Neil McNicholas: Church must look to the future and not forget the past

AS we await the decision of the conclave in Rome, the question keeps being asked of one pundit and spokesperson after another: what direction would you like to see the Church taking under the next pope?

It’s a question that is typically asked when the wheels of our national political process are about to bestir themselves at a general election. There is the misguided concept that who we vote for, and why, will help to influence the kind of government we get but, of course, it doesn’t and our hopes end up being dashed on the rock of the party whips.

It would be pointless to have any such hopes for how Church policy might be influenced. To begin with the Church isn’t a democracy (even if a democratic process could make a difference), but can you imagine if Rome had to listen to the clamour of the voices of the estimated one-and-a-quarter billion Roman Catholics worldwide? As a universal Church, Rome applies its teachings universally with, perhaps, slight variations according to culture so the Catholic faith remains recognisable locally but also universally.

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From time to time in the Church’s history, popes have called ecumenical councils to discuss and formulate policy on the future direction of the Church. The last was the Second Vatican Council called by Pope John XXIII in 1962 to, famously, throw open the windows of the Church. These councils typically involve Church leaders and experts in various fields from all over the world. But in the same way that new branches can be grafted onto a vine stock, it is the same with such councils – the vine isn’t pulled up, rather the essential life of the Church continues to flow from the root stock through whatever new grafts are added. You can’t just arbitrarily throw out over two thousand years of sacred history and tradition.

And so to the present conclave. The choice of which pope will next lead the Catholic Church will inevitably be influenced by the “politics” of where those involved in that choice feel the Church should be heading, but the pope won’t wake up the next day, or any day thereafter for that matter, with a personal agenda for the future of the Church or able to implement it even if he had one. That’s not how it works. Before he is able to do anything, he has the labyrinthine Roman Curia to deal with – the Vatican equivalent of our civil service, only more so – and I think it’s that which a number of commentators, including our own Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, have suggested would be their first choice for reform.

Those readers who are familiar with the brilliant Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister will know that the Civil Service ploughs its own furrow, or tries to, regardless of which party is in power.

Without a programme “Yes 
Your Holiness” (and please let no one try to write one as I suspect it wouldn’t be anywhere near as entertaining!) I don’t know that anyone outside of the Curia knows a half of what goes on within it, but that is where Church policy will be influenced and not, directly, by whoever occupies the Chair 
of Peter.

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And so it may not necessarily be the choice of the next pope so much as his choices thereafter of the people with whom he surrounds himself that will be significant for the direction the Church takes in the months and years ahead.

Unless the pope was to call another ecumenical council, I don’t think we would expect there to be any earth-shatteringly significant changes to policy or practice within the Church. It is the decisions, therefore, of our national Bishops’ Conferences that may affect us more directly, but even those won’t – and can’t – diverge from Rome.

Having said all of that, if I had to try to answer the question we started out with, I think the Catholic Church in this country had been making considerable headway towards a greater co-operation with the Church of England through the activities of ARCIC (the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission) and we seemed to be rediscovering a great deal of common ground.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, in recent years that process stalled or was stalled, which I think was sad. I also feel Rome needs to visit the whole issue of a celibate clergy – in fact it already has in welcoming ex-Anglican married clergy into the priesthood, which appears to contradict our understanding to-date.

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On a number of other issues, however, the Church needs to be careful it isn’t simply responding to “the Church needs to bring itself up-to-date” mantra. This particular vine stock has its roots firmly established in 2,000 years of sacred history and tradition, and it can’t simply be pulled up and transplanted which is what would happen if the Church were simply to respond to the vagaries of popular opinion.