Dorothy Kweyu
20 April 2005
opinion
Nairobi — Pope Benedict XVI has his job cut out for him. He has the unenviable task of striking a delicate balance between what his predecessor, Pope John Paul II stood for, and what the rest of the world expect of him.
As Cardinal Ratzinger, he was widely associated with the Catholic Church's conservative policies that his predecessor stood for.
As Pope, he must now respond to growing concerns in religious circles and in the secular world that the Church's ultra-conservative stance on some critical issues could alienate it and render it irrelevant in the 21st century.
John Paul laid the foundations of diplomacy in the Vatican by increasing the number of countries with diplomatic ties with the Vatican from 80 in 1978 when he ascended the throne of St Peter to 174 at the time of his death on April 2.
He built inter-faith bridges by being the first Roman Pontiff to visit a Jewish synagogue and a Muslim mosque.
It follows that these initiatives that saw his funeral attended by an unprecedented crowd that included sworn political enemies and religious rivals have to be enhanced by the new pope.
In another departure from tradition, John Paul II sent delegates to critical global meetings, including the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, Egypt, 1994 and again the Fourth UN Conference on Women - braving hostile feminist hecklers that view the Church as oppressive to women.
Pope Benedict XVI, therefore, has not only to measure up to and exceed the parameters set out by his predecessor, who made a mark as a diplomat par excellence, but has to muster the courage to break with tradition in some sticking issues that remain synonymous with the Catholic Church.
John Paul II left some unfinished business that poses a major challenge to his successor.
Principal among these are celibacy among the clergy, ordination of women and condom use in the context of HIV/Aids.
While there is no dispute that the Catholic Church's refusal to yield to demands for an amoral agenda defined by sexual permissiveness enjoys great support especially in Africa, where issues of sex remain largely private, making the Church a stabilising moral force in a world on the brink of moral collapse, the Church's stand on the management of Aids is another story altogether.
Early last year, Cardinal Godfried Daneels of Belgium in an interview with a Dutch broadcaster caused ripples in the Church when he hinted that using a condom might not be sinful.
Someone who had the HIV virus could use a condom to protect life, the cardinal was reported as saying in The Age newspaper of Melbourne, Australia.
Later the same year, the Church's leading international aid agency, Cafod, publicly supported the use of condoms in the fight against Aids. Saying it backed the 'ABC' approach to the issue - 'abstain, be faithful, use a condom' - Cafod, which said it did not intend to distribute condoms, said nonetheless that denying condoms to potential Aids victims was a denial of the Catholic pro-life teachings.
That a prince of the Church and its principal aid arm could stand up to be counted on one of the most volatile debates pitting the Catholic Church against most of the world seemed to signal that time had come for the Church to come to terms with the management of a virus that as yet has no known cure.
The cardinal said that if an HIV-positive person had sex without a condom, it would be sinful and against God's commandment 'Thou shalt not kill'.
He said: "While we can say that, objectively, the use of condoms is wrong, there are places where it might be licit, or allowable, as when there's a danger of intercourse leading to death."
While this was not followed by an official Vatican statement in support of or against the statement, observers read a softening of opinion among the Church hierarchy especially following hostility generated Cardinal Alphonse Lopez-Trujillo comments that the Aids virus could pass through the condom.
Will Pope Benedict XVI face up to the challenge of taking a stand that separates condoms as a purveyor of irresponsible sex and as a prophylactic gadget against the omni-present killer that is Aids?
On priestly celibacy, the Church already took a stand when it accepted into its fold Anglican clergymen who decamped to protest the Church of England's 1994 decision to ordain women.
Malawian theologian Augustine Musopole wants the new Pope to follow the Orthodox Church by making celibacy optional.
He points out that in spite of insisting on celibacy, "the church has been crippled by sexual scandals. It would be a revolutionary move, but a positive one," he says.
When I interviewed the outgoing Pope's Representative in Kenya, Archbishop Giovani Tonucci, the envoy saw no link between priestly celibacy and sex scandals in the Catholic Church. He noted that there were no more sex scandals among Catholic clergy than among the laity.
Biblical wisdom however shows that Jesus' disciples - including the first Pope, Peter - were married.
Perhaps the thorniest issue that Pope Benedict XVI has to face up to relates to the ordination of women - an issue in which the Catholic Church is truly caught in a time warp.
According to Dr Musopole, this would be one way of meeting the growing shortage of priests.
Shortage aside, feminist theologians - and they are backed by progressive male scholars - consider the Catholic Church's insistence on ordaining only men as anti-Christ and discriminative of women.
Since 1852 when the United Church of Christ broke with tradition to ordain its first woman, others have followed including the Universalist denomination, now Unitarian Universalist Association (1863 ), Salvation Army (1865), Mennonite (1911 ) and Assemblies of God (1914).
They were followed in the 1920s by some Baptist denominations and in 1939 by United Methodist Church although African Methodists had ordained women for decades.
In 1956, the Presbyterian Church in the US ordained its fist woman minister, followed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in the 1970s.
The Episcopal Church - the American Anglican branch that has earned notoriety by ordaining a gay bishops followed suit and finally the Church of England in 1994.
Feminist theologians argue that the Catholic Church's refusal to ordain women is based on Old Testament Theology that treated women as second class. But Jesus Christ changed all that. Each woman who is baptised becomes another Christ, just as a man is.
"All who are baptised in Christ, have put on Christ. There is no longer any discrimination between Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female," St Paul says in his letter to Galatians.
Every baptised woman shares fully in Christ's priesthood, kingship and prophetic mission. Baptism implies a fundamental openness to all the sacraments, including the ministerial priesthood, and Pope Benedict XVI has to respond to growing calls to ordain women.
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