Hardening the Papal Lineup

John Paul picks a German Cardinal as his doctrinal watchdog

Unlike Premiers or Presidents, new Popes put their top aides in place only gradually, as jobs open up. John Paul II's first major appointment, two years ago, was Papal Loyalist Agostino Cardinal Casaroli as Secretary of State. Other changes slowly followed, including the selection last September of U.S. Archbishop Paul Marcinkus as chief administrator of Vatican City. Now, at the start of John Paul's fourth year, his lineup is virtually complete. The Pope has just named West Germany's Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 54, to be his doctrinal watchdog as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office). Ratzinger is the only internationally respected theologian in modern times to fill the post, and the Pope's second most important appointee is also perfectly attuned to John Paul's conservative views.

Ratzinger did not always see things that way. During the Second Vatican Council he was the most eloquent member of a troika of progessive German theological experts (with Karl Rahner and Hans Kueng). In that era the reform-minded priest called the office he will now head "detrimental to the faith." By the 1970s, however, he gradually came to question the church's leftward drift. He warned against accepting "tenets merely because they happen to be fashionable at the moment." In 1975 he called the previous decade "a period of ecclesiastical decadence in which the people who had started it later on became incapable of stopping the avalanche." After Ratzinger was appointed Archbishop of Munich in 1977, he barred Liberation Theologian Johann Baptist Metz from a professorship and engineered the Vatican crackdown on his former colleague Kueng. Ratzinger's shift prompted charges of opportunism; students broke up one of his campus appearances last year with booing and jeering chants.

No one has ever questioned his intelligence, though. As a Wunderkind theology professor, he raced through appointments at five German universities and at 42 became deputy president of Regensburg. He is abstemious, hardworking, and as archbishop has earned a reputation for aloofness from his people but persuasiveness in his oratory. In 1980 the Pope assigned him to prepare the major reports for the International Synod of Bishops.

The Pope's desire to end the church's period of doctrinal uncertainty means that the new prefect can expect some renewed booing and a lot more conflict. One sure focus for trouble is Dominican Father Edward Schillebeeckx, a Dutch scholar who has frequently questioned Vatican views. In a new book, Ministry, published last April in English (Crossroad; $12.95), Schillebeeckx focused his critical attention on the clergy. Pointing to the church's manpower shortage, he argues that the "right" of Catholics to have priests means that some rules must be reexamined, notably those which ban women, non-celibates and even lay people from performing priestly duties.

The Vatican is not receptive to such proposals, and last spring the doctrinal office quietly questioned Dominican headquarters in Rome about the book. The order is planning a formal "discussion" of Schillebeeckx's proposals. The bureaucratic maneuvering will go on for some time, but Ratzinger is likely to press hard for Schillebeeckx to be either less contentious or just plain quiet.

The Pontiff clearly wants that sort of decisive action. Religious orders like the Dominicans have long been free of control by bishops and tend to be loosely disciplined, but John Paul is now signaling that if they do not police their own ranks, he intends to do it. In October he suspended the normal rules and installed two men of his own choosing as interim leaders of the Jesuits, an order which has been troubled by social and theological liberalism in recent years. Last week the new leaders ordered the 83 regional Jesuit executives to Rome next February. The purpose, says one Jesuit, is to get them "to think with the Pope." John Paul, adds one unhappy Vatican observer, "really wants to see a kind of highly organized church with the Pope at the top, bishops underneath and clergy underneath them--all tidy-like." With Joseph Ratzinger, the Pontiff now has just the team to tend to the tidying up.

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