The Future of Faith

by Harvey Cox

  It was hard to imagine how anyone could actually enjoy a conversation with the “pope’s Rottweiler,” as he was then sometimes called. He was the church’s official doctrinal watchdog, in which capacity he had disciplined and silenced several theologians who, he believed, had strayed over the line into or too close to heresy. Two of these were personal friends of mine, including Ratzinger’s former colleague, the German Hans Küng, and his former student, the Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff.1 On the morning of our engagement, I woke up early despite a nearly sleepless night, dressed in a white shirt and conservative tie, and then rode a careening taxi through the perilous streets of Rome to the prefect’s headquarters.

  The “Holy Office of the Inquisition” has undergone a number of name changes, the most recent in 1965 at the Second Vatican Council and is now known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. But the city of Rome has never changed the name of the street on which it is located, the Largo Sant’Uffizio. There are ten “Congregations” in the Curia of the Vatican, which in most countries would be called “ministries.” Each has its own responsibility, such as education, foreign policy, or family life. But, as happens in secular governments, they sometimes overlap and scrap with each other for influence. Eight of the ten are housed in two massive matching office buildings that line the Via della Conciliazione. The staid, graceless structures contribute nothing to the vaunted elegance of Roman architecture. The “reconciliation” the street refers to is the Lateran Treaty of 1929, in which Mussolini’s Italy finally came to terms with the papacy and the Vatican city-state was created. Two of the Congregations, however, are situated elsewhere, one in the Piazza di Spagna and one on the Largo Sant’Uffizio, where I climbed out of the cab. These two, while not contiguous with the main area of Vatican City, are legally a part of it, enjoying a kind of extraterritorial status.

  Just across the street from the Congregation, I downed a quick cappuccino at a little snack bar decorated with old fashioned Coca-Cola posters and colored prints of the Colosseum, St. Peter’s, and the Trevi Fountain. Then I crossed the street and paused to decipher the inscription on a crumbling stone fountain, placed there—it read—by Pius IX, Pontifex Maximus, whose long papal reign lasted from 1846 to 1878. He was first the pope elected by the liberal wing of the church, but grew increasingly conservative. He is remembered for issuing the Syllabus of Errors, with its stinging denunciation of democracy. It did not seem to be an auspicious omen for my visit.

  As I walked through the imposing iron gate of the off-yellow five-story Renaissance palace that houses the Congregation, the thought occurred to me that I was not only crossing an international border; I was also stepping back in time. It also suddenly struck me that I had spent the previous night with members of the Dominicans, the very order appointed by the pope to conduct the Inquisition in the late thirteenth century. The quietly flowing Tiber has seen many currents.

  As soon as I entered the imposing old front door a porter showed me to a high-ceilinged waiting room. It contained three wooden chairs covered with thinning brocade and a table whose gold and ivory paint had begun to chip. There were two albums of photographs on the table. Assuming they were there for visitors to peruse, I thumbed through them. Both were devoted to the many global journeys of John Paul II. Four paintings hung on the wall. One was of a cardinal I did not recognize. Two were of the Virgin Mary, one with her breast pierced by a sword, the other showing her enthroned as the Queen of Heaven. A small one portrayed a broadly smiling John Paul II.

  I had barely surveyed my surroundings when Cardinal Ratzinger strode in, welcomed me in English with a smile and a handshake, and ushered me into an adjoining room. He wore a dark cassock trimmed in red piping, a black skull cap, and a medium-sized pectoral cross. His eyes looked tired, but he seemed energetic, if a little brusque. After a few moments of friendly banter, I asked him what he thought were the main sources of “heresy” today. He replied immediately that he had just returned from a trip to Africa and that the problem was really not mainly European liberalism like Küng’s or even left wing political theologies like Boff’s. Rather, he said, it was the danger of “syncretism,” mainly in the non-Western world. It was the fusing of Christian with indigenous local spiritual practices that, he said, obscured the Christian content. The example he offered was the African custom of mixing Christian initiation rites such as Baptism and Confirmation with initiation into the tribe itself. When I asked how one could possibly sort one from the other, he smiled, shook his head, and admitted it was not easy. But then he looked at me calmly and added, “We handle it by working closely with the bishops.”

  Those few words spoke volumes. Yes, he was saying, the old malignancies on the mystical body are still there. They might be assuming a new form, but they will be dealt with as they always have been: by those who, as the only legitimate heirs of the original apostles, hold the unique right to do so. He the prefect, the pope, and the bishops will “handle it.” They possess that power by virtue of being the curators of nineteen centuries of apostolic tradition, and this is the hallmark against which all possible deviations, whether in Brazil, Nigeria, Thailand, or anywhere else in the world, will be measured.

  As we talked, it became clear to me that Joseph Ratzinger was a man with a deservedly high degree of confidence in his own scholarly acumen. He gave the impression that in his view many of the errors he was combating were not matters of bad intentions, but of wrongheadedness. He clearly implied that if he could only gather all the theologians and church leaders in the whole Catholic world together at a comfortable spa and talk with them for a week or two, the problems would take care of themselves.

  After about forty-five minutes a staff member rapped on the door, looked in, and said, in English (for my benefit?), that someone from the Vatican Secretary of State’s office was waiting to see him. The cardinal smiled at me, tilted his head, and held his palms up in a “what-can-you-do?” gesture. He then rose, we shook hands, and as I left he handed me an autographed copy of a small book of meditations on Easter entitled Seek That Which Is Above, 2 which he had recently written. The cover shows a page from an eleventh-century codex now in the Cologne Cathedral. On a red-and-gold background it depicts two women, both wearing red robes and bearing anointing oils, their eyes fixed on an angel with red wings and red hair who sits on top of an open coffin in which can be seen rolled up grave clothes. The angel is blessing the women with his right hand raised. At the door we shook hands again. He did not invite me to lunch.

  As I walked out the gate onto the Largo Sant’Uffizio, passed the Pius IX fountain, and turned toward the Largo di Porta Cavalleggeri to look for a taxi, I did not suspect, of course, that the man with whom I had been chatting would one day be Pontifex Maximus. When that elevation did occur in 2005, I wondered what kind of pope he would be. Would he still rely on the same control mechanism the church had used for all those years, even though the historical claims on which that apparatus is based are now suspect? Useful fictions were now giving way to historical facts. But Ratzinger still seemed to view the newly globalized Catholic Church as though it were an extension of Europe. A year later he confirmed this attitude in his lecture to his former colleagues at Nuremberg in which he declared that the fusion of the gospel with Greek philosophy provided the most dependable intellectual vehicle for Christianity in today’s world.

  Ratzinger is a thorough European, born and bred. But the Catholic Church is now more non-European than it has ever been. The situation Christianity faces in the twenty-first century is radically different from the one his predecessors faced during the long era of Constantine, the Age of Belief. He is a professionally prepared scholar and has written articles on the historical development of ecclesial authority in the early church, but his strategy for keeping his far-flung realm in line relies on the same adhesion to creedal uniformity and obedience. Discussion may be allowed, even encouraged, but only up to a point. Finally, as the old dictum puts it, Roma locuta, causa fini
te est, “When Rome speaks, the matter is closed.”

  As Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger is arguably one of the best-trained theologians ever to occupy the throne of St. Peter. He has not been as severe as some feared he might be. But I still wonder how good a listener he is. If he were able to listen, it would be fascinating to organize the kind of leisurely conversation at a comfortable spa that I surmised he sometimes thought about, but with somewhat different people attending. First, I would want a number of Christians from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, people steeped in their own cultural traditions who might never have set foot in Europe, let alone Rome or the Cologne Cathedral. I would also want to have in the room the scholars from different traditions who are painstakingly reconstructing the actual history of the first centuries of Christianity. If the wine was of a fine vintage and the atmosphere sufficiently mellow, the gathering might end with some elements of consensus about how the Catholic Church and Christianity more generally might help the twenty-first century to be a an age of faith and a new era of the Spirit. But if the papacy is to have a place in this new chapter of Christian history, and I believe it should, then its role will have to change. But how?

  The high-water mark of the Roman Catholic attempt to define Christianity as creed and hierarchy occurred in 1870 at the First Vatican Council. There Pope Pius IX asked for and obtained, albeit by a mixed vote, the doctrine of papal infallibility. A close parallel to some tenets of Protestant fundamentalism, the doctrine states that when the pope speaks ex cathedra, that is in his official capacity as pontiff, and speaks to the whole church on a matter of faith or morals, the Holy Spirit prevents him from erring. Under those carefully delimited circumstances, the pope, as the earthly Vicar of Christ, is infallible. His decrees cannot be questioned or rescinded by any ecumenical council or, presumably, by any subsequent pope. They do not have to be suggested by or approved by the church as a whole. Although this power appears awesome, in fact it has only been exercised once since 1870. That was in 1950 when Pope Pius XII declared that the Assumption of the Virgin Mary—that she ascended bodily directly into heaven without passing through the portal of death—was henceforth to be a dogma accepted and believed by all Catholics.

  The enunciation of this doctrine, which had been recognized as a “pious belief” for centuries, caused considerable concern among Protestants and Orthodox Christians, if for different reasons. It was also received coolly by many Catholics. But since then, although there have often been rumors about new doctrines to be announced, such as the idea that Mary should be revered as “Co-Redemptrix” with Christ, none has been forthcoming.

  Catholic theologians are allowed to argue about the degree of authority possessed by this or that papal statement or encyclical. But this misses the point. The flaw in the idea of infallibility lies not in whether the pope should have it or not, but in another direction. The very concept of “infallibility,” no matter who has or does not have it, is itself misleading. Infallibility applies in the area of ideas, teachings, and propositions. It means that such propositions are accurate and must be assented to as true. It requires not faith, but belief. It was at this point in Christian history, in 1870, that the central and original impetus of Christianity—a basic life orientation to the coming Reign of God as exemplified in the life of Jesus—almost completely disappeared from view. It seemed that, at least in one church, belief had vanquished faith completely. Hierarchy and creed had triumphed.

  I say “almost” and “seemed,” because this is not what really happened. Instead, the popes who followed Pius IX, with a single exception, never wielded the ultimate weapon of infallibility. Some turned to persuasion and reasoning, listened more carefully to the laity, and even—beginning with Pope John XXIII—embraced the fellowship of non-Catholic Christians. In the hundred and forty years since the First Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has nurtured numberless saints, scholars, and martyrs. They are a testimony to the sheer resilience of a Jesus-centered, Kingdom of God faith even in an ecclesiastical structure that continues to define itself with such emphasis on hierarchical authority and correct doctrine.

  I freely confess that, as an outsider, I have been fascinated by popes and the papacy for most of my life. I have met three of them personally. One of whom (Paul VI) commended me on my first book and another of whom (Benedict XVI, while he was still only a cardinal) quoted me favorably in one of his articles. I also met John Paul II. I describe a couple of these meetings in other chapters in this book, but my deepest regret is that I never met Pope John XXIII, who was my—and many others’—favorite. My limited experience with the popes and the papacy has, however, led me to believe that there is in fact an important role for the papacy in the Christianity of the future. But I also hope that this future place will be secured despite—not because of—claims to infallibility.

  It was in February 1939, when I was nine years old, that I first found out there was such a thing as a pope. Walking down our street in the small town of Malvern, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, I noticed that the doors and lintels of the imposing gray stone St. Patrick’s Church, which stood almost next door to our two-family brick house and on the same block as the Baptist church we belonged to, were hung with yards of somber black ribbon. When my father came home from work that evening, I asked him what it meant. The non-churchgoing offspring of two churchly Baptist parents, he pursed his lips for a moment before answering. “Well,” he finally said, “their pope died. He lived in Italy, but he died, and those are mourning decorations. It’s the way they show their sadness.”

  He may have hoped I would be satisfied with the answer, but of course I wasn’t. I wanted to know what a pope was—it was a term I had never heard before—and why anyone from Malvern would be that sad about the death of someone who had lived so far away. He paused and then tried to explain as best he could what the pope meant to Catholics.

  Many years later, what impresses me about his reply is how free it was from bigotry or antipapist venom, something I only learned about much later and never heard at all either in church or at home. My parents’ attitude seemed to be that if Catholics, whose ways were a bit mysterious anyway, wanted to have an Italian who lived far across the ocean as the head of their church, that was their business. It had nothing much to do with us. The only thing that riled them about Catholics was that some of them seemed to think they were the only ones going to heaven.

  That conversation was the beginning of my continuing interest in popes and the papacy. As I grew, I also came to see that the pope, even though we were not Catholics, did have something to do with us. The pope who had died on that cold February day in 1939 was, of course, Pius XI, the librarian-diplomat whose memory tends to be overshadowed by his flashier protégé and eventual successor, Pius XII, whose somewhat sour visage and rimless glasses I came to recognize during my teenage years as the Italian who headed the Catholic Church. I never saw him as a warm or welcoming figure, but I have also discovered that many Catholics didn’t either.

  Still, as I began to study history, first in high school, then in college, and ever since, I could not help noticing that whatever period or problem I was reading about, at least in the West and for nearly two thousand years, the popes were always there. Try to study the history of political institutions, philosophy, art, science, or literature without bumping into popes everywhere. They did, after all, have something to do with us, because they were significant actors in a history we all share. Besides, whatever you might think about the claims made about the popes, it would be hard to find a more absorbing collection of men (I am leaving out “Pope Joan,” whose credentials and historicity, it seems, are still in some dispute). The bishops of Rome have included saints, rakes, scholars, schemers, administrative geniuses, reformers, egomaniacs, tyrants, art collectors, warriors, builders, and even an occasional personage with an interest in theology.

  Somehow, as I plunged deeper into history, then theology and the history of religion, it was the sheer persistence and v
irtual omnipresence, for blessing or bane, of the papacy that impressed me. I began to see at least a glimmer of plausibility in the hoary Catholic argument that any institution that has survived that long, despite the fornicators and four-flushers who had actually occupied the office, must be taken with some degree of seriousness. If the God of the Bible, as I believe, acts in and through human history, then it has to be conceded that the papacy occupies a not inconsiderable chunk of that history, and not just in the West.

  I was already a doctoral student in the history and philosophy of religion at Harvard in 1958 when Pius XII died and a roly-poly cardinal named Roncalli was elected to the throne of St. Peter and took the name John XXIII. His choice of this name was a bit puzzling to those of us who knew a bit about papal history, since the previous John, who had reigned seven hundred years earlier, had become a slight embarrassment to the church. The former John had reigned from Avignon in southern France and thus represented an episode in church history some Catholics would prefer to forget; he had worried sober theologians by talking about his elaborate mystical visions of what would happen after the final judgment. But there you had it again: persistence. The Catholic Church had waited seven hundred years, but 1958 seemed an opportune time, at least to Roncalli, to retrieve and refurbish a perfectly good biblical name.