I do not intend to make an accounting of the pontificate of Benedict XVI; others already have competently done so. More interesting would be to understand better a tension that is always alive within the Church, and defines the profile of each pope. The central question is: what is the position and the mission of the Church in the world?
We start by saying that a balanced vision of this question must be based on two fundamental pillars: the Kingdom and the world. The Kingdom is the central message of Jesus of Nazareth, His utopia of an absolute revolution that reconciles creation with itself and with God. The world is the place where the Church realizes her service to the Kingdom, and where she builds herself. If we think of the Church in a way that is too closely linked to the Kingdom, we risk spiritualization and idealism. If we think of her as too closely linked to the world, we succumb to the temptation of trivializing and politicizing her. It is important to know how to articulate Kingdom-World-Church. The Church belongs to the Kingdom and also to the world. The Church has both a historical dimension, with all its contradictions, and a transcendental one.
How can we live this tension within the world and history? We offer two models, that are different, and sometimes conflictive: the model of the testimonial and the one of dialogue.
The model of the testimonial affirms with conviction: We have the source of faith, within which are all the truths necessary for salvation. We have the sacraments that communicate grace. We have a well defined morality. We are sure that the Catholic Church is the Church of Christ, the only true Church. We have the Pope, who has infallibility in matters of faith and customs. We have a hierarchy that governs the faithful, and the promise of the constant assistance of the Holy Spirit. We must give witness of this to a world that does not know where to go and which by itself will never have salvation. It must pass through the mediation of the Church, without which there is no salvation.
The Christians of this model, from the popes to the simple faithful, feel infused with a unique mission of salvation. They are fundamentalists and not much inclined to dialogue. Why should one dialogue? We already have everything. Dialogue could only serve to facilitate the conversion of the other, as a gesture of courtesy.
The model of dialogue proceeds from different assumptions: The Kingdom is larger than the Church, and also realizes itself secularly where there is truth, love and justice. The resurrected Christ has cosmic dimensions and guides evolution towards a good end. The Spirit is always present in history and in persons of good will. The Spirit arrives before the missionary, because the Spirit was with the people in the form of solidarity, love and compassion. God never abandoned His own, and God offers to all an opportunity for salvation, because God created them from His heart, that one day they may be able to live happily in the Kingdom of the free. The mission of the Church is to be a beacon for the history of God in human history and also to be an instrument for its construction, together with other spiritual paths. If reality, both the religious and the secular are imbued with God, all of us must dialogue: exchange, learn from each other and make that human pilgrimage towards the promise be happy, easier and surer.
The model of the testimonial is the model of the Church of tradition, that fostered the missions in Africa, Asia and Latin America, being, in the name of the testimonial, complicit even in the genocide and domination of many Indigenous, Africans and Asian nations. It was the model of Pope John Paul II, who traveled around the world, holding a cross as a testimonial that from the cross came salvation. It was the model, even more radicalized, of Benedict XVI, who denied the title of "Church" to the Evangelical Churches, deeply offending them. He directly attacked modernity, because he saw it negatively, as relativistic and secularist. Of course, he did not deny all its values, but he saw them in every instance as coming from the source of the Christian faith. Benedict XVI reduced the Church to an isolated island, or a fortress surrounded by enemies, against whom the only thing was to defend herself.
The model of the dialogue is that of Vatican Council II, of Paul VI, and of Medellin and Puebla in Latin America. They saw Christianity neither as a repository nor as a closed system that risks being fossilized, but as a source of living and crystal clear waters that can be chaneled through many cultural venues, in a space of mutual learning, because all are carriers of the Creative Spirit and of the very essence of the dream of Jesus of Nazareth.
The model of the testimonial frightened many Christians, who felt reduced to children and devalued in their professional knowledge; they no longer felt the Church as a spiritual home, and, disconsolate, they have separated themselves from the institution, but not from Christianity as the value and utopia of Jesus.
The model of the dialogue has brought many closer, because they have felt at home, helping build an apprentice-Church, open to dialogue with everyone. The effect has been a feeling of liberty and creativity, that being a Christian is worthwhile.
This model of the dialogue becomes urgent, if the institution wants to overcome the crisis into which it has descended, and that has touched her honor: her morality (the pedophiles) and her spirituality (the theft of secret documents and grave problems of transparency in the Vatican Bank).
We must intelligently discern what it is that presently best serves the Christian message, in the middle of the ecological and social crises of very grave consequences. Because the central problem is not the Church, but the future of Mother Earth, the future of life and of our civilization. How can the Church help in this transition? Only by dialoguing and joining her strength to that of all the others.
– Leonardo Boff, Theologian-Philosopher and Earthcharter Commission
Free translation from the Spanish by Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org. done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.
