After Martini, the Fight over His Spiritual Testament

By Sandro Magister
The Chiesa
September 6, 2012

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350318?eng=y

His last interview, published posthumously, has ignited the controversy. The leading authorities of the Church have ignored it, with the sole exception of Cardinal Ruini. One more reason to analyze it critically

September 6, 2012 – "Cardinal Martini did not leave us a spiritual testament in the explicit sense of the word. His inheritance is entirely in his life and in his magisterium, and we must continue to draw on it for a long time. He did, however, choose the phrase to be written on his grave, taken from Psalm 119 [118]: 'A lamp to my feet is your word, a light to my path.' In this way, he himself has given us the key to interpret his existence and his ministry."

With these words, spoken on September 3 in the homily at the funeral for his predecessor, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Angelo Scola, revoked the qualification of "spiritual testament" from the interview with Martini published the day after his death by "Corriere della Sera":

> L'ultima intervista: "Chiesa indietro di 200 anni. Perche non si scuote, perche abbiamo paura?"

In effect, if this interview were truly the quintessence of Martini's legacy for the Church and the world – as those responsible for it want it to be believed – the figure of the deceased cardinal would correspond precisely to that label of "anti-pope" which was applied to him over the years by circles inside and outside of the Church, but which clashes strongly with the lofty and heartfelt attestations of esteem expressed repeatedly toward him by Benedict XVI himself, most recently in his unusual message for the archdiocese of Milan on the day of the funeral of the one who was its archbishop from 1979 to 2002:

> "Cari fratelli e sorelle, in questo momento desidero esprimere..."

The interview was conducted last August 8, three weeks before the death of the cardinal, by the Austrian Jesuit Georg Sporschill, together with an Italian residing in Vienna, Federica Radice Fossati Confalonieri.

Father Sporschill is the same one who in 2008 edited the publication of Martini's most successful book, also in the form of an interview, ""Conversazioni notturne a Gerusalemme."

If to this book are added the other book-interviews published by Martini in recent years, written together with "borderline" Catholics like Fr. Luigi Verze and the physician Ignazio Marino and bristling with ambiguous or heterodox texts on the beginning and end of life, on marriage and sexuality, the divergence between this cardinal and the last two popes would appear even more marked.

Among the leading figures of the Church who in recent days have spoken out on the figure of the deceased cardinal, only Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the Italian episcopal conference from 1991 to 2007, has not remained silent over this divergence.

In an interview with Marina Corradi in "Avvenire" on September 1, to the observation that on topics like artificial fertilization and homosexual unions "Martini seemed more open to the reasoning of some secularist circles" and "publicly expressed positions that were clearly far from those of the CEI" of which he was part, Ruini responded:

"I do not deny it, as I do not conceal that I remain deeply convinced of the soundness of the positions of the CEI, which are also those of the pontifical magisterium and have a profound anthropological root."

And in a subsequent interview with "Corriere della Sera" on September 5, he made these comments on the statement by Martini, in his presumed "spiritual testament," according to which "the Church is 200 years behind":

"In my view, it is necessary to distinguish two forms of distance of the Church from our time. One is a true delay, due to the limitations and sins of churchmen, in particular to the inability to see the opportunities that are opening for the Gospel today. The other distance is very different. It is the distance of Jesus Christ and of his Gospel, and as a result of the Church, with respect to any time, including our own but also that in which Jesus lived. This distance must be there, and it calls us to the conversion not only of persons but of culture and history. In this sense, today as well the Church is not farther back, but farther ahead, because in that conversion is the key to a good future."

But apart from Ruini, no other important churchman has made reference, in the comments following his death, to the effectively controversial elements of the figure of Cardinal Martini.

The reminiscence has gone exclusively and generically to his merits as a biblicist and pastor, to the School of the Word, to the promotion of charity, to the dialogue with nonbelievers, to the proximity to difficult existential situations.

In other words, the almost exclusive memory has been for Martini as archbishop, not for Martini as opinion leader of recent years, exalted by the secularist media as well as by the Catholic proponents of an imaginary Vatican Council III and of a democratized Church.

That is, one has witnessed in recent days a flood of strongly selective commemorations. With an almost universal silence that has fallen upon the problematic aspects of the figure and upon his public statements of recent years.

This has not prevented, however, the interview presented as Martini's "spiritual testament," "read and approved" by him, from going around the world, solidifying precisely that image of him as an alternative prophet which the leaders of the Church would like to exorcise.

One more reason to reread and analyze critically this posthumous interview, as does Pietro De Marco, a professor at the University of Florence and at the theological faculty of central Italy, in the commentary that follows.