After having qualified John Paul II, the adjective ‘conservative’, with everything narrow it comprises, has now been attributed to his successor, this time aggravated by a pejorative co-efficient: “hyper-conservative”. Once the first reaction of nervousness always caused by this kind of reduction of the mission of the Pope to politico-social debates (in which a person is always classified according to the progress, by linear definition, that we think is taking place before our eyes), it is probably time to take stock of what is at stake in the post-John Paul II turning-point. John Paul II, in sum, had based his pontificate on the combination of an unshakeable fidelity to the letter of the Vatican Council II and a strong commitment to bringing back disoriented believers to the continuity of the Catholic Tradition. More precisely, his pontificate had been based on the possibility of interpreting the Council and the liturgical reform precisely in terms of that continuity, while not in any way repudiating an openness to the non-Catholic world (whether inter-religious or ecumenical), indeed wholly certain of the foundations of that continuity and of the spiritual strength of the Church, so as not to lose anything of the distinctive traits of Catholicism. That position led to undeniable results, even if it dismayed, or even turned off, more than a few: the meeting in Assisi, the declarations of repentance moved an entire section of Catholic public opinion “on the right”, while the doctrinal appeals ( Veritatis splendor, Dies Domini, and especially Dominus Jesus in 2000), the strictness of the moral teaching and the admonitions in the liturgical field fuelled controversies “on the left”. Contrary to what some had believed, there was on the part of John Paul II no duplicity, no ambiguous language in holding that position that might have seemed poised on a knife edge, but that, for him, was the result of his faith in the power of the Gospel to overcome all the positions of stalemate, the sterile conflicts and the forms of ostracism dictated by fear. Will Benedict XVI be able to continue exactly the same line? He undoubtedly has the wish and, we may say, the intellectual abilities to do so. No one better than he is able to address the problems of modernity, the great religious traditions, and the ecumenical questions in which he knows how to open new approaches, identify the pitfalls and present the Truth of the faith from a renewed perspective. It is probably this incontestable quality, perceived by everyone, in particular on the occasion of ad limina visits, that led to the choice of the Sacred College. In as much as the crisis of the Church, which has distant origins and certainly did not begin with the Council (which was indeed an attempt to respond to it), is first and foremost an intellectual problem, it is in these terms that the problem needs to be tackled. Too long forced into a defensive position, Catholics have lost the habit of subverting the currents of thought by which they were threatened. They need, on the contrary, to rediscover that foundation of truth present in every aspiration of the human heart, but with the goal of leading it to Christ. Benedict XVI will have to tackle the reality of a Church that has still not recovered from the traumas inflicted on her by post-1968 disaffection and is still radically weakened in her obedience, in her faith, and in her apostolic fervour. Will he be able to maintain the constantly eirenic position that was peculiar to John Paul II, certain of reaching the good Catholic people in his spontaneous intuition? There are those who say that Benedict XVI does not have much time before him (he is 78 years old!) and that he does not enjoy at the outset a fund of great sympathy. What he does have however is the Holy Spirit…, which is a winning card of quite another order. It is up to us, in any case, to help him, from now on, with our prayers, faithful, constant, filial…
