The whole world heard about the news because of the cardinal’s description of the Catholic Church as being “200 years out of date” and his comments about the need for the Church to be more open in areas such as sexual ethics and the provision of the sacraments to remarried divorcees, reports Vatican Insider.
These are subject the Emeritus Archbishop of Milan had discussed in person with his interviewer, the German Jesuit Fr Georg Sporschill in 2007, in his best selling book Nocturnal conversations in Jerusalem. On the risks of Faith.
But whatever one makes of this, the Jesuit cardinal who passed away last week certainly deserves recognition for the courage of his ideas. A friend of the then Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume, from whom he inherited the role of President of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences, Martini often visited him in London.
It was during these visits that he gave his most controversial statements to the press.
On April 26,1993, The Sunday Times published a large colour photograph of Martini on its front page, with an interview by John Cornwell titled: “The next Pope?”
Contemplating the situation within the Catholic Church, Martini had said: “This is 1993, but some Catholics are still mentally in 1963, some in 1940 and some even in the last century. It’s inevitable that there will be a clash of mentalities.”
They cannot all be in the right, Martini had gone on to say. Some are closer to the Gospel that others and this is precisely the danger.
In his interview with The Sunday Times the cardinal discussed the problem of birth control.
He stated that contraception is something special which involves particular aspects of moral teaching. Northern and Latin countries differ in their attitudes towards moral questions.
Italy, he said, believes we should set ourselves high ideals in order to achieve something.
Other countries believe that ideal really has to be reached and they worry if the fail.