Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  Oversight responsibility for developing the new Catechism had been given in 1986 to a commission of twelve cardinals and bishops chaired by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The actual drafting work was done by an editorial committee of seven diocesan bishops, whose editorial secretary, Father Christoph Schön-born, an Austrian Dominican teaching at the University of Fribourg, was responsible for synthesizing the drafts of individual sections into a coherent whole. Father Schönborn and Cardinal Ratzinger had previously worked together on the theological journal Communio and on the International Theological Commission.

  The Catechism went through nine drafts, all of which were first prepared in French. Bishops around the world were consulted throughout the drafting process, and the editorial committee’s work was continually reviewed by the oversight commission. John Paul followed the work closely, according to Schönborn, but rarely gave direct comments on the draft. One exception, widely noted, was the catechism’s discussion of the morality of capital punishment, but that was not the only occasion when the Pope took a personal interest in a specific topic. Still, John Paul’s influence on the text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is best described as indirect. He influenced the Catechism through his teaching, which, Schönborn notes, was “often the basis of a Catechism text” even when a direct citation was not made. The editorial committee had decided that, within the Catechism, direct quotations would only be made from the most authoritative sources: Scripture, Council documents over the centuries, important writings from the Fathers of the Church and the saints. John Paul II’s encyclicals, apostolic letters, and apostolic exhortations are cited more than the teaching documents of any other pope, but those 135 citations do not measure the full scope of his influence on the text.102

  The Catechism of the Catholic Church is not structured in the question-and-answer format familiar to Catholics from pre–Vatican II catechisms or to Lutherans from Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. The commission and editorial committee decided to return to a more traditional narrative format, following the division of material adopted by the catechism of the Council of Trent. After a very brief prologue, the Catechism is divided into four parts.

  The first is an explication of the Apostles’ Creed, the ancient baptismal creed of the Church of Rome. The second is built around the Church’s seven sacraments, celebrations of the mystery of God’s saving presence in the world. The third, structured around the Ten Commandments, describes the moral life as a journey toward the summit and goal of human existence, happiness with God forever. The fourth, often regarded as the most lyrical part of the Catechism, discusses Christian prayer using the three professions and seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, given by Christ to his disciples (see Matthew 6. 9–13). The Catechism, in brief, takes both Catholics and interested others on a basic tour of the Christian life: What does the Church believe? How is that belief publicly celebrated in the community’s worship? How is that faith, confessed in the creeds and celebrated in the sacraments, to be lived? How does the individual deepen the life of faith through prayer?

  Within each part, the Catechism is further subdivided into sections, chapters, articles, and numbered paragraphs. The numeration of the paragraphs is continuous throughout, for a total of 2,865 paragraphs in over 700 pages—a challenging but not indigestibly massive book. The narrative is broken at numerous points by boxed sections that provide concise summary statements of the material discussed at greater length just above. The Catechism is also extensively cross-referenced so that the studious reader can work backward and forward through the text, which was deliberately designed to elicit a sense of the “symphony” of faith.

  The Catechism draws heavily on the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, citing Scripture thousands of times—far more than any other authoritative source. The documents of the Second Vatican Council are cited almost 800 times, eight times more than the next most frequently cited council, Trent. Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes are the two most frequently quoted Vatican II texts. In addition to citing canon law, papal teaching, and the prayers of the liturgy, the Catechism also draws on the wisdom of theologians and other Church writers, ranging from “Anonymous” (author of An Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday) to St. Thomas More (whose letter to his daughter Margaret from the Tower of London, shortly before his execution, describes More’s conviction that God’s providence is fully and finally in charge of history). St. Augustine is the most frequently cited theologian, in a list that draws most heavily on the Fathers of the Church, east and west. John Henry Newman, John Vianney, and Thérèse of Lisieux are among the modern figures quoted. In addition to Thérèse, women cited include Catherine of Siena, the fifth-century pilgrim Egeria, Elizabeth of the Trinity (a French contemplative beatified by John Paul II in 1984), Joan of Arc, Rose of Lima (the only Catholic author from the New World in the index of citations), and Teresa of Avila.

  The final phases of the Catechism’s gestation were marred by a controversy over the English translation of the text, which delayed the publication of the English edition for more than a year. Quarrels over the acceptable limits of “inclusive” language seem, in retrospect, minor compared to the achievement of the Catechism itself. Christoph Schönborn, who was named a bishop during the last year of the drafting process, argues that the “symphonic element” in the Catechism is the key to the whole edifice. The Catechism is not a matter of 2,865 bricks “put together in a vague, incoherent way.” Rather, the attempt was to create what Schönborn calls “a beautiful, coherent expression of the unity of faith,” in which the truth of particular doctrines becomes clearer because of their relationship to the entire structure.103 That was important in itself, because the Catholic faith had always thought of itself as an integrated, unified whole. It was also important as the Church’s statement of its confidence in the human capacity to know the truth of things on the threshold of the new millennium.

  The Catechism of the Catholic Church, as John Paul put it in Depositum Fidei, is for “every individual who asks us to give an account of the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Peter 3.15) and who wants to know what the Catholic Church believes.”104 It was, at the same time, a challenge to some of the dominant intellectual currents of the late twentieth century—the cluster of ideas and assumptions often identified with “deconstruction” and “postmodernism.”

  Postmodernism claims that the origins of religious or moral traditions are irretrievably lost and that contemporary men and women have no access to the sources of what their ancestors had believed to be true. The Catechism claims that, whatever difficulties contemporary historical scholarship has with a “return to the sources,” Christianity’s origins are present in a living way because Christ—who is the source, the fountain of truth—is always present in and to his Church. Postmodernism claims that plurality is an absolute, and that coherence of conviction—agreement about the truth of things—is impossible over time or between cultures. The Catechism states its firm conviction of the unity of faith over space and time, and proposes that every human being is capable of hearing a saving word of grace from God, no matter what the cultural or historical circumstances.105 Postmodernism claims that there is no such thing as the truth; there is only your truth and my truth. The Catechism argues that truth is essential food for the human soul and that we cannot live without the truth. Postmodernism claims that whatever knowledge exists is incoherent; there is no way in which all of reality can be coherently understood. The Catechism solemnly and joyfully confesses the coherence of Christian faith as an explanation of how things are, how things came to be, and how the world’s story will be completed.106

  The Catechism’s reception was a surprise to the project’s critics and even its most hopeful supporters. Within a few years of its publication, more than 8 million copies were in print worldwide. By the end of the 1990s, the Catechism was available in forty-four languages, in six CD-ROM versions, and over the Internet on the Vatican Web site. Notwithstanding what some skeptical religious education professiona
ls and bishops may have thought, millions of men and women in very different cultures wanted to know what the Catholic Church had to say about its belief and practice. The Catechism sold well in France, where its positive reception was one indicator of progress in the new evangelization. The Philippines received the Catechism enthusiastically, as did the bishops of India. The German-speaking world, Schönborn reports, was “rather difficult,” but there, too, one could find “islands of deep interest in the Catechism, of good work with the Catechism.” The Catechism’s reception in the United States frankly surprised its drafters. When the English edition was finally available in 1994 sales were robust, with 2.3 million copies of the trade edition and several hundred thousand copies of the mass market paperback sold. Shoppers grew accustomed to seeing, nestled among the thrillers and romances on sale at supermarket checkout counters, copies of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.107

  Many bishops, priests, and religious educators, of course, welcomed the Catechism, which was formally intended as a guide to local catechisms and teaching materials. Its reception made clear that it was not simply a set of guidelines, however, for the Catechism quickly established itself throughout the world as a popular instrument by which Catholics could tell their children and neighbors (and, when necessary, remind their clergy, their religious educators, and, in some instances, their bishops) just what the Catholic Church believed and taught. In a late twentieth-century environment where Catholicism was no longer learned through the slow absorption of a Catholic culture, the Catechism also proved an invaluable tool for giving young people a view of the Church’s doctrine and practice as a whole, and became a staple of the seminary pre-theology programs mandated by Pastores Dabo Vobis for those beginning priestly formation later in life.

  Skeptics at the Extraordinary Synod in 1985 had doubted whether the Catechism would ever be completed. It was ready in six years, despite some rough patches along the road. Critics of the proposal said that Catholics were no longer interested in “conceptual” approaches to religious education. The exceptional sales of the Catechism proved the critics mistaken. Others worried that the Catechism would be a book “against” the Council. The 785 citations from the documents of Vatican II made unmistakably clear what John Paul wrote in Depositum Fidei—the Catechism is a product of the Council, and the Council understood as a coherent whole.

  Three weeks after the Catechism was promulgated with Depositum Fidei, the Galileo case was brought to a close. The two events may seem dissimilar, but they ought to be considered together. Opening a new dialogue between religion and science and presenting a comprehensive narrative of the “symphony of faith” were, for John Paul II, two moments in a single evangelical project. What the Church proposed to the world was that the Word of God, the Logos who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, was the agent of creation’s purposefulness and the guarantor against the ultimate absurdity of life. In Christ, the heavens and the earth—origins, experience, destiny—were linked together. That was the good news the Church had to tell the twenty-first century: this all fits together, in a symphony of truth with a divine composer.

  EUROPE, AGAIN

  As 1992 gave way to 1993, controversies and opportunities in post-communist Europe continued to occupy a considerable place on John Paul II’s agenda.

  “Humanitarian Intervention”

  On December 5, 1992, the Pope addressed the International Conference on Nutrition being held at the headquarters of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome. Although John Paul did not mention the crisis unfolding in Somalia, where U.S. troops were preparing to land in an attempt to enforce the minimum of public order necessary to deal with widespread hunger and starvation, the Somali situation formed an unmistakable backdrop to the Pope’s remarks.108 Hunger, the Pope proposed, could no longer be considered a natural condition, nor was it a by-product of overpopulation. The contemporary problem was not production but food distribution, which was impeded by natural disasters, corrupt and violent politics, and protectionism. “Every day, hunger causes the deaths of thousands of children, elderly people, and members of the more vulnerable groups.”

  It was a “duty of justice” to remedy this, John Paul urged. “Wars between nations and domestic conflicts should not sentence defenseless civilians to die from hunger for selfish or partisan motives.” The principle of noninterference in a country’s domestic affairs did not apply in these circumstances. Therefore, the Pope argued, “the conscience of humanity, supported by provisions of international humanitarian law, asks that humanitarian intervention be obligatory where the survival of populations and entire ethnic groups is seriously compromised. This is a duty for nations and the international community….”109

  That “humanitarian intervention”—meaning military intervention by outside powers to rescue threatened populations—could be morally justified in situations of impending genocide was not very much in dispute. But on whom did the “duty” of “humanitarian intervention” fall? The “international community” was more a fiction than a reality, lacking both a government that could enforce its will and instruments of military intervention. The United Nations had shown itself incapable of dealing with situations like that of Somalia, where great-power intervention was the only available remedy. Was John Paul suggesting that a “duty” of “humanitarian intervention” now lay on the world’s major powers, and particularly on the world’s sole superpower, the United States? If so, what did that portend for the future of international institutions, which the Holy See had supported ever since World War II? If not, what did it mean to assert a “duty” when one could not identify the party on whom the duty fell?

  John Paul’s FAO address was a powerful plea for human solidarity and an important challenge to certain enduring “realist” shibboleths about world politics after the Cold War. As an examination of the serious moral and political issues involved in “humanitarian intervention,” it raised more questions than it answered. By doing so, the FAO address may have inadvertently contributed to the kind of policy paralysis that had, as the Pope rightly observed, led to “unacceptable” situations and avoidable calamities.110

  The “Hour of the Laity” in Poland

  John Paul forcefully addressed some of the issues of how to be a “public Church” in a democratic Poland when the Polish bishops came to Rome in two groups in January 1993 for their ad limina visits.

  Those Polish churchmen nostalgic for a return to the 1920s and 1930s—or even to the sureties of the struggle against communism—were quickly told that historical rollback was impossible. On January 12, at the outset of his first ad limina address to his fellow Poles, John Paul simply and bluntly told the bishops that they were living in “a new phase of history” which posed “new challenges” for evangelization. Above all, the Pope insisted, fidelity to Christ’s command to “proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16.15) in the new Polish situation meant recognizing that “the hour of the laity has struck for the Church.” Poland’s Catholic people now had “to assume the role in the Church which is rightfully theirs by virtue of the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.” That was what implementing the Council meant in the new Poland. The laity must, as Lumen Gentium had put it, “make the Church present and fruitful in those places and circumstances where it is only through them that she can become the salt of the earth.” To help make that possible, the Polish bishops had to create diocesan and parish-level structures of consultation with the laity, support lay renewal movements, and revive Catholic Action as a movement for strengthening civil society.

  Then, having tried to consign clericalism to the Polish past, John Paul took up the most difficult issue of the public Church’s presence and style in the new Poland: the legal status of abortion. The new evangelization included a defense of the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, and this, too, was primarily a task for the laity. As for legislation, the Church—laity, priests, and bishops—had to learn to make the case for the right to l
ife of the unborn in explicitly public terms: “It is not a question of imposing Christian principles on everyone, as some people have objected, but of defending a fundamental human right, that is, the right to life….”111

  The Church’s role in national political life dominated the Pope’s ad limina address to a second group of Polish bishops, including Cardinal Józef Glemp, on January 15. The new evangelization, he began, included “among its essential elements” the social doctrine of the Church. A Catholicism confined to “the walls of the churches” was inconceivable, in Poland or anywhere else. But the evangelization of culture was one thing, and the clericalist direction of politics was another. Deepening the nation’s understanding of freedom was not and could not be a matter of the Church becoming a partisan political actor.

  The ancient Polish tradition of the Church as defender of the nation was one in which the Church was “not a competitor or partner in the game of politics” but rather “the guardian of the moral order and a critical conscience.” Living that tradition faithfully meant some very specific things in the new Poland, John Paul said: “The Church is not a political party nor is she identified with any political party; she is above them, open to all people of good will, and no political party can claim the right to represent her.” It was not the bishops’ mission to be directly engaged in political affairs: “It is the laity’s task to be directly involved in the area of politics, motivated by a sincere concern for the common good of the society in which they live.” Post–Cold War dissatisfactions with democracy’s sometimes dubious political results could not become an excuse for Catholic laity to avoid engaging in public life and the political arena, which was “their duty in conscience as well as one of the tasks deriving from their vocation.” As for the country’s historical tendency to indulge in divisive politics (which, as John Paul knew full well, had opened the doors to a return of excommunists to political power), Poles had to “learn to dialogue with one another in truth and with respect for their own dignity and that of their counterparts, who, although differing, are not enemies.”