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WORLD March 16, 2000 VNN5690 Comment on this story A Sweeping Apology For Church Errors BY SRI RAMA DAS USA, Mar 16 (VNN) — This may be of interest to proponents of sincere and productive reform in ISKCON. I found the second half, wherein the problems associated with issuing a genuine apology are discussed: From the International Herald Tribune A Sweeping Apology for Church Errors Pope Asks Forgiveness for Catholic Misdeeds Over 2,000 Years By Alessandra Stanley New York Times Service ROME - Saying that ''we humbly ask forgiveness,'' Pope John Paul II delivered the most sweeping papal apology ever Sunday, repenting for the errors of his church over the last 2,000 years.
''We cannot not recognize the betrayal of the Gospel committed by some of our brothers, especially in the second millennium,'' the Pope, dressed in purple robes to mark Lent, said in his homily. ''Recognizing the deviations of the past serves to reawaken our consciences to the compromises of the present.'' The public act of repentance, solemnly woven into the liturgy of Sunday Mass inside St. Peter's, was an unprecedented moment in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, one that the ailing 79-year-old Pope pushed forward over the doubts of even many of his own cardinals and bishops. The Pope has repeatedly said that the new evangelization he is calling for in the third millennium can only take place after what he has described as a church-wide ''purification of memory.'' To underline the religious significance of the apology, seven cardinals and bishops stood before the Pope and singled out some of the key Catholic lapses, past and present, including religious intolerance and injustice towards Jews, women, indigenous peoples, immigrants, the poor and the unborn. The Pope also mentioned the persecution of Catholics by other faiths. ''As we ask forgiveness for our sins, we also forgive the sins committed by others against us.'' At the beginning of his pontificate, John Paul's boldest gestures were on a political front, confronting communism in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Latin America and also challenging human rights violations and the economic injustices of capitalism. But the apology, issued in the twilight of his papacy, is theologically even more daring. His effort to cleanse his church's conscience for the new millennium has already drawn criticism, but it is almost certain to deeply mark his legacy. ''The apology does not just apply to individuals, but the church as a whole, and that is very important,'' said the Reverend Lorenzo Albacete, who teaches theology at St. Joseph's seminary in Yonkers, New York. ''Because it reflects this Pope's desire to reconcile with other Christians and other religions, people are tempted to view it as a tactic, but its immense spiritual importance to this Pope lies in the fact that it did not come within a diplomatic or theological agreement, but in the liturgy of the Mass during Lent and the Holy Year.'' The Pope, broadening a process of reconciliation that began during the Second Vatican Council, has issued apologies before, notably regretting the failure of many Catholics to help Jews during the Holocaust in a 1998 document, ''We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah.'' That document disappointed many leading Jewish groups, who complained that the Pope did not go far enough in apologizing for the silence of church leaders, including Pope Pius XII during World War II. On Sunday, in the prayer dedicated to ''confession of sins against the people of Israel,'' the Pope did not mention the Holocaust. He said, ''We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.'' Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called Sunday's apology a ''bold and important step forward,'' but added that he was disappointed that the Pope had not mentioned the Holocaust. ''The church still wants to steer clear of dealing with the role of the Vatican during World War II,'' he said. The Pope also acknowledged that church followers had ''violated the rights of ethnic groups and peoples and shown contempt for their cultures and religious traditions.'' He deplored divisions between Catholicism and other branches of Christianity, and also discrimination against women. ''Given the number of sins committed in the course of 20 centuries,'' Bishop Piero Marini, who is in charge of papal ceremonies, explained before the Mass, ''it must necessarily be rather summary.'' The need for Catholics to examine their collective conscience is something that this Pope has been thinking about for years, and he laid out his own rationale for it in a 1994 apostolic letter on the third millennium called ''Tertio Millennio Adveniente.'' He also raised the subject privately in meetings with key cardinals, and his proposal was sufficiently groundbreaking that they requested that the theological and historical implications first be studied in depth. The result was a dense 31-page tre atise by the International Theological Commission, which, with Vatican oversight, ground out the theological precedents and also the limits to the apology. Written by committee and issued earlier this month, the document addresses concerns that the apology will be misunderstood or misused by those ''hostile to the church.'' It also reflects other worries of theologians, who had to grapple with such complex issues as how a church that considers itself holy can admit mistakes, and whether it is fair for today's church to condemn acts by previous generations made in good if misguided faith. The document explains that the church is holy, but is stained by the sins of its children, and requires ''constant purification.'' It hints at, but does not directly address, the delicate issue of whether past church leaders also erred. ''The document should have put it in bold print that 'children of the church' includes Popes, cardinals, and clergy, and not just people in the pews,'' said the Reverend Thomas Reeves, editor of the Jesuit magazine America. ''The Pope had a great idea that some in the Vatican are obscuring with a fog machine.'' The document also cautions against judging past generations by today's moral or religious standards, and says that today's believers cannot be held responsible for sins committed by Catholics hundreds of years ago. It nevertheless concedes that there is ''an objective collective responsibility'' for past errors that modern Catholics should acknowledge and repent. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who heads the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the modern successor to the Inquisition, addressed the issue of why the church feels ready to concede error now. At a press conference last week, he said that Protestantism and the Enlightenment ''created a new historiography of the church, claiming that it was not just stained by sin but completely corrupt, so the church had to build up a Catholic historiography to combat it.'' He said that the collapse of atheist, totalitarian systems had left the church ''in a new situation of freedom to return to our sins.'' The difficulty for theologians and church historians to determine what exactly constituted knowable error during the Crusades, the Inquisition, holy wars, the burning of heretics and the forced conversions of Indians and Africans, however, led to a more elliptical reference to ''sins committed in the service of truth.'' Cardinal Ratzinger prayed that Catholics would recognize ''that even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel.'' The Pope replied, ''Christians have at times given in to intolerance and have not been faithful to the great commandment of love, sullying in their way the face of the church.'' The Pope, who rode up the aisle on a rolling platform, a strength-saving device he has been using since Christmas, read his homily in a clear, firm voice that belied the palsied trembling of his hands, a symptom of Parkinson's disease. Copyright (C) 2000 International Herald Tribune Comment on this story  Contact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
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