‘Radical’ cardinal’s profound legacy
Religion at its best has always been committed to change
The interview with Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, published in an Italian newspaper the day after his death on Aug. 31, attracted international attention. Not unexpectedly, the reference to his reported contention that the Catholic Church is 200 years behind the times figured prominently in the headlines. Commentators had also much to say about his views on sexual politics in the church and sexual abuses by some of its servants.
The seemingly radical opinions of the former archbishop of Milan were well known in Vatican circles while he was alive. It was probably these, rather than his reported illness, that prevented his election as pope when the current incumbent was chosen. Yet his influence on contemporary Catholic thinking has been profound.
One of Cardinal Martini’s concerns was the relationship between Catholics and Jews. He spent much of the last years of his life in Jerusalem. In recognition of his commitment and scholarship, Jerusalem’s Hebrew University gave him an honorary doctorate thus celebrating his repeated calls for the church to seek to understand all of Judaism, not only what it terms the Old Testament.
His book, Christianity and Judaism, states: “It is necessary for the church to elaborate a better self-understanding of her own nature and mission in relation with the Jewish people. Before anything else, this necessitates a heightened attention to what the Jewish people thinks and says about itself.”
I’ve been a beneficiary of this call: For many years it was my privilege to teach a course on contemporary Jewish thought at the Faculty of Theology at St Michael’s College in Toronto. My aim was to show Christian theology students that Judaism isn’t a relic from a distant past superseded by their faith but a living reality which it behooves them to recognize, appreciate and relate to.
Though Cardinal Martini’s primary academic interest was the Bible and its languages, he also urged his church to concern itself with the current situation in the Middle East. In his book, Towards Jerusalem — translated into Hebrew but not yet available in English — he wrote that Catholics should remain “in the middle and to work so that all violence may cease and every- one may learn to understand the pain of the other.”
He added a personal note: “For this reason I have chosen to live in Jerusalem most of the time and I have set as my main priority the prayer of intercession, so that the people of the Middle East, and in particular Jews and Palestinians, might discover the ways of mutual trust and dialogue.”
This prince of the church was painfully aware of the suffering to which Jews had been subjected through the ages by Christians: “Indeed for us, therefore, every day is an opportunity to begin to ask God and our brothers and sisters to accept our sorrow for the evil that we have done and the good that we have forgotten to accomplish.”
Cardinal Martini’s teachings and actions form part of the foundation for continued co-operation between Catholics and Jews. His words must also be seen in the larger context of the many and varied efforts to reform religious institutions in general and clergy hierarchies in particular. But to view this as evidence of capitulation to secularism is to distort the very nature of the life of the spirit. Despite its excessively pious conservative champions across the many divides, religion at its best has always been committed to change.
Interfaith dialogue is the result of this growing awareness in our time. Cardinal Martini has left a lasting legacy of making the presence of God more visible to all who care to look. Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple. His column appears every other week.