Pope Benedict: silence in class.
Pictured above: Leonardo Boff (thanks)
As the wind gathers strength in the hours before Pope Benedict’s state visit to the UK, I am reminded about the time I came across the man. It was when I indulged myself in a little theological reflection a while back (10 years ago now, in fact) and found myself reading some great liberation theology by one Leonardo Boff.
Among Leonado’s books was one entitled Church: Charism and Power. In 1985, the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, directed at that time by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), silenced Leonardo for a year for his writing in this book, accusing him of “religious terrorism” no less.
I’ve always been suspicious of those wanting to quash thought and expression like this. Recently we had Pastor Terry Jones threatening to burn the Qu’ran on the anniversary of 9/11. More auspiciously, we can look back to when the Nazi regime burned books by the thousands.
But the pen is mightier than the sword.
Ironically, Cardinal Ratzinger (described by some as the Vatican Rotweiler back in those days) arrives on our shores, now as Pope Benedict, to find himself visiting a land in which the emerging church – in its practice and thinking – is alive and well. And if there’s one thing which I would argue Leonardo Boff’s ecclesiology encouraged worldwide – and not just in his particular Brazilian geopolitical context – it was the practice of and adventure with new forms of being church.
You just can’t control things the way the present Pope would seem to want to do. You never could. And you never will. Truth will out. The Spirit will find fresh voice and expression.
So what about Leonardo? Well, he was almost silenced again in 1992 by Rome, this time to prevent him from participating in the Eco-92 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. And this finally led him to leave the Franciscan religious order and the priestly ministry to which he’d devoted his life, writing and teaching. Sad. But true.
I’m not sure where Leonardo is now. Or what he’s doing. But I’ll raise a glass to him during the Pope’s visit here. Good on you Leonardo. It’s your vision and thinking that (without you or our really knowing) informs much of what’s most exciting and vivacious in the life of the church in the UK today. Not the Pope’s.
