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Ratzinger regrets church centralism at König funeral
There have been times when the Vatican has intervened too often in the affairs of a local church, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has admitted. He made the surprise remarks to journalists following the Requiem Mass in Vienna of its former Archbishop, Cardinal Franz König, who died on 13 March (The Tablet, 20 March). Cardinal Ratzinger frequently clashed with Cardinal König over church governance. In a Tablet article in March 1999, König deplored what he described as the Vatican’s “inflated centralism” and accused the curial authorities of appropriating the tasks which properly belonged to bishops’ conferences.
“Perhaps we could sometimes be more generous in certain matters,” Cardinal Ratzinger told journalists after the Requiem, which the doctrinal congregation prefect conducted on the Pope’s behalf. The German word he used – grosszügig – is variously translated as “generous”, “magnanimous” or “tolerant”.

The prefect also said he was prepared to think about where less centralism and more decentralisation could be applied in the Church. There was “no absolute ban” on the part of the Holy See as far as making readjustments was concerned, he said, adding that it was important both to maintain unity and to allow local Churches to develop their charisms. Local bishops should not be afraid to make unpopular decisions and should not shun conflict, he said. But the right balance between the central authorities and local Churches had not always been found, he admitted.

The day before the Requiem on 28 March, thousands flocked to St Stephen’s Cathedral to pay their last respects to König, a legendary figure to Austrians who knew him simply as “the cardinal”. Among them were the leaders of Austria’s Orthodox Churches, who gathered round König’s open coffin to say the Panichida, the Orthodox prayers for the dead, the first time in Western Europe that they have been said for a Catholic cardinal.

The Requiem itself was restricted to 5,000 invited guests: the thousands outside followed the Requiem on video screens. Twelve cardinals – including Cardinal Ratzinger – joined more than 40 bishops, 300 priests and the leaders of the other 14 Christian Churches in Austria in the chancel. The Austrian President, Thomas Klestil, all the members of his cabinet and many prominent people from in and outside Austria attended, as did the cardinal’s only surviving sister and many of his relations and close friends.

In his will König had asked for a simple funeral but had knowingly added, “if that is possible under the circumstances”. His only real wish was that the Easter candle should be placed next to his coffin during the Requiem.

Opening the Mass, Cardinal Ratzinger said that when the Pope had received the news of König’s death, he had first of all withdrawn to pray. He had then asked the prefect to conduct the Requiem as his personal representative. “The Pope wanted to show how grateful he was to Cardinal König that, at a time when the Iron Curtain had still seemed impenetrable, König had let the Churches in Eastern Europe know that they had not been forsaken. But after the demise of Communism, König also did everything within his power to promote dialogue between the Churches in Eastern and Western Europe so that Europe might once again breathe with both lungs.”

The homily was pronounced by König’s successor, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. He quoted König’s words on his consecration as Archbishop of Vienna in 1956: “The festive splendour of my entrance into this cathedral today has not prevented me from thinking of my final departure from it as a dead man when I will have to answer for my administration of the Vienna archdiocese.”

Instead of adding a further tribute to the thousands that had come in from all over the world in the past two weeks, Schönborn said he felt that König would have wished him to concentrate on the future. “I have never met an elderly person who lived so completely in the present with his eyes always on the future,” Schönborn said, adding that König’s legacy could be summed up in three injunctions: “Continue to build ecumenical bridges, put that which unites above that which divides, and protect human life in all its forms.”

Schönborn recalled König’s staunch support of the hospice movement and his insistence that the Austrian constitution should expressly forbid euthanasia. Only very recently he had said in a moving letter: “People should be able to hold someone’s hand when they are dying, but a human hand must never be the cause of their death.”

The voice of President Klestil, broke as he ended his address with the words “Austria mourns you, Austria prays for you, Austria thanks you.”

Perhaps the most moving moment of the Requiem was when one of König’s closest Jewish friends, Professor Jacob Allerhand, was led to the front of the cathedral. From there he read Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd” in Hebrew, the language König loved best after English. It was a fitting tribute to a bridge-builder who had worked untiringly for Catholic-Jewish reconciliation.

Citação:

'Above the pope as an expression
of the binding claim of church authority
stands one's own conscience,
which has to be obeyed first of all,
if need be against the demands of church authority.'

Joseph Ratzinger, 1968