA and Brazil, and towards the church as a genuine communion of believers.

During the 25 years since his election, John Paul II has made nearly 100 trips to all parts of the globe.

Far from having a unifying effect, this extended exercise in papal populism has seen local hierarchies sidelined.

The outcome of the visit to Ireland in 1979 could serve as a metaphor for the Pope's globetrotting: no lasting effect.

Central to the Papacy emerging from the next conclave will be:

the exercise of papal authority;

the status of national episcopal conferences;

the role of women, including ordination to the priesthood;

celibacy and a married clergy;

how the church should relate to the world;

the church and human sexuality.

The events of the past 10 years (the spate of clerical sex scandals, the crisis in vocations, celibacy, the alienation of young people, the marginalising of women) represent unhealed wounds that the next Pope must confront.

The success of the next Papacy will be gauged by the extent to which the successor to John Paul II is able to heal such wounds.

That's why the conclave must go for a Roncalli rather than a Wojtyla template.

The former contains necessary healing ingredients. The latter will perpetuate the wounds which are already damaging the church.