POPE'S MEETING WITH BRAZILIAN BISHOPS A "NEW FORM OF COLLEGIALITY"

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Pope John Paul II will hold a special summit meeting March 13-15 to debate problems troubling the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil, home of a booming liberation theology movement, and has invited all Brazilian bishops conference leaders to attend. Chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Vails said a number of Roman Curia officials will also attend, possibly including delegates from the Sacred Congregation for the Faith, the Vatican office that has taken a strong stand against what it views as Marxist-oriented types of liberation theology. Some strains of liberation theology use such Marxist concepts as class struggle and advocate violence in an attempt to promote better life for Latin America's poor.

The doctrinal congregation condemned such theologies in a 1984 booklet and in 1985 imposed a period of silence on Brazilian liberation theologian Rev. Leonardo Boff. It is preparing to publish a second document on liberation theology and Brazilian sources say it may present the new work to Brazil's church leaders at the March meeting. The March summit comes at the end of 15 months of individual meetings by the Pope with each of Brazil's more than 300 bishops. Such meetings are required of all bishops once every five years and give the Pope a chance to be informed directly on the situations in local dioceses.

Reacting to reports that the Pope called the meeting to discipline the Brazilians as he did the Dutch in 1980 when he called a Dutch synod, the Vatican statement said the March gathering will be "neither a synod nor any other canonical (legal) type of assembly, but rather an informal meeting to consider in depth and in fraternal dialogue, subjects concerning the life and activities of the church in Brazil.

"This is not a juridical move; it is a new form of collegiality the Pope is exercising," the deputy Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Giulio Nicolini said.

Chief spokesman Navarro Valls said the Pope plans to discuss a number of issues with the Brazilian church leaders; very likely the upcoming elections and a proposed new constitution. But the issue bound to come up is the new document on liberation theology, Church sources say Brazil's bishops were displeased to be taken by surprise when the Congregation issued its first document on the subject in September of 1984, and asked to be informed in advance of any new documents.

CARDINAL LAW SAYS ODDI AND RATZINGER WORKS WON'T SUBSTITUTE FOR CATECHISM

WASHINGTON (RNS) — A catechism proposed by a high-ranking Vatican official for use throughout the Roman Catholic Church "bears no relationship" to what an international synod of bishops requested in December, said Cardinal Law of Boston. In a telephone interview with Religious News Service, he commented on a proposed catechism, or collection of Catholic teachings, presented late last year by the Vatican's Cardinal Silvio Oddi. He said the synod had called for preparation of a catechism by a special worldwide commission of bishops, not by the Vatican.

"What Cardinal Oddi is talking about is not what the synod is talking about," said the Boston prelate who, along with Cardinal Oddi, launched the idea of a universal catechism. Within days after the synod participants called for work on a new catechism, completed catechisms began to spring up around the Vatican. Cardinal Oddi announced that he would hand to the pope what he said will suffice for the universal catechism requested by the bishops.

At the same time, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, released a collection of Vatican statements which, he asserted, serves the same purpose as the one proposed at the December meeting in Rome. As one of the originators of the catechism idea, however, Cardinal Law said neither one of them will do. He said he was not sure if Cardinal Oddi wanted his own catechism to replace what the bishops had asked for, and added that he was unaware of any suggestions by Cardinal Ratzinger that his collection of statements should serve as the universal catechism. "These bear no relationship to what I mentioned and what the synod ultimately requested," said Cardinal Law, known for adhering closely to the doctrinal line set out by Pope John Paul II. "There has been no catechism suggested along the lines of the bishops' proposal," he said.

Cardinal Law said the pope has made no announcement of how he will respond to the synod's request for a commission to draw up a new catechism. "My hope is that the development of such a compendium or catechism will be done by a group other than a (Vatican) congregation or office in place," he remarked.

"I would hope that the Holy Father would appoint a special commission of cardinals, not unlike the commission brought together to revise the code of canon law," he added, referring to the revised canons released several years ago. "The Holy Father appears to have thought well of the recommendation." Preparation of the catechism must "reflect universality" and actively involve the world's bishops, "who are the teachers of the church," Cardinal Law said. "It is something that should bear the stamp of the world episcopate along with the stamp of the Holy Father," he said.

In the interview, Cardinal Law said he sees the catechism as one way of helping the church "interiorize" and further implement the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which the special synod was called to celebrate and assess. The catechism, he said, would address such basic questions as:" Who is Jesus Christ? What is the church? What are the sacraments? What does it mean to be a human person? What does it mean to be a redeemed human person? How is church teaching authority related to personal freedom and freedom of conscience?" While rejecting the Ratzinger and Oddi catechisms as substitutes for what the synod asked for, Cardinal Law said these and other works "would be looked at in the process of developing something." The one by Cardinal Ratzinger is a collection of all the documents issued since Vatican II by the Sacred Congregation, which he directs, and addresses many of the controversial issues in the church today, ranging from liberation theology and abortion to celibacy, euthanasia, ecumenical relations and divorce.

In the United States, there has been no standard compendium of teachings since the Baltimore Catechism was taken out of circulation after Vatican II.

NEUHAUS SAYS CATHOLIC CHURCH MISSING CHANCE TO SHAPE THE CULTURE (excerpt)

SAN DIEGO (RNS) — A noted Lutheran scholar, Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, told a Catholic audience at the University of San Diego, a Catholic school, that much of US Catholic leadership has abdicated its role as a shaper of culture. "I believe this is what might be called the Catholic moment in American life. Quite frankly, I would welcome it and I think other Americans should welcome it." But Catholic leaders are "ducking away from that task" of filling a moral vacuum in American life. He said he believes the church should speak out only on clearly moral questions and leave politics to lay people. Nor does every Christian have a full-time vocation for political involvement, he added, saying that the church should get over the notion that "somehow you aren't doing anything in the real world unless you're making a political difference."

There are no "specifically Christian answers" to school prayer, Central America, South Africa, the MX-missile and many other issues on which the religious right and left frequently issue pronouncements, he said. With the exception of abortion, anti-Semitism and slavery, "there is no 'the' Christian position on almost any question in public view today." The Lutheran cleric said respect is due not only to Christians concerned about abolishing apartheid in South Africa, but also to those who are concerned about preserving South Africa as a bastion against communism.

"Political views have become more important than religious views in American churches," he declared. "We have arrived at the point in American religion — right, left, center and unspecifiable — in which in many religious leadership circles it is more important what you think of U.S. policy in Central America than what you think of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ."

VATICAN ECUMENIST SENDS POSITIVE SIGNAL ON ANGLICAN ORDERS (excerpt)

NEW YORK (RNS) — A July 13 letter from the Vatican's top ecumenical officer, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, president of the Vatican Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, was made public on March 5 in London. Also released was a January 14 reply to Cardinal Willebrands by the dialogue team's co-chairmen, Anglican Bishop Mark Santer and Catholic Bishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, in which they called women's ordination by some Anglican bodies "a fresh and grave obstacle" to Catholic recognition of Anglican ministries.

Cardinal Willebrands mentions the women's ordination issue briefly in his letter, but sets it in a broader context of the historical reasons for Catholic nonrecognition of Anglican orders and other dimensions of the ecumenical commission's dialogue on ministry and eucharist. In New York, a statement issued by the Episcopal Church's top official, Presiding Bishop Edmond Lee Browning, said that the U.S. based denomination, which has been ordaining women priests for ten years, would "regret it" if the Roman Catholic Church were to view women's ordinations as a barrier to recognition of Anglican orders. Said Bishop Browning ". . . what we intend is not to overthrow the traditional Catholic doctrine of Holy Orders but to expand and open it to the other half of the human race . . ."

The release of the exchange of letters came less than a week before the opening of the March 11-16 conference in Toronto of the heads of Anglican bodies around the world. The Rev. William Norgren, ecumenical officer of the Episcopal Church, said Cardinal Willebrand's letter was the first public statement by high Vatican authorities on the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue commission's report on eucharist and ministry, and that he believed it would serve as a stimulus to continued dialogue aimed at reaching theological agreement sufficient to justify Catholic recognition of the Anglican priesthood.

. . . and from The Remnant

CARDINAL ODDI RESIGNS VATICAN POST

POPE JOHN PAUL II has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Silvio Oddi as prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy and has named Cardinal Antonio Innocenti, papal nuncio to Spain, as his successor. Cardinal Oddi, an outspoken and courageous figure since being named to head the clergy congregation in 1979, turned 75 last November, the age when congregation heads are required to submit their resignations to the Pope. Together with Cardinal Ratzinger and a few others, he was in the forefront of those insisting on restoring a universal orthodox catechetical instruction based on the Roman Catechism and Vatican I. His sympathy for and practical support of the Tridentine Latin Mass was likewise known and acknowledged in many quarters. His retirement is seen as a severe blow by traditional Catholics around the world.