A cardinal for our times
Apr 19, 2005
The conclave that opens today is so wide open that there is even a plausible Canadian candidate. In 1978, the cardinals elected a pope from Poland, a faraway country. By that standard, Canada is on another planet.
(National Post, April 18, 2005) Nevertheless, there is serious talk here about the Archbishop of Quebec City, Marc Cardinal Ouellet. Not that he will be elected pope, but that he is a serious man worth a serious look. And that tells us a lot about the kind of man the cardinals are looking for.
First, the reason Cardinal Ouellet won't be elected. It's not so much that he is young, which at 60, he is, but that he hasn't been a bishop very long -- and being Bishop of Rome is not an entry-level position.
It wasn't long ago he was just another Canadian priest in Rome. When I lived here, some of us Canadians would get together to celebrate our national patron saint, St. Joseph, on his feast day, March 19. In 1999 and 2000, Father Marc joined us -- he was then a theology professor here, having previously been rector of seminaries in Montreal and Edmonton, and in Columbia before that. In 2001, we didn't have our St. Joseph party, as he was ordained a bishop by Pope John Paul II that day. Within three years, he was named Archbishop of Quebec and created a cardinal.
Why the rapid rise?
Facing a Quebec Catholic culture in ruins, the Holy See chose Ouellet because he is a man of engagement with contemporary culture. If the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) heralded a new dialogue between the Church and modernity, the years intervening were too often a monologue -- the modern world hectoring the Church to, so to speak, get with the program. Nowhere has that been more true than in Quebec, where the collapse of Catholic culture was so complete that occasionally the most vociferous hectoring came from the clergy themselves.
Such a milieu can also be found throughout the world. Addressing it requires a bishop who can speak in a language modernity can understand about the precise things modernity needs to understand.
Cardinal Ouellet has had a promising start in that regard. Just a few months ago, his instruction that priests were to return to individual confessions, instead of (invalidly) administering the sacrament to entire groups simultaneously -- the contemporary drive-thru mentality at work -- was front-page news for several days in Quebec. It is a rare bishop who can spark a public discussion about the sacraments, rather than simply engage in periodic rehashes of the common media preoccupations with abortion, sex, and, well, sex.
The theological school out of which Cardinal Ouellet comes emphasizes engagement with culture, and argues that only through a return to its Christian roots can our contemporary culture emerge from its coarsening and corrupt state. In that, he shares a similar pastoral vision with more plausible candidates this time around -- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Holy See's doctrinal officer, Camillo Cardinal Ruini of Rome and Angelo Cardinal Scola of Venice. Those Europeans -- and in terms of religious culture, Quebec is closer to Europe than to the rest of North America -- identify confident Christian renewal as the only response to challenges as varied as the secularization of public life, Islamic immigration, demographic decline and the decline of the family.
Ouellet also has the natural and supernatural prerequisites. He can operate in five languages, including Italian, which is essential for the Bishop of Rome. He is comfortable with the media, and is able to translate his scholarly theology into common language. And above all, he has a deep prayer life.
During his two years of Vatican service, he worked in the Christian unity office, spending a great deal of his time on the road in dialogue with other Christian communities large and small. The cardinal-electors will be looking for a man who has a sense not only of the world at large, but the many different worlds within the Catholic Church. If this is the first truly global conclave -- where nationality is not a determinative factor -- then the man chosen will require a global knowledge of the Church today.
It is difficult to imagine a set of circumstances that would coalesce to produce a Ouellet papacy out of this conclave, but it is entirely plausible the esteem in which Ouellet is held might make his an influential voice in the between-ballot discussions. The cardinals are likely looking for an older, more experienced man, who has a proven ability to respond to the types of challenges that Cardinal Ouellet faces in Quebec.
On a personal level, Cardinal Ouellet finds all such talk embarrassing -- a man who was genuinely shocked to find himself a bishop four years ago is hardly inclined to think of himself as a likely pope. For now he remains just that -- an unlikely pope, but not wholly implausible.
A cardinal for our times