Book Review

Pope who has baffled his critics

The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and his battle with the modern world

After the announcement of Joseph Ratzinger's election to the papacy, as David Gibson relates in his new book, the then public affairs adviser to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Sir Stephen Wall, sent a disconsolate text message to the cardinal's aides in Rome. By contrast, "theo-cons" such as the publisher and controversialist Joseph Fessio were, by his own testimony, weeping for joy.

There has followed so far, however, a papacy that has surprised all shades of opinion. Benedict has made conciliatory overtures towards the traditionalist followers of Marcel Lefebvre, and on liturgy looks likely to promote a further "reform of the reform". Yet conservative champions such as the American priest Richard Neuhaus, editor of the often acidulous journal First Things, have voiced "palpable uneasiness" at Benedict's refusal to take a hard line within the Church. Even Hans Küng has been brought in from the cold. One would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during Benedict's four-hour conversation with his former theologian colleague.

Pope Benedict knows he has none of the Christian machismo of his predecessor, and he does not try to emulate him. His style is at the opposite pole. He takes the limelight only when necessary. Gibson compares the two popes at length, drawing on his experience and research at Vatican Radio, where he worked before returning to the United States. "Pontifex Maximus [John Paul], Pontifex Minimus [Benedict]", he nicely entitles one chapter.

He quotes the former papal spokesman,  Joaquín Navarro-Valls, who offered his own comparison. "John Paul expressed himself in gestures," said Navarro-Valls, "this pope gives great space to words. This will be a pontificate of concepts and words." Carefully chosen words concerning the great Christian mysteries and doctrines.

A stunning example was Benedict's first encyclical letter. Where other popes have used such letters to set out their programmes, Benedict reflected on the love that is the essence of Christian faith and life. Gibson underplays the revolutionary combination of eros and agape, human and divine love, each enfolding the other, that Benedict boldly sets out. Sometimes the words have gone wrong, notably in the Regensburg lecture which so offended Muslim opinion. Gibson's book covers the period before this blunder, for which Benedict apologised before adeptly recovering lost ground through his visit to Turkey.

So the Rottweiler, as some dubbed Joseph Ratzinger during his 24 years as the Church's doctrinal watchdog, has metamorphosed into a German shepherd. Gibson's explanation is convincing. Benedict can be relatively relaxed and conciliatory precisely because he holds that the disputed questions of the post-Vatican II- era - sexual ethics, truth, freedom and democracy; the theology of liberation; church government; the place of theologians; celibacy; women priests; above all the interpretation of Vatican II itself - have all been settled in a conservative direction. Now he aims to bring Catholics back to the basic teachings at the heart of the faith.

But German shepherd dogs can give a sharp nip if they are provoked. Thus Benedict continues to press his fears that a "dictatorship of relativism" threatens the modern world. When he uttered the phrase in his pre-conclave homily, Gibson writes, it echoed across St Peter's. Equally striking was his reference on Good Friday 2005 to "filth" in the Church - interpreted as clerical sexual abuse. As Pope, he moved decisively on these grounds against Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who had previously always escaped.

Gibson balances appreciation with some sharp criticism. He sees Benedict as a brilliant intellectual. But the watchword is contemplation rather than action. Gibson notes that while the Christian humanism expressed in Gaudium et Spes can be said to have inspired everything John Paul II did in the world, Benedict criticised it severely as excessively optimistic about the human condition.

What did the 84 cardinals who voted for Joseph Ratzinger on the fourth ballot think they were getting? Gibson believes they were looking for "space to breathe". If so, they have achieved it, but surely what influenced them most were the amazing scenes around John Paul's dying and his funeral, when several million flocked into Rome and some three billion viewers watched on television. Joseph Ratzinger gave the funeral oration, showing a capacity for emotion that no one had previously associated with him. Here, the cardinals must surely have thought, was the nearest they could come to Act II of John Paul II. What they have actually got, Gibson rightly says, is a transitional pope. But transition to what? Gibson cannot yet say, and nor can anyone else.

Had he been a cardinal at the 2005 conclave, Gibson would not have voted for Joseph Ratzinger. Nor would Robert Kaiser, the American journalist who became famous for his reporting of Vatican II. There were Catholics, he writes in his latest book, "who expected the conclave of 2005 to choose a people's pope for a people's Church", and he will have shared their hopes.

Kaiser's campaigning style may put some readers off, but he is on to something vital. Vatican II was indeed, in a sense, a move to return the Church to the people. Faith resides in them, not just in the bishops. Kaiser continually calls attention to one of the Council's preferred images for the Church: "the people of God". This image has subsequently dropped almost out of sight.

It is perhaps a touch ironical that he then focuses "for their iconic value" on six cardinals: from Rome, Joseph Ratzinger ("order in the Church"); from the United States, Roger Mahony (the "Hollywood cardinal"); from Britain, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor (the Church "must always be reformed"); from Latin America, Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga ("star quality"); from Africa, Francis Arinze (his "modesty" was "appropriate"); and from Asia, Julius Darmaatmadja (leading "in a collegial way"). He supplements these compelling portraits with some fascinating "excursions".

But Kaiser skates on thin ice when he envisages a people's Church in the United States that would be "less Roman, more catholic - and more American". He then falls right through when he supports suggestions that this Church should be "autochthonous", like the Chaldeans, the Maronites, the Melkites, the Catholic Armenians and Copts of the Middle East, "with their own patriarchs, liturgies, and mostly married clergy". No wonder that some fear an American schism.

The Church should indeed be more democratic, but Kaiser needs to find the main road again. What he is saying is too important for him to get lost down a blind alley. I hope he will go on calling trenchantly for a people's Church, hierarchically structured, and reminding everyone who will listen that this was a central part of Vatican II's endeavour.

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