Support NeoGAF

[ComputerMKII]

Cardinal Carlo Martini says Church '200 years behind'

Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini has described the Roman Catholic Church as being "200 years behind" the times. The cardinal died on Friday, aged 85.

Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has published his last interview, recorded in August, in which he said: "The Church is tired... our prayer rooms are empty." Martini, once tipped as a future pope, urged the Church to recognise its errors and to embark on a radical path of change, beginning with the Pope.

Thousands of people have been filing past his coffin at Milan's cathedral, where he was archbishop for more than 20 years. The cardinal, who had retired from the post in 2002, suffering from Parkinson's Disease, is to be buried on Monday. Martini, a popular figure with liberal stances on many issues, commanded great respect from both Pope John Paul II and his successor Pope Benedict XVI. The cardinal - a member of the Jesuit religious order - was often critical in his writings and comments on Church teaching, says the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

He was a courageous and outspoken figure during the years he headed Europe's largest Catholic diocese, our correspondent says. Cardinal Martini gave his last interview to a fellow Jesuit priest, Georg Sporschill, and to a journalist at the beginning of August when he knew his death was approaching. The cardinal had returned to Italy from Jerusalem, where he had settled on retirement in 2002 to continue his biblical studies.

Catholics lacked confidence in the Church, he said in the interview. "Our culture has grown old, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our religious rites and the vestments we wear are pompous." Unless the Church adopted a more generous attitude towards divorced persons, it will lose the allegiance of future generations, the cardinal added. The question, he said, is not whether divorced couples can receive holy communion, but how the Church can help complex family situations.

And the advice he leaves behind to conquer the tiredness of the Church was a "radical transformation, beginning with the Pope and his bishops". "The child sex scandals oblige us to undertake a journey of transformation," Cardinal Martini says, referring to the child sex abuse that has rocked the Catholic Church in the past few years. He was not afraid, our correspondent adds, to speak his mind on matters that the Vatican sometimes considered taboo, including the use of condoms to fight Aids and the role of women in the Church. In 2008, for example, he criticised the Church's prohibition of birth control, saying the stance had likely driven many faithful away, and publicly stated in 2006 that condoms could "in some situations, be a lesser evil".
Corriere Della Sera plans to give a copy of his last book entitled Speak From The Heart to all its readers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19451439

 

[Phobophile]

Only 200? I'd say closer to half a millennium.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

The "empty Churches" sentiment is an interesting one that I've heard a few times before, but the narrative this provokes isn't often compatible with the religion itself. Society is largely secular, Christianity is not. Is he implying the faith conform to secularism to remain as relevant as it had once done? This is probably a debate for the Official Christianity Thread rather than here

 

[IISANDERII]

Is he implying the faith conform to secularism to remain as relevant as it had once done?

No, I think he means to be more forgiving for modern "sins". Still teach the same philosophy, but do it in the method which doesn't alienate your congregation.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

Only 200? I'd say closer to half a millennium.

Have you visited the early nineteenth century lately?

What the guys says makes sense. Contrary to intuition, the Church never got as big as it got by sticking dogmatically to legalistic moral points. The early church compromised all the time, first by dropping the circumcision requirement for membership, then by dropping levitical law, then in the resolution of the Donatist heresy. Back when it erred on the side of greater inclusion, it went from strength to strength.

When the Church has been at its least productive, at its most divided and in its weakest moral position was when one faction or another flat out refused to compromise. Each time a popular heresy came along after Donatism, well, it was usually handed badly. Tell me, how does attainting Arianism help the everyday believer? How does refusing to budge even an iota on contraception, a subject on which all canonical Bible books are silent, strengthen the faith?

Rigidity has always been Christianity's problem, right from the beginning. Theologically inclined people tend to fall into the temptation of becoming ivory tower academics, or more specifically, jurists.

But that's entirely the wrong approach to take. People didn't convert to Christianity the illegal religion because its morality was more exacting or absolute. They converted to Christianity because it was emotionally more satisfying than sacrificing every so often to a pantheon of distant gods and more inclusive than philosophies that encouraged you to be happy with your lot as an unemployed plebeian bum or slave. To the new believer in the first, second and third centuries, the biggest change in your life was that your god cared about you, no matter how low your station.

TL;DR: The guy is right. Rigidity is killing the Catholic Church and Christianity in general.

 

[BertramCooper]

Time to approve lambskin condoms, I'd say.

 

[elrechazado]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=489551&highlight=

Neogaf posters say OP is 200 hours behind.