Whither the Church, should Karol Wojtyla bow out?

The name of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger - the 'ideological enforcer' - has arisen over the past couple months as a candidate for Pope, with the understanding it would be short term because of his age (77). My personal viewpoint is, he would be a good choice. Since I'm not technically Roman Catholic my opinion may carry little weight, but what the hey. Concepts regarding the definition of the Catholic Church in some ways parallel competing definitions of Christianity in general, and on a number of fronts I believe that the Church serves as the vanguard of Christianity's confrontation with culture.

Though not a member of his fan club, I've had some familiarity with Ratzinger since the mid-1980s when I followed things like the Synods about as closely as I currently follow major league baseball (check in every few days, scan the headlines, read the occasional article). He played a significant role then, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as.....cue scary music....the Inquisition!!) At a time when the concept of the Church was a matter of debate, he cogently maintained one side of the argument.

The Church is an institution composed of individuals whose definitions of reality, and conceptions of the institution, can conflict. The first major document produced by the Second Vatican Council was Lumen Gentium, promulgated in November 1964. This 'Dogmatic Constitution on the Church' invoked several metaphors for the Church, primary among which are the 'People of God' and the 'Mystical Body of Christ.' In the years following the Council, the relationship between these 'models' has been interpreted both as complementary and as somewhat opposing, and as supporting liberal and conservative positions. The first type of relationship was described by Avery Dulles in 1974: '…both illuminate from different angles the notion of Church as communion or community.'

A decade later the images of People of God and Mystical Body of Christ could often be heard employed as shorthand for 'liberal' (authority of community) and 'conservative' (authority of hierarchy) understandings of the Church. Commenting on the 'Final Report' of the Extraordinary Synod of 1985, journalist Peter Steinfels discussed the concepts of the Church from the liberal viewpoint:

Mystery quite clearly appealed to conservatives because, in stressing the divine origins of God’s gift to the Church, it tended to secure the current forms of ecclesiastical organization from the critical eye of what was dismissed as 'sociological' or 'political' analysis. . . If mystery threatened to cloak hierarchical power in a cloud of incense, communion emphasized an equality of standing before God, a bond of love in Christ that should supersede relations of power. It had much in it of the quality of the image 'people of God' which conservatives have increasingly resisted.

Ratzinger elucidated the 'conservative' standpoint in the small-yet-trenchant 'Ratzinger Report' of 1985:

'People of God' in Scripture, in fact, is a reference to Israel in its relationship of prayer and fidelity to the Lord. But to limit the definition of the Church to that expression means not to give full expression to the New Testament understanding of the Church in its fullness…the Church receives her New Testament character more distinctively in the concept of the 'Body of Christ'…Behind the concept of the Church as People of God, which has been so exclusively thrust into the foreground today, hide influences of ecclesiologies which de facto revert to the Old Testament; and perhaps also political, partisan and collectivist influences. . . The Church does not exhaust herself in the 'collective' of believers: being the 'Body of Christ' she is much more than the simple sum of her members.

This makes good sense to me, and the question could be asked whether it is useful to categorize this standpoint as 'conservative' because the term carries a lot of other baggage. But then again, in some cases the baggage is illuminated by the Body of Christ conception. I see a parallel with The Living or Personal Christ of Evangelical Protestantism, versus the Community of Believers notion of the Liberal/Mainstream churches. The different concepts of the Church also relate to Hunter's Orthodox vs Progressive 'culture wars' dichotomy.

While the Church is, in one sense, the ultimate 'top-down' hierarchical organization, it is also certainly a community of individual believers, and Christianity certainly stresses the primacy of the individual's relationship with God. This is a key argument against the ecclesiastical emphasis - Steinfels' 'cloak' of mystery - of the Body of Christ model.

But this argument assumes the mystical conception of the Church is merely a facade for sustaining the hierarchy; a high degree of cynicism underlying Ratzinger's definition of the Church. I have no comprehensive knowledge of the Cardinal's statements, but from what I've seen he does not come off as a cynic:

Today, Christianity is seen as an old tradition, weighed down by old Commandments, something we already know which tells us nothing new; a strong institution, one of the great institutions that weigh on our shoulders...If we stay with this impression, we do not live the essence of Christianity, which is an ever new encounter, an event thanks to which we can encounter the God who speaks to us, who approaches us, who befriends us...

It is critical to come to this fundamental point of a personal encounter with God, who also today makes himself present, and who is contemporary. If one finds this essential center, one also understands all the other things. But if this encounter is not realized, which touches the heart, all the rest remains like a weight, almost like something absurd...

Another fundamental element of the Council that we are called to assimilate better affects the need to understand Christianity in a personal way, from the point of view of an encounter with Christ. The central character of Christ was, I would say, the heart of the message of Vatican Council II. Unfortunately, we concentrated on many external things so that this central character of Christian personalism remains to be discovered...

If on one hand it is important that priests proclaim well the essence of the Christian faith, on the other hand there must be persons who in the different realms of the world commit themselves to make present the principles of the Christian faith, which will transform human realities from within.

Spoken like a good Evangelical. Should one be needed, he seems like a good man for the job.