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That is precisely what worries some of John Paul's critics. One concern: the questionnaire soliciting the reports from national bishops' conferences asked about "errors or abuses" in applying the teachings of Vatican II. Peter Steinfels, editor of the U.S. journal Commonweal, says that among his colleagues "damage control is the most pertinent phrase" in synod talk. Father Simon E. Smith, former executive secretary of U.S. Jesuit Missions who is now working in Kenya, sees a Vatican scheme to "box in the spirit" of the council. This can be "thwarted only if the assembled bishops take their own agenda in hand," he says.
Catholic liberals are also concerned about the conservative views expressed by some of the Pope's principal associates. Chief among them is Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and adjudged the Pope's most influential aide on internal church issues. The cardinal spelled out his views in a series of forthright interviews that were published in book form this year in several languages (U.S. version, published last month: The Ratzinger Report, Ignatius Press, $9.95). Ratzinger's remedy for the "self-destruction" of Roman Catholicism over the past 20 years is to "reconstruct the church" by returning to "the authentic texts of the original Vatican II."
Ratzinger also criticized the growing role of national bishops' conferences as an ecclesiastical innovation that has no warrant in Scripture or tradition. At the synod the president of the U.S. bishops, James W. Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, expects to defend the conferences and their pastoral and social involvement. Malone got a boost at last week's meeting of the American hierarchy in Washington, D.C., when Papal Pro-Nuncio Pio Laghi praised the U.S. bishops' conference and its pastoral letters on nuclear disarmament and economic morality for "offering the service of leadership on public issues." Malone said last week that he will also press in Rome for "new initiatives" on ecumenism.
The conservative mind-set is expressed by Msgr. Wilhelm Schätzler, secretary general of the West German bishops' conference: "Following the euphoria of the council, certain negative developments have crept in, and they must be soberly analyzed and, if necessary, corrected by the synod." Conservative U.S. lay Catholics have lobbied for synod action on empty seminaries, dissident priests and nuns, and what they consider to be inadequate parish education. But the most noteworthy reforms enacted by Vatican II are no longer at issue.
At the synod, Ratzinger and his allies are expected to warn that the church is endangered by being too immersed in worldly matters. Father Edward Schillebeeckx, a liberal theologian in the Netherlands, whose theology has been investigated by the doctrinal commission, predicts that there will be attacks against Ratzinger at the synod because, he says dryly, "it is always easier to voice criticism to a cardinal than to a Pope." The Pontiff does not necessarily share all of Ratzinger's views. During an August plane trip returning from Africa, John Paul told reporters that Ratzinger's plea for reconstruction is "his personal opinion ... However, it must not be interpreted in the sense that the council has caused damage to the church."