From the editor’s desk

CHALLENGE OF THE LORD?S VINEYARD

CELEBRATION is the right response to the election of a new Pope. Brass bands played in St Peter?s Square as the bells rang out on Tuesday, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O?Connor has described how champagne corks popped at the cardinals? final dinner after the conclave, where the new Pope was serenaded in song. The See of Peter is God?s gift to the Church, the key to its unity, and it is occupied again. That is like the healing of a wound. But this is not to deny that the result of the election was controversial, just as the cardinal chosen to succeed John Paul II had been for most of his life. But unlike the despondency and pessimism which seemed to mark his sermon to the cardinals before they elected him, his first words as Pope have been optimistic and full of the promise of outreach, as well as stressing that collegiality will play its part in his papacy.

It is unfortunate for him that his role under the papacy of John Paul II was one of the least happy the Vatican has to offer, the disciplining of clergy and the policing of doctrine. Many felt his performance of these duties was unduly severe. Now Benedict XVI is at last free to direct his creative energy and enormous intellect in more positive directions. It is clear from his choice of title and from his recent utterances that Europe, of which St Benedict is the patron saint, is top of his priorities. He is alarmed by its secularism, which he sees as becoming aggressively anti-religious. But the implicit irony in his striking phrase ?the dictatorship of relativism? suggests he is aware of the subtle contradictions in the present state of European culture, which has made the rejection of the possibility of truth into the very meta-narrative ? the very ?absolute? ? that it insists it is dismissing.

There is much truth in the new Pope?s diagnosis. But there is also a danger of being so aggressive in arguing against Europe?s post-modern culture that the very opposition the Church is trying to overcome is in fact stimulated. People may not need moorings, but they certainly need bearings. It would be a crucial mistake for him to assume that theologians on the more progressive wing of the church are somehow part of a fifth column trying to undermine it. The boundaries of orthodoxy need to be set more widely to accommodate them as ?co-workers in the vineyard of the Lord?, to adapt the new Pope?s opening words. They are likely to be crucial interlocutors if the new Pope wants to engage modern Europe in a serious conversation. The same is true of those theologians who have explored other faiths, seeking points where the Gospel may have resonance. A pioneer in this field, the late Jacques Dupuis SJ, was unjustly crushed by Cardinal Ratzinger. Perhaps the papacy will be his penance.

John Paul II seems an impossible act to follow. If his successor supplies merely the same doctrinal authoritarianism but without the popular charismatic personality, then the cardinals have some heart-searching to do. If Pope Benedict blossoms into an intellectual force for unity, justice and progress, as he may well do, then the Church will indeed see him as a benediction from God. At the outset of his papacy, every new Pope deserves the entire Church?s prayerful welcome.