രണ്ടാം വത്തിക്കാൻ കൗൺസിലിനോടും ഫ്രാൻസിസ് മാർപാപ്പയോടുമുള്ള വിരുദ്ധത ഒരു പ്രവണതയായി വളരുന്ന സാഹചര്യത്തിൽ, ബെനഡിക്ട് XVI ന്റെ 'പ്രവചനത്തിനു' നിഷേധാർത്ഥകമായ ഒരു ചായ്‌വ് നല്കപ്പെട്ടില്ലേ എന്ന് എനിക്ക് സംശയമുണ്ട്. ഏതൊരു അഭിമുഖവും, ദർശകരുടെ സന്ദേശങ്ങൾ പോലും അവയുടെ സാംസ്‌കാരിക ചരിത്രത്തിന്റെ പശ്ചാത്തലത്തിൽ വായിക്കേണ്ടതുണ്ട്. 1969 (അഭിമുഖം നല്കപ്പെട്ടെന്നു സൂചിപ്പിക്കപ്പെടുന്ന വർഷം) ഒക്കെ യൂറോപ്പിൽ 'സ്വാതന്ത്ര'ചിന്തയും, വ്യക്തിയുടെയും സമൂഹത്തിന്റെയും സ്വത്വബോധത്തിന്റെ സാന്ദ്രീകരണവും, വിശ്വാസം ശാസ്ത്രീയരീതികളിൽ സാധൂകരിക്കപ്പെടാനുള്ള അതിതീവ്രപ്രയത്നങ്ങളും നടക്കുന്ന സമയമാണ്. അദ്ദേഹവുമായുള്ള അഭിമുഖത്തിന്റെ അർത്ഥം ഈ സാഹചര്യത്തിലെടുത്താൽ കുറെകൂടി വ്യക്തമാവും. രണ്ടാം വത്തിക്കാൻ കൗൺസിൽ സഭയെയും വിശ്വാസത്തെയും സാമൂഹികവും മനഃശാസ്ത്രപരവുമാക്കിക്കളഞ്ഞു എന്നൊക്കെ വായിച്ചെടുക്കുന്നവർ കൗൺസിലിനെ മനസിലാക്കാത്തവരാണെന്നു തോന്നുന്നു.
സൂചിപ്പിച്ചിട്ടുള്ള ക്രിസ്തുചൈതന്യം ഇന്ന് പടർന്നു പിടിക്കുന്ന മതാത്മകതയായി വായിച്ചെടുക്കുന്നത് ബെനഡിക്ട് XVI ന്റെ ഉദ്ദേശ്യശുദ്ധിയെ ലംഘിക്കുന്നതാണ്. അദ്ദേഹം വിഭാവനം ചെയ്യുന്ന ചെറുസമൂഹങ്ങളും അവയിൽ പ്രകടമാകുന്ന ശുശ്രൂഷാശൈലികളും, സഭയെന്നത് എല്ലാവർക്കുമുള്ള ഭവനമെന്ന സങ്കല്പവും തീർത്തും രണ്ടാം വത്തിക്കാൻ കൗൺസിലുമായി ഒത്തുപോകുന്നതാണ്. ആശങ്ക സൂചിപ്പിച്ചെങ്കിലും പ്രത്യാശയിലേക്ക് ചുവടുവയ്ക്കാനാണ് അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ ആഹ്വാനം. ഭീതിജനകവും നിഷേധാത്മകവുമായ സമീപനം നമ്മുടെ ക്രിസ്തീയതയുടെ സാംസ്കാരികഘടകമായി മാറിയിട്ടുണ്ടെങ്കിൽ എത്രയും വേഗം സൗഖ്യം ആവശ്യമാണ്.
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ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് ഭാഷ്യം ചുവടെ ചേർക്കുന്നു.
...in a 1969 German radio broadcast, Father Joseph Ratzinger ...
“The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered. If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are!
“How does all this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the [sidelines], watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of man, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.
“Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.
“The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
“And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death"
