Conflict at the Vatican
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
THE SUENENS CASE Conflict at the Vatican By Silvio F. Senigallia Rome The practice of stifling dissent under a heavy cloak of secrecy is deeply rooted in Vatican circles. Not unlike the...
...He added that the complaints were "not all precise, not all just, nor always respectful or proper...
...Urging changes in the exercise of papal authority, Suenens advocated termination of the "centralized, formalistic, legalistic, static and bureaucratic conception" of Church government...
...Later in the week, the Vatican daily Osservatore Romano published an article by Cardinal Felici, an authoritative polemicist, condemning the views of those who want to submit the authority of the Pope, primate and supreme teacher of the Church, to episcopal control...
...It is too early to visualize the Archbishop of Brussels as the successful leader of an antipapal bloc at the synod...
...It is no secret that many Catholic liberals are unhappy over the limited scope of the reforms enacted after the Vatican Council, as well as critical of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae because it strongly rejects any form of birth control...
...and finally in an interview granted to the weekly Paris Match...
...While noting the difficult conditions under which "the brothers in the episcopate" must function, the Pope scored criticisms directed "against this apostolic see under the more vulnerable name of the Roman Curia...
...According to Cardinal Felici, the advice and consent of the bishops POPE PAUL VI is occasionally called for, but is not actually needed to validate the Pontiff's supreme rulership...
...The timing, too, is significant, since the controversy came into the open Silvio F. Senigallia, a previous contributor, is Rome representative of Farrar, Straus and Giroux...
...In his as yet unpublished letter, a copy of which was sent to all Curia cardinals, Tisserant reportedly objected most of all to the tone of the interview and to the unwise choice of a vehicle, but also deplored the disrespect shown to the Curia and the defamatory charges leveled against papal envoys...
...This brought the Pope back to the battlefield...
...For about a month it looked as if the Curia, though angry and embarrassed, would not pick up the challenge in order to avoid opening a major debate on the reform issue...
...He also wants to force the issue of joint responsibility of Pope and bishops in the government of Roman Catholicism...
...In the overall shaping of post-Council policies, however, he has quite consistently steered a conservative course, despite occasional concessions to the progressive wing...
...As to the other protagonist of the controversy...
...He called for a review of papal election procedures, denied the right of papal envoys to interfere with the activities of national episcopal conferences, and renewed the plea for truly active participation of the bishops in the management of Church affairs...
...in a welcoming address to Belgium's new papal envoy, Mon-signor Igino Cardinale...
...Still, despite the new trends which emerged from the long sessions of the Vatican Council and Pope Paul VI's formal allegiance to John XXIII's doctrine of aggiorna-mento, the monolithic conception of Catholicism remains...
...It is clear, though, that his call for modernization, eliminating "obsolete and suffocating usages," as he put it, has the support of large sectors of Western European Catholicism...
...The Pope's direct intervention and obvious rebuttal of Cardinal Suenens' charges were virtually without precedent—so much so that an Italian Catholic journal primly claimed that the June 22 address was not necessarily directed at any specific person...
...But the attack delivered by Belgian Cardinal Suenens, Archbishop of Brussels, in an interview published in the May 15 issue of Informations Catholiques Internationales, was unprecedented for the range of its arguments and the firmness of its tone...
...Although substantially rejecting the liberal wing's charges, the Pope, in a formally conciliatory remark, expressed his willingness to consider reasonable criticism in order to give the Church "pluralistic unity...
...Aside from the specific issues involved, the debate has shed additional light on Paul's personality and leadership...
...shortly before the symposium of European bishops in Chur (Switzerland) two weeks ago, and just three months prior to the World Episcopal Synod to be held in Rome on October 11...
...Indeed, a French middle-of-the-roader, Cardinal Tillot, is the new Secretary of State...
...As a matter of fact, in the pre-Johannine era the mere idea of papal participation in a debate on the exercise of pontifical authority would have been unthinkable...
...Silence is viewed as both the symbol of obedience and guarantee of unity...
...The first move was made by Cardinal Tisserant, the French-born dean of the College of Cardinals, who wrote Suenens asking for a public retraction...
...On July 2, speaking to his weekly general audience in Saint Peter's Basilica, the Pope denounced those who wish to break with tradition and downgrade his authority...
...The representatives of the Dutch New Catechism, French Gallicanism, Anglo-Saxon pragmatism, if joined by the Third World's clergy of dissent, have the backing and the strength needed to resolve the worries and doubts now sweeping the Roman Church...
...Cardinal Suenens, the prevailing opinion here in Rome is that his present stand is not an isolated episode but the prelude to a leading role at the October synod...
...He deplored the "revolutionary mentality" that has invaded Roman Catholicism and cited many reforms undertaken by the Church and its institutions...
...He does not want to curb the power of the Roman Curia and let the bishops participate in the administration of the Church's affairs...
...Paul's warning, though, was no more successful than Tisserant's rebuke...
...True, a number of old conservative stalwarts, including Cardinal Ottaviani, have been replaced and there are fewer Italians at the top of the Church hierarchy...
...Not unlike the ministers of an absolute monarch, the high prelates of the Roman Curia regard criticism of the Pope's policies as lese majeste...
...It is still unclear why the once progressive Cardinal Montini turned into an essentially conservative Pope...
...One of Italy's leading Vatican experts...
...The publicity given to the "Suenens case" is therefore significant, even though it may well be forced rather than spontaneous...
...Instead of backtracking, the intransigent Brussels Archbishop renewed his criticism—in a conversation with Abbe Lambertin, published by the Paris daily he Figaro on June 28...
...But the Pope has remained adamant on the basic issues...
...The most recent of these was the "aquittal" of Belgian Dominican priest Edward Schillebeeckx, a liberal theologian accused of doctrinal heresy...
...Carlo Falconi, in his book La Svolta di Paolo ("Paul's Turning Point"), theorizes that this is due to the realization that "the aggiornamento introduced by the Council would inevitably bring Catholicism and its historical structures to a self-denial and a transformation into radically new and only partly predictable forms...
...This second broadside moved the conflict from the secretive atmosphere of the Vatican corridors to the full scrutiny of world public opinion...
...Far from retracting, Suenens made new charges...
...Eventually, however, it was decided that the Belgian's statements—including a blunt accusation that the Council had been betrayed—could not be left unanswered...
...The Pope has frequently been described as vacillating or amletica (Hamlet-like), for he is periodically beset by doubts and often revises or drastically modifies earlier decisions...
...The Vatican counterattack against the leader of the Catholic confrontation, as the Rome daily Messaggero called Suenens on July 3, was considerably delayed but has been mounting in intensity...
...While the Curia wants to keep this gathering's debate on a strictly juridical level, the Belgian wants a thorough, factual analysis of the relations between the Curia and the episcopal conferences...
...He condemned the intolerance of any dissent to maintain the fiction of total unity, and lamented what he described as the Church's current "tragic malaise...
...And on June 22, in the course of a long address marking the sixth anniversary of his election as pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Paul himself entered the fray...
Vol. 52 • July 1969 • No. 14
