Was Cardinal Carlo Martini the Last Liberal Catholic Bishop?

The Washington Post ^ | 9/7/12 | Alessandro Speciale

[marshmallow]

VATICAN CITY — With the recent death of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Catholics who call for church reform on issues such as homosexuality and priestly celibacy have lost one of their last leading lights in the top echelons of the church’s hierarchy.

Martini, who died Aug. 31, was a Jesuit and an archbishop of Milan from 1980-2002. More importantly, he was considered for decades the informal leader of “liberals” inside the church. But he has no clear successor in the current crop of cardinals.

He had a “rare combination of skills as a scholar, pastor, communicator and holy man,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a church expert and fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center. This allowed him to be an independent voice in the church that prizes conformity to tradition.

“If there was a young Martini in the church today,” Reese said, “he would not be made a bishop or cardinal.”

Since the late Pope John Paul II assumed the papacy, there has been an effort to remake the hierarchy by appointing bishops who would unquestioningly follow Vatican thinking started under John Paul. Ironically, it was John Paul who elevated Martini to the episcopacy in his first year as pope. After that, John Paul mainly appointed conservative bishops.

With Martini’s death, the church risks losing liberal Catholics who push for changes in church structure and discipline. “The progressive wing of the church will simply give up on the hierarchy and the hierarchy will try to push the progressives out of the church,” Reese said.

But the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, editor of a Jesuit-run official Vatican magazine, “Civilta Cattolica,” said the division between liberals and conservatives in the church is “forced and simplistic.”

Labeling Martini as a “liberal,” he said, has the effect of “silencing his prophetic legacy for the....

[Zionist Conspirator]

Your opinion and your opinion alone.

All Catholic bishops believe the first eleven chapters of Genesis is mythology. That may not be liberalism in your book, but it is in mine.

[Zionist Conspirator]

False, for someone who has no idea what he’s talking about, some posters just want to shoot their mouth’s off. Your knee-jerk false statements denigrates everything your posts say. They have zero value due to the knee-jerk stupidity in some posts

Oh FCOL, what did I say that offended you so badly that you felt compelled to border-line violate the forum rules with a personal attack???

The vast majority of Catholic bishops subscribe to higher criticism and believe the first eleven chapters of Genesis is mythology based on Babylonian and Canaanite sources. Surely you are as aware of that as I am.

Perhaps you can in the future prevent your blood pressure from zooming to dangerous heights by simply recalling that in my book anyone who rejects total Biblical inerrancy or who believes that Genesis 1-11 is a liberal.