Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . INTERVIEW . John Allen . April 14, 2006

Read more of Kim Lawton's March 22, 2006 interview about Pope Benedict XVI with John L. Allen Jr., Vatican correspondent for the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER and author of THE RISE OF BENEDICT XVI (Doubleday):

Q: What characterized the first year of Benedict's papacy?

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A: In some ways, the great story of Benedict's first year is what hasn't happened, because, of course, when Joseph Ratzinger was elected to the papacy, there were expectations in many quarters. He was a man with a very high profile and a very clear set of views about issues in the Church. I think many people expected that he would move much more quickly and much more comprehensively to impose his vision of things. What we've discovered is that Benedict has a clear understanding that he was not elected, like the president or prime minister, to impose a personal agenda. He sees himself as the carrier of a tradition and as pastor of a very complex universal church, and so has moved much more slowly, much more thoughtfully than many people had anticipated. That has been a source of reassurance to some, and a source of alarm to others. I think one of the great ironies at the end of the first year is about the only people that you can find publicly critical of the pope at this stage are those who were most excited about his election one year ago and who are now worried that the man they thought they were electing is not the pope they got.

Q: What have been his main priorities?

A: I don't think we had to wait for his main priority to emerge. I think he told us the day before he was elected on April 18, in the Mass for the election of the pope, where as dean of the College of Cardinals he gave the homily and identified the most important threat facing the Church as what he called a dictatorship of relativism, that is, this idea in the developed West that you've got your truths and I've got mine and they're all equal, which he sees as profoundly dangerous because, among other things, it imperils the universal validity of the truth, the dignity of the human person, with all kinds of negative consequences. I think from day one the core ideas of his papacy you can express in three words: truth, freedom, and love. Truth, meaning there is universal truth which sets limits to what states can do, and it set limits to what we can do as individuals. Freedom in the deepest sense, that is, freedom that is not there are no restraints in your behavior. Freedom is you are free to become the man or woman that God intends you to be, to realize your fullest potential. And then ultimately seeing both of those things in the context of love, because I think what Benedict understands very clearly is that while he believes there are things that are seriously amok in modern culture, you don't change hearts and minds with excoriation and with finger wagging. Too often, people perceive the Church when it speaks publicly as doing so out of fear, out of desire for power, out of a desire for control, and I think what he has wanted to do -- and this is, in a way, what the first year has been about -- is changing the context, trying to get people to understand, "Look, you may not agree with what we say, but at least give us credit for our motives. That our concern here is not trying to control you; our concern here is trying to make sure that you have a full and deep experience of lasting love. In other words, we're in love with you, and we're so profoundly in love with you that we want to share with you this secret to unlocking what real happiness and real love is all about." In that sense, I think the remarkably positive tone and the remarkably open tone that we have seen in the first year is all about that. It's trying to get people to look at what the Church is saying in a different light and at least understand, you know, if you don't buy the particular prescription, you can at least understand that the doctor has your best interests at heart.

Q: Are people listening?

A: Benedict is clearly a much less cinematic and much less charismatic figure than John Paul. I've actually written that I think the big difference, after the first year of John Paul and the first year of Benedict, is that the big division after the first year of John Paul was between those who liked what they were hearing and those who didn't. He had set a clear line that we are going to have a stronger sense of Catholic identity, that we are going to impose some discipline, and that we are going to stop wringing our hands and apologizing to the rest of the world, and we're going to, in a much more muscular way, take our act on the road. The force of his personality was such that nobody could avoid reacting to that. The big distinction after Benedict's first year, I think, is between those who are paying attention and those who aren't, because the truth is you've got an inner core of papal devotees, people who hang on everything the pope does, and left, right, and center, those people have been bowled over by Benedict XVI. He is an enormously cultured, an enormously intelligent man, an enormously reverent man. To use the slang, he knows how "to pope," and it's been a very impressive performance. However, because he does not have the same charisma that John Paul II did, very little of that has registered on the broader cultural radar screen. I honestly believe if you stopped the average Catholic in the States and asked them, "What do you know about Benedict XVI?" they would probably be able to say, "Well, I heard he put out something about gay priests and he wears Prada shoes." Beyond that, I think there's very little that in the broader mass market has gotten across. This is a new challenge for the Catholic Church. For 26 years, John Paul put Catholicism on his shoulders and carried it kicking and screaming into the media age. And the Catholic Church for 26 years had the best story in the world. Well, they don't anymore. So the question now is they've got a tremendously impressive pope; how do you get people to notice? I think they're just wrestling with that question for the first time.

Q: In what ways are some conservatives disappointed?

A: One prominent American conservative, Father Richard John Neuhaus, who edits a very influential journal called FIRST THINGS, has written about what he describes as a palpable uneasiness with Benedict XVI. What he means by that is he believes that one of the great failures in twentieth-century Catholicism came in 1968 when Paul VI issued an encyclical, "Humanae Vitae," reaffirming the ban on birth control but did very little to follow it up, so that dissent and disagreement and so forth continued and still continue to this day. In 2005, Benedict XVI has put out a controversial document affirming a ban on admitting homosexuals to the priesthood. Once again, there's dissent and disagreement, and once again, in the eyes of Father Neuhaus, very little is being done about that. He believes, and I think he speaks for a sizable constituency in the Church, that the great fear about this pope is not that he's going to say the wrong things -- obviously not. His positions are going to be rock solid, traditional, classical Catholic doctrine. The question is, will there be the follow-through to make sure that people are toeing the line? I think there's concern in some constituencies that they're not yet seeing that. I'll tell you what one very prominent neoconservative Catholic told me off the record, which is: "You know, we thought we were electing a Ronald Reagan. We got stuck with Jimmy Carter." I think that summarizes the concerns that some people have.

Q: How has Benedict reached out to other religious traditions?

A: Clearly Benedict XVI wants good neighborly relations with the world's religions. On the other hand, I think one of the very few substantive areas of contrast between John Paul II and Benedict has come precisely on this question, and more specifically on Islam, because John Paul II was known as something of a dove on Islam, that is, his program was to reach out to moderates, to avoid ever saying anything inflammatory or provocative, to stress that we're the religions of Abraham, we're the religions of the book, and so on, and to try to build bridges. That was always a subject of frustration with some at senior levels in the Catholic Church who believe the pope wasn't being tough enough on certain issues, particularly around what's called reciprocity -- that is, if Islamic immigrants can claim the protection of law in the West, than Christian minorities in the Islamic world ought to get the same deal. For example, if the Saudi Arabian government could come into Rome and spend $65 million to put up the largest mosque in Europe, then maybe we ought to be able to build churches in Saudi Arabia. Or if we can't do that, maybe we at least ought to be able to import Bibles legally. Or if we can't do that, maybe the four priests who are authorized to serve the needs of the million Catholics in Saudi Arabia ought to at least be able to set foot off the oil industry compounds and the embassies without the threat of arrest by religious police. That's the kind of thing that sticks in the craw of a lot of Catholics. I think Benedict is very sensitive to those arguments, and we have seen a much tougher line, a more hawkish line, if you like, under this pope. His willingness to explicitly challenge Muslim leaders on issues of terrorism and on issues of religious liberty is clearly different than the line under John Paul. I think he is going to want to continue dialogue with other religions, he is going to want good relations, but not at the expense of what he would see as truth.

Q: What about Judaism and Orthodox Christianity?

A: On Judaism, once again I would say that Benedict clearly is committed to moving forward that relationship. He has a particular biographical interest in this relationship. This is a man who was a child when Hitler came to power in 1933 and who was a young adult when the thousand-year Reich fell 12 years later. He saw the devastation of war and the horrors of [the] Holocaust. I think he feels a personal investment in this relationship. He is also a world-class theologian, and he is fascinated by the relationship between the old covenant and the new covenant, between the first elected people of God and then the new community of the elect in Christianity, and so he is going to want to pursue that conversation. On the other hand, I think it has to be said that once again he will not do so at the expense of renouncing core Christian truths. He is never going to say that an individual Jew is better off not knowing Jesus Christ. I think there will be a very clear insistence about those kind of markers of identity as this dialogue goes forward.

In terms of Orthodoxy, Benedict XVI said the day after his election that ecumenism, that is, the effort to reunite the divided Christian family, is job number one of his pontificate. It has to be said we have not seen dramatic new initiatives along those lines. But it is clear that the pope is especially committed to trying to improve relationships with the Orthodox churches. This is, after all, the primordial Christian schism, conventionally dated at 1054. It is a thousand years old, and I think he believes that because Catholics and Orthodox have roughly the same theology about the priesthood, about the sacraments and the nature of the church, that it's in a sense an easier fix than the relationship with some of the Western Protestant churches, where we have very significant disagreements over those issues. In practical terms, certainly his decision to go to Istanbul in November to visit the headquarters of the Patriarch of Constantinople is a symbol of that. Behind the scenes at the Vatican, he is continuing to work very hard to try to arrange a meeting with Patriarch Alexi II, who is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. The dream would be a trip to Moscow, but if that can't happen, meeting on neutral territory someplace. So there continues to be forward movement on that relationship. On the other hand, I think it has to be said that, at the end of the day, the 800-pound gorilla in the room about all of this is debates over the nature of papal primacy. The Orthodox would see the pope as essentially a first among equals, an important point of reference, but not somebody they necessarily have to check their plays with. Certainly, Benedict would have a very different understanding of the nature of papal primacy. While I think there will be good, neighborly relations, there will be a gentlemanly tone to this conversation, there will be joint service projects and so on, I don't see any short-term promise that the real knot here is going to be untied.

Q: Benedict hasn't traveled much in his first year.

A: Well, no pope in his first year travels a great deal, because there are all kinds of ceremonial events that have to take place in Rome. In addition, Benedict decided to create new cardinals in an event called a consistory, which is a major spectacle in Rome. He has basically committed to three trips for next year. He's going to Poland, Spain, and Turkey, and in addition he's going to vacation, apparently, in Germany. John Paul at his peak was taking three or four trips a year, so I don't think it's the number of trips that's unusual. It's the way he is traveling. John Paul in his early years, if he were going to Latin America he would be in eight countries in 14 days. This would be an ordeal. Talking to people who were in the press corps at that time, essentially they had to carry oxygen to keep up with John Paul. Benedict is not going to set that kind of pace. When he travels to a country, he'll be there for 48 hours, maybe 72 hours at most. It will be a less busy schedule. There will be two or three meetings a day rather than eight or nine or in some cases 17. He'll make fewer speeches, there will be fewer private sessions, and so on. It will be a more low-key kind of travel. I think that's the main difference.

Q: How has the Vatican changed in this year?

A: Those of us who follow the Vatican on a day-to-day basis have been struck by how little has changed. By and large I would describe the situation as business as usual, that is, the same people in the same offices following the same procedures as under John Paul are doing their thing today. There have been certain changes. Certain leaders have been removed, others have been brought in, a couple of offices have been collapsed into other offices, but this all amounts to largely window dressing. We have not seen the kind of root and branch of reform of the Roman curia that many were expecting from Benedict XVI. But, again, I think this illustrates an important aspect of his personality, which is that if you want to understand Benedict XVI, the first thing to understand is that he makes a sharp distinction between matters of faith and morals, about which he is completely intransigent and will not budge, and essentially everything else -- matters of prudential judgment, where he really does want to move slowly, he wants to listen, he wants to consult, he wants to operate on the basis of consensus. The truth is that 95 percent of what a pope has to do every day does not come directly out of faith and morals. It's not the kind of thing you can look up in the catechism -- who should be appointed to what job, how a curia ought to be set up, where our money ought to go, to say nothing of questions like what should our line be on Islam, what should our line be on the reconstruction of Iraq? There are doctrinal principles under all of this, of course, but these are also contingent matters about which you have to make the best judgment you can. And on those kinds of issues Benedict is committed to going slow, to consulting widely, to listening carefully, and to trying to operate on the basis of consensus. I think this kind of night of the long knives people expected, where the Roman curia would be turned on its head overnight, was never destined to happen and is just not how he does business.

Q: What do we know now about the conclave a year ago that elected the man who became Pope Benedict XVI?

A: I'm what the Italians call a Vaticanista. That means I'm a Vatican expert, and one of the things we Vaticanista do is make confident predictions about who's going to be pope and who's not going to be pope. Part of my claim to fame is that three years before Benedict XVI was elected, I publicly predicted that Joseph Ratzinger would never occupy the papacy, and obviously [I] lived to see myself contradicted. The conventional wisdom upon which that was based was that Ratzinger was too old, 78 at the time of his election; that he was too European at a time when two thirds of the Catholics of the world live in the global south; that he was too curial in a time when the residential bishops in the rest of the world would like to bring somebody from their experience into the papacy; and that he was too identified with the policies of the pope he was following. If you were using a kind of ecclesiastical racing form to try to pick your horse, those things normally hold up. The detective story, so to speak, of the conclave of 2005 was how did this obviously very impressive and plausible candidate, but long shot -- how did he go from being a long shot to somebody who was such an overwhelming favorite that he gets elected in four ballots and the fourth ballot was largely a formality? I think you can't explain that without what I call "the funeral effect," that is, the collective impact of those events that happened in Rome between April 2 at 9:37 p.m. local time, when John Paul died, through April 8, the funeral mass, and then April 19, the opening of the conclave. You had 5 to 7 million people washing through Rome just in the days between the death and the funeral mass. You had those incredible lines of humanity sweeping down the surrounding streets, people waiting up to 30 hours for a few fleeting seconds in front of the body of the pope. You had the saturation media coverage, you had the amazing diplomatic turnout, 70 heads of state, heads of government at the funeral mass, the largest such gathering for the funeral of any human being in the history of the planet. What all of that did collectively was it brought home to the cardinals that they were electing the successor to a giant. The idea of a quiet, pastoral interim figure, which might have been plausible in 1978, was now completely unthinkable. John Paul II had changed the job description of the pope, and so they had to go looking for a man who had seriousness, who had heft -- someone who knew the role, who spoke languages, who had a deep intellectual vision. A pope of whom you could be proud. And I think at the end of the day they felt that Joseph Ratzinger was the best card in the deck.