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Forgive and Remember
Elesha Coffman | posted 8/08/2008 12:33PM
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Forgive and Remember
By Elesha Coffman, assistant editor of CHRISTIAN HISTORY
As countless news stories on last Sunday's event proclaimed,
John Paul II's act of repentance was unprecedented in church history. The International
Theological Commission, whose study "Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and
the Faults of the Past" laid the groundwork for the landmark prayer, presents
a fuller picture. While "in the entire history of the Church there are no precedents
for requests for forgiveness by the Magisterium for past wrongs," there have
been rare occasions on which "ecclesiastical authorities—Pope, Bishops, or
Councils—have openly acknowledged the faults of abuses which they themselves
were guilty of."
Notably, in a message to the Diet of Nuremberg on November 25,
1522, the reforming Pope Adrian (or Hadrian) VI acknowledged "the abominations,
the abuses … and the lies" of which the "Roman court" of his time was guilty—a
"sickness" extending "from the top to the members." Of course, this wasn't exactly
news. Adrian's predecessor, Leo X (whom Martin Luther called "Antichrist," among
other things), was notorious for his excesses, and several members of the college
of cardinals had tried to poison him. Interestingly, Adrian, like John Paul
II, was not Italian (he was Dutch), which might have accorded him some critical
distance from the Roman see.
The only other apology cited is much more recent. Pope Paul
VI, in his opening address at the second session of Vatican II, asked "pardon
of God … and of the separated brethren [John XXIII's term for Orthodox believers]"
who felt offended by the Catholic Church. Paul then declared himself ready for
an apology from the eastern church. "In the view of Paul VI," the commission's
study reads, "both the request for and offer of pardon concerned solely the
sin of the division between Christians and presupposed reciprocity." Paul received
his apology, in a sense, after he met with Greek Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras
in 1964 and they lifted the mutual anathemas in place for 1,000 years. John
Paul II's address also expresses his willingness to hear apologies for abuses
Christians have suffered over the years, but as his address was much more inclusive
than Paul's, he obviously doesn't expect direct reciprocation from everyone
mentioned.
The "Memory and Reconciliation" study also examines Jubilee,
which was first proclaimed under Pope Boniface VIII in 1300. At that time, "the
penitential pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul was associated
with the granting of an exceptional indulgence for procuring, with sacramental
pardon, total or partial remission of the temporal punishment due to sin." This
first jubilee was a real hit: up to 200,000 pilgrims thronged Rome throughout
the year, which created a traffic jam the poet Dante used as a model for hell's
travel arrangements in the Inferno. But even worse problems resulted
from the indulgence-based pilgrimage. When pilgrims seeking forgiveness were
denied access to holy sites by Muslim Turks in the late eleventh century, the
church launched a crusade. Special indulgences were then offered to anyone who
participated. Thus, ironically, one of the main events for which the Catholic
church (as a whole) is now seeking forgiveness was originally motivated, in
part, by a quest (by Catholic individuals) to attain forgiveness.
"Memory and Reconciliation" certainly doesn't address every
confusing aspect of church history or of the idea of forgiveness. It does, however,
explicitly address the following questions regarding John Paul II's public "purification
of memory": "Why should it be done? Who should do it? What is the goal and how
should this be determined, by correctly combining historical and theological
judgment? Who will be addressed? What are the moral implications? And what
are the possible effects on the life of the Church and on society?"
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