So far, so good, so what

...Both were shorthand defenses of local churches against centralization, of episcopal conferences against Roman surveillance and interference...

...The week that followed was a demonstration of what Cardinal Danneels had called the "geography of problems...

...Baum spoke of the limits of historical criticism of Scripture and the need for an "ecclesial" exegesis...

...But what could this ringing announcement realistically mean...

...The old theology prof, he surmised, would not have felt in need of a papal okay to express his opinions...

...The synod was not a setback...

...When it came to the central question of collegiality, however, the bishops seemed to speak another kind of language as well — a hybrid of theology and diplomacy...

...But any such judgment, I realized, rested largely on what one's expectations had been...

...In Ratzinger, liberals found an ally malgre lui...

...Less purely defensive but still modest were the hopes that the synod would unmistakably reaffirm Vatican II in the face of those who continued to look with suspicion on its legacy...

...In that respect, nothing has changed...

...Who won the synod...

...its aftermath was often a tale of dashed hopes...

...It had in it much of the quality of the image "people of God," which conservatives have increasingly resisted...

...Unity was the conservative counterpart...

...The synod's expression of concern for collegiality will probably not affect Rome's apparent determination to use its powers of appointment, its censure of theologians, its pressures on religious orders as it sees fit and quite regardless of the advice of America's bishops, to say nothing of any consideration for the views of the rest of us...

...The latter referred to the documents...

...Before the synod, Monika Hellwig wrote that we must look to it with "sober, even dogged, hope...

...Why reopen old wounds...

...His glum and sweeping estimation that the council's promise stood betrayed in almost every direction — and by bishops' conferences as well as unruly theologians — rallied opponents of the conservative agenda...

...Ratzinger said out loud what much of the Curia believes but prefers to keep quiet...

...The same people who recommended a return to the original documents could also endorse a 20 December J985: 699 universal catechism, or official handbooks on the council, or new theological manuals...

...Documents, catechism, manuals, the Code of Canon Law — they were part of an impulse to freeze the council in a moment of time...

...No Victors and No Vanquished" ran the headline over an upbeat story in the New York Times...

...It would suffice if the synod were not to become an occasion for closing the windows John XXIII had opened, nor for a decisive display of papal prerogative that would have broken the independent spirit of bishops' conferences...

...it is in the current atmosphere of distrust that we bite down hard on the tough political kernel...

...We should not ask too much...

...Both explanations obviously had some validity...

...Time for preparing the synod was short...

...that it would try to apply the council's vision to the church's present situation...

...You can't say the church would have been better off without the synod," was the phlegmatic way one veteran of the conciliar and post-conciliar years put it...

...Those were years of frustration, polarization, bitterness, overreaction...

...Cardinal Law was quoted as saying — "I think the church won the synod...

...If mystery threatened to cloak hierarchical power in a cloud of incense, communion emphasized an equality of standing before God, a bond of love in Christ that should supersede relations of power...

...It was salutary for Americans to be reminded of the problems facing churches which had only recently managed to get the Scriptures translated into hundreds of local languages, or where Christianity represents not only a statistical minority but an alien culture...

...Africa, Asia, and the numerous Eastern rites enjoyed proportionally greater representation here than they would have at a regular synod, let alone at a council...

...Mystery could become mystification...

...Perhaps there were no victors or vanquished, but I am not sure that means the church won either...

...The night before the synod set to work, I heard Walter Kasper observe that the summary he had drawn up of the reports from episcopal conferences around the world was "sufficiently optimistic...

...Alas, when Archbishop Berg of Salzburg, Austria, spoke about "the problem of responsible procreation" and asked that "the concept of 'nature...

...One explanation, therefore, maintained that post-conciliar disarray was due to "misinterpretations of the council...

...One rumor had it that John Paul II had himself gone over the galleys...

...It was the intermediate issue — the gatekeeper question — that would determine how all those other specific questions, so notable by their absence, from sexual morality to nuclear arms, would be approached in practice...

...It is that atmosphere that makes it difficult to achieve real dialogue between liberals and conservatives, to speak candidly of tensions and conflicts in the way Cardinal Danneels had begun to do, to take up problems of worldhistorical dimensions that all parties in the church recognize...

...But the documents were something other than a pastoral proposal...

...NOT REOPENING these wounds may have been part of the price to pay for the synod's distinct turn to the middle...

...The process of shaping the agenda was almost entirely in the hands of the pope and the Curia...

...If PETER STEINFELS is the editor of Commonweal...

...The particular was enveloped in general concepts...

...One is the separation of the link between sexuality and reproduction, a radical new step in the story, as old as civilization, of humanity's ambiguous emancipation from "nature" and a factor behind both the new claims of women and the disarray of sexual morality...

...No informed person could have accepted the idea that the pope wanted to "bury" the council...

...Curiously missing, however, was a third explanation...

...be more deeply studied," the ink was scarcely dry on the summary provided to the press when he issued a veritable recantation insisting that nothing he said should be taken as raising questions about Humanae Vitae...

...Now I think we must evaluate it in the same spirit...

...Collegiality, however, was the issue that stretched across continents...

...But it had at least one strong effect on the discussion preceding the synod...

...No one, of course, blamed the problems on the council itself...

...The introductory report Cardinal Danneels had based on it skillfully balanced positive and negative elements...

...That turn became visible with the appointment of Cardinal Godfried Danneels, of Brussels, to the key post of synod rapporteur, and the appointment of Father Walter Kasper, theologian from Tubingen, as synod special secretary...

...It was not surprising, then, that at least one level of expectation was almost purely defensive...

...What was surprising was that no one apparently pointed out that both had obvious implications for control of ecclesiastical power...

...it would simply agree in broad terms, as Bishop James W. Malone put it, that the church was "on the right path," if it would restore lagging hopes for ecumenism, if it would recognize the legitimacy of episcopal conferences, and if it would solidify the place of the synod itself as a factor in the church's governance, then it would have done as much as could be reasonably demanded...

...The council had launched a revolution of rising expectations...

...In reality, the church's leadership let much of its credibility drain away as it balked, scolded, and seemed to ignore much of the council's vision...

...that it might revive something of the council's spirit...

...The council had enrolled Catholics in a crash course in modernity — a decade to deal with all that had racked Protestant Christianity for over a century...

...The pope might not have intended anything beyond his broad aims...

...Cardinal Ratzinger had pitted the "letter" of the council against its "spirit," or as he preferred, its "anti-spirit...

...Unfortunately, the discreet silence thereby passed over a factor still very much in today's church...

...Collegiality itself was a liberal word...

...In 1983, U.S...

...Time for the synod to do its work would be practically nonexistent...

...Mystery quite clearly appealed to conservatives because, in stressing the divine origin of God's gift of the church, it tended to secure the current forms of ecclesiastical organization from the critical eye of what was dismissed as "sociological" or "political" analysis...

...Commonweal: 700...

...Not only did people divide over the degree of difficulties experienced by the post-conciliar church — the overworked distinction between''optimists'' and' 'pessimists'' — they also lined up behind one or the other of two explanations for these difficulties...

...Perhaps it was tact that kept virtually everyone from mentioning this "missing explanation" either in the pre-synod discussions or, as far as an outsider could deduce, during the synod's deliberations themselves...

...Had the pope in fact approved Ratzinger's initiative, blessed it as a trial balloon...

...Criticism of Ratzinger, moreover, could be easily distinguished from criticism of the pope...

...The synod should take on basic problems confronting the church — the role of women, the rethinking of sexuality...

...Writing before the synod, George G. Higgins drew attention to a warning from Dom Aelred Graham in The End of Religion:'' Spiritual renewal lies beyond the scope of administrative acts...

...The pope's" own stated aims, in announcing the synod, were sufficiently positive — that it would review the work of Vatican II...

...The sober truth is that for most of us — to return to the pope's aims — the synod did not "revive in some way that extraordinary atmosphere of ecclesial communion" of Vatican II...

...so too was subsidiarity...

...It should escape the "churchy" issues altogether and address the needs of the poor, the threat of nuclear destruction...

...bishops went to Rome in connection with the peace pastoral and were told that episcopal conferences had no teaching authority...

...CONFLICTS & CODE WORDS: A SOBER LOOK AT THE SYNOD So far, so good, so what PETER STEINFELS WHEN I RETURNED from Rome after the first week of the synod, my eye caught the covers of two newsweeklies sitting side by side on an office shelf...

...The synod was punctuated by serious gestures of renewed concern for ecumenism...

...Would masses of people really take up the documents of Vatican II...

...Nonetheless, the synod as an institution is a wee bit healthier now than before...

...Or it should take up concrete measures of institutional reform, providing local churches with greater power over the selection of bishops, transforming the synod itself into a deliberative body...

...B OTH TERMS featured prominently in the synod's final report, indicative, I think, of a stand-off...

...So Far, So Good" was what I felt about the extraordinary synod at that moment...

...Here was a church facing poverty and illiteracy in many lands, barely able to get believers to read pastoral letters in other lands, still new to widespread familiarity with the Scriptures...

...The alternative ascribed such problems to cultural and social factors in the world outside the church and unrelated to Vatican II...

...Perhaps the synod we need is the one we would hold in our own hearts...

...The flurry over whether or not it would compose its own final statement and, with the pope, issue it, was hardly earthshaking, the kind of thing that is elevated to importance when more fundamental decisions have been excluded...

...A more narrowly theological and ecclesiastical example was provided by the intervention of Cardinal Baum, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education...

...Peremptory and unilateral orders undermine the credibility of authority and discredit the reasonable requirements for a common faith and discipline...

...Liberals could be reliably identified by appeals for ecumenism or praise for base communities...

...Latin was the official language of the synod, although many bishops chose to speak in English, Italian, Spanish, French, or German, and simultaneous translation was available to all...

...Conservatives also leaned to complaints about secularization, although liberals might sometimes take a swipe in that direction...

...Since then, the conferences had been frequently dismissed as somehow illegitimate by conservatives...

...Hearing these remarks summarized at the press briefing, one liberal priest said, "I wish someone else had made that point'' — i.e., Baum was indicating a real problem, but coming from the head of a congregation embroiled in efforts to control Catholic universities and with something less than a record of respect for independent inquiry, his observations were more likely to provoke anxiety than thought...

...Conservatives favored integral, as in integral teaching and integral reception...

...A Northern Europe priest, long active at the Vatican and no fan of Ratzinger, scoffed at these reports...

...Liberals countered with the concept of communion - koinonia, fellowship...

...At an opening press conference, the Belgian cardinal insisted on the synod's freedom of debate...

...Pastorally, however, the idea was not all that obvious...

...The real opposition was between the advocates of the "letter" and those of history, which was the truly disturbing factor that the council had reintroduced into Catholic consciousness, the dangerous flux which the "letter," the code, the catechism, the manuals might possibly trap in their web...

...Not a few of those on the regular receiving end of Rome's authority might have thought of the image of smokescreen instead...

...The task would have been daunting enough for a leadership that unmistakably identified itself with the energies the council had released...

...At one point, after Cardinal Basil Hume of Westminster had finished speaking, Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich, primate of Ireland, took the floor and wittily indicated his choice of language by saying'' I prefer to speak in the language of Cardinal Hume...

...The conservative concentration on the documents was particularly interesting...

...He also referred with more than usual frankness to what he called an inevitable tension between "Peter and the apostles," between Rome and the local churches...

...The problem with this level of expectation was that it came flat up against the constraints of time and even representivity within which the synod had to operarate...

...But there should also be no underestimating the vast differences that can exist in interpreting an event as complex as Vatican II...

...Theology could help us understand this tension "between two truths" but could never quite resolve it...

...The leading code words for debating collegiality, however, were mystery and communion...

...the debate seemed to take place at arm's length and by means of a set of code words...

...Church in Crisis" read the headline on Newsweek's December 9 issue...

...There was, of course, a third level of expectation...

...No one could deny the theological legitimacy of either concept as a description of the church...

...Where secularization led, sense of the sacred (as in "loss of) was seldom far behind...

...The pope's homily at the opening Mass carefully avoided sending signals that might restrict the bishops' deliberations...

...The church was a pillar of cloud by day, of fire by night...

...Ratzinger's offensive may have backfired...

...That still left a vacuum to be filled by others...

...One had only to think back to the immediate post-conciliar period...

...As far as one could tell from the twice-daily briefings, few bishops expressed their concerns in specific terms or gave concrete examples of what was bothering them...

...IF ANY single event shaped anticipations about the synod, it was the widely cited interview that Cardinal Ratzinger granted an Italian journalist last spring, later expanded and published as a book in several languages...

...that was off-limits, at least in public...

...Next to it an older issue of Time, with a cover story on the East-West summit, declared, "So Far, So Good...

...The implementation of Vatican II was frequently half-hearted, uncomprehending, begrudging, authoritarian...

...A man of Ratzinger's position and views, I was told, would never have given such an interview without clearing it first with the Holy Father — and certainly would not have followed the interview with the book...

...Who could gainsay these heartfelt appeals that the conciliar documents in their entirety be studied throughout the church...

...In expounding his ideas openly, the cardinal offered liberals a target...

...But also so what...

...Words like mystery and communion offer us rich theological fruit...

...The synod both recognized their positive service and treated their teaching authority as at least deserving of theological study...

...The issue is one of' 'co-opting'' rather than burying the council's truly pioneering steps, assimilating them to a largely pre-conciliar vision of the church...

...In Rome, opinions were divided...

...Much of that could have been tempered by a leadership felt to be steering the way and not just applying the brakes...