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But it is only after he has made his principal
appointments and after his first programmatic speeches that it
will be possible to predict the line’s of Pope Francis’
pontificate. It is
true for every Pope what Cardinal Enea Silvio Piccolomini said
in 1458 when he was elected with the name of Pius II, "Forget
Enea, welcome Pius."
History
never repeats itself exactly but the past helps us to understand
the present. In the
16th century, the Catholic Church went through an unprecedented
crisis. Humanism,
with its immoral hedonism, had infected the Roman Curia and even
the Pontiffs themselves. Against
this corruption there emerged Martin Luther’s Protestant
pseudo-reform which was dismissed by Pope Leo X, a Medici, as
"a quarrel between monks". The heresy had started to fizzle out when, on Leo X’s
death in 1522, the first German Pope was elected, Adrian Florent
from Utrecht who took the name Adrian VI. The
brevity of his reign prevented him from bringing his projects to
fruition, in particular – as the historian of the Popes, Ludwig
von Pastor, writes - "the gigantic war against the mass of
abuses which deformed the Roman Curia and nearly the whole
Church." Even
if he had reigned for longer, the evil in the Church was too
entrenched, according to Pastor, "for one single Pontificate
to bring about that great change which was necessary.
All the evil which had been committed over many
generations could be corrected only by long and uninterrupted
work."
Adrian
VI understood the gravity of the evil and the responsibility for
it of the men of the Church. This is clear from an instruction which the Nuncio,
Francesco Chieregati, read out in the Pope’s name at the Diet
of Nuremberg on 3 January 1523. As Ludwig von Pastor says, this is a document of
extraordinary importance not only for understanding the
reformist ideas of the Pope but also because it is a text which
was unprecedented in the history of the Church.
After
rebutting the Lutheran heresy, Adrian deals (in the last and
most noteworthy part of the instruction) with the reformers’
desertion of the supreme ecclesiastical authority.
"You
are also to say," so run Chieregati’s express instructions:
that we frankly acknowledge that God permits this persecution
of His Church on account of the sins of men, and especially of
prelates and clergy; of a surety the Lord’s arm is not
shortened that He cannot save us, but our sins separate us from
Him, so that He does not hear. Holy Scripture declares aloud
that the sins of the people are the outcome of the sins of the
priesthood; therefore, as Chrysostom declares, when our Savior
wished to cleanse the city of Jerusalem of its sickness, He went
first to the Temple to punish the sins of the priests before
those of others, like a good physician who heals a disease at it
roots. We know well that for many years things deserving of
abhorrence have gathered round the Holy See; sacred things have
been misused, ordinances transgressed, so that in everything
there has been change for the worse. Thus it is not surprising
that the malady has crept down from the head to the members,
from the Popes to the hierarchy.
We
all, prelates and clergy, have gone astray from the right way,
and for long there is none that has done good; no, not one. To
God, therefore, we must give all the glory and humble ourselves
before Him; each one of us must consider how he has fallen and
be more ready to judge himself than to be judged by God in the
day of His wrath. Therefore, in our name, give promises that we
shall use all diligence to reform before all things the Roman
Curia, whence, perhaps, all these evils have had their origin;
thus healing will begin at the source of sickness. We deem this
to be all the more our duty, as the whole world is longing for
such reform. The Papal dignity was not the object of our
ambition, and we would rather have closed our days in the
solitude of private life; willingly would we have put aside the
tiara; the fear of God alone, the validity of our election, and
the dread of schism, decided us to assume the position of Chief
Shepherd. We desire to wield our power not as seeking dominion
or means for enriching our kindred, but in order to restore to
Christ’s bride, the Church, her former beauty, to give help to
the oppressed, to uplift men of virtue and learning, above all,
to do all that beseems a good shepherd and a successor of the
blessed Peter.
Yet
let no man wonder if we do not remove all abuses at one blow;
for the malady is deeply rooted and takes many forms. We must
advance, therefore, step by step, first applying the proper
remedies to the most difficult and dangerous evils, so as not by
a hurried reform to throw all things into greater confusion than
before. Aristotle well says: "All sudden changes are dangerous
to States." (…)
Adrian
VI’s words help us to understand how the crisis in the Church
today can have its origins in the doctrinal and moral failings
of the men of the Church in the half century which followed the
Second Vatican Council. The
Church is indefectible but her members, even the supreme
ecclesiastical authorities, can make mistakes. They should be ready to
recognize their faults, including
publicly. We know
that Adrian VI had the courage to undertake this revision of
past errors. How
will the new Pope confront the process of doctrinal and moral
self-destruction by the Church, and what will be his attitude
towards the modern world, impregnated as it is by a profoundly
anti-Christian spirit? Only
the future will answer these questions but it is certain that
the causes of the obscurity of the present lie in our most
recent past.
History
also teaches us that Giulio de Medici succeeded Adrian VI and
took the name of Clement VII (1523–1534). During his Pontificate, on May
6, 1527, there occurred the
terrible sack of Rome, perpetrated by Lutheran mercenaries (Landsknechte)
of the Emperor Charles V. It
is difficult to describe the devastation and sacrileges
committed during this event which proved to be more terrible
than the sack of Rome in 410. Men and women of the Church were targeted for especial
cruelty: nuns were raped, priests and monks were killed or sold
as slaves, churches, palaces and houses were destroyed. The massacres were swiftly followed by famine and plague. The inhabitants of Rome were decimated.
The
Catholic people interpreted the event as a punishment they
deserved for their own sins. It was only after the terrible sack that life in Rome
changed profoundly. The
climate of moral relativism dissolved and the general poverty
stamped austerity and penitence onto the city. It
was this new atmosphere which made possible that great religious
rebirth, the Catholic Counter-Reformation of the 16th century. |
