Synod Giving Firm Support to Reforms of Second Vatican Council

By the midpoint of a two-week world assembly of Roman Catholic bishops, the participants had given almost universal support to the sweeping reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which 20 years ago propelled the church into the modern era.

But a co-president of the extraordinary synod of bishops made it clear Saturday that, despite the trend toward shared decision-making within the 800-million-member church, it isn’t about to become a democratic institution.

“You shouldn’t apply the structures of ordinary civil society to the church,” Cardinal Joseph Malula of Kinshasa, Zaire, said at a news conference. “The church is a mystery, a communion. . . . It is not a democracy as we know and experience it in civil society.”

Malula made the comment in response to a question about why the five synod representatives who will draft a final statement at the end of the assembly were appointed rather than elected by their colleagues.

The synod’s view of Vatican II, as the 1962-65 council is popularly called, is important to the general Catholic population because the meeting here will help chart the future course of the church. At the time of Vatican II, Pope John XXIII said it would “open the windows of the church.” The council introduced new styles of worship, involved the laity more directly in church affairs and fostered the growth of national church characteristics through the formation of national bishops’ conferences.

Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Brussels on Friday summed up progress of the sessions, saying that the synod “had achieved its aim to “celebrate, verify and promote Vatican II,” which he called the Magna Charta of the church.

But, he said, the council “must be deepened” as the church approaches the beginning of its third millennium.

At the press conference on Saturday, Bishop Dario Castrillon Hoyos of Colombia, secretary general of the Conference of Latin American Bishops, said that the church could support much of the philosophy of so-called “liberation theology,” which aims to restructure society to give more power and justice to the poor and the politically oppressed.

But he said that some forms of liberation theology had produced “sad fruits . . . and a loss of identity in our Catholic Church. . . . I don’t believe in the use of violence or hate to bring about change. The light of Christ is love and forgiveness.”

Some lines of liberation theology use Marxist analysis in devising strategy and recommend armed revolution, if necessary, to achieve social change. Last spring, West German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s theological watchdog, censured Father Leonardo Boff, a leading Brazilian exponent of liberation theology, and ordered him not to teach or publish for a period of time that was expected to last about a year.

“When I see a church with a machine gun, I cannot see the crucified Christ,” Castrillon said.

During the news conference two women sitting among the reporters interrupted the proceedings to demand greater rights for women.

Marie-Terese Sonmoy, a former nun from Belgium, declared, “The second Vatican Council decreed that any discrimination based on race, social class or sex has to be uprooted as contrary to the will of God.”

The other woman, Babi Burke of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., who described herself as an activist in the movement for women priests, said thousands of Catholic women with theological training were waiting to be ordained.

Bishop Henry D’Souza of India responded that the church’s ban on women in the priesthood was not a matter of discrimination. He said it stemmed from “a historical reality of what God did,” and added that each person had a different role to play in the church.