WE GOT ISSUES :

A legacy of questions from this heroic Pope (William Rees-Mogg, August 19, 2002, Times of London)

There are several potential difficulties, which will not be resolved in his reign but will eventually have to be resolved. There are issues from the Second Vatican Council still to be decided, and issues which arise from the global cultural changes to which he attaches great importance. [...]

Above everything else, there is the question of the rights of women, the most profound of all the human rights claimed in the second half of the 20th century. Unusually, John Paul II seems unsure of his own mind on this issue. He moved one step forward in 1995, with his sympathetic letter to the Beijing World Conference on Women, but two steps back with Ad Tuendam Fidem (In the Defence of the Faith) with its commentary by Cardinal Ratzinger. That document attempted to put 'definitive' but 'non-infallible' teachings, such as those which reject the ordination of women, outside the boundaries of discussion. For Cardinal Ratzinger, there seems to be no such thing as loyal disagreement.

That dam will not hold. In the 19th century a great pride of 'Pio Nono'` Catholicism was that Catholic doctrine and practice never changes, and has never changed. The truth is the opposite. The faith is constant, but from the earliest days, certainly since the time of St Ambrose and St Augustine, the Church has been in a continuous process of reform and development. If it had not been it would long since have died.

That process will inevitably continue. Pope John Paul II is a great Pope, an heroic Pope, a man of compassion and grace, from my perspective perhaps the greatest leader I have ever met. But his judgment will not decide how the Catholic Church may develop in the 21st century any more than Pius IX could have stopped the hand of John XXIII when he took the critical decision to call the Second Vatican Council. Even in Rome no generation can bind the conscience of its successors.

Lord Rees-Mogg redeems himself for last week's anti-Rumsfeld lunacy with a nice piece on the Pope.
Posted by Orrin Judd at August 21, 2002 9:00 AM