Two heavyweight German cardinals, Kasper and Ratzinger, epitomise radically different approaches to Rome's authority that could well be central to the forthcoming conclave, writes Eamonn Conway
All but three of the cardinals who will elect the new Pope were created by John Paul II. There is an impression therefore that the cardinals are more or less of one mind. That is simply not so, at least in Europe.
Take the president of the German Bishops' Conference, Karl Lehmann, who got the red hat in 2001. Lehmann was never popular in Vatican circles, and became less so when he led German bishops in their opposition to Roman interference in the late 1990s.
Abortion is illegal in Germany, but after unification it was decided that women up to 12 weeks pregnant who had sought advice from approved agencies would be exempt from legal sanction. The German bishops had a dilemma.
Clearly they opposed abortion, and did so repeatedly and publicly. At the same time they judged that it was better pastorally to provide advisory services that unequivocally offered the pro-life perspective, even if certificates of having attended for such advice could subsequently be used to procure an abortion.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), disagreed, and so did John Paul II. The German bishops were ordered to discontinue providing certificates. Lehmann was openly annoyed at Rome's heavy-handedness. At Katholikentag in 2000, I heard him say publicly that he had vigorously opposed Rome, and lost. A year later, perhaps reluctantly, John Paul II made him a cardinal.
The case of Walter Kasper, widely considered a papabile [ potential pope] is even more interesting. As a theology professor at the University of Tübingen, Kasper tried to broker a deal to avert the dismissal as a Catholic theologian of his close colleague, Hans Küng.
Later, in 1989, Kasper became Bishop of Stuttgart-Rottenburg. From the beginning, he brought his considerable theological expertise to bear on pressing pastoral problems. He actively encouraged research on the ordination of women to the diaconate. Also, in association with Lehmann and with Archbishop Oscar Saier of Freiburg, he provided a pastoral solution to the issue of communion for divorced and remarried people under carefully delineated circumstances.
Rome and Ratzinger forced these bishops into what seemed like a publicly humiliating climbdown. In general, the feeling among diocesan bishops was that they were being treated by curial officials, most of whom had no pastoral experience, as "branch officers" to be hauled in and overruled by "headquarters" if they overstepped the line, with little regard for the genuine dilemmas facing bishops "on the ground". Pastorally frustrated, Kasper began to sharpen his theological knife by appealing to the teaching of the council.
Vatican II had begun a process of reversing Roman centralisation. It had restored the theological significance of particular or local churches, commonly referred to as a diocese or a number of dioceses in one particular geographical region. But the appropriate relationship of local churches to the universal church was still a matter of dispute, perhaps the theological dispute underlying many of the squabbles with Rome.
Since 1989 Ratzinger had been offering his interpretation of Vatican II on this matter more or less unchallenged. In 1992 the CDF issued a statement that local churches are formed "out of and in the universal church" and claiming that the universal church is essentially and temporally prior to local churches. This, if true, tipped the scales in favour of Roman primacy and authority. It would provide a clear theological basis for Roman intervention in the affairs of local churches and episcopal conferences.
Kasper became increasingly critical of this view. In 1999 he wrote that the CDF's position was "more or less" a reversal of Vatican II and an attempt to thwart it. In his view, Ratzinger's claim that the universal church pre-exists the local churches misread the tradition. "The local church," he argued, "is neither a province nor a department of the universal church; it is the church at a given place".
Kasper claimed that Vatican II wished the church to be understood as a mutually respecting "communion of communities", and he showed how such an understanding would have wide-ranging advantages in terms of ecumenism, a view endorsed wholeheartedly by the Orthodox Church, for which an overemphasis on authority in Rome was an obstacle to unity. It would also have implications for practical ethical issues as well sacramental discipline, allowing and putting the responsibility upon local churches to incarnate the teaching of Christ the best way they could.
This might seem like two Germans splitting theological hairs. But the debate may prove to be the most divisive, and decisive, at the forthcoming conclave. American cardinals, for instance, will be recalling how the Dallas Charter, which advocated "zero tolerance" towards clerical sex offenders, was modified by Rome to ensure some level of due process for accused clergy.
This is an interesting example, because some, such as Cardinal Avery Dulles, formed the view that the US bishops were overreacting to pressure "on the ground" to be seen to act decisively and even ruthlessly against abusers, and Roman intervention on this matter was both necessary and welcome to restore balance.
Again, others would see in the disarray which has beset the Anglican Communion the legitimacy of Ratzinger's fears of the church being reduced to some kind of loose federation. Right or wrong, at the end of the day the issue is one of authority and power, and where these should lie. As John Paul II's pontificate progressed, the Roman magisterium, by using the mass media to great effect, frequently seemed prematurely to force consensus among bishops on issues that many of them felt had not been adequately discussed.
The result was that their role seemed downplayed to one of accepting decisions already taken and communicating these to their people. The many synods of bishops called by John Paul II seemed to do little to address the problem. Irish-born Keith O'Brien, Archbishop of Edinburgh, complained that his and others' attempts to discuss the ordination of married men at the European Synod in 1999 were stifled by the curia. O'Brien was created a cardinal in 2003, and will also be voting at the conclave.
Few bishops would have the theological apparatus to argue with either Ratzinger or Kasper, but most would identify with the experience of being torn between the doctrinal demands of the Roman curia, and their own pastoral instincts. They would probably support Kasper's demand that bishops "be granted enough vital space to make responsible decisions in the matter of implementing universal laws".
What was John Paul II up to in bringing Kasper to Rome, making him a cardinal, and putting him in charge of the Congregation for Christian Unity in 2001?
By then Kasper's views were well known, so the Pope's appointment at the least legitimises the dispute. Had the Pope begun to regret the unprecedented Roman centralisation his pontificate had effected? In his first encyclical, effectively the charter for his papacy, Redemptor Hominis, he had said he wanted to consolidate national episcopal conferences and to underpin collegial structures. He had intended each individual diocese "to pulsate in full awareness of its own identity, aware of its own originality within the universal unity of the church".
Could Cardinal Kasper be John Paul II's final legacy to the universal church?
Eamonn Conway is a priest of the Tuam diocese and head of theology and religious studies at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick