THE POPE AS FISHERMAN MORE THAN SHEPHERD
Very interesting anaylsis above of two Popes and two styles! Here now is a lengthy analysis from an ecclesiological viewpoint. I must thank emma from the main forum who e-mailed me the PDF version of an article I could not access online, from Il Foglio of January 14, 2006. Herewith, a translation:
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A POPE WHO KNOWS VERY WELL
WHICH FISH TO ANGLE FOR
The image of the net in the addresses of Benedict XVI
Hypotheses on a Pope who perhaps thinks himself more a fisherman than shepherd
By Andrea Monda
On November 25, on the occasion of the opening of the academic year at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Benedict XVI ended his speech by defining the daily work of a Catholic university as an “enthusiastic adventure”, because “moving within this horizon of reason, one discovers the intrinsic unity which links the diverse branches of knowledge – theology, philosophy, medicine, economics, every discipline up the most specialized technology – because everything is linked… However, dear friends, with renewed passion for the truth, cast the net at large in the high seas of knowledge, trusting in the words of Christ, even when you may slmetimes experience the hardship and the disillusionment of not having fished anything. In the vast sea of culture, Christ always needs ‘fisher of men’, well-prepared men of conscience who place their professional competence in the service of the Kingdom of God.”
The Pope thus once again returned to this image of the Christian as a fisherman and of the Church as a net (called in this case to confront the challenge emerging from the Net of knowledge). He used the image before – first when he was still Pope
in pectore, so to speak, during his eulogy of Pope John Paul II (April 8), during his installation as Pope (April 24), and in his homily on Pentecost (May 15). Some references also emerged in his speeches in Cologne.
One may venture to say that the idea of the Church which Benedict XVI is proposing at the start of his Papacy is linked to the image of the Church as God’s net. This is an ancient metaphor which is also very current, rich in literary suggestions but also with a latent revolutionary power.
Above all we find the image of a net and fish in Scriptures, for example, in Habakuk, and particularly in the New Testament, where there are at least two miraculous fishing incidents (Luke and John), both recounted at curcial moments in the life of Christ as it relates to the life of the Church: the calling of the disciples and the the call to Peter by the resurrected Christ, and it is on this episode that Ratzinger and later Benedict XVI reflected twice in the month of April 2005 – first, on Christ’s command “Follow me” which John Paul II as successor of Peter incarnated in 27 years as Pope, and then later, upon receiving the Fisherman’s Ring, to indicate his, Ratzinger’s, own new and personal mission.
Referring as he often does to the Fathers of the Church, the newly elected pope underscored the paradox of the task before Christians: if in the act of fishing, the fish which is “created to live in water…is taken away from his vital element to serve as food for man… in the mission of being fisher of men the opposite happens.
We humans live alienated in the saltwaters of suffering and death, in a sea of darkness without light. The net of the Gospels draws us out of the waters of death into the splendor of God’s light, towards the true life.”
It is rather surprising that neither the Fathers of the Church, the magisterium or theology devoted an ecclesiological elaboration to this theme. In the course of centuries, the Church has defined itself as a society, a body (of Christ, mystical), communion, community, mystery, sign and sacrament – but there nas not been till now a definition of the image of the Church as God’s net.
Among the great names in Christian tradition, perhaps the one who has dwelt most on the theme is the greatest of all: St. Thomas. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, specifically, on the episodes of the miraculous catch and the call to Peter, Aquinas made a statement whose effect one can easily imagine on theologian Ratzinger, when he became Prefect of the CDF at age 54. “
The net with which the fish will be caught,” wrote Thomas, “
is the doctrine of the faith, with which God draws us by inspiring interiorly, and the apostles by exhorting.”
The net is therefore the doctrine of the faith. It is not a cage which restricts man in a network of ethical links and moral obligations, but precisely an interior inspiration, as Benedict XVI underscored in his homily last December 8: “
The will of God is not, for man, a law imposed from outside to constrain him, but the intrinsic measure of his nature, a measure which is already in him, which renders him as the image of God and therefore, a free creature.”
The net is also the Church itself, as one deduces from Peter’s gesture of “drawing the net onto land.” The Church-net was entrusted to Peter the fisherman, and not coincidentally, in the same episode in which he is commanded to bring the sheep to pasture, a task which Aquinas said was prefigured in that act (of drawing the net onto land): “In fact, it was he who brought the fish to the solidity of the shore, showing to the faithful the stability of the eternal fatherland.”
Against the sea, symbol of the agitated human condition, the Petrine image of the Church stands out, a ship that plows through the waters, a net that rescues men, all men. Into this net come “fish of every sort” as then Cardinal Ratzinger said in 2000 on presenting the document “Memory and reconciliation: the Church and the sins of the past.” This Church with its large net into which all men are invited to enter, is the net that was in danger of breaking apart from the weight of the miraculous catch..
As narrated by Luke, when the first disciples were called, the net which, at the Resurrected Christ’s command, Peter brought to shore, contained 153 large fish but did not break – it is a pre-figuration of the celestial Church. Whereas the first net represented the Church of the present, holy and sinful, chaste and adulterous, always in the process of reform, full of “breaks, schisms, heresies,” over which the newly elected Benedict XVI raised a cry of sorrow and of hope in concluding his homily at his inaugural Mass:
“I wish to stress once more – whether in the image of the shepherd as in that of the fisherman, the call to unity emerges in a very explicit manner… And the story of the 153 large fish ends with the joyous statement – ‘although there were so many, the net did not break.’” (Jn 21,11)
“ ‘Alas, dear Lord, the net is broken right now,’ we may wish to say in sorrow. But no – we must not be sad! We will rejoice over your promise, which does not mislead, and we will do everything possible to pursue the course towards unity that you have promised us. We commemorate that in our prayer to the Lord, when like beggars, we say: 'Yes, Lord, remember what you promised. Let it be that we should be one flock with one shepherd! Do not allow your net to break and help us be servants of unity.'”
The image of the net immediately presents itself, rich with many dimensions, among which stand out the ecumenical and the evangelical (which inevitably reverberates on the socio- political aspects of the Church). The ecumenical meaning, represented by the fisherman’s net, intensely animated the activities of the Wojtyla-Ratzinger partnership during John Paul II’s Papacy, and continue – with so many clear signs – during the start of Benedict XVI’s reign.
But the image of the net does not only call to mind ecumenism. Papa Ratzinger’s return to this image allows other reflections, even in relation to the figure of his predecessor. The Pope is at once shepherd and fisherman - this is true of every successor of Peter, but perhaps it is precisely in this double aspect that it is possible to distinguish a nuance of discontinuity between the German Pope and his Polish predecessor. Shepherds were frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, then gave way to fishermen in the Gospels.
Like a figure out of the Ancient Alliance, Wojtyla was, like Moses, a man on the move, with the shepherd’s staff always raised and tightly held in his hand until the end. With strenuous vigor, John Paul exerted himself to the end at the head of his flock, often moving against the flow, knocking down physical and spiritual walls. Towards the end of his long reign, he condemned the erection of walls, underscoring instead the importance – vital for man and society – of building bridges: that was the meaning of being a “Ponti-fice” (“builder of bridges”).
Benedict XVI is above all a “fisherman.” In the wake of Wojtyla, he has taken his place with a style that is more patient, more reasonable, more subtle, typical of fishermen. Many signs, not only physical (the figure, the face), indicate the “subtlety” of this Papacy compared to Wojtyla’s, a subtlety that is, however, neither lightness nor silence, but rather an attitude which will end up “making noise” in the way a wise fisherman does, as Kierkegaard wrote in his diary: “ Like the fisherman who, after having cast his net, makes noise in the water in order to attract as many fish as he can, so also God, who wishes to be loved, must vigorously bring in men.”
The net which Benedict XVI casts into the agitated sea of the contemporary Western world is subtle (like every net, it should be almost invisible in order to be most effective), it is discreet, and its strength lies in these (characteristics). On “discretion” as the mark of the style of God and of his own vicariate, one must reread his homily on May 15, a very interesting text from the ecclesiological viewpoint. The Pope on that occasion spoke of the descent of the Holy Spirit as “a discreet image”, but that it is "precisely in that manner that we perceive the greatness of the Pentecostal event .”
The greeting of peace that the resurrected Christ sends “is a bridge that he has thrown down between heaven and earth. He comes down through this bridge to us, and we can go up this bridge of peace to reach him. On this bridge, always together with him, we also reach our neighbor, he who has need of us”. This is the net of God, held firmly by the Lord but entrusted to the hands of man.
Later, Benedict XVI compared the “soft breath of Christ on the eve of Easter” with the “strong wind” of Pentecost as described in the Acts of the Apostles. It is the difference between him and his predecessor.
It is also the difference, according to the Pope, “between the two episodes on Sinai of which the Old Testament speaks. On the one hand is the story of fire, thunder and wind, which preceded the promulgation of the Ten Commandments and the finalization of the Alliance (Ex 19 ff). On the other hand, the mysterious story of Elia on Mount Horeb.” The latter is one of the most celebrated passages of Scripture, and the Pope dwelt on it at length, for the benefit of the priests who had just been ordained, a rite which would see them “introduced into the great procession of those who, after the Pentecost, have received the apostolic mission.”
“You have become part of the communion of priests, with the bishops and the successor of Peter, who here in Rome is also your Bishop.
We are all part of the network of obedience to the word of Christ, the words of him who gives us true freedom, because he leads us to the open spaces and wide horizons of the truth.” And all of this must be done with a gentle voice, with the light breath of the Spirit written about in Scriptures.
Whoever has an image of Ratzinger as the German Panzer-Pope should bear in mind that homily, in which the Pope invited the new priests to live their mission following the example of the servant of Jehovah, prophet of Christ, of which Isaiah said: “He will not shout nor raise his voice, he will not make his voice heard in the public square.”
“Was not that how the humble figure of Jesus appeared, as the true revelation in which God manifests himself and talks to us? …On Mt. Horeb, Elia would learn that God is not in wind, nor earthquake, nor fire; Elia would have to learn to hear the quiet voice of God , and thus, to recognize ahead of time Him who would triumph over sin not with force but through his Passion; Him who with his suffering also gave us the power of forgiving. This is how God triumphs.”
The world today may still appear quite distant from this Pope, from his gentle but acute reasoning, which is rich in spirituality but has nothing spiritualistic. Indeed he makes us observe, as he did in that Pentecost homily, that “the Holy Spirit is a wind, but is not formless…. And if the lay world is uneasy because of movement in the Church, it has not realized that the Church is no longer just a flock, but a network made manifest precisely by putting its missions in place, in the sacrament of the priesthood, through which it continues the mission of the apostles.”
So, that is the Church according to Ratzinger – a network of obedience to the word of Christ.
Basically, the battle remains the same as it was for John Paul II, a battle for freedom, but after the powerful passage of the Polish shepherd who broke down walls and broke ground, it is time now to draw back the nets, to cast the baits one by one with acumen and perseverance.
In a lecture in August 1999 called “An ever-reforming company,” then Cardinal Ratzinger affirmed that “
faith in fact is not only recognizing (the truth) but making it work, not only breaking down walls but also holding out a helping hand to save, one by one, all men, all kinds of fish who pass into the net… (that) does not exist to keep us busy like any other mundane association trying to keep itself alive, but exists instead to become for all of us our access to eternal life.”
Even on a symbolic level, we can note that Ratzinger has kept Wojtyla’s pastoral staff, but, in obedience to tradition, also put on the new Fisherman’s Ring. From the Church-as-flock to the Church-as-net, this imagery could serve to cast light on the course which Catholicism now finds itself living through.
Obviously, this is only a suggestive image which does not explain all the complexities of human history and which already has its contradictions, starting with the ever more numerous “flocks” of the faithful - giving the lie to hasty predictions - who have been coming to St. Peter’s on Wednesdays and Sundays to be near Benedict XVI.
But the image of the net, with something of the antique in it, allows an effective reflection on the actual situation of the Church. The Catholic Church, based in the world’s tiniest state but with the largest population in the world - like the fisherman’s net and like the virtual net of the worldwide web - falls effectively into the insterstices of society and is at once invisible and resistant.
The net is not in view but it is there, and against the light, one might note its juncture points, the nodes which keep it together. These are the dogmas that, over time, remain firm points against the successive waves of history. The more this net is mobile, ductile and malleable, the more it is able to resist the tides.
There is another dimension which becomes more vivid with this ancient and new symbol of the web: the political one, that which refers to the relations between church and state.
Even here, the transition from the shepherd Wojtyla to the fisherman Ratzinger may reveal new scenarios once unsuspected.
In 1978 when the world was very different, broken up into blocks and divided by walls, the power of a great pastor was needed to change it. Outside of metaphor, perhaps the discourse that “the call to unity emerges very explicitly in the image of the shepherd as in that of the fisherman” (Ratzinger homily at his Inaugural Mass), serves to explain also the recent emergence [into public view] of important prelates like Cardinal Camillo Ruini and Mons. Carlo Caffarra, who have disclosed and highlighted a certain dissatisfaction with the present condition of Church-State relations, a condition that harks back to Italian and European history and the concordat with the Vatican.
The concordat in fact was born out of the logic of opposing walls, in that 19th-century epoch when national governments opposed the State, with a capital S, to a Church that had been stripped of temporal powers, a centralized State that had emerged out of the French Revolution.
Fortunately today, that “State” no longer exists, and not only because the European Union has taken its place. Even the Church is adapting itself to the socio-political evolution of the West (contributing to modify it from the inside) and perhaps is starting to look with new interest on the experience of the United States, which, after its own revolution, saw the birth not of a State but of a real democracy with diffuse pluralism which could precisely be described as “reticular.”
It is not surprising that Pope Benedict XVI himself, in his speech to the Roman Curia on December 22, underscored this difference between the European and American experiences: “We took account of the fact [during Vatican-II] that the American Revolution had offered a model of a modern State that was different from that theorized by the radical tendencies that emerged in the second phase of the French Revolution.”
Perhaps that explains the uneasiness on the part of the exponents of laicism in Italian culture in the face of activist movements within the Catholic Church: they do not realize that the Church is no longer just a flock (how many times over the past years Ratzinger and others who think like him have reflected about the “minority” condition in which Christianity finds itself athwart the millenial junction) – but a net.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/01/2006 1.11]