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March 2, 2006
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Why cardinals chose Pope Benedict XVI |
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Journalist John Allen is speaker at Pallium Lecture Series |
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Catholic journalist John Allen, Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter and guest speaker for last Monday’s Pallium Lecture Series at the Cousins Center, visits with Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan during a breakfast for representatives of the journalistic community Feb. 28 at the Milwaukee Athletic Club. (Catholic Herald photo by Sam Lucero)
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SIDEBAR:
Allen gets stories by doing his homework
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ST. FRANCIS — Catholics trying to assess the first 10 months of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate, as well as the personality of the pope himself, may receive an indication about the man and the work he is attempting to accomplish, according to John Allen Jr., but that is about all they will get.
“Stay tuned as we watch this dramatic papacy unfold,” said the senior, and by his own admission, “only” Vatican correspondent for CNN.
Allen, whose full-time media position is as Vatican reporter for the National Catholic Reporter, spoke to more than 350 people at the Cousins Center for the second lecture in the 2006 Pallium series Feb. 27.
Noting that the cardinal electors saw 5-7 million people come to Rome to pay their respects to Pope John Paul II, including 71 heads of state who attended his funeral, and that non-stop media coverage of the Vatican from April 2-18, 2005 was “an infomercial for Roman Catholicism,” Allen said the cardinals “realized they were electing a successor to a giant. They had to find someone who would not be crushed.”
The columnist said that John Paul II “had changed the job description” of the papacy to include “political titan, deep intellectual, model for sanctity, media superstar, and Fortune 500 CEO.”
Why did the cardinals choose the 78-year-old prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith?
“[Cardinal Joseph] Ratzinger appeared as the best and the brightest they had,” Allen stated.
He said the cardinals identified three things they wanted the successor of Peter to address: runaway secularism in the West; someone to reform the Roman Curia; and someone who had “the substance of Pope John Paul II without the craziness,” i.e., the frenetic pace, of John Paul II.
“No one better than Ratzinger understood why relativism is seductive to the human mind,” Allen said of the first area, noting that truth would be at the core of the teaching Magisterium in this pontificate.
He added that the pontiff’s choice of love as the subject of his first encyclical “was not a public relations exercise.”
“This is a happy, content, joyful man,” the author said.
As for curial reform, Allen said Pope Benedict “never planned to turn the church on its head overnight.”
“Ratzinger is a classic conservative. He doesn’t trust bureaucracy,” Allen said.
Calling the pope’s evaluation of Vatican offices “an examination of conscience,” the writer said the pope might ask, “Do our structures serve the ends of the Gospel?... Do we need the structure we have?”
Pointing out that those heading the Vatican’s efforts in missionary work, education, liturgy and health did not have experience in those areas, Allen said, “He is more interested in what someone knows rather than who he knows.”
Allen described the cardinals’ desire for a different kind of pope as “Wojtylaism without Wojtyla.”
“He does not have to be the star of every show, the answer to every question,” the writer said of the pontiff’s style.
As examples of how the pope does business, Allen noted that rather than consult two or three Italian bishops for advice on choosing the head of the Italian bishops’ conference, he sought input from all of Italy’s 245 bishops.
Likewise, at the World Synod of Bishops last fall, when groups were at odds on their views of the Eucharist, the pope spoke from the floor of the assembly.
“He settled it not by act of authority,” Allen said, “but by reasoned argument.”
Allen noted that the pope “will be a tenacious defender of faith and morals,” but added that on prudential matters, in those areas where doctrine did not provide the definitive teaching, he was a “listening pope; surprisingly open and consultative.” |
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