Ambition in the Church (Main Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Sunday, May 09, 2010, 10:22 (1110 days ago) @ James

I have to admit that I have never seen anyone like him, although one got used to picking the politicians in the seminary. Pell is the consummate politician in a frock.

I think many share your point of view, James. The attention this guy stirs up in the international media, and amongst the high profile international Catholic journalists and prominent bloggers, is quite extraordinary. While he does have an ideological core for sure, I also have this sense that had the "ecclesial political climate" been running in a consistently different direction to what it has been under JPII and Benedict this guy is such an ambitious and 'political animal' he'd have been equally prominent in that alternative climate. I sense there is a constant internal tussle there between his ideological preferences and his ambition or drive to be constantly at the centre of the action. Your analysis of the different ways in which "politics" is played out in a democracy and in an absolute monarchy has much to commend it.

The sense I pick up is that he was extremely successful in ingratiating himself with JPII to the point that for a period he was almost single-handedly picking who would be the bishops right across this country. He fell out of favour for a while in having that sort of influence. If he gets this position as head of the Congregation of Bishops I should imagine there will be a big pay-back time.

One of the saving graces in all of this is that he has developed a reputation for making hopeless appointments. The number of "disasters" left in his wake is almost as impressive as the international attention he creates. That augers well for him continuing to be a major contributor to the continued collapse of the institution. If the Australian church can put up with the short term pain of the appointments he will make in this place my confident prediction is that he will be the best appointment Benedict could ever make to bring about the collapse of the entire institution by simply driving most people out of the pews. We live at a fascinating moment in world history and ecclesial history.

If there really is a "last judgement" in the style in which Michaelangelo painted it, when it is handed down I'd just hate to be standing in the shoes or minds of any of these recent blokes who at every turn have endeavoured to undo, or re-interpret, Vatican II!

Personally I have now lost all hope in seeing the spirit that animated the collective episcopal leadership at Vatican II being restored. The collapse of the institution will continue. Benedict will create his "purist" remnant far more successfully than anything JPII or Ottaviani ever achieved. It will not convince the youthful generations of the future though. The fascinating question now, in my opinion, is what sort of institution they (the coming generations) end up creating to replace this one that nurtured our generation and those that came before us? Will they have a sense that they even need an "institution" like the Church or will something completely fresh evolve as the mechanism through which society nurtures and develops the "spiritual" dimension? I sense there continues to be enormous "spiritual energy" in the world — perhaps more than at any other recent period. At present it seems to be in a phase of 'rejecting the old certitudes' without necessarily yet having an alternative set of coherent answers. Society seems to be in a "searching phase" for both answers and for some kind of structure that supports whatever the "answers" might indicate needs to happen — what part a "spiritual or religious structure" might play in the future of human civilisation.

My own sense is that some kind of structure will be required but that could be flowing from my own innate conservative nature. I am open to the possibility at least intellectually that what emerges in the future will not require "structure" in the sense we have thought of the meaning of that word in the past. For example, and this is just one possibility, if there is a structure in the future it might be more in the nature of the United Nations, or the Parliament of the World's Religions, or the sort of structure the Orthodox and Eastern Churches have long operated under.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]