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LEVADA-DOCTRINE Jun-6-2005 (970 words) With photo posted June 3. xxxi
New doctrinal head says U.S. pastoral experience will help his work
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Archbishop William J. Levada, the new head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said his U.S. pastoral experience makes him sympathetic to the doctrinal and teaching challenges faced by local bishops around the world.
In an interview with Catholic News Service June 6, Archbishop Levada also said that while the congregation sometimes must discipline errant theologians its primary work is positive -- safeguarding sound doctrine so the faith can be shared with the world.
That task is something all theologians should share, he said.
Archbishop Levada was visiting the doctrinal congregation's offices in early June. He plans to move to Rome at the end of the summer, after he wraps up affairs in his current Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Archbishop Levada said the doctrinal congregation lost a great theologian when its head, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected Pope Benedict XVI.
"What you get with me is someone who has pastoral experience of dealing with questions of faith as they are lived out in the local church," he said.
"I think that's an important thing for the bishops around the world, to have the sense that when they need to talk to me or to our congregation there is someone here who is sympathetic to their pastoral situation and experience," he said.
Archbishop Levada, who as a bishop helped write the "Catechism of the Catholic Church," said formation in the faith was one area where universal and local churches could cooperate.
In the congregation's dealings with theologians, the archbishop said it was important for everyone to understand that theology, properly understood, is simply a way of helping people learn who Christ is and what Christ did and said.
"I like to think that promoting a sound grasp of doctrine and helping the church see how beautiful and wonderful God's love is, as it has been revealed to us, that's what theology is about. So I think that's the primary job of this congregation," he said.
He said one of the "negative aspects" of the congregation's work is that it must occasionally intervene and ask theologians how they justify their positions or square them with the faith. That can be misunderstood as a form of repression, he said.
"I think people have sometimes gotten the idea that if you don't let every theologian say everything that he or she thinks, or if you challenge them in any way and say, 'That's not correct,' that somehow you are impeding freedom of conscience or freedom of inquiry," he said.
"But that's not the case. We have freedom to inquire. But a theologian himself or herself is called to discriminate between where that inquiry leads and how it corresponds to the faith that the church continues to receive and to live by. Otherwise they would not be doing true theology, it seems to me," he said.
"Theology itself is in dialogue with revelation, which has some things to say. And you can't just say that revelation says anything you want it to say," he said.
Archbishop Levada, a theologian who has specialized in ecclesiology, said he thought one of the most interesting areas of theological exploration today is interreligious relations, especially in the context of the contemporary mixing of cultures.
"I think we're still at an early point in the development of looking at how Christianity can and ought to relate to these different cultures and the religious expressions within them," he said.
Theological works on religious pluralism have drawn close and sometimes critical attention from the doctrinal congregation in recent years. Archbishop Levada said that may be normal in such a developing field of study.
"I'm not at all surprised that there's a lot of interest in this. I think that's a very healthy sign. And I think the Catholic Church and Catholic theology and even our congregation ought to be very interested dialogue partners in that development," he said.
When it comes to religious-political issues like last year's debate in the United States over Catholic politicians and Communion, Archbishop Levada said the doctrinal congregation is there to help, not meddle.
"You can be sure that, as someone who has been very interested in this question lately, I will be eager to give any help that we can," he said.
But he emphasized that the task of sorting out how Catholics "interface with a complex political world in a pluralistic society" falls first of all to bishops, both individually and collectively.
The doctrinal congregation also oversees cases of priestly sex abuse around the world, a new task that has brought extra work to a relatively small staff. While generally praising the congregation for the level of expertise and cooperation in handling these cases, some U.S. bishops have asked that the process be speeded up.
Archbishop Levada said the bishops' new sex abuse policies have been "diligently and vigorously implemented" in U.S. dioceses, and the Vatican supports this.
He said the slowness in processing the cases is partly caused by a desire to be meticulously fair, something the church needs to preserve.
"I'm not so sure that we should expect a rapid turnover and response, because that might not guarantee that thoroughness and fairness," he said.
Archbishop Levada said he would rely greatly on the congregation's lineup of theologian-consultors for expertise in specific areas. Because the congregation deals with questions from different parts of the world and different fields of theology, he said, "nobody can be an expert on everything."
He said he expected bioethical issues to continue to draw the congregation's special attention, in part because it's difficult for individual dioceses or even Catholic universities to have the scientific and ethical expertise to arrive at a mature judgment on these issues.
- - -
Contributing to this story was Cindy Wooden.
END
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